http://newyorkjazzproject.com

million distractions, and most of us don’t have great focus. Or meditate, and call upon that meditative state when you start practicing. You have to protect your right to practice from everyone, and give them something to do. If you have a child, you need a babysitter or relative, or project for that kid to do.

Then afterwards you can give them your undivided love and attention. Practice every day unless your voice needs to rest. Divide your practice time. If you have 15 minutes, you can warm up, do a scale exercise and practice a song in 15 minutes. However if you are practicing for performance, you should plan your Maggie Malone repertoire well ahead of time and go through at least a set a day, until you feel secure with that set of songs, then start on the next set. Then before the performance, at least one or two weeks ahead, you should go through all the songs every day that you will perform. You don’t want to go into a situation where that will be the first time you go through all the songs. You need to pace yourself for the entire performance, both physically and mentally or emotionally. The songs should be in an order that you can switch from one to the next, and make the emotional switch or development.

There are hundreds of standards that every jazz singer must know. You must know the words, the melody, the key and the changes to all these tunes, or not expect to work at all. You can keep books of your repertoire, by composers or sets, and keep one for piano or guitar, and one for bass and one for drums. These books can be black or dark colored with plastic covers for each song that attach to the center of the folder or cover. We could have 9 The Jazz Culture, VI:40