Tolga

Hi everyone, I am very new to singing and I am actually a guitar player of 25 years. I played mostly as an amateur though... A few years ago, when I became tired of looking for a singer for recording my original material, I decided to try singing. When I finally decided to take singing lessons from a vocal coach, I discovered that I had a naturally wide range and I had no trouble in blending my registers. My exercise range is something like E2-C6 and I took lessons for about 9 months or so. While my coach was not a rock singer, he was open-minded and I feel that I learned quite a bit during that period. One particular discovery for me was the pharyngeal voice for singing higher parts, which, for some reason, comes natural to me. My tone, however, is a quite different story. Unfortunately, thus far, I never really managed to produce a tone that I am happy with. I do feel that I have improved my tone in time, but I still find it harsh and unnatural at times. I know that people can be alienated towards their own voice, but I do not think this is my problem. My vocal coach told me that my tone could be described as “edgy” and suggested that perhaps I could try mimicking the sound of opera tenors for producing a somewhat more fuller sounding tone. However, I am not sure whether this is good advice… Trying to improve my tone in this manner also seems to add an unnatural and forced quality to my tone. In the link below, you can access an amateur recording of mine where I sing the Deep Purple classic, “Smoke on the Water”. In case you have time, feel free to provide your advice, particularly with regard to my tone production. Be aware that English is not my first language, so my pronunciation may not be an ideal one if you are a native speaker. In addition, if you think there are other things I must work upon (and I am sure there are many…) feel free to comment on them as well. I have bought many courses on rock/metal singing and I have tons of exercise mp3s… etc, which claim to be improving tone. Unfortunately, tone is not something that you can objectively measure and I am not sure what I should do at this point. Thanks, Tolga PS: The vocal part starts around 0:50…