If you’ve ever felt like you’re searching for the right way to sing… this episode is your permission to stop.
Because here’s the truth: there isn’t just one.
In this episode, I’m breaking down why great singers don’t rely on one perfect technique—they build options. Your voice isn’t a formula, it’s a skill. And the more ways you can access ease, power, and consistency, the more reliable your voice becomes in real-world situations.
We’ll talk about:
If something only works one way… it’s probably not as solid as you think.
Your job isn’t to be perfect—it’s to explore, adjust, and build a voice that works for you.
00:00 Introduction to Effective Singing Practice
02:00 The Importance of Focus in Practice Sessions
05:16 Breaking Down Songs for Effective Learning
08:23 The Nuances of Motor Learning in Singing
▶️ Spotify| Apple Podcasts| YouTube
🎁 Free 5 Minute Vocal Warm-Up + Bonus Belt Exercise
🎤 Become a Vocal Pro - 7 Day Money Back Gaurantee
Hi friends and thank you for being here. How many times have you gone to practice your voice, let's say you're working on a song and you work on it for whatever length of time and you end and you feel like, I mean, maybe it got a little bit better, but you feel like you didn't make the gains that you wanted to make. I hear this lament from singers all the time,
A lot of times what I hear is when I get to work with you I get so much out of it. I just make massive gains. And then I go work on it on my own and I feel like I'm not getting anywhere. And that's a really frustrating feeling, which I totally get. So I want to talk today about why that might be happening and what you can do about it. And I want to talk about
effective practice for singers in two different ways. One, let's just think about all the different things that go into singing a song. Step number one, one, need to have the basic technique and function of my voice to connect, stretch, vibrate, match pitches, right?
I need to know the melody. I need to know what the notes are in the song. I need to be able to hit them, I need to know the rhythm. I need to know the lyrics. Then we're thinking about things like I need to make sure I breathe. And when I breathe, it's the most effective so that I'm not overworking, so that I'm fueling my sound. I need to think about tonal quality. I need to think about dynamics. Where am I going to get loud? Where am I going to get soft? Stylistic considerations.
genre considerations. I need to think about how I look. Am I entertaining to watch if I'm in front of somebody? Because if I look like I'm concentrating on all the different things, the many, many things that our brain has to be covering when we sing, that's not very fun for people to watch. I need to make sure I'm making people feel. I'm communicating a story. There is so much. So, so many different things and I don't care how talented you are. I don't care how smart you are.
you cannot focus on all those things at once. That's just not how our brain is wired. And that takes me to the second aspect I want to talk about when it comes to learning and practicing Singing is a type of motor learning,
so stage one, when you're learning something new, you just need loads of repetition, right? Repetition, repetition, repetition. So we've got to work through that motor learning stage. You can't be focusing on 12 things then. You need to focus on.
Then you get to the stage where you're like, okay, this feels pretty good. I don't have to think about it as much, but you still have to be working on it. The brain still has to give it some energy. And then finally you get to the point of mastery where your brain's like, okay, I don't need to think about hitting pitches anymore. I just do that without thinking. I think the pitch, there it comes, But we have to go through that stage for all these different aspects. So what does that mean for you in a practice session?
You need to think about the biggest thing you need to work on first, So you might have a whole list. You know, I don't love the quality of my voice here. I keep forgetting the lyrics in that one section. I really want to make this chorus more dynamic and then I want to come up with something at the end where I kind of do my own thing.
You can't focus on all those things at once, it doesn't matter how big your brain is, how fabulous your voice is, how much talent you have. It's just not how the brain and the body works. It's not how motor learning is acquired.
So my recommendation in a practice session is think about the one thing you want to focus on first.
when I'm working with a higher level singer, they're not having to work, let's say on a lot of those foundational technique things, but they're focusing on, okay, I really want to deliver this. I really want to lean in stylistically. And then they get to the end of a chorus and they're like, ⁓ Amber, why am I so tight? And I'm like, You didn't breathe since you started.
this multi-line killer chorus that's high belt with loads of agility. And they're like, yes, I did. And then we go back and we watch like a recording or we listen to it and they start dying laughing because they're like, my gosh, what's wrong with me? Why didn't I breathe? And I always point out because you were focused on the runs. You were focused on the dynamics. You were focused on remembering that part of the chorus, that little part of the lyrics that's kind of tricky.
you can't focus on everything. So
we'll stop and we'll go fully through the song marking everywhere that they can possibly take a breath. And then we'll break it into chunks. We'll just look at verse one, let's say and chorus one and work through with those breaths and go, which ones work? Which ones fuel the sound in a way that you want so it feels good and it sounds good?
without throwing off any phrasing. Ideally, we want our breath work to add to the phrasing, to add to the vibe, the story. That's one thing you're gonna focus on. We're not focusing on breath and the bridge and X, Y, and Z because your brain can't do that. So number one, pick one thing to focus on in your practice session. Doesn't mean that you can't focus on more than one thing, but one thing at a time.
