What Instrumentalists Know About Singing That Most Singers Don’t

One of the things that keeps coming up when I am talking to instrumentalists is the difference in the practice habits between instrumentalists in general and vocalists. One only has to go into a university practice room hall to notice the difference. In these practice rooms you’ll find pianists practicing endless arpeggios, violinists running up and down every scale imaginable, and vocalists—if they are there at all—singing some art song, aria, or Adele. Where’s the skill building?

As a vocalist, I must admit, I’ve been here—some days I am still here. This approach is undeniably fun—and there’s nothing wrong with that if the goal is simply enjoyment. But if you want to improve as a singer, relying on repertoire alone leaves skill acquisition largely to chance, often resulting in frustrating plateaus and underwhelming performances. While it is certainly the most common approach in modern times, it was not the approach in vocal studios throughout history.

Think about this: no kindergarten–2nd grade teacher would ask a student to write a full paragraph, much less an essay. First, they must learn the alphabet, then how letters form words, how words build phrases, and only then how to string complete thoughts together. It’s so obvious in that context—yet we often act as if singers can skip the primer entirely.

For the several centuries leading up to the 20th century, singers practiced vocalises as what we would today call their warmups.

Fun fact: singers in historic vocal schools might spend months or even years practicing fundamental skills before they were allowed to sing arias.

These vocalises were designed to provide repetitions of specific patterns—be they rhythmic patterns, dynamic modulations, or pitch and vowel challenges. Sometimes these vocalises were more akin to what we think of as modern vocal warmups—things like endless scales and arpeggios; other times they were excerpts from repertoire that had been modified in some way. For example, a passage with lots of large quick leaps may be slowed down to practice the leaps, repeating in several different keys and/or rhythmic patterns. Either way, the goal was clear: to establish the fundamental building blocks of singing. Things like: pitch accuracy, vowel clarity, breath control, onset coordination, vocal agility, dynamic control, and register transitions. These are the foundations.

To sum it up, the general idea of practicing the fundamental skills and isolating challenging or unique moments in repertoire is about:

• Leaving nothing to chance
• Unlocking your potential

According to Seneca, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” I think that one of the challenges that we face with singing in the modern world is the focus tends to be too big picture. We are focused on the performance of the song, which makes sense. Singing is a performance art, and a song is more or less the smallest unit of measurement in a performance. We talk about so-and-so sang such a beautiful song, what a great performance. We rarely discuss how well they sang that one note in the middle.

That is not to say that as singers we don’t focus on the moments that make up a whole song. I have spent hours polishing singular moments in songs for my own repertoire and with students. Sometimes the beauty of a song can be in those singular moments. Or conversely, a lack of attention to those moments can degrade the quality of the whole song; typically the listener has no idea how much effort went into the moment.

What strikes me is that even in this attention to detail, it is in the context of that song. I spend the time polishing the moments in context. Ultimately, there is no way around this. There will always be a level of polish required in context. Where we could do better is in more generalized practice of skills.

Let’s be honest here—we all have a lot of excuses as to why we don’t practice our scales; goodness knows I’ve told myself every possible excuse. Things like:

• “Warmups are boring.”
• “I just want to sing something beautiful.”
• “Exercises don’t express anything.”
• “I’m working on technique through the song.”

These excuses are totally understandable. Singing is fun. It’s expressive. And we’re drawn to the thrill of performance. But if you’re always working at full speed, in full context, you rarely give your voice the chance to refine the ingredients. It’s like trying to become a better cook by only making full meals—never practicing knife skills, never tasting your seasoning, never adjusting your heat.

Generalized practice—fundamental skill work—isn’t about killing the joy. It’s about unlocking more joy, because it builds the technical freedom you need to express yourself more fully.

By practicing fundamental skills in isolation, we unlock our potential and, in the end, have to spend less time polishing individual moments because all of the components are already better. If your scales and intervals are in tune, you don’t have to worry about pitch accuracy—check. If you practice your run patterns, you can insert them into a song as needed. If you practice singing messa di voces on every note with every vowel, there is no word, note, or dynamic level that will phase you.

To get really nerdy for a moment: a lot of this is really about how muscle memory works. Despite its name, muscle memory is located in the brain, created and refined by the basal ganglia and refined through repetition by the cerebellum. Think of these memories more as preprogrammed patterns that can then be accessed and performed with little or no attention from you—autopilot. This pattern includes the whole package: take a breath like this, adduct the vocal folds like so, exhale at this rate, move the lips and the tongue in this way—every part of the activity is pulled together in a specific order. Or Timothy relates it to jazz saying: “This makes me think of the work of a jazz musician. Improv is pulling from the pantry of preprogrammed patterns.”

Seneca again: “Everyone faces up more bravely to a thing for which he has long prepared himself…”

Singing is chaining together small moments into something that is hopefully beautiful. Instead of focusing on the big picture and hoping the moments take care of themselves, let’s focus on improving all of the moments to a place where we no longer have to concentrate on the details.

Timothy used to give a short speech before student recitals as inspirational encouragement to the performers before they stepped on stage. He would remind them that at the root of being a singer is to be a storyteller—that what the audience really wants is to be taken on a journey, to feel something. Even if the notes, rhythms, and words are less than perfect, the audience will forgive (or honestly not even notice) many mistakes.

He is absolutely correct: our goal in a performance is to be storytellers. I, however, find it very difficult to focus on being a storyteller when I am concerned about making beautiful sounds. Practicing those components early and often can make the difference between success and failure.

Remember our quick dive into muscle memory? By putting in the repetitions to improve our preprogrammed sequences, we open up our ability to focus on storytelling—to make edits in the moment based on real-world conditions. For instance, I live outside of Denver, Colorado in the United States. We are about a mile above sea level here, which means the air pressure is lower. In effect, you get less oxygen with each breath. Lower oxygen levels make it harder to perform physical activities for individuals that are not accustomed to the altitude. When singers come here, they will likely need to adjust their breathing, taking more frequent breaths during their performance.

I found the world of voice science through a recommendation of Timothy’s to go to an Estill Voice training. Estill Voice breaks the voice into 13 anatomical components or structures that can be controlled to produce desired sounds. Changing how I think about and practice the voice has had profound effects on the quality of my singing and the speed at which I can put together performance-ready repertoire. I hope you will transform your practice time into focusing on the details.

To help with this, we are launching a new weekly segment on voicescience.org to provide suggestions on what to practice this week. Every week we will release one exercise with instructions, helpful pointers, and focuses for beginner, intermediate, and advanced singers. For example, one week we might focus on octave leaps across register shifts—training the coordination between your breath, vocal folds, and vowel shape. Something that feels impossible in the moment becomes reliable when practiced in isolation. For beginners the focus might be on pitch accuracy, intermediate singers focus on controlled dynamics, while advanced singers focus on matching timbre.

 

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The Voice Science Podcast. If you found today’s discussion helpful, consider sharing it with a friend, your studio, or your choir. Word of mouth helps us reach more singers who are ready to dig deeper and train smarter.

Got a question or a topic you’d love to hear us cover? Head over to VoiceScience.org and use the contact form—we’d love to hear from you.

And don’t forget to check out the new VoSci Skill Lab series on the homepage. Every week, we’ll post one focused exercise to help singers at every level build real skills—on your own time, at your own pace.

Until next time, keep singing, keep training, and keep unlocking the voice you didn’t know you had.