Ok OK I know you dislike the whole vocal classification stuff.. but well here's the deal, I am a supposedly a baritone ..... I was trying to sing something tday and NOTHING worked and my voice sounds pretty weak compared to the guy from tool .... BUT I was just fooling around with the beginning of don´t stop believing .... I OBVIOUSLY sucked... but then I repeated it a dozen times doing the stuff of "expanding the ribs, shooting up in the head and pressing down" and :O... it sounded likeable !! and I didn't strain! ... so here's the question... it´s obvious that i am discovering my head voice... but why is it that I was able to sing the beginning of that song in a likeable tone and there's just no case in me trying to do some tool song :S? can it be that i was misclassified and maybe I'm a lighter type of baritone that I thought??

(hey, anyone that can answer, plz do so!)

You need to quit thinking in terms of voice classification. Everyone is different and you may have a certain timbre, or color if you will, to your voice, due to your physical characteristics. So, Journey may come easier to you as oppsoed to Tool. Doesn't mean you have to quit singing Tool though, just keep working at it.

JV

Hey you know Jaime has a section in the Raise Your Voice book about something that I think should be the first, middle and last thing mentioned in the book...the mental attitude towards your voice and believing in yourself to create the sound you want. This needs to be a repetitive section. What you tell yourself subconscoiusly (positive and negative), actually does show in the voice. After I read that section the other day, I was so psyched up by Jaime's advice, that I immediately put the book down and said "That's it, dammit, I'm going to stop telling myself negative things about how I sound from this day forward. So, since I was so psyched up by reading this advice, I did a vocal warm up and a scale and wouldn't you know, I sang three notes higher than I did the day before. Dam, that visualization stuff really works. Now all I'm doing is daily positive affiramtions with my subconscious. And before Raise Your Voice, I also realized I've been silently telling myself negative things as I'm practicing. Talk about mental damage!! I even used to (notice how I slipped in the words "used to") talk negatively in conversations about my voice and the level that I'm at, but AH HA, no more. Ever!!!

I have expanded that section of the book already for RYV II. Plus, I am sure that will be a topic of another book in the book series that I am writing with Tony Harnell.

JV