Draven Grey

You'll never be paid to sing, and you don't have a set plan (or choosing not to make one)? To me, that says you're not serious about singing. Learning to sing, perhaps, but not to the point you want to make a career out of it. You're choosing not to do so, for whatever reason that may be. It's when someone says they're super serious, want to make a living/career out of it, and are willing to do whatever it takes, and then complain when it costs money for a teacher's time (especially a good teacher with proven results within their goal set), that teachers get frustrated like we talked about above. There are great course out there that cover the material you mention, and don't cost a student thousands per year. Not everyone learns that way. There are great software trainers too, but I'm not yet convinced that one could replace a good teacher. Then there are those students who are passionate about their voice, train consistently, seek out the best courses, and really only need a teacher for a few lessons, to help them tweak a few things. But to say you're serious about singing and only looking for free tips, there's a disconnect.

I experienced a lot of the same when I coached bands for a couple of decades. It's teh same all acrosst he world. I watched many bands and artists complain about spending money on coaching that taught them, step by step, how to make money at their craft, and yet would spend thousands of dollars on gear without flinching.

Advice: Start training. You say you can't afford it, but $20/mo is next to nothing for great training like The Four Pillars of Singing. You're not singing in the above post. You're talking with a bit of rhythm and some different pitches now and then. If you want to sing, then put time, effort, and money into learning how.

With proper placement, you should be able to hold your nose and get the same sound as without holding it. Rhinitis and a deviated septum really doesn't change much besides having to manage allergy symptoms a bit more closely. You're not lifting the voice properly, likely singing a lot from the throat with more speech-like vowels. The harder you push, the more you're shouting more than singing. I address that in my first Singing Basics video. If you want to build lung capacity get a cocktail straw. Breath in a low as possible (lower back, not shoulders), expanding your lower ribcage. Then, blow the entire breath out through the straw as hard as you can do without any pain. After a week, you'll start to notice you can do it a lot longer than when you started. As with the straw exercise, you can do this multiple times a day. You'll also notice some big differences in general after using the straw exercise for a while, which I describe in my warmups video. That one is all about learning to relax, get good glottal closure, balance air-pressure, and hold proper resonant placement for the pitch.

Are you training with anyone or any particular system? I too have rhinitis and a deviated septum, but have been singing professionally for 27 years. The problems you describe sound more like lack of proper placement and support. The videos linked below can help, but won't be nearly as effective as having a good coach, solid course of study, or both, like in The Four Pillars of Singing. Check these out, and let me know if you have questions: http://rocksinginglessons.com/videos/

Until you can afford singing lessons, be careful about simply getting tips from Youtube and the like. However, if that's all you have, then make sure they are reputable teachers. The first video on my Rock Singing Lessons playlist can help, as can any of Robert Lunte's videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheDravenGrey https://www.youtube.com/user/roblunte

Didn't you just say tat you weren't sure if it sounded good? If you don't want advice, then why did you post? However, if you're willing to learn, I've taught for years, and the advice I gave you is exactly what you need to improve your high C. What do you mean when you say you've "begun training on that high C"? Are you taking lessons, and going through specific exercise routines proven to help you reach your goal? Or are you doing this by trial and error? The latter isn't training, But the former, like getting someone experienced and who has a reputation for getting results to walk you through exercises for the advice I gave you, is training.

It doesn't sound good until those concerns go away ("strain", "difficult", "try not to..."). Start learning how to lean into your head voice resonance more, and slowly turning on the TA muscles as a separate thing. Until you can turn on your TA muscles less than full strength, and hold a head voice position/configuration while doing it, you're simply yelling. Appoggio exercises can also help.

You're very pitchy in general, and your resonant placement is completely incorrect. Look into eartraining for vocals. There are many voice apps that will play a pitch or interval and then let you try to match it. Also, humming into a pitch wheel can help you match pitch as well. Winging in pitch is a listening skill, more than it is coordination or strength like the rest of singing. You head voice sounds off because of resonant placement being in the throat vs being in the soft palate. Hold a finger to your bottom lip and try to sing up and over it. This usually will point your vowels up into the soft palate and get you out of your throat. Also, start humming and buzzing your lips through songs 2/3 the time, instead of just singing them. It will help you get used to a better placement of you voice, among other things good for singing. Keep taking lessons. Get them to show you how to place your resonance and vowels better for singing, and give you exercises specifically meant for learning to sing in pitch.

