We are here to find the answers to your questions.  Here is a question we often get.

How much and how long should I practice?

I love this question because it implies an intent to actually Practice!!!!

OK, here goes.  Of course this depends upon your experience as a singer. If you are a beginner, I suggest you vocalize 20-30 minutes per day - at least six days a week. When you sing those exercises, do so with consciouness. Don’t fall asleep on the job. Warming up your body takes precision in your thinking to properly direct breathing, posture, tongue and jaw placement and the myriad other muscles involved in the process of singing. I don’t mean to imply that you need to think of all those things at once. Talk about overload! Rather concentrate on what your tying to achieve with the exercise. You need to get in touch with breath management for all your exercises, so perhaps you begin with a few simple breathing exercises. Reminding your body of what it already knows about breathing and also reminding it that now it has to go further and last a bit longer than normal speech or daily breathing.

When you begin your first exercise ask yourself, what is the purpose of this exercise. How will it grow my voice and then let that be your purpose is doing it. If you have no purpose behind your warm ups, you are wasting your time and possibly building in bad muscle memory patterns that will later need to be undone.

Another thing about practice is that the singing voice has a limited time limit. One cannot sing full out for hours at a time without damage from fatigue. Just ask any middle school music teacher. They often suffer a great deal of vocal abuse. I subscribe to the same method that Olympic athletes use and that is VISUALIZING your song(s) in detail. It’s great for memorizing and programming your body for stage movement. Sit quietly after your practice and visualize in as much detail as possible. You’ll be amazed at how your confidence grows.