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So the story goes...

Today/ yesterday made a new piano/ scales exercise up to do repetativally on the CD player

When you get going on it, getting into the rhythm and hitting the notes of the melody, after a while you/ or should I say I start raising my voice and I start shouting or belting the notes

After doing this it has left me with a loss of voice or a fading voice trying to sing higher notes

I remember my teacher telling me a few weeks ago you should not belt with out doing the estill exercise, he said Adel did this and that is why she had to have an operation on her vocal cords

Apart from that he also said I should go and have a look online and I should find this estill exercise  somewhere

Well googled estill; and nothing but the usual rubbish and sales tricks

So what is of this exercise?

 

Thanks

2CIADB

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Learn and practice good technique and you wil not run a risk of hurting your voice. I'm 48 been gigging as a singer since I was 23-24. I sing AC/DC to Cornell to journey and Bruno mars and james Brown. Never got nodules or polyps because I always make sure I warm up and practice good technique when I can and scream when I can't. There are no shortcuts or secret exercises 

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IMO Daniel Formica is the real deal and you just dismiss his advice? You seem to have a lot of excuses 2cats, are you sure you want to sing? ATM all you need is a teacher who is a better singer than you and to copy what they do. You don't need a program, you don't need secret exercises, you don't need some weird smoothie with exotic extract that can only be found in the remote areas of brazil. You need a local teacher who can get you started, and guide you weekly. it doesn't matter if they're a Baritone who cant sing past an F4... because it sounds like you can't either.

I'd recommend going to Daniel's Youtube and watching his interviews and masterclass. He seems like a no bullshit instructor that other (sometimes very expensive) Vocal Coaches look too for advice. Not someone to just dismiss. I'd imagine he's the guy you go to after you've surpassed the local teachers and not the guy to help you out on 'Happy Birthday'... I suspect you might need the 'Happy Birthday' guy for now and that's fine. get rid of the ego.

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On 6/23/2017 at 8:14 PM, kirkovin84 said:

all you need is a teacher who is a better singer than you and to copy what they do. You don't need a program, you don't need secret exercises, you don't need some weird smoothie with exotic extract that can only be found in the remote areas of brazil. You need a local teacher who can get you started, and guide you weekly. it doesn't matter if they're a Baritone who cant sing past an F4... because it sounds like you can't either.

All I need is a good teacher that can sing better then me and no vocal work outs; so lets see, the 500 odd hours of vocal work outs I have put in over the last 12 month was all for nothing because lerning to sing well is not about doing exercises it is about singing songs, so all I really needed was some one who could sing maria callas better then me that could then teach me to sing bon jovi.

Can't sing above F4; I mean WTF

is this who has the biggest p%%$s contest. and what dose that have anything to do with this topic and do you even know what gender I am. actually its a G5 not that this has anything to do with this thread or you

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how's that 500 hours of exercises working out for you? 

your last 3 posts are literally... 'nope, that won't work' and beyond that, whining about your teachers. Maybe it's not the exercises but the way you are executing them? Maybe you think you're doing them right but maybe you're just hitting the notes without actually being where you have to be in your voice. Maybe you're not taking your teachers advice onboard and just dismissing it. It doesn't matter if you can hit a G66 if the quality of your A3 sucks.

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Both of you might do good to calm down before you reply, or really think about how your words might come across in text. Let's remember that arguing on the inetrnet will prove nothing to the other side, especially when it can be perceived as name calling or similar, and that written words account for a VERY small percentage of communication. Then, chill out and think about your words before you write them, especially if angry or frustrated.

Let's try to clear some things up:

A good singer doesn't make for a good teacher. The opposite is also true. I've hired a coach befroe who charges $300+ an hour and can't do what I hired her for. But she has a great track record for teaching it! Also, each student is unique. Each one has different habits to overcome, some much more difficult than others. I've had students who went from complete beginner to advanced in 3 months! But I've also had students who barely scratched intermediate level in a year.

Learning to sing well is all about the correct, well executed exercises, not about singing songs. Singing songs is all about singing songs and manipulating your voice to sound how you want, not about doing exercises. It almost sounds like a contradiction, but it's not. It's like Karate Kid. Daniel painted the fence and waxed the cars, and that translated directly into doing Karate. If you build the coordination and strength of the individual muscle groups used in singing, then the result will directly translate into singing songs. However, 500 hours of doing exercises doesn't mean much unless they are solid exercises that are being executed properly. If you still struggle with singing after 12 months of instruction, then you either need a new teacher, or you need new and more purposeful exercises.

