Hi all,
It's incredible!! I've been practicing the Ch. 1 breathing techniques for just a few days and then I moved onto Chapter 2 and read about the "shooting a rocket through the soft palette" technique. I decided to incorporate the latter into my daily singing regimen last night and suddenly it was like singing was totally stress-free! I sang Queensryche's The Lady Wore Black like I've never sung it before - with absolutely no strain whatsoever. I only remembered the lyrics to the first verse but anyway, it felt so easy to sing, I sang it 20 times straight and after that, I still felt no stress on my folds, I was not hoarse afterwards either. This has never happened to me before!!

I decided to record one of the runs on my Olympus digital recorder as proof lest I find I've lost this sudden magical ability when I practice tonight (fingers crossed and praying with all my strength that I don't).

Here is the clip:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ujl4bj

Jaime, I would be really grateful if you could download that and comment, plus also list the areas that need work. It's only 5.5 MB. The guitar volume is quite low compared to the vocals (deliberately) and I didn't recall the chorus guitar part, so I ad-libbed. No effects were added to the vocals (not even reverb).

Sorry for gushing like this but I'm very happy with life right now (atleast 'till tonight!). THANK YOU JAIME.

See how easy it is when you make a beakthrough. Great job. I will listen to the audio but I can only make very basic comments. My management company does not allow me to go into full detail critiques through this board or random email because the amount of requests I was getting for critiques was phenomenal. So now we offer a song/exercise critique choice in the store as a pircahsable item. Funny how my manager started replying to all of these people and the requests went way down, hahahaha.

NOTES
.Not bad
. Nice vibrato
. You are in full voice throughout, just need a little more control on the top end so it doesn't sound strained/shouty, but now that you've gotten there, it will become easier;)

I'd add you need to let the vowels shine a bit more. Less focus on the consonants, you can keep it from sounding slurred without it being choppy. Its OK to enunciate, but theres no need to over enunciate.

Other than that, I really liked it. You're not trying to copy Geoff Tate, which was a smart move, as most singers tend to try to sound like the vocalist they are covering. You use your natural voice, and it has a nice sound to it. The chorus was a bit bright in tone, which is cool, I for one enjoy a bit of a darker sound on the highs in this particular song, but I bet you would sound great with that tonality on some Led Zeppelin.

Really nice man!
Dont think there was anything i could pick out bad about that...
Your pitch is spot on and the high end is very seemless with your voice.... and sounded easy for you to do.
Good luck
Lee

Why would anyone do the song thing, when they can schedule a skype lesson with you for not much more? I'm sure the advice you give with the recording will be amazing, but a lesson for 45 minutes seems like it would be a better pick.

Some people just want critique on song structure. I personally prefer to do the Skype lessons because I can get to know the singer. On thing that I am surprised someone didn't say was that "Dude, you sounded thin on that Queensryche song" However, I have been listeneing to voice for sooooo many years that my ear has gotten really sensitive to know when someone is thin due to lacking and when somone just has more of a 'tinny' type sound. Which I believe is what you have, so therefore I would not mention that, NOW, if you wanted a little more beefy sound on the top end, that's the kind of thing we'd work on in lessons;)

I was planning to do some skype lessons this month, but my mom quit her job so its either pay taxes or get good singing lessons, haha. As soon as I get a job or my mother does i'll quickly be contacting you for lessons haha.

Now, time to get back to singing...

Thanks for listening and for the comments Jaime. One question: is a naturally thin voice neccessarily worse (I'm thinking not as versatile) than a thicker tone? On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the thickest, where would you rank the following voices: Geddy Lee, James LaBrie, Joey Tempest, Russell Allen, Geoff Tate and mine? Oh, and I think I would like to take up that offer of a paid, full-on critique when I record my own songs :)

Jay Sin, I agree - more or less - with the points you made. But I've noticed that sometimes singers tend to sound incomprehensible at higher pitches because they tend to stress the vowels a bit too much (and also due to changing the sound, mostly to the easy "aa"). I guess I do overcompensate a little bit to avoid that. Thanks for bringing it to my notice :)

Lee: Thank you!

No a thin voice is worse than a thick one.It's just our tonalities. I'd say you were about a 6. Don't worry about it.

is it okay to put this up on the voice council to have other instructors analyse and comment on it?

Oh absolutely.

I know what you mean vats. I find that there are a few singers that I can almost never understand, and a few that sound too much like they are trying to pronounce words. You just have to get to the point where it flows out of you. Eddie Vetter and James Labrie (to a lesser extent) are very hard to understand at times, whereas you kind of overstressed at parts, find a good balance, maybe work a bit more on thickening that sound up a bit and i'd say you're radio ready.

James labrie, if you look on youtube misheard dream theater lyrics, is known for being hard to understand at times haha.
The high notes he does get "ay" sounding. He's probably trying to get more of a better tone by opening up more, and its making it harder to understand. I dont really know.

I agree about LaBrie; consider for example, the song Innocence Faded off Awake. I couldn't decipher even one word from the following lines:

Wearing apathetic displays
Sharing flesh like envy in cages
Condescending
Not intending to end

I don't know if it's his diction (him being Canadian and all? Do Canadians speak markedly differently compared to Americans? I've never met/spoken with anyone from Canada...)

Another instance that came to mind just now is Robert Plant singing Immigrant Song (Led Zeppelin III). He pronounces "oar" and "shore" as "aar" and "shaar" respectively...personally, I do find it easier to sing it that way than with the correct pronunciations

Thats why I like Rody Walker from protest the hero, you can understand what he is saying on high notes pretty well.