Start with the humming exercise above. It is quiet enough for a flat with thin walls, and it gives you something to listen for straight away: hum with your lips closed, feel the buzz around your lips and nose, and notice whether the buzz stays as the scale climbs. That is real practice at a volume nobody next door will hear, and it is a good model for the rest of a home session. PICK A SPOT AND KEEP IT. Practise in the same place each time. A room with curtains, a rug and a sofa or bed is easier to judge yourself in than a bare room or a bathroom, where the echo flatters every note. Stand, or sit tall on the front of a chair, with room to breathe low, and keep water nearby. The same spot makes it easier to start, and it makes your recordings comparable from week to week. VOLUME AND NEIGHBOURS. A lot of useful practice is quiet: hums, lip trills, slides on "ng", pitch work, learning melodies, working on words and breathing. Save the loud work, belting and full-voice choruses, for a time of day when it bothers nobody, and keep it short. Notice, though, if every phrase you sing is at half volume because you feel self-conscious. If all your practice is quiet, set aside a few minutes for full voice when you can. GIVE EACH SESSION ONE JOB. Without a teacher it is easy to spend twenty minutes singing through songs and call it practice. Choose one thing for the session: landing the first note of a phrase in tune, a smoother gear change, the breath in a long line. Warm up, spend most of the time on that one thing in short repetitions, then sing a song and listen for whether it showed up. LISTEN BACK. The most useful habit at home is recording a short take and listening to it, because what you hear while you sing is not what a listener hears. Keep takes short: one phrase, or one verse. Listen once without judging, then once for the single thing you worked on. Was the first note under or over? Did the line run out of breath before the end? Write one sentence about what you heard before you sing again. COMPARE LIKE WITH LIKE. When you look back over weeks, compare takes recorded in the same spot, at the same distance from the microphone, after the same warm-up. A change of room or microphone can sound like a change in the voice when it is not. KEEP IT SHORT AND REGULAR. Short sessions on most days usually do more than one long session a week, and they fit around a household more easily. Ten or fifteen focused minutes is a real session. Stop when the voice feels tired rather than when the timer ends. Diagnostic question: play back the last take you recorded. Can you name one specific thing you would change, such as a flat first note in the chorus or a breath in the middle of a word? If you can, you know what tomorrow's session is for. If all you can say is that you do not like it, record a shorter take and listen for one thing at a time. WHEN TO STOP. At home nobody is watching for strain, so watch for it yourself. A recording can show you what you sang; it cannot diagnose why something hurts. If singing hurts, your voice is hoarse, or speaking feels effortful after a session, stop for the day, and if it lasts more than a day, see a doctor or an ENT before you practise again.