alright well I was showing someone this video of a steelheart song and they said their dad used to sing like that but smoking and age took out most of his range. now I've met this guy and he has a very low speaking voice so I asked... "whoa could he give me some pointers? what's his technique?" and she replied he didn't really have one, he was born with his voice.

is that possible to have a voice like Mike Matjevic's, and it be natural? I know this technique is taught through Raise Your Voice but could it be possible to just be able to sing like this without deliberately using the techniques and scales and such from the book?

It's very possible, but more often than not people who can naturally sing and sound incredible don't have very good technique... mostly because it's all natural and they never needed the technique to get to be good.


What usually happens with voices like that is they sound great in their youth, and then by the time middle age has hit (if not much sooner) the voice has already begun to degrade significantly.

Now I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who are just born with a totally perfect and easy ability to sing, and go their whole life just sounding amazing without a single lesson... but I haven't met any of them personally, and the chance of them not developing some bad habit that would lead to vocal destruction gets smaller and smaller the more that they sing.

yeah there are alot of singers who tend to have it easy. It's the same as some are more flexible then others, that doesnt mean you cant train to master a split.

Sure but singing is like sport. You can have certain abilities naturally that makes you good a fast runner for example, but you need to train to maintain and increase your skills and performance.

Ya natural voices bug the mess outta me...I just can't understand how someone can be born like that. I mean think about all the exercises we do to get these voices, and there's actually people out there already have it. Honestly, if I had had a natural vocal talent, I would be practicing more than I am now, but oddly enough, I'm a natural piano player and I hate to practice. So I guess "the naturals" take if for granted...hehe

But I heard somewhere that we all where born with it, we just lost it over time.Idk

Phew! Glad I got that off my chest

@singloud Makes sense we are in a society in which people often make fun of others who sing.

What make me angry is when I here someone singing then I hear someone say that it sounds bad yet most of main stream singers today are pure crap.

Ya its sad

Matijevic sang that way because he started young and was into stuff like Led Zep. You have to start somewhere! I heard earlier stuff of him and singer like Mark Slaughter that didn't sound anything like they do as we know them. That was because they had to start somewhere and develop from there. If you want to sing like Steelheart, then run out, buy all there records and get started. The notes are easy if you practice hear enough. It's finding YOU as a singer that is the tough part;)

Babies have perfect vocaltechnique, it's when they grow up alittle and mimic their parents they tend to lose the ability.

yeah I actually find it easiest to sing Steelheart songs now, and I have been singing theirs the longest because their song "She's Gone" is what got me to buy Raise Your Voice. I was singin Sticky Side Up last night and it didnt sound great but I could hit the notes so that parts good!

For sure some part of singing ability is inherited. I know this personally, because my mother was a singer, and I didn't grow up with her. She left my Dad to go on tour when I was four years old, and didn't come back. I don't remember anything about her. My father had maybe two records that he played every now and then. Despite this I was really into music. I remember hiding a transistor radio under my pillow and listening to the radio all night, when I was supposed to be sleeping!

Babies have perfect vocal technique?? Wow I despise my parents and their lousy vocal technique they should of set a better example. Now I gotta reverse nearly 2 decades of their bad vocal habits!!!

Hahaha singloud, this is true. We start out correct with breathing and vocal production and lose that ability by mimicking our parents as we learn to talk.

Then it's only Freddie mercury, Robert plant, and Axl rose for my children!
(tough i think imitating Axl, may cause them MAJOR problems..

Now seriously, Can baby's actually imitate someone so perfectly so they will gain they're habits? (if they're good i mean)

If you want your kids to keep their perfect vocal technique, have them start voice lessons as early as you can. You're never too young to start learning how to use your voice. Sure vocal maturity and puberty and all of that are things that often come up, but Thomas Appell explains in his book that muscular coordination is muscular coordination at any age. Kids just have shorter, thinner vocal cords. They thicken and lengthen slowly, so having them train their voices as they grow will actually help them get through that 'voice changing' part of puberty without all the cracks and embarrassment.

In other words: Want your kids to sing without all the disadvantages of poor vocal habits having to be cast aside? Have em start before they develop them.

If thats the case i'm gonna make sure I have my kids keep their good habits! Too bad i'm 16 and in 10-20 years whenever the hell I have kids, i'll forget about this hahaha.

Rather than put kids in voice lessons, I think it's much healthier to have a kind of "lets gather around the piano/guitar/karaoke machine and sing!" fun time.


