How to Practice Singing: Routines, Tips & Tools

Tyler Connaghan
Music producer, Singer
07/14/25 | Last modified: 12/22/25

While it may seem like some professional singers are just “born with it,” that doesn’t mean that they don’t put in years of practice to get to where they are and maintain their skills. 

If you’re gearing up to play your first show, preparing to record an album, or just trying to extend your range so you can finally hit that high C without cracking, knowing how to practice singing is just as important as what you practice. Keeping your vocal training structured and consistent can help you improve your tone, unlock your range, and keep your voice healthy in the long run.

In this guide, we’re going to take a look at some vocal practice techniques that the pros use, as well as a few tools that can make your practice sessions more meaningful. 

Best Expert Vocal Practice Tips

There’s no reason to practice for hours a day if you want to sing better. However, you do need to practice with intention. Below, you’ll find a few foundational habits that many professional singers and vocal coaches use to help themselves and their students sing better, sound better, and protect their instruments over time. 

Here’s how to practice singing at home like a pro:

1. Have a Dedicated Practice Routine

If your practice is random, your results will be too. You can’t just sing when inspiration strikes. You have to be intentional about practicing each day, even when you don’t want to do so. The more consistent you are with your practice, the better progress you’ll have in the end. 

Here are some tips for setting aside dedicated vocal practice time:

• Find a quiet space where you can sing without feeling self-conscious

• Use a full-length mirror to monitor your posture and technique

• Keep a water bottle handy to stay hydrated

• Have a notepad nearby to keep notes on your practice

Here’s a small example routine that you can get done in 30-45 minutes:

• Physical & Vocal Warm-Up (5-10 minutes)

• Breath and Tone Drills (10-15 minutes)

• Pitch Exercises and Song Application (10 minutes)

• Cool Down and Note-Taking (5-10 minutes)

2. Start with a Vocal Warm-Up

Warming up is not an optional part of your daily singing routine. Start thinking of yourself as an athlete. Just like a runner would stretch their legs before a run or a gymnast would do some mobilization techniques to get their muscles moving, you need to warm up your vocal cords before your vocal practice to prep them and reduce the risk of injury. 

Here are some good warm-ups to start with:

• Lip Trills: One of the best semi-occluded vocal exercises for activating breath and airflow

• Sirens (Low to High): Stretches the range and loosens up the transitions between registers

• Humming on a Five-Tone Scale: Gently warms up the voice while checking for tone

• Vocal Straw Phonation: Another excellent semi-occluded vocal exercise for reducing strain and improving cord closure.

Pro Tip: Try your semi-occluded vocal tract exercises like the one above by blowing a small straw into a cup of water. This helps balance pressure and airflow.

3. Focus on Breath Control  

Most vocal problems, such as weak tone and early fatigue, can be traced back to poor breath management. Having great breath support doesn’t mean “taking a big breath” before each line you sing. Instead, it has to do with managing your airflow using your diaphragm and intercostal muscles. 

Here are a few breath training exercises to get your coordination in order:

• 4-7-8 Breathing: Inhale for four seconds, hold for seven, and exhale for eight. This helps build better breath control.

• Sustained “S” or “Z” Sounds:  This puts tone atop your breath and focuses on airflow endurance.

• Silent Inhalations: Open your mouth and breathe into your belly without making a sound. The sensation should be cold air on the back of your throat. 

Your breath is your voice’s battery, and the better you’re able to manage it, the more efficiently you’ll be able to sing. 

4. Work on Pitch and Tone Accuracy

There’s nothing that can ruin a performance faster than pitchy vocals. Fortunately, we can work on pitch and build better performance consistency by training our ear-voice connection.

Some of the best methods to do so include:

• Using Pitch Apps: Download one of the many hundreds of pitch apps on the market and practice pitch games with them.

• Piano Drills: Do short drills to match single notes or short phrases

• Record and Adjust: Record each of your singing sessions and listen back to see what you can improve on pitch-wise.

