Snorth

I thought this was important when I first started looking at videos on youtube about singing, getting an review from a teacher that would reveal to me what it was that I was to sing. But when I actually got my first lesson the teacher didn't mention this once because it's really not something that matters. Choose what you wish to be able to sing like and work for it. I think anyone can hit at least an F5 with the right technique.

It sounds good jonpall, with a nice microphone you could record a track right now. At your curbing level right now I think it's all a matter of artistic choice. I would have prefered abit more twang and/or just a hint of distortion here and there to spice it up with more dynamics but that is just my taste. :)

Just have to say that was awesome. :)

Awesome stuff man, just wished you had a clean karoake track.

And regarding neutral and judas priest, it's a MUST!

Rob Halford is singing with Metal-like-neutral very often. It's just neutral with alot of twang.

Hey there Ronws,

You're getting better! I would recommend you in this song to use more curbing, you seem to switch to neutral quite early and it can be abit thin unless you twang like mad and/or go higher than the high tenor C. Curbing that high is hard, but I definitely believe anyone can learn it. I just look at myself that had no idea how to curb a year ago, and now I can do it.

BUT! Then again this is my personal preference, if you wanna stick with neutral make sure that you train on the parts were you go low with neutral and then suddenly ascend to a higher note because I think those were the places that could be improved the most.

Thanks to all those who have provided feedback so far.

To Steven,

The photos you see are snapshots from my YouTube videos. When I am actually recording audio, I record each part separately separately and with my body upright. You're right, being slumped over the guitar does restrict the airflow a bit. I just haven't quite become comfortable at playing the guitar standing yet.

To Fahim,

You are one wicked guitarist!

I also wanted to ask a few follow up questions:

1. Do you think that my voice is suited to the acoustic, adult contemporary and soft rock styles that I am currently involved with, or is there something else that would suit me better? I have dabbled around in rock and pop rock before and my assessment is that my voice lacks the power and brightness needed to really cut through the music.

2. With my mellow and breathy tone, am I better suited to background vocals than lead vocals?

Thanks in advance

1. Anyone can sing any style, if you learn abit about the techniques a certain style often involves. You talk about lack of power and brightness. If this is something you wish to be able to do then I recommend you start looking into twang. Twang will increase your volume and make your vocals abit sharper.

Go here(http://vocalcoach.dk/uk/onlinecourse/) and do the following:

1. Scroll down the page and click the button neutral with soft closure.

This is the technique you are doing mostly. It is soft, airy and always has low volume.

2. Now click compressed neutral.

This is abit stronger and sharper. But still very similiar. The easiest way to find this would be by simply adding abit twang. Try singing with a smile. Also, just as a picture in your head, try to sing with a with a more compressed sound. If a regular smile doesn't get rid of the air you could always do the joker smile http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f9/Manwholaughs.jpg then you should really get to feel what alot of twang feels like. And singing like that can sound very piercing and sharp. The key then is to feel how much twang do you need for certain notes to get the sound you want.

Now I don't want to overwhelm you with new techniques, so I recommend you try this first and then if you wanna wake the neighbours you should push the button overdrive on that page and I'll give you some tips on that.

2. Do what you feel like, I believed a year ago that you had to be a natural talent to be a great singer and that I was born with a certain voice type, and that I only could sing loudly(Yes I could almost only sing in overdrive, too much metallica in high school did that to me.). It was all lies. Some people has to work harder than others to be learn to sing certain things though, but that's life.

I wish I could do the high stuff in overdrive (with distortion) but I don't think I could without killing my voice. There are a lot of C5's and B4's. I would have to train for that and build up to it right?

C5s and B4s are tough in overdrive indeed because the volume is immense , if you want to learn overdrive you should learn how to sing it in the center of your range first of course.

Here's a clip of analog nailing some high Bs in overdrive for you to hear how it sounds. http://www.box.net/shared/6rduq47osl

And here Martin H does an A#4 in overdrive at 3:40~

Greatly mixed with that backtrack! Did you make those solos? They had a nice John Petrucci vibe.

Singing was great. But you wish to add grit to the high notes you say? Well from a CVT perspective you are definetly in curbing. And if you want to add more grit to curbing I think the simplest way is simply by adding alot of twang(AKA Distinct Twang). This way the singing gets noticebly louder and more sharp. Another thing you could do is add distortion to your singing, but I can't really give any tips on that because I haven't learned that myself yet.

Oh and about the vowel on "more", if you really make sure it's the vowel "O" as in "woman" it will work perfectly with curbing. However if you want to go with a more "open vowel" as Michelle described it I would go with "OH" as in "Go". This will have to be done in overdrive though which is a different way of singing, but it would give you a very big volume boost that's for sure. "AH" works okey for overdrive to an extent, around E4 it gets abit hard and it's better to just sing OH or EY instead in the higher range.