If you practice the wrong way, you will definitely develop bad habits. That's not to say that you can't learn good habits too, but trial and error is a very ineffective way to learn. Training is different than practicing. In training, you follow a training regiment that gets you to the results you want i(using both strength and coordination) with tried and proven routines/exercises. Two things: The examples you gave are not complete. The first sample has no voice. But it really doesn't matter because... You're singing from your throat, rather than the soft palate. The following video can help, but a short youtube video will fall drastically short of what training can do for you. If you truly want to learn to sing, The Four Pillars of Singing will be the best purchase you've ever made.

You can sing in pitch, and that's a big one! You ask if you should continue practicing. Practicing what? If you practice bad habits, you reinformce bad habits. If you practice good techniques, you reinforce good techniques. If you practice guesswork, you reinforce guesswork (which is usually full of bad habits). You need to train if you truly want to get better. Check out The Four Pillars of Singing. It not only gives you a complete and comprehensive course of study, it also explains why you're doing each thing. Your placement, tension, choice of muscle groups for different things, breath support, and and air pressure balance, are all off. Here's a good start. Just know that it only scratches the surface, give you a basic feel for things, and gets you pointed in the right direction. You won't learn solid technique from short YouTube videos.

You were hearing the right things! I'm merely addressing the root of it.

What MDEW is hearing as compression, I'm hearing as singing in the throat too much. Similar results, until you try to lighten compression and then the voice suddenly gets super airy/breathy. What he's hearing as out of control vibrato, I'm hearing as not being able to stablize the notes and overcompensating with more vibrato. You need better resonant placement and proper breath support, so that the voice will resonate better in the soft palate and have the support underneath to better stabilize, cause better cord closure, and add to the resonance. To get an understanding and feel for what I mean by better breath support, try to make a loud "hooah" sound while pushing only from your diaphragm. That lock down of your upper abs is what you want to feel when you sing. When singing softly, it's a subtle feeling. As you get louder, it can greatly intensify. This is also the beginnings of a technique called appoggio, which means "to lean" the voice. Think of it as a leaning forward into your diaphragm. For better resonant placement and getting your voice out of your throat, place a finger on your bottom lip (maybe just under) and try to sing up and over your finger. If you're focused only on the breath support and the pressure caused by that support going up and over your finger, you'll have a much better feel for what I'm trying to say. Here's a much more in depth explanation:

Do you have something with less autotuning on your voice? It's hard to hear your technique for the pitch correction. There are other ways to achieve a similar effect, but many years as a recording engineer, it's rare to hear a voice without very little variation that doesn't have pitch correction or a massive amount of other effects to achieve the same sound. Sadly, it makes it almost impossible to analyze your voice as a coach.

Having a well-rehearsed band definitely makes a difference! How are you arranging a band live currently? Backing tracks can definitely make a huge difference too, but, as you said, can come across a bit cheesy. However, it's all in how you do them. My drummer always plays to a click, along with backing tracks. But teh backing tracks are just that, backing. We try to make sure anything that stands out is being played/sang live (even if along with the backing). For instance, we have 3 or 4 guitar parts, but 1 guitarist. He chooses the most prominent guitar part to play live. Bacling vocals also have 3 to 4 parts, but someone is always singing along with them. Keyboards are on backing tracks unless there's a prominent piano part of synth lead. Another way I've seen it done is making a spectacle of having a backing track. I've seen the lead singer of a punk band do a solo performance on acoustic guitar. He set up a stool next to him with a mic'ed tape recorder. Pressing play gave him a light rhythm part and backing vocals, and everyone loved it. On a bigger scale, Trent reznor did the same when he performed on piano. All his beats and strings were on a boom box, placed on top of the piano. In a band setting, I've mostly seen it done with vocals and keys, even on a pro level. Tesseeract's last singer, Ashe, had very lush harmonies, but no one else was singing. Van Halen did an entire tour without a keyboardist, only keys on backing. Granted, one screw up on their song Jump, and it went viral in a bad way. The backing tracks were out of key. I've also seen some big label guys have people on stage with them faking it. Sadly, it was obvious. The point is, backing tracks can work, if you find other ways to make the performance interesting and don't try to pretend it's live.

