In the past couple of months I've grown obsessed about my voice.

I've had a very odd relationship with it for my entire life. When I was eight, I joined the choir and it was suggested that I took some informal singing lessons. I was eight when I had a raving obsession with singing, I learnt all of the terms, vibrato and lyric soprano and things like that. But I have to lie to my friends that are freaked out by my ridiculous knowledge saying that I was being professionally trained at one point. Now they all think I'm a opera singer.

I've neglected my singing voice for years and regret it. People still sometimes ask me to sing because they say I'm talented but I don't really see it. I used to record myself on my phone but I sounded awful. But I started to remember techniques so I sound a little better now. I struggle breathing with my diaphragm and singing 'like a yawn' instead of through my nose. Plus I hate the fact I can't hit high notes. I feel like a contralto at fifteen.

I'm musically able but I've only recently taken music up. From May, I've taken clarinet lessons and have just done my Grade 2, my teacher says that I'll probably get a merit or distinction. She says that my singing voice is good due to me singing in key and on tune but it could be better if I learnt proper techniques.

Because I'm clueless about the whole 'C5' and 'G4' business, I've made a picture of my shameful singing range



If I really wanted to, I could nervously pull out a High 'G' and 'A' but make my voice go freaky if I'm not careful.


Despite the long-winded post (it's almost my life story ), can anyone suggest other ways to improve my singing technique and any songs I can sing to improve my voice? Another thing to mention is that I can't afford a singing tutor or even a clarinet tutor. I have to play in my town's youth orchestra to get lessons and my clarinet, it can get really annoying. Thanks for any advice given.

Haven't got time to reply fully at the moment, but I would say you have a jolly good range!

That's quite a nice range, I don't think there's anything to be ashamed of - my really good pro students end up with around about three octaves of comfortable voice, so I think you can congratulate yourself on the fact that you have almost two octaves comfortably without any great deal of training!

It's hard to advise you, though, without hearing you. I'll give you a couple of general tips based on what you said in your original message, please feel free to take them or leave them :

1) you can't feel or control your diaphragm. Don't worry about trying to use it consciously when singing, it's impossible.

2) breathing is only about ten percent of the equation in singing. How you take the breath in is more or less irrelevant, it's how you expell it that counts. As the only valve in the respiratory system is the vocal chords, any breathing exercises which do not take into account the role of the larynx are inherently flawed.

3) rather than worrying about how to breathe, think about how to support. Remember that support should be keeping the air back, rather than pushing it through. You support to avoid your body's desire to push the remaining air out of your lungs (it will eventually win, but you can try to hold it off as long as possible!). Your belly should not be tense when you sing, but the little muscle just under your sternum that sticks out when you cough should be, as should the waistband muscles and certain back muscles (this is where a good teacher will be really useful for you because these things are much more simple to get when someone is showing you!)

4) don't fixate yourself on your range - prefer quality over quantity. Higher isn't better or more impressive. So many people fixate themselves on high notes - if a singer were to sing an entire song and miss the high note, we'd probably forgive them - if the high note was the only one they got right, we'd just sit there and think 'shut up!' whilst they were singing the rest!

5) try some nice easy resonance exercises to get you back into the swing of things, on easy range scales, with the purest, cleanest tone you can muster. Sirening on 'NG' (as in siNG) would be great for this as long as you keep the volume really low.

6) bear in mind never to push - singing louder and singing higher both require less air, not more.

7) I think this is probably the best thing you could do : find yourself a great teacher who you get on with and respect and take a few lessons - you'd be amazed at how good teaching will help you progress at a rate of knots (a good way to judge it : if you don't feel a significant improvement in your voice by the end of the first session - you're in the wrong company). If you have talent, as your friends say you do, then you owe it to your voice to keep it in tip top condition so classes are a must. Maybe one of the teachers on the board could help out if they're near you?