Pro Tip: It can be incredibly helpful to close your eyes and imagine the note before you go to sing it. Visualization helps reinforce neural pathways for pitch targeting.

5. Train with Vocal Exercises

Like a bodybuilder will perform reps in the gym, a singer must perform reps in the form of vocal exercises. These are the foundational tools for building strength, control, and agility. The more you do them correctly, the better your voice will get over time.  

The key is to know where you stand as a singer so you can determine how to practice vocals in a way that matches your experience and skill level. 

Here are a few daily exercises you can rotate:

• Arpeggios and Octave Jumps: Great for extending the range

• Legato Scales: Works on vocal agility and breath control

• Staccato Drills: Reinforces breathing and strengthens the vocal

• Vowel Shaping: Tunes resonance from low to high on each of the main vowels (Ah, Ef, Ee, Oh, Oo) 

If the video above shows us anything, it’s that these exercises don’t have to feel like a chore. Make them fun, and you’ll feel more excited about doing them each day!

6. Take Care of Your Voice

Remember, you only have one voice. That means you need to protect it at all costs. If you want to sustain your career as a singer, keeping your voice healthy is non-negotiable. 

Some of the golden rules of good vocal health include:

• Hydrate Consistently: Drink room temperature water throughout the day. Chugging a bunch of water right before a performance won’t help if you’re dehydrated.

• Avoid Whispering: When your voice is tired, refrain from speaking. Whispering can be more harmful than regular speech in many ways. 

• Have Rest Days: It’s good to take a day off from singing each week to give your voice time to recover.

• Keep an Eye Out for Tension: As you sing or speak throughout the day, be mindful of tension in your jaw, neck, or tongue. 

If you ever feel pain when singing, stop immediately. Pain is a huge red flag. Don’t push through it. Give your voice time to rest and come back to your vocal practice routine the next day. 

7. Make Your Sessions Fun

If your practice feels like vocal boot camp, you’re going to burn out. Trust me. Your singing practice should serve as a reminder of why you got into singing in the first place. Because you love it, right? 

To keep your brain engaged and your motivation up, here are a few ideas: 

• Warm up with one of your favorite songs by singing it on a lip trill

• Challenge yourself to mimic the vocal styles of your favorite singers

• Turn exercises into short games (e.g., time yourself to see how long you can sustain a note for)

The more you enjoy your vocal practice, the more consistently you’ll do it. And in the business of getting better at anything, consistency is key. 

8. Practice Bodywork Before Each Session

A tense body = a tense voice. Just a few minutes of a bodywork before a singing session can dramatically improve your airflow, alignment, and tone. 

Try out this quick pre-singing routine from David DiMuzio:

It includes:

• Jumping jacks

• Shoulder rolls and neck circles

• Jaw and neck massage (especially below the ears to open up the jaw)

• Tongue stretches

• Spine lengthening exercises 

9. Practice On a Song

While scales are important to any great singing routine, they don’t have to be everything. In fact, applying your technique to actual music can be a lot more fun and help you translate some of your warmup mechanics into something more usable.  

Break a song down into 4-bar sections, and analyze each section to see what you’ll need to think about in order to sing it properly. If it’s a difficult section, try to sing it without lyrics on open vowels or mimic the melody using a lip trill.

Once you’re comfortable with the technical aspects of a specific section, you can try to sing it more expressively. 

10. Get Feedback

You can practice for hours on end, but if you’re reinforcing the wrong habits, you’re not going to see the growth you desire. Having feedback in any form can be helpful.

While taking lessons periodically with a vocal coach is the way to go, we understand that not everyone has the means for that. In that case, you might consider posting recordings of yourself to online singing communities for feedback, joining a local choir or vocal group, or using AI apps with feedback to train your pitch and timing.

How Often Should You Practice Singing?

If you want real results, you have to show up consistently. Just like trying to build muscle or muscle memory, the way that you intentionally train and how often you do so will dictate how fast you grow. 

So, how often should you have singing practice?

