hey chris liepe here with how long you should practice singing it's a very common question
regardless of whether you're just starting out or whether you're further along in your journey
and the answer is complicated therefore the question is a really good question
so in this video i'm going to dissect different types of practicing and i'm going to help you
answer the question for yourself given the style of music you do what kinds of things you do with
your voice how long you should practice how often you should practice and what that should look like
if you'd like more personalized help with your own voice you'd like me to
come alongside you and be your vocal coach and help you practice and practice well
click the link below and join my free voice course that's the best place to start with me and there's
lots of ways we can work together from there so before we answer the question how long we need to
take a look at the different types of practicing that all of us do there are three main types
the first is exploration the second is conditioning and the third is preparation now
there's bleed over into different categories here but for the purposes of answering our question how
long i want to keep the classification primarily to these three and by not paying attention to the
practice classifications that i'm talking about we get all sorts of answers from vocalists and
vocal coaches about how long is safe and how long is productive anywhere from 10 minutes to
a few hours a day and as usual the answer is more complicated and somewhere in the middle
if we look at exploration as our first form of practicing this is the kinds of of things that you
might do after viewing one of my crazy videos on how to scream or how to sing higher as a baritone
or something like that where i'm giving you something that's unconventional and you're working
it into your own voice maybe for the first time but you're experiencing your voice in a new way
these types of practice sessions should be very short initially
in my full course discover your voice where i am throwing weekly experiences at you
for 12 weeks and you're having to oh wow that's a new sensation oh that's a new sound oh interesting
i have practice recommendations in there and i have you journal on it no more than
10 minutes a day in certain certain settings sometimes i'll have you do
10 minutes on one thing take a little break and then come back and do 10 minutes on another thing
and then work on some other things throughout the day but i've run into all too many times
a vocalist who comes to me and says man i can only practice for less than a half an hour a day
and my voice is just fried and what's wrong am is my voice damaged am i doing something wrong
well i don't know maybe your voice is damaged and you're probably doing a few things wrong
but the main thing that you're probably doing wrong is that you're not taking into consideration
the type of practicing if you're doing exploratory practicing making weird sounds doing things that
are very new feeling and new sounding to your voice those initially need to start with a very
limited timetable and i even tell students you know sometimes a minute or two on some of these
exercises is great you want to get to the point before you enter into exploratory practicing
that you are good and warmed up and you've taken inventory of where your voice is at for the day
and a typical warm-up can range anywhere from a few minutes to 15 minutes depending on how your
voice feels and other other factors and i've done videos on how to warm up on this channel
and i have lots of free warm-up videos on my website now let's discuss vocal conditioning
as a form of practicing this is the type of practicing that most vocalists think of
when they think of practicing and it might include scale exercises or other exercises
working over something until it's you know like doing a workout with your with your voice
and those of you who've been following my channel or who are members of any of my courses
know that i'm not a big fan of scale based or rote based vocal exercises i shy away from those
in a big way and tend to work with strategic short phrases note assignments and other speech level
types of engagements to help not only explore but definitely condition our voice
conditioning should be done on your voice with things that you've already explored
so when you're in the exploratory state you're working with things that are not familiar and
you're trying to develop muscle memory mind-body connection so that you can move these exploratory
aspects of singing and vocalizing into the conditioning stage once you're in
this fun conditioning stage you can stretch your practicing out a little bit 20 30 minutes a day
of conditioning practice is fantastic if you're doing it right you're doing it mindfully and yes
if other things are in balance and you've done your 5 10 15 minutes or so of exploratory things
and your voice is feeling okay you can enter in to conditioning you can enter into this stage
confidently knowing that you're warmed up you are working with things that are familiar feeling
you're working on maybe older exercises that help build your confidence build your strength
reinforce how you're using your support all of these things and it is imperative
that you are paying attention to your vocal budget as you're working through conditioning
if you've already done some exploratory work even if you haven't be listening to your body
more than you're watching the clock oh i gotta get my 20 minutes of conditioning in
it's okay to have a loose guideline of how much you want to practice but the minute you start
feeling your voice or your mind start to work against you in other words if you're doing an
