You got 2 things you need to practice…
1) Musicianship
2) Muscle Memory
Musicianship is how you get your songs to sound like the singers you are trying to emulate.
It is the rhythm…
Volume…
Style…
All in the context of a song…
Muscle Memory is how your muscles know where to go to sing a particular note or execute a particular passage.
How does Whitney Houston sing that particular note? She hears it in her head..and then her muscles all work together to execute that note…
Exactly right…
Now you see simply singing exercises can get the muscle memory right…You know…
the scales and arpegios going up half steps for half of your time…
It will help your muscle memory…
You will become better at hitting certain notes…
But….
It won’t help your musicianship…
For that, you gotta listen to music…and emulate the music…
Go grab Whitney and try to sing it…it will help you sound like a singer in that style…
Go grab Brian Mcknight or Boys 2 Men and try to sing like them…
And guess what…you will begin to sound more like them…
first like a total newby…
Then like a bad RnB singer….
Then like a reasonable RnB singer…
And then more and more…
Till you sound good…
Now I’m not sure how much further you can get than “Good”…but you will…
Now my RnB teacher, Rached Hayek, emphasizes exercises that are derived from your songs…
He has me doing 20 minute a day of just intense practice of runs…
Trying to get them exactly right…
Now what is nice about this approach…
Is that the muscle memory you are working on is EXACTLY what you are trying to sing…
Rather than scales….which you probably won’t use in total in your singing…but are helpful…
or arpeggios…which you may use in your singing…and are helpful no doubt…
You sing Runs that no doubt are made up of some elements of scales and arpeggios, but are actual pieces of singing that you can immediately use in your singing…
And you do use them…
Then after that 20-30 minutes a day of intense practice…
Sing for 30 minutes…or throughout the day…just singing songs…
Now I find that I do the exercises throughout the day…but I think it is important to do exercises AND songs intentionally…
Now, again, I am very new…but I am right now working to get both MUSICIANSHIP and MUSCLE MEMORY in my daily practice.
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