When a seasoned instructor with a great track record of results tells you something, and you think it's bollocks, then it's likely you misunderstood what they were saying. It can help to ask questions to clarify, rather than dismiss it flat out. However, being a seasoned instuctor doesn't mean they're a good fit for you either. Their teaching style might not click with you, or their communication not be something you understand well. That's fine. You may think your teacher is the Messiah. That's fine too. Regardless, asking questions will clear a lot of things up. Making blanket statements with very little clout, or getting offended that someone wrote something you disagree with? It helps no one.

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On 6/17/2017 at 0:33 AM, 2 cats in a dust bin said:

So the story goes...

Today/ yesterday made a new piano/ scales exercise up to do repetativally on the CD player

When you get going on it, getting into the rhythm and hitting the notes of the melody, after a while you/ or should I say I start raising my voice and I start shouting or belting the notes

After doing this it has left me with a loss of voice or a fading voice trying to sing higher notes

I remember my teacher telling me a few weeks ago you should not belt with out doing the estill exercise, he said Adel did this and that is why she had to have an operation on her vocal cords

Apart from that he also said I should go and have a look online and I should find this estill exercise  somewhere

Well googled estill; and nothing but the usual rubbish and sales tricks

So what is of this exercise?

 

Thanks

2CIADB

Exactly the point with Estill. No workouts. No exercises. But good stuff. Helpful for voice coaches more then students actually, but good stuff. The only issue in my opinion is, no workouts. Enjoy the workbook.

Very few people posting or viewing this forum would ever find any interest in Estill. Too much science, too boring, ( for most people), too much work and study required. Estill is really best suited for teachers, not for average students and FST people.

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I don't know about that. There are opera singers(people who sing arias ) and then there are OPERA singers. It takes a long time to become a world class opera singer. There are a few languages you have to learn, acting, and then the technique issue. It's not like pop where you can get away singing flat here and there. It's a much more exact sound and way of singing. Just my 2 cents. I've been around a long time met some pretty heavy opera singers and it takes at least a good 7-10 years to get in the game as an amateur . Even someone slightly gifted like Pavarotti took 7 years to get a real first gig in la Boheme.    

 

 

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10 hours ago, Danielformica said:

I don't know about that. There are opera singers(people who sing arias ) and then there are OPERA singers. It takes a long time to become a world class opera singer. There are a few languages you have to learn, acting, and then the technique issue. It's not like pop where you can get away singing flat here and there. It's a much more exact sound and way of singing. Just my 2 cents. I've been around a long time met some pretty heavy opera singers and it takes at least a good 7-10 years to get in the game as an amateur . Even someone slightly gifted like Pavarotti took 7 years to get a real first gig in la Boheme.

 

You don't know? Okay, I can go with that. I'm not lying. He did it. Some don't. He did multiple world tours. I'm not going to knock that. GRanted, telling his life story, he sounds like a work fiction. He survived pediactric sarcoma, and I think it made him willing to conquer anything. Apart from multiple world tours as a professional Opera singer, he also carried the olympic torch, fought a lion with a bo staff, made it into the Western Music Hall of Fame, carried sharks to safety (yes, you read that right), is host to the top poetry podcast in the world, and has written, produced, and directed multiple films, plays, musicals, and commercials. Hell, he was running his own film company as a teen on top of hanging out with his favorite movie stars. There are mroe people out tere like him, and I plan to get to know as many of them as possible. In the mean time, he and I have been good friends for the better part of a decade, and I'm honored to have him as a business partner and co-author in The Silent Still.

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I STAND CORRECTED! I was wrong.

I asked him more about it, and he said it was over six years of three to four hours a week of training. I also know he had the two top opera coaches in Denver. From his stories and all the other stuff he was doing, I truly thought it was much less.

His name is Amidei. I'm asking him for anything he might have left online or otherwise from that life. I know he sang tenor arias and did multiplle world tours. I don't know much else in that area, but I can post more once I do.

On another note, I really wish most pop and rock stars had 7+ years of good training!

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On ‎28‎/‎06‎/‎2017 at 4:28 PM, Danielformica said:

I've been around a long time met some pretty heavy opera singers and it takes at least a good 7-10 years to get in the game as an amateur . Even someone slightly gifted like Pavarotti took 7 years to get a real first gig in la Boheme.    

