One important focus area of the MaJoVTA Summer Term 2025 has been learning new repertoire.

Said another way, new songs in new styles help you break out of vocal adaptations that may have become a part of your singing, whether you realize it or not.

It’s been said that one definition of insanity is “Doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result.”

The same can be said for singers who keep singing the same tunes (or the same style) over and over again – sometimes for years – while, somehow, expecting to improve vocally.

Nope. Not gonna happen, MaJoVTA members.

So what’s a singer to do?

The first thing to understand is that learning new rep brings the singer face to face with adaptations of all kinds – many of which may feel completely unknown to them. And in new rep, the adaptations can’t be hidden or avoided.

You’ve heard me say it before:

• Identify
• Release
• Replace

The struggles of learning new rep require that the singer undergo this process of discovery and removal of various adaptations – with new rep, there’s just no getting around it.

I want to close this post with a quick refresher on the three main sources of unnecessary or unwanted vocal adaptations:

• Misinformation (from either our own assumptions or outside sources)
• Previous Experience (you’ve always done it this way)
• Prior Learning (did watching that vocal ‘influencer’ on TikTok really improve your singing?)

About that last one: I think that’s probably another “nope.”

* * * * *

Learning new rep has the potential to dynamite each of these negatives into tiny mental and physical piles of rubble. We bring in the figurative front loader, clear away the rubble, lay a foundation and begin building back stronger than ever.

Over the next two weeks I encourage you to really dig in.

Revisit Chapter 4 of the training manual on the song learning method – work your song thoroughly. Not just work on it but actually work it.

There’s a real and meaningful difference in those two ideas!

See you soon … in the room.

M

#workinit
#dothereps
#majovta
#vocaltraining
#voicelessons
#singerstuff