Break Your Songs into Parts for Optimal Practice Sessions
Many singers go into a practice session with songs that they very much enjoy singing, and they simply sing these same songs over and over hoping to perfect their performance. Sometimes the singer is looking to improve the singing voice, other times the goal is to simply get better at singing the given song for an upcoming performance. What often happens, however, is that there are particular sections of the song that you might feel just don�t work out right. Instead of singing the song over and over again to improve, the solution is to simply break the song down into parts for optimal practice sessions.
This might seem a bit obvious to some, but many times we overlook the thing that is staring us right in the face. What you can do is break apart all the sections of the song that you feel you are doing right and separate those from the parts that seem to be running flat or just out of tune. Work on each difficult section individually until you eventually eliminate the whole list of parts of the song that you are having a problem with. It�s easy to get overwhelmed by going through this process, but as you overcome the various portions of the song in which you are having trouble, you will build confidence and self esteem as the list dwindles and you eventually tackle the whole song.
A drill I�ve found that is very helpful to go along with this process is to strip all the words out of the various portions of the song and replace all the syllables with a �Nay�. So for instance if you were singing a line like �Here I go again on my own�, instead you would sing �Nay nay nay nay-nay nay nay nay.� This makes it easier for your mind to focus on the notes since it won�t be preoccupied with also having to form words to sing. This greatly increases the speed at which this process works. Once you get all the notes down in a particular section, put all the words back into that part. Wash, rinse, and repeat until you get the whole song down pat.
Take care and good luck.