Over the past couple of months, I have been developing a practice routine and reflecting upon it for my instrument which is vocals. I have been specifically looking at bettering the foundations of my voice such as warming up. The main way I have been practicing this is through attempting to create a routine. When I do sing it’s through scales and arpeggios but also through singing songs and focusing on specific elements of them. Furthermore, I have been participating in these activities through my one-to-one lessons, my group study and my personal practice.
I have been implementing the VARK model for creative reflection in my personal practice routine.
VARK is a model created by Neil Flemming. VARK is an acronym to describe the different types of learners. The types are Visual, Aural, Read/Write and Kinaesthetic.
It helps a person deduce what type of learner they are through taking a test. (Fleming and Mills, 1992)
There are also types which combine the two elements again as the model is only supposed to be a ‘catalyst for reflection.’
Over the past couple of months, I have practiced in 3 different ways and reflected upon my experience. I practiced through my one-to-one lessons, band practices and my own personal practice.
One way I have practiced is through my one-to-one lessons with my tutor. I would start with warming up my body and voice, then moving onto doing either scales or singing a full song. I often find these lessons difficult as I start off by listening as I am an aural learner. In my practice I am doing the scales and I don’t feel I have had enough time to listen to them and fully grasp the intervals between each note. I usually feel confident when I can hear the scale in my head before singing it out loud. I do partially enjoy this method as it pushes me out of my comfort zone and creates the opportunity for me to adapt. As Niel Flemming (1987) said “Students and teachers need a starting place for thinking about, and understanding, how they learn.” he implies that this understanding creates space for reflection to gain clarity on certain behaviours. Combating my weaknesses and working upon them has allowed me to flourish with my instrument in new areas. For example, I didn’t know how to properly warm up before but through my one-to-one lessons I have learnt valuable exercises which help keep myself and my voice healthy. When singing, there was very obviously a difference in the quality of my voice and I was able to support the pitch correctly.
Another reason I feel it’s important for me to warm up is because as a singer I need to focus more on my body. In my one-to-one lessons, I was taught a warm up not only for the voice but for the body too. Grounding myself and feeling the tension release from my body is relaxing because I don’t realise how much I hold, especially in my shoulders. This impacts my voice because I strain myself when singing certain notes as that area of my body is tenser making it more difficult. Jenevora Williams (2017) says that “Good technique involves the optimisation of all constituent actions for creating the sound” She explains how good technique can only happen when each part is adequately prepared and inadequate preparation can lead to bad habits.
I think that this will benefit me because I have a difficult time feeling what I’m going through. I’m good at expressing emotions through the song but I completely ignore how my body feels. Paying attention to it will make me aware of if there is any tension or if my technique is poor such as when I breathe.
I also participate in reading and writing while in my one-to-one lessons as my tutor instructs me to write out the scales so I can visualise the scales. I find this helpful but I don’t feel I retain the information as well as the other components of VARK. This goes back to ‘being able to hear things in my head’ . I don’t have the expertise to read a note and hear it in my head so I find writing it down to be useless.
Another way I have been practicing is through band practice. Once again, I start with a warm up but it is usually shorter than in my one-to-one lessons. During this time, I practice songs with my group that we are going to record or perform. I feel that I underperform in these sessions because of my lack of warm up. I feel I need to schedule time out of my day to warm up by myself as I don’t feel confident enough to warm up in front of other people.I face the personal challenge of my body and brain being extremely active and always on the go so I often feel I don’t have time to warm up even though I do. The lack of structure in my life has perpetuated this and made it incredibly difficult to regulate a schedule. I will be working upon creating a schedule to allow myself time to implement the important parts. However, this in itself is a problem because I’ve recognised, I spend a lot of time thinking about doing stuff but never actually doing said task. I feel I need to shift the way I learn to the uncomfortable area of kinaesthetic to actually be able to learn and produce a satisfactory result within these sessions.
I feel that my lack of warming up has led to me pushing my voice when I shouldn’t have. In my band we played in a style I wasn’t familiar with and that my voice isn’t completely comfortable with. To decrease the amount of potential damage, I should have researched how to sing safely in that particular style and should have warmed up to at least protect my voice.
Lastly, in my personal practice I have more freedom to do what I know works for myself. I spend more time listening and repeating the scales to make sure I can hear them in my head. However, I may need to rethink the way that I practice by myself when I do get around to doing it. As mentioned, my lack of routine has also impacted my personal practice as it is another thing I feel I don’t have time for. I feel I have trouble balancing all the areas of my life such as writing essays, attending lessons and even smaller stuff such as eating or shopping.