The second biggie, break it in two chunks. Here's the biggest mistake I think singers make is they'll be like, I worked on that song, Amber, for an hour every day. And it maybe got a little better, but I'm not making the gains I make when you and I work on it for 30 minutes. So I always ask, well, what did you do? I sang through it over and over and over again. Again, think about all the different things we have to think about when we sing.
If you've got a little part in verse one that's given you a little bit of a problem you'd like to improve. And then this little part in the second chorus, and then you'd really like to lock in the outro, that end section. If you go from the beginning to the end, all the way through, over and over again, there's no way you're gonna get all of those little pieces perfectly locked in. And then you're gonna get frustrated and you're gonna run it again.
and a different part's gonna be tricky. Again, that's just not how our brain works. I liken it to a math problem. I have a fourth grader, that's my youngest kiddo, and he is already getting to that stage where he brings math problems home. Just last night, was helping him with homework.
I had to chat GPT at because I was like, I don't really exactly know what they're asking for. He's doing some advanced stuff and it is multi-step. And I remember when I was back at that stage doing many, many multi-step math problems. And for me, I would try to go all the way through. I wonder where my kids get it. They've always done the same thing. They just wanna get it and get it fast. And then they're frustrated because at the end the answer is not correct.
And so if you can relate to this, you feel like, I guess I'm just not good at math. And for singers it's, well, I guess I just can't do this song. I thought I could, but I guess I can't. When really, it's not that you can't do the song. It's that little spot in the first verse, the little spot in the second chorus, and then you need to lock in what you want to do at the end, It's one spot in the math problem, two spots in the math problem where you don't have it locked in. So what do you do? You go to step one. You make sure that feels great. As a singer,
We look at verse one. That's it.
and you are just thinking about first and foremost, do I have the melody right? Do I have the rhythm right? Can I hit the notes? Do they feel good? Do I know the lyrics? That's the next step. Do I know what I'm singing? I've got to have all of that down and locked in before I care about
I think I want to put like a little bit of a grit on this one note. If you don't have the basic rhythm, melody, the pitch is locked in, they feel good, they sound good, you know your lyrics, let's not worry about the grit on that, We start with the core skills and we build and we build and we build.
And then I would say, okay, let's add on our chorus. take the chorus on its own. Let's lock that in. When that feels good, we're going to add verse one in the chorus together. Work through it, make sure we don't have any hiccups. So we're doing it bit by bit, just like a math problem. Step one.
and we're making sure we have that function down. Step two, let's say you've gotten to the point where you've got the whole song, you know all the basics. You've got your lyrics, your melody, your rhythm. You can hit the pitches, but you're like, okay, I can sing the song. It's so boring. It doesn't have the feel I want. I want it to have this kind of energy. Great, let's focus on that now, but you can't focus on that and where to breathe and where you wanna add grit and where you wanna throw in some agility.
this is a subject I could talk about forever because it's so nuanced. And I'm just talking about all these technical aspects of the song and stylistic aspects.
Don't even get me started on the nerdiness of what's happening in the body and at the voice to make all these things happen. And it's not to overwhelm anybody. It's to say, if you are singing, and I'm going to guess you are because you're listening to this, you are impressive, You are hopping on one foot while you twirl in a circle counterclockwise, rubbing your belly, patting your head, chewing bubble gum, humming a tune,
And then at the end of the day, all of that is just tools and foundation so we can give somebody an experience. We can connect with other human beings. We can make them feel something. But when we've got all these different things that we need to focus on and we know how our brain works, singing is a type of motor learning, we can't go from a new skill to mastered like that. It takes time. It takes repetition.
It takes building those neurological pathways, which just means every time you do something, what I always tell my singers, it lays down a piece of brain yarn, And we need a pretty hefty pile of brain yarn before we don't have to think about it. So we've got to do that with each of these skills. So if you are practicing and you feel like, I'm just not getting that much out of it, you probably need to slow it down. You need to really think about what do I need to focus on?
And if it's five things, I can't do that. That's just not how my brain's wired. Doesn't mean I'm not a great singer. It means I'm a human with a human brain. So choose one and take it little spot by spot, really fine tune, chunk by chunk in your song, on your exercise.
I hope this is helpful, everybody. If you are somebody who still feels like you need support when you practice, you don't have the tools that you need, you're not sure of the exercises that work for you.
I would highly recommend checking out the Vocal Pro Collective. You get all of that and so, so much more, loads of access to me. I will put that link down in the show notes for you to check it out. I also have a free sing-along warmup track for you. Five minutes you can do anywhere along with one of my favorite mix voice belt exercises. I'll put that in the show notes too.
Thank you for listening everybody and see you in the next episode.
