You only need one of the ten faults below, to slow or stop your progress.
Most people have more than one.
1. No one showed you how to practice.
There are ways to practice, to achieve results. All include that you must practice with a purpose. What are you wanting to do or improve?
2. You’re practicing the wrong things.
Bad vocal exercises will make bad singers. Do you know which ones work? If you are not improving, you’re doing the wrong ones.
3. You’re practicing the wrong way.
You are dehydrated and your attitude is bad. That would be the wrong way. What else? Going over music repetetively is like the horrendous garage bands I heard years ago. Practice doesn’t make perfect but correct practice gives you a chance to get better. There is actually a procedure to follow, to progress rapidly.
4. You’re not practicing enough.
It is not unreasonable to practice three hours a day, if you have gradually built up to that. It is virtually useless to practice fifteen minutes a day. You will lose range (if you had any). You will lose technique, endurance, strength, power, and may also develop faulty articulation.
5. You’re practicing too much.
If you put in fifteen hours a day, you may just be keeping your voice in a state of fatigue or worse. Vocal abuse is a real thing and pain does not equal gain. Pain equals irritation and/or strain.
6. No one told you to practice.
You rely on your natural talent and you never practice. This doesn’t work for most people.
7. You are a perfectionist.
There is no gray area with you. It is either right or wrong, actually: perfect or terrible. Let’s hope you are not a teacher and that you do not mistreat your poor students!
8. You have little or no objectivity.
You have no real idea of how you sound to others. If you record yourself, listen back to it the same day. Listen to your recording a day or two later. What are you hearing? You must be specific and don’t generalize. Having objectivity is vital to improving your singing.
9. You are not being analytical.
You don’t separate all the aspects of singing into their elemental parts. What are some? Articulation, dynamics, connection of vocal registers, timing, rhythm, style, phrasing, artistic imagination, are but a few.
10. You are hyper-critical.
You only see the bad and never the good You exaggerate when you think or talk about the bad. This is a symptom of perfectionism, an insidious one.
“Repetition is the mother of skill”.
The repetition of doing things the wrong way, or at the wrong time, or for the wrong amount of time is the mother of failure.
You can practice mistakes and make them stringer. You can practice the wrong way and hurt yourself. You can practice the wrong way and think that practice does not help.