exercise and you're not performing the exercise or experiencing the exercise in a way that you
normally do in a positive way it might be that you need to back off that certain type of conditioning
and work with something that is going to be of benefit for that type or for that day
or for that type of practicing so make sure that you're paying attention to how you feel
more so than really being wrote in terms of i've got to get this type of practicing in
i've got to do these exercises etc and now the third way to practice preparation many of you
might also call this rehearsing or just plain practicing because it is a type of practicing
preparation is classified as working on songs or song sets it could include aspects of conditioning
for example if you are going to be going on a short tour and you know that your set is
60 minutes long and you've got to be able to build up your conditioning in order to get to
that level you are preparing for this set and this set length in your conditioning
but in preparation i'm particularly talking about well we're learning the song we're troubleshooting
the song we're putting it in our voice we're getting into where we can sing it all the way
through or preparing for a recording session uh or we're preparing for a group of songs
this is practicing in its most fun and in a lot of ways it's the most intense it's also the most
dangerous because a lot of times we are so focused on preparing a song or working through the aspects
of real music at this point that we forget to pay attention to things like vocal budgeting
or good technique or we forget you know all together and we just go too long and then we
oh i've got to br i've got to practice again and rehearse again with the band again because uh we
we've got to prepare for this thing and you wind up burning yourself out you wind up over training
maybe because you've spent too much time in preparation but you could also be doing
your exploratory stuff and then doing your other conditioning sorts of exercises
and your preparation all at once and before you know it yeah you're beating your voice up not
to mention all the other things you're doing with your voice throughout the day do you talk for work
did you yell at a restaurant last night for for a while we have to take all of these things into
consideration but when it comes to preparation here are a few guidelines that will help you
keep things in check if you're in a season of intense preparation practicing for real artistic
outpouring with your voice really pare down on particularly the exploratory stuff
exploratory stuff is awesome but it can very easily burn out your voice because
things are unfamiliar no you're not going to injure your voice by spending a few minutes a day
screaming or putting some new sensation in your voice but if this is still a big
priority while you're over here and doing preparation on on big things you're going
they're going to come into conflict and you're going to notice that your voice isn't behaving
quite the same way that it should when you're over here preparing oftentimes it's good to
separate the seasons out so that you know when you're in your off seasons you are working more
exploratory and then the muscle memory that you develop here and then hone in your conditioning
really creeps into this artistic outpouring in ways that you don't even have to think about
if you separate them if you're doing them all at the same time then they start competing with each
other and i know from experience it's miserable you feel confused you feel like your voice is
working backward and working against you it's not fun the other thing to consider is and this has
really come into play for me time of day there's something to be said for in the preparation stage
don't try to do this stuff in the mornings
i tend to work best in the preparation in the practicing in the band rehearsal in the
long recording sessions i tend to work best in the late afternoons and early evenings
because my body is fully awake i've already spent time talking i've already spent a little bit
of time singing and warming up just by the very nature of being awake for a while and this squares
with a lot of professional touring vocalists that end up working late into the night and
so they end up having their mornings be you know maybe they're sleeping maybe they're resting their
voice so keep all of these things in mind how long should i practice how long should you practice
exploratory type practicing sometimes five ten minutes a day maybe less
conditioning 20 or 30 minutes these are your exercises these are a chance to build
strength and body mind connection 20 to 30 minutes is great and rehearsals
man if you structure your rehearsals your preparation right if you're working with a
group of people you give the band a chance to work on stuff uh you know they can work for hours and
hours they don't have a voice plan your rehearsals your band rehearsals so that you can come
in and out of there yeah you can still be mentally engaged but you don't have to sing you don't
definitely don't have to go all out the whole time when you're working on full sets structure the
song orders in the way that you're practicing so that you are giving your voice peaks and valleys
you may not do that set then in that exact order but it gives you a chance to really feel out where
your voice is strong and where your voice is not as strong but preparation can be hours if done
right and done mindfully with other things these other areas of practicing in consideration i hope
this has been helpful for you again if you'd like more hand-holding and personalized experience with
your own voice be sure to click that link below and join my free course we'll see you for more