In a word, NO. Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Whatever you repeat on a regular basis will eventually become habitual, but the resulting habit could be good OR bad. So in order for “practice to make perfect,” you must practice perfectly.

How do most people practice their singing? They sing songs over and over hoping for improvement. But whether they will improve really depends on HOW they are singing that song. When you repeat any sound over and over, your brain accepts it, your ear tunes to it, and your body locks into it. We call this muscle memory. If you are repeating harmful coordinations like flipping into falsetto or pulling up the bottom too high, it will eventually become automatic. Then you have a bad habit.

On the other hand, if you practice a good coordination, your body will make that feeling the automatic response. You can train your body to the point where cracking or pushing feels “wrong’ and hard to do…just like basketball superstar Larry Byrd practiced his free throws to the point where he couldn’t miss the basket. Even when he tried. Boo hoo, eh?

Singing songs is NOT the quickest way to get to these good vocal habits. I know a lot of songwriters, and their chief concern when they write a song is not whether it will help you stop straining or not. The SLS exercises, on the other hand, were specifically designed to fix your vocal problems. Do you tend to crack into falsetto? There’s an SLS exercise for that. Do you pull up your bottom voice until it hurts? There’s an SLS exercise for that…and scores of other issues.

Before you begin singing, your voice may feel a bit stiff. As any athlete knows, you need to slowly warm up your muscles before you put them through the paces. The muscles and tissues (inside the larynx, in this case) need to accept more blood flow in order to be limber and flexible when the work load increases. This process is known as vascular dilation.

The lip trill, tongue trill, and humming are all great ways to start warming up. After 5 to 15 minutes of exercises, you should feel fully warmed up, depending on the size of your voice, your vascular conditioning, and the amount of time you’ve been awake and using your voice.

However, you can come all warmed-up to a voice lesson with me, and I will still vocalize you. Why? Because now that the muscles are ready to be worked out, all that’s missing is the workout! You are the Olympic athlete training and conditioning your body for the main event = singing a song. I am your personal trainer, choosing the right exercises and building the right workout regimen to get you there.

With this in mind, here are a few tips to develop a successful practice regimen:

Vocalize at least 10-15 min. per day. That’s it? Yes, that’s all you need in the beginning to start coordinating your voice. If you want to do more, do this twice a day. 15 minutes of focused practice is far better than 1 hour of distracted frustration.

Anytime is a good time, anywhere is a good place to PRACTICE. Aside from your daily 10-15 minutes, find five opportunities a day to vocalize for 30 seconds…in the elevator, in the car, before brushing your teeth. Here is your mantra: frequency is more important than duration. The more often you practice an exercise to find balance, the faster your body will accept it. And if you sing out loud on the street, well that’s normal…at least Downtown Vancouver, it is.

Practice along to your CD. The exercises I record in a lesson were chosen and sequenced in a specific order to break down the bad habits and build the good ones. If you ever get discouraged, go back to CDs from six months ago. You’ll immediately hear how much you’ve improved.

When you practice a song, focus on the section that needs work. No use ironing the whole shirt if there is only ONE wrinkle…go straight to the wrinkle. Try spending one whole practice session on 30 seconds of a song. Find the problematic vowels and modify them as I suggested in the lesson. Try adding some style to the melody like a run or a note bend.

Take some time every day to listen to great vocalists. We all need mentors to model ourselves after. Check out the playfulness of Ella Fitzgerald, the floating ease of Luther Vandross, the brassy-ness of Aretha Franklin, and the clarity of Starship’s Mickey Thomas.

Above all, HAVE FUN! Remember why you got into this in the first place…because singing is supposed to be fun. If you get too bogged down trying to “do it right,” you might get frustrated and stop altogether. Enjoy and love your voice for what it is and where it’s at. Practice being playful!