What does it take to get a singing voice in shape? How do I know when I’m in shape and how do I stay in shape?

You always want to start with a good vocal warm-up – one that emphasizes the vowels we typically sing (A, E, Aw/Ah, O) and one that works chromatically (half-step at a time) through the vocal register. I do wonder why people do that “motorboat” (er, “lip trill”) thing as a warm-up. I’ve never heard a song that required it, so I avoid it. A decent vocal warm-up should take about five to ten minutes and if you consider yourself a singer, then you should do that daily.

As for going through your repertoire, after your vocal warm-up, you should run your five, multi-purpose audition songs all the way through. Don’t just do 16 or 32 bars, get some stamina and stretch in there. Stand and sing, but if the only place you can sing is in your car in traffic, then so be it. Make sure the songs represent you as a positive person, a winner. Singing a ballad about what a loser you are may be cathartic, but you’d also be putting a fluffy raincloud over your head at your audition. Honestly, if I’m a producer with $20 million to put into a new Broadway musical, I would not be inclined to hire a group of performers who consider themselves losers or unlucky at everything they do. Find something positive to sing about.

At this point, including the warm-up, we’re at about 20-25 minutes of singing. This would be the baseline for maintenance (and you can now tack on your fun, sobby torch songs). If you do this seven days a week, great! You will grow stronger and always be in relatively good shape. You probably really enjoy singing, too. If you do this for three days a week or fewer, you won’t really grow, you’ll pretty much stay in the same arena, and, like most things, you get out of it what you put in.

Does this mean that you need to start singing an hour or two every day? No, don’t do that — yet. Build the habit slowly, adding one or two songs a week (a month, whatever), so that if you start at 20 minutes a day, the next week will be 25 minutes and so on. For three years, I sang in my bathroom every day. At the end of those three years, I was singing for two hours straight. I don’t expect everybody to do that, but, once I get started, I really do like singing.

My most recent gig lasted for a few years where I sang standards and showtunes for three hours a night in a high-end restaurant, Thursday through Saturday. It was a ton of singing, but I was able to do it because over thirty-five years, I had built a foundation for a strong voice, constantly relied on solid vocal technique and maintained a fairly consistent practice.