Best Practices: How to make the most out of your performance preparation time!
Monday 26th January 2026, 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM (London Time)
There’s no substitute for being prepared as well as you possibly can be for a performance. But peak performance requires smart, sufficient practice – not too much, not too little, but just right, like Goldilocks and the Three Bears! What is practice, what is the difference between practice and performance, and how does optimal practice occur?
This course will review what is known from research on motor learning about how we best learn to do activities like singing. We’ll define important terms, such as practice, learning, and performance, and examine different kinds of practice (massed vs. distributed; constant versus variable; blocked versus random) and when they are most useful. This impacts how we organize our practice time, how we plan teaching others, and even how we warm up before a performance.
We’ll look at various strategies for reflecting on our practicing, tracking our progress, and seeing patterns in how we are or are not making progress. These include daily, weekly and monthly reflections, having practice partners and lesson partners, planning schedules for major performances, goal setting, musical and character study prompts, and various apps to track what you do.
Time will be left for questions and sample materials will be available for your use.
Professor John Nix
John Nix is Professor of Voice and Voice Pedagogy and chair of the voice area at the University of Texas at San Antonio. His mentors include Barbara Doscher...
Attend this course for as little as £22 as part of the Voice Professional Training CPD Award Scheme.
Learn MoreSorry, this is an archived short course...
We have plenty of upcoming short courses coming soon. See details of some of them below or look at the full list of short courses.
Monday 27th April 2026
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Tuesday 28th April 2026
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Wednesday 29th April 2026
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Thursday 30th April 2026
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Friday 1st May 2026
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Tuesday 5th May 2026
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
(London Time)
Certificate In Applied Neuroscience And Voice with Voice Scientist Heidi Moss
This six-day course is designed to provide an introduction to the neuroscience of vocalization. It aims to provide a foundation for those who are looking to fuse science with art and understand that the voice is so much more than an instrument.
Tuesday 5th May 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 12th May 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 19th May 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 26th May 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 2nd June 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 9th June 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
(London Time)
Music Theory Fundamentals for Voice Pedagogues
Dr David Cane
Voice pedagogy has advanced significantly in the last decades in relation to knowledge of the vocal apparatus (anatomy and mechanics), acoustics, and performance psychology (to name just a few subfields) – this is a wonderful thing! Nonetheless, musicianship and the foundations of music theory are still relevant to the teaching and coaching of singers and this course aims to empower voice teachers and coaches with skills to support the fundamental musicianship development of their students.
Thursday 7th May 2026
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
(London Time)
Embodied voice research: negotiating the ‘inner’ and outer’
Marth Munro
The central thrust of the session will be around the employment of Donald Schön’s concept of ‘reflection-in-action’ and ‘reflection-on-action’ to contextualise the potential interface between the inner and the outer in embodied voice research.