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Don’t spend all your practice singing through your whole song.
Instead, find the three trickiest spots and practise just those sections.
Try this:
Professional performers spend more time fixing little sections than singing the whole piece over and over.
Every small improvement builds confidence.
Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to stay motivated when you’re working towards something specific?
Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced performer, having a goal gives your singing practice purpose. Instead of simply singing through songs, every lesson and practice session becomes a step towards achieving something meaningful.
Your goal doesn’t have to be huge. It could be:
Goals also make progress easier to see. On days when you feel like you’re not improving, you can look back and realise just how far you’ve come. That sense of achievement builds confidence and keeps you moving forward.
The best goals are specific, achievable, and exciting. They should challenge you just enough to encourage growth without feeling overwhelming.
At Singing Strong, we encourage every student to have something they’re working towards. Whether it’s a performance, an exam, an eisteddfod, or simply becoming a more confident singer, having a destination makes the journey far more rewarding.
Ask yourself today: What is my next singing goal?
Once you know where you’re heading, every practice session has a purpose.
Learning music doesn’t just doesn’t just make you a musician, it actually builds bravery.
Music and particularly performing music, lives in the same part of your brain where you recognize your own nakedness.
Every time someone performs, they are presenting to the audience – this is what I made, this is a piece of who I am.
That’s scary.
And bravery is doing something while you are afraid of doing it.
Every time that you do something that you are afraid of doing, every time you do something bravely, it actually rewires your self concept, what you think about yourself.
Neural pathways get built that tell ourselves I can do difficult things and I can do it in front of people.
What is so amazing is that neural pathway that has been built doesn’t stay in music.
It shows up in job interviews, it shows up when you volunteer in the community, it shows up when you stand up to a bully.
There are so many places in life when we require bravery, the ability to do something while we are afraid to do it.
Bravery is built in the mind and the body through repeated acts of bravery.
And music is a bravery gym.
Developing singing skills is just like learning any instrument. To be able to sing on pitch and not sound flat you need to develop your singing technique,
be able to hear whether you are singing on pitch or sounding flat, and you require the confidence, energy and songs suitable for you to sing.
Without steady airflow, the vocal folds don’t vibrate efficiently, causing notes to sag below the correct pitch.
Signs:
Making sure you practice regularly to build good breath support is very important.
A lack of ear training can have a lot to do with singing flat.
Sometimes the singer simply isn’t hearing the pitch accurately enough to match or maintain it.
Signs:
Flat singing can happen when the singer isn’t fully committing to the sound.
This is common with shy or inexperienced singers that aren’t adding enough energy, even when singing softly.
Signs:
Trying to sing notes that are too low or too high can make it difficult to maintain accurate pitch.
Signs:
By combining these approaches, you can make learning to sing a fun and rewarding experience, setting a strong foundation for their musical journey ahead.
The following songs are popular, catchy, and have relatively simple melodies and lyrics, making them suitable for young boys to sing along with and enjoy.
This is a very repetitive song and has a small vocal range, making it very easy for young boys to learn quickly, sing and enjoy.
Always check the key the song is in and if that key suits the child. Sometimes you may need to raise the key to make it easier to sing in their vocal range. Remember, these voices are still immature and they don’t have the vocal chords that an adult male has, meaning they are not yet able to sing really low notes.
Here is the Beatles version, as well as the same song in a higher key.
Click on the image below to get my free pdf : Mastering Lyrics 8 tips for effortless memorization.
It has been a very busy week for me this week, as along with everything I usually do in a week, I am also preparing for an audition. I haven’t done one of these in a long time, and although it is a little stressful, it is wonderful that things are starting to get back to normal so that shows can once again be staged.
Usually I like to be well prepared for auditions, but for some reason, this one has crept up on me. In an audition they usually ask you to perform something from the show, and then a section of a song that is similar in style to the show you are auditioning for.
I chose to sing the beginning of The worst pies in London from Sweeny Todd. Now Sondheim, the composer composes very challenging music. You can watch a performance by the amazing Patti Lupone here.
The challenge here was the words. It is so fast and there is no time to think, they have to be known.
So how do you go about learning something like this in 4 days? Well you practice really hard.
Some of the things I have done to learn the piece include: Listening to the recording at least 50 times, probably more. Chunking it up. Learn the first phrase, add the next and so on. I broke it up also into two sections, the first one has lots of fast phrases, the second section is more legato and you have a little more time to think. As soon as I wake up in the morning, I go through the lyrics for about 15 minutes, then probably sing through the song about 10 times.
Whenever I had a spare moment during the day, I would play the music on my phone. I would spend time in front of the music score looking for clues about how to sing the piece accurately, revise lyrics, rhythm and melody. I spent about an hour each day doing this. After a couple of days I would start to attempt to put some moves with the music to be able to perform the song, not just sing it. Then go over and over and over it until I feel confident I can sing it accurately. I was even going through it in my head while swimming my morning laps at the pool.
In total I guess I have spent approximately 3 hours a day rehearsing.
This gives you a bit of a clue as to how much practice is required to learn a 90 second piece of a song.
If you would like to have individual singing lessons with me, please click on this link to register your details.
Today we are going to have a look at a very small section of Adele’s song Easy on me.
We are just going to do the very beginning of the chorus: Go easy on me baby.
There are a couple of things to look at in this small section of the song.
It’s a great song, and if you haven’t listened to the whole song you can click on this link to listen to it on you tube.
The song is in F major, and this phrase begins with the tonic note, which is the beginning not of the scale -F and then you sing up a fifth, or leap up, which is the fifth note of the scale which is C.
You will find fifth intervals in lots of songs. Intervals are important to practice so that when we sing them, we land accurately on them.
Practice on the sound ng, which is the sound at the end of the word sing. The sound is closed (the tongue and soft palate are together) but you can open your mouth when you sing. This aims the sound into the front of the face.
You want to glissando (slide) up and down. As you go up, think more like you are landing on the note rather than revving up a hill.
When you are attacking a phrase, especially one that begins with a vowel, there are a number of different ways you can sing it.
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