While arguably just another exercise in health and safety,
practicing your work is actually much more than just ensuring you don’t
accidentally overwork your stage presence or hit a bum note and throw out your
entire routine – funnily enough even an accidental wrong note can mess your
throat up something fierce.
In fact, that’s probably the most important reason why you
should practice. Getting those notes right isn’t just pleasing to the ears, but
practicing your song over and over will ensure you hit those notes just right
and don’t accidentally overdo it. That, and accidentally going flat just sucks
– you don’t want to be caught short mid-song.
Of course it’s not always just about staying in key and
keeping your voice steady. Practicing a song also helps you learn when to
breathe. Sometimes it’s incredibly easy to forget to get a quick lungful when
there’s a brief pause in a song, and that can cost you a lot of strain. As well
as messing your throat up, it just doesn’t sound very nice as the notes you’re
singing are much, much harder to uphold if you’ve got nothing in your lungs to
push out.
Then there are the words, of course. Everybody’s the victim
of getting the words wrong, but if you’ve got a heavy restriction on how many
takes you have or – even worse – you’re doing it live, then you don’t want to
be forgetting those lyrics. Get it wrong in front of a camera, you can redeem
yourself in another take. Get it wrong in front of a crowd, and you lose it.
Timing is everything, too. It’s alright knowing the words,
but even if you’re just singing to a backing track, you need to know WHEN to
sing. If you break out in to the chorus mid-verse, that just sounds wrong, no
matter how right you think it is.
In
general, practicing can also strengthen your vocal range merely through pushing
yourself a little every time and learning new singing techniques. Watching
videos or reading guides on how to get the most out of your voice is a fast
track to getting it right – although nothing can fix a bad voice. As long as
you have the voice, though, practice and rehearse away.
