I've just recorded myself singing "Voi, che sapete" and "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" and I would be ashamed to put either of them online! My voice is thin, shrieking, flat (no vibrato) and out of tune horribly on both. "Wishing. . ." goes up to a top G which is a sort of hideous croak, not even a note! I think I can see what the RWCMD meant about my voice!

Basically, anything above the D an octave over middle C is very hard for me to sing. Is my voice a very very low alto - ie a female tenor or is it that my high notes haven't developed yet? at Grade 5 standard I haven't really had to sing anything particularly high (I'm using the low/medium voice book) but wondering if they ever will develop.

How low can you comfortably sing/sound OK singing?

The timbre of your voice doesn't sound like a "very very low alto" on your recordings. Even if you have a low voice, i.e. mezzo soprano (these days the trend is for ladies who are not sopranos to be called mezzos) you should comfortably get notes above the D an octave over middle C. All my mezzos can get an A above that - even those who can comfortably reach C below middle C.
If you are working your support correctly, the problem is likely to be either the placement, posture, or tension in the upper body or jaw (or both).

Lady Moonlight - it sounds to me from your postings that you are not very confident with your singing technique as it is at the moment. All these points, which you should be discussing with your teacher, you are feeling you have to ask us about. This suggests to me that you do not trust your teacher to give you the correct advice. We can give you general pointers on here (and are happy to do so), but cannot give you a definitive answer without both hearing you "live", and seeing you sing to observe you posture, head position, watch your breathing, etc., etc. I would strongly recommend that you have a consultation with another teacher to see if you are on the right track with your present one. Make sure that they are well qualified though, and know what they are talking about. There ARE not a few bad ones out there, I'm sorry to say.
The other thing you can do is to enter festivals - that will give you another person's opinion on your singing and technique, which is very valuable. The adjudicators will be specialists.
Good luck!

Ann

Lady moonlight, as AnnC has said, your timbre soes not suggest you have a low alto voice.

Does your singing teacher work at getting your throat relaxed, and jaw soft in your lessons. Are you jutting your head forward.

Has anyone mentioned the phrase head-voice to you?

Have a consultation lesson with another teacher, and if necessary swap.

As AnnC has said there are a number of bad singing teachers out there. You need one who has a thorough grasp of the technique.

Thanks everyone. I've had several teacher, none of them have really made sense to me. One of them (the teacher who discovered Ms. Church!) sort of did. She herself was a big operatic soprano and had a more professional approach, I found. I felt I was working my voice really hard with her. She was convinced I was a soprano and used to make me do lots of big warm ups, going well up to Top A and beyond. She would also make me sing songs in higher ranges than I'd done before. For example "O Del Mio Dolce Ardor" she made me sing in the higher version (starting on C rather than A). I found it hard and my voice was squeaky and odd for a while, but it did start to improve slowly. The problem is, she had very little patience with me and after a couple of months announced she could do nothing for me and wouldn't teach me any classical stuff any more because it was "beyond" me. So thats why I left her.

My current teacher is not an operatic type singer, she's a light-ish mezzo and doesn't really do a lot of technique with me. She encourages me to relax, but I still don't seem to get much of a big or tuneful sound out. She tells me to "drop the jaw" when approaching high notes. And yes I do know that higher notes are produced in "head voice" but my head voice just seems to sound like a tight squeak. I don't really understand support I must admit, although its been explained to me so many times - in several different (and often conflicting) ways.

I can imagine what it must be like to just relax and have a full, rich note float out. I can imagine how it is to approach a high note "from the top" and sing through it. I can't seem to do it, which I guess makes me think that I just "can't sing". But I don't want to go down that road again!

I don't really understand what the throat and diaphragm should do when you sing notes above the octave over middle C. I know how I'd like them the behave, I feel that the diaphragm should lift, the throat should relax and the note should fill the head and mask, resonating even to the ears. But then when I try to do that I just get a tight throated squeak.

One thing that my ex teacher taught me that slightly helped was the "ung" exercise when you sing a note on "ung" and then let it go to "ung-aaaaa". I found that the note seemed to open up more on the "aa . . ." when I'd prefaced it with the "ung" (apparently its getting the voice into the mask). But that still doesn't really help on the high notes. . .

No wonder you are confused! First being taught by a soprano, then a mezzo who does little technique with you. Yes, Relaxing is important, but there's an awful lot more to it than that. And a mezzo cannot DEMONSTRATE what a high note should sound like for a soprano.
Actually, if you've been to Ms Church's teacher, you must be just over the bridge from me. If you'd like me to hear you and offer an opinion, just send me a private message. I'm sure there must be a way - but being a newbie, I haven't attempted it yet...Hope I'm not breaching anything by offering this.

Ann

I would endorse what AnnC says whole heartedly. As a soprano, I teach all voices except counter-tenors who I think need to be taught by a man who understands falsetto. But the reason that someone that Ann or me can do this is the time we have spent studying technique. I am fortunate, I have a wide range, to can demonstrate how to get low notes to mezzo's and basses. But singing teachers need to be empathetic to the needs of their pupils, and able to explain aswell as demonstrate. Developing your head voice needs to be done sensitively so that it both feels and sounds right.

Hi Ann, I've PM'd you!

This is a gnerous offer. Go for it Ladymoonlight!

Oh I do hope you can meet with Ann. And who knows, if distance isn't too much a problem maybe you could start training with her. You do sound as though you haven't met a teacher who can fully support you along your singing journey. I can identify so much with the difficulties and struggles you talk about (although the high notes thing is less of a problem with me). You NEED a good teacher alongside you. I probably would have given up long ago if it weren't for my teacher. He lets me know what is going right, not just what is wrong, and is so encouraging and enthusiastic in his teaching.

Keep going, and let's hope Ann and you can get together.



Amber
x

I can go down to a C one 8ve below middle C but I'd say my voice probably sounds its best between the E below middle C to the E one 8ve about it. Wouldn't this make me a contralto?

Being a contralto is much more than how low you can get, it also has to do with your timbre.

If you judged my voice on how low it get then I'm a contralto...but I'm not I'm really a high soprano. My tone suggests that, all the natural break points suggest that, and my uppernotes suggest that.

I new a Mezzo who could hit a top D, but that didn't make her a Soprano because her tone was wrong.

When assessing my pupils voices to type I listen to a variety of factors. Range is only one of them.

You don't sing like a low contralto. You're a mezzo.