As Courtney Cutchins suggested for Seadragon Songhouse (2019) I may need to be more rigid and choose a dedicated spot or make it easier for myself. Through this I’ve come to realise that, even though it’s not the best, I have to make sacrifices to benefit myself such as staying at university longer than I want to do to practice or telling a friend that I’ll need a different time as it conflicts with my practice.
One area of reflection I have already implemented into my practice is the use of voice notes. In my sessions I record myself to listen to in my own time and consider what went well and what didn’t. I find this to be helpful and affective. However, I would like to record not only my voice but my body too from now on. This is because it’s important to also see what I’m doing and how many body changes at certain parts to further understand why I sound a certain way or why something happened with my voice. Using voice notes is also useful because it allows me to hear the difference between when I warmed up well and when I didn’t warm up well and proved to myself how different I sound between the two. I’ll apply this to my singing practice to hopefully help with this problem.
With my lack of routine, it has almost made me stop singing. However, I am in search of makinging singing fun again. I used to enjoy singing by myself or in choir but due to the shift in my life, i don’t do it anymore. reconnecting with the side which enjoys singing is helpful because it gives me the motivation to focus on pursuing my instrument even though I have a hard time focusing. I feel it’s significantly poignant considering the fact that my instrument is myself so if I’m unmotivated, it’ll reflect into my work and potentially turn into bad technique. which i don’t want.
When it comes to technique and warming up, doing so inefficiently has led to areas such as my breath control to suffer. I find that I can’t do longer phrases and I’ve picked up a bad habit of breathing into my chest instead of diaphragm. Once again, this is also where having a video of my practising would benefit me because I would be able to pick up when my technique is bad. An important part of singing is your expression, if you don’t have your support you can’t express yourself which dulls the performance. I feel that if I warm up and include breathing exercises within my routine, I can alleviate some of the issues.
Having the video available would also allow me to assess the way that I portray myself. As mentioned, I am good at showing the emotional side in a performance but I am looking to make it more unique and enhanced.
When I’ve performed in the past, I usually stood and presented myself to the audience. Now reflecting back on those experiences, I’ve come to realise how much tension I truly had in my body. Being able to move around and further try to put a kinaesthetic approach to my practices would help me build my confidence and unique image as an artist as I currently feel very lost on who I want to be.
With a busy lifestyle, I often don’t have a lot of time to think about these elements, therefore implementing the rigid practice would also aid me as it would give me time to reflect and have the space to think about who I want to be as an artist and what I want to create. In addition to this, I need to gain more confidence in myself as I naturally try to withdraw out of things that make me uncomfortable when they’re actually worth giving an attempt at. When I do my warm ups I feel very awkward which hinders the effectiveness of the exercise. In the future, I need to take it in its stride no matter how ridiculous I look as it’s for my own good. Having more confidence and watching myself sing will allow me to solidify what attributes of me as a singer work best and can help me to build a brand and image.
After reflecting upon my experiences I have decided that in the future, I’ll be creating a definitive routine. In this routine, I will have a set place and time to practice and will do my absolute best to stick to it. My routine will consist of a warm up and then I will go on to singing. I will also be reviewing videos of myself practicing to gain confidence and decide on the artistic persona I want to create for myself.
I have developed my understanding through trial and error over the past couple of months and through participating in my three activities.
I have wanted to improve the foundations of my voice and I have spoken with my tutors about this. Be it my one-to-one tutor or others that I have lessons with, I have used their expertise to understand myself and motivate myself to do better. In the future, my plan is to be firmer with myself as I feel that my lack of routine is causing me to lose grip on myself.
Bibliography
Cutchins, C. (2019). 9 Ways to Create an Awesome Practice Space (And Finally Enjoy Practicing!) | Seadragon Songhouse. [online] Seadragon Songhouse | Vocal Coaching & Voice Lessons | Online, Virtual, Hilton Head, Savannah, Atlanta. Available at: https://seadragonsonghouse.com/9-ways-to-create-an-awesome-practice-space/.
Fleming, N. and Mills, C. (1992). Not Another Inventory, Rather a Catalyst for Reflection. To Improve the Academy, [online] 11(1), p.137. Available at: https://vark-learn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/not_another_inventory.pdf.
Harrington-Atkinson, T. (2017). Fleming VARK Theory – Paving the Way. [online] Paving the Way. Available at: https://tracyharringtonatkinson.com/fleming-vark-theory/.
Williams, J. (2017). Warm-ups for singers: what exactly are we trying to achieve? [online] Available at: https://jenevorawilliams.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Warm-ups-paper-Singing.pdf.
