What is task-based practice?

Oftentimes when we come to practice our singing, we make it a time-based endeavour.

That might look like:

“I am going to practice for 20 minutes today”.

Depending on what your practice focus is, this might not be the best approach when it comes to your singing practice.

If your practice is just (and I don’t mean “just”) using your voice, being playful, following your curiosity or perhaps even working on stamina, then a time-based approach may work. And my goodness, what a fun practice session you are in for!

But a more focussed practice session might rather benefit from a task-based approach.

That might look like:

“I am going to work on this 12-bar section until I can sing it at the specified tempo without mistakes”.

This is more akin to other types of learning tasks; doing 10 maths problems (rather than spending 15 minutes ‘doing maths’), for example. And it can help to keep a practice session with limitless possibilities more focussed.

The more practice sessions that are performed in this way, the better we can get at determining the length of time each chosen task. This is important as, despite not necessarily wanting to define practice by lengths of time, we do often need to fit it into specific times of our day, often with limits on our availability.

The suggestion, therefore, is to start with small tasks with defined end points. You can always double up if things move faster than you imagine.

For singing practice tips you can follow me on social media @TessaSmithMusic, or explore thesingersguide.com where there are resources for optimising your singing practice.