Like we've said before, you have a VERY particular style. Very unique and pretty damn cool. On the top end, your voice is reminiscent of Robert Smith. Is there something in particular you feel you're struggling with in this song, or something about your voice you would like to work on?

I'm, unsurprisingly, 100% in agreement with Robert. I adore your voice. Absolutely incredible. For those low notes, it might be worth attempting a few things to stabilize: Bring the voice more forward, edging, harsher, and then open to more air, which naturally modifies to a more curbing position. Dampen the larynx a bit more to taste, while adding slightly more breath support and locking down on the diaphragm. Do tuning exercises downward. This has been incredbly helpful with my female students who want to sing lower. Start with tuning slides E4 to A3, working your way down in half steps (D#4 to G#3, D4 to G3, etc). The main point is tuning as your voice and pitch moves. By tuning, I mean paying very close attention to a well balanced placement, musculature, support, and anchoring. For the higher notes, do you feel relaxed or like you're pushing? It sounds great, but I know that sound can be produced by either pushing a LOT of air/volume, or by relaxing completely and adjusting tiny things (like vocal twang and jaw placement) to get the same sound color. I've blown out my voice before from pushing too hard. I would hate to see that happen to you.

You honestly won't know for sure until you train. While it's impressive that you're singing in whistle register, the rest of what you're singing is not placed well, and therefore is not a proper representation of what you're truly currently capable of. Also fach classification is meant for classical, opera, and choral, so they can quickly put you into a pre-written part. If you're learning for contemporary voice, it doesn't matter. Any way about it, you nbeed to be training, either through a course like The Four Pillars of Singing, or with a solid teacher - which tehre are plenty of here.

Before I jump in, I do want to say that I like your storyteller style. I suspect the biggest culprit in your accent for causing problems is your hard "R" at the end of words, whihc is a consonant that is almost crossed with a vowel. It sounds like you pull the tongue up on that consonant. Most people pull the hard "R" to their throat, so you at least are headed in the right direction! I have a specific exercise to correct this type of issue, but it would be difficult to explain here. I can at least get the most important part here though. It's what I call "relaxed speech." I've used not just to help correct placement and throatiness, but also to change accents. One of my students was from France, where everything is spoken near the back of the tongue. This helped her a LOT. I've also seen it get many people out of their throat when in a tough spot in the recording studio. First, make a soft "g" into /eh/ (geh), and pay attention to where the tongue hits the roof of the mouth. I call that the "resonant spot". I use it as an anchor or default point for vowels. That anchor can be moved a bit further forward or back for sound color, but in general, the vowels will stay anchored to, pointed at, or move around that one point. It should feel like your vowels are being generated in that point and then only outward from there. Try to stay relaxed and speak a whole line of the song from that point, then sing that line into the exact same spot. At first, your speech might remind you of the priest from The Princess Bride. It sounds ridiculous when speaking, but it makes for a solid singing accent. Now try to say problem words, like ones with hard "R" sounds, into that point. Your "aR" should sound more like /ah/oo/. For "eR", it might ssound more like /uh/ou/. The "R", if sung at all, would be at the very very end, closing the word, and not really sung. For the pitchiness on high note, it sounds like you might be moving into a grunt mode, where your neck and glottis tense up to try and "hit" the note. I see this a lot. Try humming into a cocktail straw for those lines, relaxing the throat and neck as much as possible so that the only tension you feel is the solar plexus, then the resonant spot (above), and maybe, just maybe a little bit in the TA muscles. There should be very little air coming out of the straw, even if you hold your nose. You might have to start that at lower volumes at first, just to get used to it. Grunting on high notes is difficult to overcome. I've yet to find an onset that immediately releases that particular type of compression. Isolating the note with Pulse & Release, Wind & Release, Contract & Release, Head to Chest only, Relaxed Speech, The Straw, and more, seem to work sometimes and not others.

