This site is under construction! Stuff be missing, beware! Contribute!
  If you have additions, corrections or concerns, open an issue or contact a maintainer.
  Voice Map is released! See here for a giant map of (almost) all voice characteristics and pedagogy!
Table of contents
  1. How to Practice
    1. The fundamental laws of voice training
    2. Time
    3. Frequency

How to Practice

Training is a very individual circumstance dependent thing, and some people might practice more or less, in different ways or be working on different things. Ask the question “is what I’m doing in the direction of the the thing I want to be doing more of in the future”. If the answer is yes, keep doing it.

In general, focus on practice more than exercises. That is, don’t spend all your time doing pitch slides or resonance exercises and not speaking. Fundamentally, speaking is what you want to be able to do, and you get good at the things you do. You don’t get good at the things you don’t do or avoid.

Pay attention to the sound of your voice, listen back to recordings regularly, and listen to voices you like or are in the direction you want your own voice to go as often as possible.

Practising more regularly for less time is sometimes ideal. Burnout can happen, and it’s common to get stuck doing the same things and expecting different results. If something is consistently not working, it might be time to take a break and try something else.

The fundamental laws of voice training

  1. The more you use a configuration the more consistent it will become
  2. The further you train a part of your voice, the more you will be able to let it rest almost as far as you trained it
  3. Almost everything is exploratory, and most of the rest is habit, so the more things you try to do, the more things you will be able to do
  4. The more you do something, the better you can do it and the more you will tend to do it subconsciously in future
  5. more effort means less results in most cases, so trying less hard is better

So the most tenable strategy is:

  1. Do practice in the direction of the things you want
  2. Develop things slightly past where you want them to be so they become comfortable where you want them to be
  3. Explore things in opposite directions to where you want to be, to get more mastery

As well, there is this process which can be used to do more or less of a certain voice modification. This is particularly useful when other methods aren’t working how we want or there are no exercises for something:

  1. Try to do less of it
  2. Try to do more of it
  3. Try to isolate it so you don’t change anything else
  4. Find a balance you like

Time

A good balance is to practice exercises for 5-10 minutes, and use your trained voice for a max of a few hours per day. This is very much dependent on your level and the particular things that are occurring in your voice. The most important thing to keep in mind is not to strain or add effort at any time for any reason. If we don’t feel strain or fatigue, then we can practice for as long as we like, but it’s best not to overdo training and get burned out mentally, just as it is important not to strain things physically.

Frequency

Doing short periods of exercises (2-5min) several times a day is a good method. It can be best to avoid spending all your time training, but also to not go more than a few days without at least using the voice you’re working on.