reset

“You’ll never do a whole lot unless you’re brave enough to try.”

— Dolly Parton

January is a month of making changes, so why not take the time to assess your business as a musician or in the field you work in, and decide what you want to take forward, and what you can let go of.

Goals and Rewards

• Make a list of your goals for the year

  How brave do you feel? Maybe this list has some simple easy goals and also some amazing and difficult goals, aim big!

  Performances, work on languages, new repertoire, new genre you have not yet explored, working with new people, new teaching jobs/pupils, changing your support/additional job that helps you fund your music goals.

• Make a list of rewards for reaching those goals

  We know we all work better when there is a reward - be that money, travel/holidays, listening to a favourite piece of music after a hard day, or maybe purchasing that expensive score you have wanted for a while (yeah, this is my weakness… they might be a particular shade of blue… and start with a B)

  When you are self-employed, build in your work ‘bonus’ to your work plan.

• Add detail of the stages you will go through to reach your goals

  Don’t just make a list of big goals, plan how you will get there. Some goals will be easy to reach in one stage, some might be a long term project with many stages to tick off along the way.

Assess your Success

What went right last year?

• What are you proud of?

  It’s time, you have permission to pat yourself firmly on the back, and hold your own personal awards ceremony! Best of all, it’s all about you. List all your achievements and thoroughly asses what you have to be proud of - include financial, emotional, and mental achievements

• What will you try to replicate?

Update Ways of Working

What takes more time than it should?

• What could you use to improve your work-flow?

  Are your accounts taking ages? are you slow on social media? Are you keeping track efficiently of pupils and payments? Are there any tools like apps or software that would save you time? Remember time is money and effort - often spending money is worth it if your life is easier or you are taking less time to do tasks you don’t enjoy.

• What can be done more efficiently

  Is your teaching scheduled neatly together or taking up random times in your week? Would your commute be easier/quicker if done at a different time if you worked different hours? Could you use fewer paid childcare hours if you moved your work schedule/teaching?

Tidy

Tidy and sort :

• Concert/audition/teaching clothes

  Sell/post/give away/donate what is no longer suitable or does not fit

• Music

  It’s easier to find if it is stored in a system you find easy to use.

• Desk

• Computer Files

  Keep old files/photos in folders for their year, and make a new folder for the current files

• CV

• Website

• Your Home

Training

• What training did you undertake last year?

• What training will you plan for this year?

• Where are your weak points and how will you work towards making them your strong points?

Plan

• Set out your diary and plan in holidays

  It’s very easy to fail to take a break if you get offered work - but it is not good for us or our friends/family. Make sure it goes in the diary even if it can be moved. Schedule work like social media to automatically load while you are taking a break.

• Find gaps and decide where new projects would fit in

• Know when you are free to take on training

Hobbies

• Can you schedule holiday days around work travel to include your hobbies?

• Decide on new hobbies or when you are free to learn/do something, particularly if this is a seasonal thing

• Buy/plan to buy that new book or piece of sports equipment

Wind up Old Projects

• Make a to-do list of old unfinished goals.

  Sweep up all the old half finished things into one list. Plan what you need to do to finish them all off, and how you will do that.

• If you are choosing to stop something, plan your exit and work towards it

  If you plan to change jobs, or finish certain teaching jobs, plan how you will step back and when, build in a change-over time if you are handing a job to someone else.

warm up

Here I am, in my sunglasses, ready to help you warm-up your body and voice to sing. Are you ready to start work?

Here are my top tips for a successful warm-up that will help you sing your best.

1. Schedule

   Begin by scheduling in the time to warm up and practice. Make sure you leave yourself enough time to fit in what you want to achieve - or change your practice goals for that day.

   Make sure you know how many times you want to practise this week, or even just to warm up your voice. Too much or too little will affect your goals and your muscle memory.

2. Prepare your space

   I can't concentrate in an untidy room. Maybe you don’t have this problem - but I like the room to be clean and tidy, so I have as few distractions as possible! This helps create a calm space to work and I always feel more relaxed about my work.

3. How are you?

   Before singing, take a moment to check in with how you feel today. Do you have a headache? Are you getting over a cold? Maybe you ache from exercise? All these things may affect how you will warm up and practice. Make sure you are making realistic and safe goals for the voice you have woken up with and not overdoing it.

4. Stretch, and Connect

   We want our voices to be produced from a warmed-up neutral body that has no tension, pain, pulled muscles, or illness. We want our whole body to feel energised and yet relaxed - so begin with your favourite stretches. Choose a few positions that you may know from yoga or pilates, like roll-downs and Downward Dog to focus your mind and body.

   I ask my students to do the same stretch I do. Reach up to the ceiling and pause, then gently lower your arms back down, feeling your shoulder blades slide down their back. This with a few gentle back rotations really helps me with my shoulder tension. Be aware of your own body and what it needs today.

5. Start at the very beginning

   Be like Maria in The Sound of Music, and begin with gentle exercises of a few notes, before working up to longer and more complicated exercises. The voice should be treated gently.

6. Expand

   Once you have completed the gentle exercises you are ready to expand and sing higher, and lower. You want to warm-up beyond the lowest notes and highest notes of the pieces you are working on in your practise session.

7. Add emotions

   Even though your scales and arpeggios may be without words, experiment with adding emotion and meaning. Sing a scale as though very happy, very sad, angry, in love. Spot how your voice changes. Do you have a favourite emotion? Is the scale easier in one of these emotions than the other?

8. Isolate

   Finally, you might want to take a phrase from your pieces that needs technical work and work on it in isolation from the whole piece.

   Or, you may have a favourite piece/part of a piece you sing really well and you feel helps ground your voice in the right place. You might find it useful singing this before heading into the main part of your practice.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these tips - which do you find useful? As always, feel free to comment below, or share with your friends.