SOUND OFF
Welcome to The Voice Connection Sound Off; a forum for users of books like Raise Your Voice, Melody to Madness, The Ultimate Breathing Workout, and Unleash Your Creative Mindset, as well as a place for Vendera Vocal Academy members to interact.
This message board was created so that singers could come together and "sound off" to help support each other during vocal development and the creative process of unleashing the creative spark that occurs when writing and producing music. Currently, myself and vocal coaches Ben Valen, Ray West, and Ryan Wall are here to respond periodicially to your questions, with new vocal coaches coming soon. But, feel free to help each other too:)
This board is here for you to ask questions about my and my fellow coach's books, videos, and MP3 programs, as well as offer others help with our vocal techniques. You may also post videos of yourself and your band to share your music and ask for critiques.
Please refrain from negative comments, profanities, spamming, and inappropriate criticisms of vocal methodologies, vocal coaches, and singers. All negative posts will be deleted and subject to banning without question. I will not respond to negative posts, because, as Mark Twain once said, “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” With that said, positive criticism is welcome because that is how you'll grow as a singer during the training process.
Well Xavier, I have a couple of suggestions AND questions.
First a question- When you say "degrading", do you mean that your voice is deepening, or that you naturally are starting to sound raspy? How specifically do you feel your voice is degrading.
Another question is- Do you have the FIRST Zen of Screaming? If not, Melissa Cross provides an excellent speech warmup that I highly recommend.
I know that you have RYV b/c I've known you for a while on this board. (Thank you for all of your continual support about quitting smoking, by the way;) I was actually re-reading the section about the speaking voice when I first read your post. The first thing that popped out to me was where Jaime states that "the speaking voice and singing voice are the same." What I essentially got from this was an idea.
Maybe you should perform the morning warmup, just to "rev the engine." I've learned, through my own experiences, that when you appropriately stretch your vocal cords toward the beginning of your day, your vocal cords will almost "subconsciously" develop the correct techniques, and the days that I DON'T warm up, I sound groggy.
As far as your speaking PITCH is concerned, your voice will naturally select a pitch that it feels is most comfortable for whatever volume you're speaking at. The best thing I can advise for this is to simply try and keep the resonance out of the throat, and up into either the soft or hard palate. DON'T FORCE IT, THOUGH! Just play around with it a little bit, and it should start to feel pretty natural after you practice it a few times.
As far as the extra tips, DON'T EAT YELLOW SNOW!
The last thing I'll mention is to get VoiceRx if you haven't already. It's helped me out of many a jam.
Yeah, vocal rest is awesome! That's always a plus in my mind!
However, I just mentioned this in another post, but you should also pick up a copy of Melissa Cross's "Scream Xtra" CD. It goes more in depth about screaming, BUT there's a "robot" exercise that she does on there that teaches you how to scream without losing any extra breath on the glottal vowels and the plosive consonants. I REALLY think that exercise would be of the utmost benefit to you, because it's principles are just as applicable to speaking as they are to screaming.
The OTHER reason I feel confident in recommending it to you is because I asked Jaime if there was anything I needed to know before I bought ZOS, and he told me to buy the "Scream Xtra" CD in addition to the DVD, b/c of all the extra info that's NOT on the DVD. Long story short: He was right! It works!
Xavier first off i would lay off doing the resonation hums a little because if you do them to hard and grind the chords to much your voice will tire.2nd i have met with dr.cooper and read his books. they are excellent. he would tell you to get off your chords and speak where you would answer a question for instance just say umm humm with your mouth closed and then speak one then 2 then 3.put your voice where the umm humm lies. dont place it forward just feel where you say umm humm and then place a word there.i also have melissas dvd which is also great. and speaking above the pencil is very similar. good luck 
