British researchers, focusing on music, sports and chess, have released an extensive study of people who achieve greatness. The conclusion is that there is very little correlation between natural talent and becoming a master of your craft. It is very simply a matter of hard, disciplined practice, and, more importantly, the right kind of practice.

The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call “deliberate practice.” It is activity that is explicitly intended to improve performance, reaches for objectives just beyond one’s level of competence, provides feedback on results, and involves high levels of repetition.

The common thread researchers found in all high achievers was consistent study and practice. The bottom line is greatness is within the reach of all of us; it just takes more work than the average person is willing to give.

21 Days

Another study released several years ago focused on “habit-forming principles.” In other words, how do we form habits, good or bad?

The findings of the study: if you do anything faithfully for 21 days, you will form a habit. And chances are you will have it for life. So if you bite your nails for 21 days (like I did at age 5, apparently) you’ll develop a nasty habit…and do it for life (over 30 years later, I’m still doin’ it.)

However, you can always break a bad habit if you replace it with a good one. But you have to do it consistently and properly for 21 days.

Application

So let’s apply this (and the previous study) to singing, practice, and vocal habits. We all have good and bad vocal habits. Some have more of one then the other. But we all wanna get better at our craft, right?

In order to get rid of a bad vocal habit, you can’t just sing songs every day. All you would be doing is reinforcing your bad habits….teaching your nervous system to continue doing the same things, good and bad.

You need to find exercises that encourage the opposing response from your body. For example, if you tend to sing breathy, you need to practice exercises that really bring your vocal cords together so that you produce a clearer, less-breathy sound.

It’s not important to sound “beautiful” at this point, just get the opposite habit going. Soon your nervous system will start to favour the new, good vocal habit and abandon the old, bad one.

Frequency vs. Duration

Finally, let this be your motto for practicing: frequency is more important than duration. I often have clients who are practicing once or twice a week for 1-2 hours in one sitting. This is too much at one time and not enough to build good habits.

Consider this: if you practice twice per week for two hours at a time, you practiced a total of four hours that week. But you were only in the right coordination two times that week. Not enough.

Try breaking up your practice schedule: do your practice regimen for 10 minutes at a time, twice a day. If you do that six days a week, you will have only practiced for 120 minutes (two hours) that week. BUT you will have been in the right coordination 12 TIMES!

It’s this kind of frequency that your nervous system responds to…it builds muscle memory which is what singers, althletes, etc. depend on in the heat of performance.

If you want to develop a good habit quickly, you need to constantly remind your body what that good singing coordination feels like. Soon your body will do it automatically so that you don’t have to think about it anymore.

Good luck practicing!