Your pitch is spot on for the most part. That is the most difficult thing to train in singing, so you've got a 1-up on most people who haven't taken lessons. The thinness you're experience is because you need to be training strength and control of your TA muscles (chest-voice musculature) to be able to carry them up into that range. I don't mean just yelling at full force either, but rather training in how to turn them on without strain - which there's a point where they have to taper off. You can train your body to be able to use TA engagement for that "chesty" sound as high as your head voice can go. On top of TA engagement, Chris also used larynx dampening often, really solid acoustic mode and vowel modification as he went higher, incredible bridging and connecting of teh voice, and very solid breath support. He's also a great example of a singer who trained to completely relax his voice no matter what he was singing. If you want to be able to sing like that, then get determined to learn and start training. Check out The Four Pillars of Singing. it's an incredible program, and you'll get a ridiculous amount of solid instruction for the price.

You have a great voice! Good choice of song too. However, most of your singing and resonance is being placed in your throat, in more of a speech mode. This will make higher nd lower notes more difficult, even if your more relaxed chest voice range is easy to control. It's also apparent in some of the dynamics of your plosives, the low level of breath suppport, and some of your curbing vowels (vowels resonating further back). You are, however, always on pitch in the more comfortable parts of that range. What I hear you need is better resonant placement, more lifted to the soft palate and a bit forward. A bit more push or lockdown in the diaphram area (your solar plexus specifically) will support that better resonant placement and give your voice more body too. But that's only a start. One way to begin training yourself to resonate and support in this way is to start humming songs while buzzing your lips. This is called "Tracking". Another that I teach is to place a finger across your bottom lip and try to sing up and over it. Are you training? Do you have a teacher? I highly suggest you check out the course, The Four Pillars of Singing, created by the owner of this forum.

I noticed a bit of strain there too. Get a cocktail straw and start humming those parts with the straw in your mouth. Don't push. There should be minimal air coming out of teh straw, and it should'nt feel like you're pushing once you can relax those notes properly. To test if you're balancing the air and relaxing well, you can hold your nose. When holding your nose, there shouldn't be a major change in pressure from when not holding your nose. I know this sounds really strange, but it does so many great things for you. If you use it on warmups, it cuts down your warmup time to 5 to 10 minutes because of the push-back gently stretching out every muscle you engage. If you use it like I described above, for training a song, it is an incredibly helpful assitant in getting proper resonant placement, tuning your formant, relaxing any tension, balancing air pressure, and more -- in short, training your body not to push on those higher notes, but just sing them without tension intead. I suggest using it for cooling down after an hour or more of singing too. However, don't do it for more than 10 minutes at a time. The gentle stretching I talked about will become more like power yoga, and you'll end up wearing yourself out instead of helping.

Before I dive into this, where do you feel you're struggling or want to imrpove?

There's far too little in that recording to determine if singing comes mroe naturally to you or not. However, it's not about talent, rather it's a decision. Unless they have some sort of physical impairment preventing them from doing so, anyone can learn to sing well. Is it something you want to do? If you want to learn to sing, then do it. There's an incredible program linked on this site called The Four Pillars of Singing. There are also a lot of vocal coaches here, including myself. As for choosing a hobby in general: Is there something you really enjoy? Is there something you're naturally attracted to? Is there something you have been told you have a god-given natural talent for? As I said before, it's not really about talent, but rather about making a decision. However, if you have a natural gift for something you know you enjoy, then pursuing that thing can be a real pleasure too.

It's difficult to hear you well in the recording, at least for picking out specific things about your technique. Are there certain parts you feel extra tension on, parts you're not happy with, or anything specific you can point out for us to help you with?