And this is good cause why opera is not a good venue to venture down

My teachers mother told me "he goes for these auditions in big opera houses in London and people who can not sing as well as him get the job rather then him because (apparently) he is poor little Yorkshire boy that they don't want to know and posh little Oxfordshire boy who is in that little boty boy circle gets the job because its not what you know its who you know. that is why he dose this private tuition and teaches at the collage because he dose not earn enough in the opera houses as the money is reserved for the more established singers.

 

Mind you I am beginning to have my doubts about contemporary; But when Daren said it cost £500 to get that singer to come up all that way from Manchester (90 mile) to sing that night. and the band we had in ow that was big money not disclosing the figure to anyone.....I see something ells

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2 hours ago, 2 cats in a dust bin said:

Mind you I am beginning to have my doubts about contemporary; But when Daren said it cost £500 to get that singer to come up all that way from Manchester (90 mile) to sing that night. and the band we had in ow that was big money not disclosing the figure to anyone.....I see something ells

 

Not to go too far off topic too much, but I wanted to address this with a real worl dexample. I've been coaching bands in business and career for almost 20 years now,, and most of them take the poor artist mindset because they don't want to do the work to make it more than that. My own band did a test run for a new show concept and filled the place with all but 10 people having no clue who we were (the 1st sign it was a great concept). We charge $20 per ticket and had 500 people in attendance. We also had a cast and crew of close to 40 people, rented the place ourselves, and ran advertising ourselves. In the end, it cost us $5K. You do that math. With the fully scripted show we're building up to, we can easily charge $30 to $40 a ticket with crowds of 1200 to 1500, taking the show on the road, and our expenses staying less than $10K per show. Again, do the math. And that's just ticket sales, not merch, sponsors, alcohol, etc. IF a band does their business right, there's a lot of money to be made.

However, in contrast, even with a tremendous record deal, with a $100,000 advance (mostly unheard of these days), here's what it actually looks like: Most of that money goes towards the record-label's choice of producer, engineer, studio, mastering, pressing, distribution, and marketing of an album. They now do a 360-deal where all merch is included too. Whatever's left over, the artist can pocket. All other expnses (travel, food, limos, etc...) are added to that advance too. If the deal is tremendous, the artist will get 10% of the profits, and the label gets 90%. However, the artist must pay back their advance and all expenses added out of their 10%, usually not seeing any profit until that advance is paid back in full. That means a typical record deal, even a good one like this, is at best a $100,000+ loan with 900% interest. I would rather grow to $100K in capitol, hire my own team, and keep most of the profits myself. Sadly, most artists dream of a record deal.

Now back to Estill exercises...

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   Did anyone describe even ONE Estill exercise in this post?  :39:

  A record deal is the last thing any singer should want. It is not just a job it is an adventure.  A costly on at that for the artist. Plus once they have you......you do what they say not what you want.

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7 hours ago, Danielformica said:

"  Did anyone describe even ONE Estill exercise"

 

oh here ya go  Whimper like a puppy whine like an alien, sing through a straw etc lol.  I ain't lying

Breath with noise to close false folds and breath without making noise to open them......I was kind of wondering with all the hype of Estill if there was anything more to it.

 

On 6/17/2017 at 3:33 AM, 2 cats in a dust bin said:

    I remember my teacher telling me a few weeks ago you should not belt with out doing the estill exercise, he said Adel did this and that is why she had to have an operation on her vocal cords

   You still have to wonder why a teacher would mention an exercise from someone else and then NOT describe what the exercise is, how to perform it and the point of doing the exercise.

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On 6/17/2017 at 0:33 AM, 2 cats in a dust bin said:

So the story goes...

Today/ yesterday made a new piano/ scales exercise up to do repetativally on the CD player

When you get going on it, getting into the rhythm and hitting the notes of the melody, after a while you/ or should I say I start raising my voice and I start shouting or belting the notes

After doing this it has left me with a loss of voice or a fading voice trying to sing higher notes

I remember my teacher telling me a few weeks ago you should not belt with out doing the estill exercise, he said Adel did this and that is why she had to have an operation on her vocal cords

Apart from that he also said I should go and have a look online and I should find this estill exercise  somewhere

Well googled estill; and nothing but the usual rubbish and sales tricks

So what is of this exercise?

 

Thanks

2CIADB

 

Is that how your coach told you to do those exercises? It sounds like you were trying to do something you've seen other people do without knowing how.

