Self Study for Serious Singers, Musicians, and Dancers

Hi everyone! We hope you’re all as excited for Thanksgiving as we are! Today’s post is going to be a quick one, but a good one. Self study is an often overlooked technique for improving as a musician, dancer, or singer. Luckily, it’s a pretty easy thing to do. Here’s how!

Practice In Front Of A Mirror

The easiest method for self study is practicing in front of a mirror. At Myriad we emphasize teaching all of our students proper posture. Whether you’re a pianist, guitarist, or dancer, posture is key to performing at your best. Practicing in front of a mirror makes it easy to know if your posture is correct.

You can also work to fine tune the way you perform. Think about your face, and the emotions you want to convey to your audience. Being a powerful performer is about more than just sounding good, or getting choreography correct.

Make a Recording

If you want to take things to the next level, you can make a recording of yourself performing. Years ago this might have been difficult, but nowadays it’s easy to do with a phone, tablet, or computer. Whether it’s a video or audio recording, your eyes and ears can both give you more information than you think! And it’s a lot easier to analyze and critique your own performance when you’re not also focused on actually singing, dancing, or playing an instrument. This can be super helpful for nailing choreography, identifying note and parts of songs that are giving you trouble, and also for sharing on social media when your recording just turns out AWESOME.

Find an Audience (okay, so this one isn’t exactly self study)

But it’s still a useful way to get some extra feedback to work with. If you can find someone you don’t feel embarrassed to practice in front of, ask if a friend or family member can see what you’re working on. This can be a great way of gauging what parts of a song or dance are really working, and which ones still, well, need work. It’s also good practice for learning how to connect with an audience – which is a really really really important skill to have!

That’s it for our blog this week – but we’ll be back next week! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!