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.
Jaime,
I want to openly say:
THANK YOU!
Today, after warming up, I decided to see what I can do, so I pulled out my David Shankle Group Cd, and started singing long with it. Singer Trace Zaber has a fairly wide range, and a very strong/piercing high end. I sang through three or four songs, and hit everything on it - you do not know how happy that makes me - it's showing me that this is definitely working.
Keep in mind, that for a long time I was stuck in Danzig/Elvis land. I could blast out Ian Astbury stuff all day long - but that's not what I wanted to be able to do. That was all lung-power, and I had a fairly decent falsetto from trying to do Nitro and King Diamond type of stuff.... I bought Jim Gillette's video way back when, and I used the "E-scream" exercise where you swell the EEE from falsetto to really loud...but I had no middle ground at all...and the lack of middle was from smoking for years. I mean, I literally had 4 or 5 notes that ... there was literally no sound at all coming out. Now I've been able to completely bridge the gap between Chest and Falsetto, and hopefully in the not too distant future, it will all be in full voice. I'm pretty sure it's mixed/head and falsetto at this point, simply because the muscles are weak - I'm not sure how to tell the difference in my own voice, but at the moment it doesn't matter - I can hit the notes - and that is what counts to me.
Here are two of the songs I was able to sing (they have videos for them at their website.)
DSG Videos
David Shankle was the guitarist in Manowar during the late 80's/early 90's, and left Manowar to start more of a "guitar god" type of band.
Tim