I believe it depends on your level of experience. Here’s a good breakdown:

• Beginners: 20-30 minutes per day, 4-5 times per week

• Intermediate Singers: 30-45 minutes per day, 5-6 times per week  

• Advanced/Professional Singers: 45-90 minutes per day, daily, with strategic rest days

Now, with all of that said, more isn’t always better. Quality is much better than quantity in this case. 

If you have a tight, 20-minute session where you warm up properly, work on vocal technique, and practice a song, it’s far more effective than an hour of aimless scales and singing. 

Note: If you’ve set aside 45 minutes of practice for yourself but your voice starts to hurt after 30, stop right away. It’s better to build your way up that level or to spend time recovering than to push it. 

How Forbrain Can Help Your Singing Practice

As you practice singing more and more, you’ll realize that a lot of it is psychological. Your brain is constantly firing off neurons to make corrections to your voice in real-time. The better it can hear your voice, the more consistently it can make those corrections.

That’s where Forbrain is so helpful.

What Is Forbrain?

Forbrain is a science-backed vocal training headset that uses bone conduction and an auditory feedback loop to sharpen your listening while you sing. So, rather than waiting for your voice to reflect back to you, it helps you hear your voice more accurately in the moment. 

This allows for better pitch, tone, and timing correction.

How It Works

Bone conduction transmits sound through the bones of your skull rather than through the air, so your voice moves directly to your inner ear. With a cleaner, quicker signal transfer, it can help improve pitch accuracy, vocal tone, resonance, articulation, and timing. 

Essentially, Forbrain helps you hear yourself more accurately as you sing, and research shows us that this level of auditory feedback can have a major positive impact on motor learning. 

How to Incorporate Forbrain Into Your Practice

• During Warm-Ups: Great for practicing lip trills, humming, or sirens, as it helps you to lock in your tone from the jump.

• For Pitch-Matching Drills: Singing a note and matching it is a much more precise process when you can hear yourself clearly, and Forbrain can help with that. 

• Sight-Singing or Song Practice: Reading new music or working on some new runs? Fobrain can help with self-correction, allowing you to make the most of your time. 

• Feedback-Free Solo Practice: No coach? No problem! With Forbrain, you have a built-in vocal monitor, which gives you instant feedback you’d often need someone else to provide.

Final Thoughts – How to Practice Singing Like a Pro

Though I’ve said it a million times, it’s important to hammer the sentiment home once more:

Consistency makes great singers. 

Learning how to practice singing at home like a pro means showing up to practice each day, working smart, and listening to your body. The best vocalists in the world will give you this exact advice. 

Once you’ve built the routine you like, continue building on it and make practice more fun and flexible. Soon enough, you’ll look back in shock at how far you’ve come. 

References: 

• Van Lierde, K. M., D’haeseleer, E., Baudonck, N., Claeys, S., De Bodt, M., & Behlau, M. (2011). The Impact of Vocal Warm-Up Exercises on the Objective Vocal Quality in Female Students Training to be Speech Language Pathologists. Journal of Voice, 25(3), e115–e121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2009.11.004
• Mccarther, S. (n.d.). A Review of the Breathing Mechanism for Singing: Part I: Anatomy. https://www.rider.edu/sites/default/files/files/vthc-a-review-of-the-breathing-mechanism-for-singing-part1.pdf
• Nature, R. C. by S. (2020, October 19). Visualisation – It’s like weight-lifting for the brain. Research Communities by Springer Nature. https://communities.springernature.com/posts/visualisation-it-s-like-weight-lifting-for-the-brain
• Rubin, A. D., Praneetvatakul, V., Gherson, S., Moyer, C. A., & Sataloff, R. T. (2006). Laryngeal Hyperfunction During Whispering: Reality or Myth? Journal of Voice, 20(1), 121–127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2004.10.007
• ‌Luciani, M. G., Cortelazzo, A., & Proverbio, A. M. (2022). The role of auditory feedback in the motor learning of music in experienced and novice performers. Scientific Reports, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-24262-x