🎙️Weekly Insight #55 – Moments with Maggie: Why 12 Minutes Can Be Enough

What I learned from Margaret Harshaw about short, intentional practice.

From Maggie to the MuppetMe: keep your focus where it counts.

Maggie’s Curiosity

When I worked with Margaret Harshaw during my apprentice years at Lyric Opera of Chicago, she was already in her 80s. She had sung at both the old and new Met and taught at Indiana University. With all she had accomplished, what consistently struck me in lessons was her curiosity. She always wanted to know how each singer produced sound.

At her home in Lake Forest, lessons weren’t about singing nonstop. We’d sit for tea, talk, and then work in stretches. She kept a small mirror on the piano. More than once she had me hold it up and say, “Notice what is moving.” At first that felt intimidating. Later I realized it was her way of training attention—always noticing, always connecting sound with what the body was doing. And in her way, she echoed what Epictetus asks: Is this necessary?

Everyday Voices

She didn’t stop with singers. She listened to newscasters and television voices, noticing when someone was speaking freely or when they were constricting their sound. Her reminders weren’t just about eyebrows—they were about watching your mouth, your tongue, and the exact shape of your articulators. That’s what I learned from her: exercises help you see what you’re doing, and how small adjustments in tongue or mouth shape can form vowels clearly without extra tension.

12 Minute Sessions

Her teaching showed me that practice doesn’t need to be long. It needs to be intentional.

A morning session of 12 minutes might include:

• Breath awareness: steadying airflow before a note ever begins.
• Vowel exercise on one pitch: /i e a o u/ in half steps, learning how much air each transition really needs, and noticing what your articulators are doing.
• Middle register activation: the part of your voice you’ll use all day when speaking.
• Text exploration: speaking or intoning a line of poetry you plan to sing later.

Conservatory Habits

In conservatory, it was the opposite. We’d spend hours in small practice rooms, often repeating phrases until our voices were tired. Sometimes we left more discouraged than improved, not really knowing if what we were doing was helping. There was a law of diminishing returns—more time didn’t always mean better results.

Each practice room had a Steinway, and people would set up camp with books and scores, staying late into the night. That felt like practicing. But it wasn’t directed. We were given general rules, not guidance for how to tailor practice to our own voices. You never really knew which nuance applied to you.

There were mirrors in the practice rooms, but no one showed us how to use them in relation to what we were studying. Of course, we all knew how to look in a mirror, but we weren’t guided to notice the specific movements of the tongue, jaw, or lips as they connected to the sound. Without that focus, the mirror wasn’t a tool—it was just an object in the room.
Pomodoro Parallels

Another place I saw this confirmed was years later when I was teaching students about study habits. I came across the Pomodoro Technique, which uses short blocks of focused work followed by a break. The original method was built around 25 minutes, named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer its creator used. But whether it’s 25, 15, or even 12, the point is the same: concentrated attention works better than endless hours.
Selective Attention

It reminds me of the well-known experiment in selective attention. The point isn’t just about watching closely, but about knowing what to focus on. That was missing in conservatory practice. Harshaw, by contrast, directed our attention. She told us exactly what mattered in the moment. (If you’d like to experience the experiment yourself, here’s the link: Selective Attention Test – YouTube. Best to try it before reading about it.)

Star Pressure

You see the same thing with great pop singers. Christina Aguilera can run scales with ease, Adele can pour emotion into her sound. But natural talent only goes so far under pressure. Technique gives you something to fall back on when stress or fatigue creeps in. Even a subtle shift—like adding a bit more air in the middle range—can keep the throat from tightening.

I think back to Aguilera’s advertisement for her online masterclass, where she demonstrated an impressive vocalization. It was beautiful, but to my ear it sounded more like a performance than a daily exercise. That difference is important. The daily work isn’t about showing what you can already do—it’s about finding what helps you stay steady under pressure.
Ticket Stub Trauma

I remember it clearly in my own career. My first Figaro in The Barber of Seville was with Arizona Opera. I saw a ripped ticket stub on the ground and realized someone had paid $100 for that seat. Not to hear “Rossini” in the abstract—but to hear me sing Figaro. That awareness hit me hard. Pressure like that changes how you breathe and how the voice responds. Having exercises and habits to rely on kept me steady when nerves might have taken over.
Authenticity

Harshaw probably wouldn’t have used the word authentic. But that’s what she was pointing toward. She wanted each singer to discover how they vibrated vowels, how much air pressure they required for the passage they were working on, and what their voice did when breath was prepared with intention. In a time when we were encouraged to imitate famous singers on recordings, she pushed us to sound like ourselves.

That is the root of this 12-minute practice idea. It doesn’t have to be long. It does have to be intentional. And that’s what makes it yours.

Related Posts:

If you’d like to explore connected insights from earlier in this series:

Weekly Insight #2 – The Mental Game of Voice: Lessons from Margaret Harshaw Harshaw’s emphasis on awareness and presence over pure technique. 

https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2024/08/weekly-voice-insights-2-mental-game-of.html

Weekly Insight #3 – The Mental Game of Voice: Practice with Purpose (Part II) How practice changes when guided by deliberate intention. https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2024/09/weekly-insights-3-mental-game-of-voice.html


Weekly Insight #7 – Repeating with Purpose: How Mindful Practice Leads to Authenticity Why repetition without awareness falls short — and how mindful rehearsal connects to authentic sound. https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2024/10/weekly-insight-7-part-1-repeating-with.html


Weekly Insight #17 – Building Your 12-Minute Practice Plan: Start with Breath Lays out the short daily practice structure that connects directly with #55. https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2024/12/weekly-insight-17-building-your-12.html


Weekly Insight #29 – When Pressure Hijacks Your Voice: How to Stay Present and In Control Explores how stress alters breath and voice, and what helps you steady yourself under pressure — closely related to the “ticket stub” story. https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2025/03/weekly-insight-29-when-pressure-hijacks.html

Further Resources:

Wikipedia: Margaret Harshaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Harshaw


Selective Attention Test – YouTube

Elias Mokole Keynote Speaker, BA & Beyond 2025 | Voice Presence & Change Founder, Developing Your Authentic Voice Newsletter.

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