And if the kid sings like a horribly, screechy cat?... Well I personally wouldn't try to correct a thing :). So long as they're singing freely without -mental- inhibitions, I wouldn't try to alter their physical way of singing till they're older.

Well, I lied--the only thing I would do is make sure the kid is singing mostly in their head voice. It's much healthier for them because kids have a tendency to want to belt in their chest voice if they hear an adult singing, and that's not healthy.



Because really you don't need to train their bodies for singing, you need to train their minds. Bad vocal habits can be fixed -very- quickly if the mindset is correct, even if the habits were very bad.

^^ yep if the mindset is correct we'll all be good...that's what "Vocal Mindset" is for...lol

So Imma guess that most of us formed out vocal habits from our moms since they usually hang on to us the first couple of years. I must of been a good imitator cause I even had the same pitch as my mom when I was in elementary school, I would answer the phone and people (even family members) thought I was my mom...those were some embarrassing years. Luckily my mom a slightly lower Alto type voice, so I kinda got away with it.

So how do you know when you've found "your voice" and let go of those habits you've been imitating? Honestly, I've been talking with bad habits for so long, I can't tell the difference anymore...lol

It is my opinion that the 'naturally gifted' singers are often the best at imitating people. They hear a sound and are able to reproduce it and this is an important skill in singing. You may find, for example, that alot of these natural singers are also great at accents because they are good at imitating.

i have met one...twice. his name is rob halford and he is the most incredible singer i ever heard and still goin strong. no vocal lessons from what i can tell. he is very lucky

Hate them all lol. What we can hope for though is to work hard and make the most of what we are given.

The naturals are usually the ones that have the most problems, and wind up going to coaching at some point in there career, but their voice is forever changed.

Aretha Franklin for example. Her voice is basically trashed now. She never learned proper technique. She grew up in the church singing and it was all natural, and years of smoking and bad technique caught up with her. As far as I know she's never done coaching, but it would help.

Don Dokken is another example, although his voice is actually beginning to come back after he had some surgery a couple of months ago. Steven Tyler, Patti LaBelle, Joss Stone, Stevie Wonder, the list keeps going of natural singers who were just natural singers, did a lot of damage with bad techniques/lifestyles through the years, and got coaching to fix it and now are singing better than ever.

Basically, even those who are naturals will wind up taking lessons at some point in their career

I agree that kids should be allowed to sound however they want as long when they are young. There are too many people who were told they suck at an early age that could had been incredible.

By the time the kids are 10 or so they could start training and become good singers without holding back.

There is no such thing as your one correct sound.


There are a million tiny factors that determine your sound, and some of them are actually based on outright choices that you make.


Lets say that for the sake of argument I had a clone, and we were both singers. Lets say I were an opera singer and my clone chose to sing pop. Even though physically our instruments were exactly alike we would probably sound quite different when we sang. But both sounds would be our 'true voices' if we were producing it freely without any damage.


Then of course there are little tiny ticks which can change a sound. Maybe you swallow your 'ah' or 'eh' sound just a very tiny bit in a stylized manner. Maybe you have purposely sped up your vibrato a little. Maybe you decide to not bring all of the chesty sound into your upper register that you could.


Don't worry about finding your perfect exact voice. So long as you learn the best technique you can master, and you make those stylistic choices for how you want your voice to sound, that will -be- your 'exact voice' :D.

To add to that last post, its great to have so many stylistic tricks in your arsenal too. There is not a single great singer in the world who uses the same vocal style in every song. You want to stand out? Show people EVERYTHING you can do with your voice.

The other day I was showing people all of my vocal skills. Everything from how to start a phrase with a little fry on it and maintaining a breathy sound with a dramatic exhale at the end (Ripping off some thomas appell techniques), to healthy ways of adding grit, how low I can go, how high I can go, how to connect chest and head voice, how to scream without destroying your throat, and more.

If I had only showed them one thing, they might've been impressed, but when they got tired of it they'll lose interest altogether. Using a mix of that stuff I had them telling me I should try out for american idol "Dude, you would've kicked Dave Cook's ass" was the exact quote. I just laughed at that one. What i'm getting at is, your true voice is what you'll get when using perfect technique, but there are so many stylistic tricks that you can use and still maintain that technique. And hey, if you occasionally do something with your voice that goes out of the technical standpoint to add some more flavor, just to add some passion, thats fine. Singing is about communication. Your voice now is your true voice. Use it wisely, treat it right, and it will reward you with the dropped jaws of anyone who hears you.