 

On 6/25/2017 at 1:35 AM, 2 cats in a dust bin said:

All I need is a good teacher that can sing better then me and no vocal work outs; so lets see, the 500 odd hours of vocal work outs I have put in over the last 12 month was all for nothing because lerning to sing well is not about doing exercises it is about singing songs, so all I really needed was some one who could sing maria callas better then me that could then teach me to sing bon jovi.

Can't sing above F4; I mean WTF

is this who has the biggest p%%$s contest. and what dose that have anything to do with this topic and do you even know what gender I am. actually its a G5 not that this has anything to do with this thread or you

 

Why would you think you don't have to do vocal work outs? That's like saying I want a burger with fixings on it and don't charge me for it. First, if you are randomly performing the exercises however you want to do them, rather than as instructed, that's going to limit your progress. You just said you shouted your way through the end of a recent one because you thought you were belting. Second, Dan just told you he's been performing for 25 years, and he swears by warming up. How many hours of exercises do you think he's done? How many hours of exercises do you think Robert has done to attain what he has? Did you think you'd be done training and be an accomplished vocalist in just 1 year?

You have to slow down. You are new to this and you are being too opinionated. The skills and strength you develop from the exercises is what will allow you to kill those songs you want to sing. And even better than that, if you sing songs over and over again, you will slowly get better at it. However, if you do exercises, you will improve at a much faster rate. So, which one do you want? Do you want to improve at a snail's pace or a hare's pace? It's a marathon.

 

9 hours ago, MDEW said:

Breath with noise to close false folds and breath without making noise to open them......I was kind of wondering with all the hype of Estill if there was anything more to it.

 

   You still have to wonder why a teacher would mention an exercise from someone else and then NOT describe what the exercise is, how to perform it and the point of doing the exercise.

 

I think Cats has two problems. First, he is moving too fast. He wants to jump to desired techniques and jump to singing songs. Second, it's like he keeps finding teachers who don't really aim to be the most helpful. He's made a few posts asking about things that his coaches should have been able to help him with.

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1 hour ago, Gsoul82 said:

Why would you think you don't have to do vocal work outs? That's like saying I want a burger with fixings on it and don't charge me for it. First, if you are randomly performing the exercises however you want to do them, rather than as instructed, that's going to limit your progress. You just said you shouted your way through the end of a recent one because you thought you were belting. Second, Dan just told you he's been performing for 25 years, and he swears by warming up. How many hours of exercises do you think he's done? How many hours of exercises do you think Robert has done to attain what he has? Did you think you'd be done training and be an accomplished vocalist in just 1 year?

You have to slow down. You are new to this and you are being too opinionated. The skills and strength you develop from the exercises is what will allow you to kill those songs you want to sing. And even better than that, if you sing songs over and over again, you will slowly get better at it. However, if you do exercises, you will improve at a much faster rate. So, which one do you want? Do you want to improve at a snail's pace or a hare's pace? It's a marathon.

No I was being sarcastic towards the member who was verbally abusing me and insulting me for no justifiable reason and who has thankfully not returned. Never mind.

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1 hour ago, Gsoul82 said:

I think Cats has two problems. First, he is moving too fast. He wants to jump to desired techniques and jump to singing songs. Second, it's like he keeps finding teachers who don't really aim to be the most helpful. He's made a few posts asking about things that his coaches should have been able to help him with.

"singing songs" see me last quote

My coach/ teacher is an opera singer and trains in this field and therfor this is not contemporary

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20 hours ago, Danielformica said:

"  Did anyone describe even ONE Estill exercise"

 

oh here ya go  Whimper like a puppy whine like an alien, sing through a straw etc lol.  I ain't lying

But that is just warm up exercises, I was kind of hoping to find out more how the whole belting thing worked.  

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9 minutes ago, 2 cats in a dust bin said:

"singing songs" see me last quote

My coach/ teacher is an opera singer and trains in this field and therfor this is not contemporary

 

I'm not following. I've read everything you've typed. You still seem like you are rushing. You have to build your voice. It reminds me of one cover I was asked to listen to. It was about a 4-minute song. At the end, there were whistle notes. They were beautiful whistle notes. The problem was that you had to listen to her having pitch trouble for almost 4 minutes before she could use her trick. You should have basics coming together before you start focusing on the flashy stuff.

 

So you would rather have a coach that has that background? Did you not know this before you started going to them? It sounds like you need to pick the right one. See if there are reviews for the next one you want.

 

 

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