8) Enjoy singing without getting over caught up in 'doing it right' - many students are afraid to sing without their teacher overseeing everything they do. This is unhealthy. Enjoy yourself and your voice, your teacher will put right anything you may have 'done wrong' quickly and efficiently.

Welcome back to singing anyway, you'll get loads of great advice from the other teachers on this board too.

Allan

I don't have any advice, sorry (you'll get lots from the qualified people anyway!) but I'd just like to point out that you shouldn't be so sniffy about altos! I'm a mezzo at the moment, but am told I'll probably become an alto - and I'm pretty pleased about it! If you actually were a contralto at fifteen, that'd be pretty impressive in my view!



Good luck with the rest of your question though!

Just popping in again to say I agree with Lucky - it's quite rare to find a decent contralto these days - if you do end up with a contralto voice, then that's a pretty great thing in my opinion.

The range really isn't an issue. I would have thought two octaves at fifteen is pretty good going.

You say you were in a choir at 8, are you still in it? Are there any others you could join? In the absence of specific singing lessons joining choirs is probably the most obvious approach to take. You've joined an orchestra/wind band for the clarinet, does your music service provide a choir? Is there a _decent_ church choir nearby - ie: a reasonable size with some proficient musicians running it providing a varied selection of mass settings and anthems?

Same range as me!

*Virtual high five*

To be honest this is a perfectly normal range. I suggest getting singing lessons again if you want to top up on techniques.

I'm going to my cousin's tomorrow until Tuesday. He's promised that I can have 'his' lesson with his singing teacher on Monday as my late christmas present.

Do you think it will help me?

It will be an interesting experience, though not much is going to be done in one lesson; it might give you a taster for what it might be like though.

Went to a lesson on Monday. I've discovered something evil. My singing range is F3-E5, I'm on my way to being a contralto. The teacher says I'm straining my voice way too much when I sing above E5 to count it as my range. She says that my bad falsettoing could damage my vocal chords if I start doing it too early. When I sing with a heavier timbre, I find singing way easier. So now when I sing I sound like Eula Beal (I somehow know who she is) or a deep jazz singer compared to the weedy light voice I used to have. No wonder I struggled singing 'Green Finch and Linnet Bird'.

My cousin being a countertenor has been singing higher notes than I can sing to bug me. He's such a lovely boy. I'm just as bad, I call him a girl back.

You should enquire into his castrato singing, or ask him if the operation was painful!

Evil?!
Being a contralto is a blessing thank you very much!

If only there were more contralto voices ! They're very rare !

Falsetto won't damage your voice, by the way, not unless it's also breathy.

There seems to be this conception that being an alto is a disadvantage which I see quite frequenlty being in 2 operatic societies. There is nothing shameful about this at all. You may have a lower vocal range but why should this matter if you can produce a beautiful sound with it and after training for sometime your range will increase as you learn to use your voice properly. I agree with rosfrog I wish there were more contraltos.
Another point-contraltos don't neccesarily have lower voices they just prefer not to be singing so high all of the time whereas good sopranos are comforatble to stay up there as long as the want haha! Green finch and linnet bird takes a lot of strong technique and is usually in the grade 8 lists so I would not be dissapointed.

Dont' be embarrased just train with a teacher and most importantly enjoy yourself!

I wish I could afford a teacher Maybe I'd actually sound better then. I'm getting a computer microphone soon, so I can actually show how bad I really sound.

I know being a contralto isn't a bad thing but I was worshiped for practically being on the way to becoming 'Wagerian Soprano' as a child. My choir teacher was obviously far off. Now I'm a dramatic mezzo but predicted to be a dramatic contralto by the time I go to university.

It's just that it feels so odd to be the only female that is capable of singing tenor parts without vocal frying. When they can sweetly sing their F5's and G5's but I sing F3's and G3's... it's especially bizarre thanks to my age.

It's brilliant ! There's less competition too, should you decide to work in music. In classical circles, there are few contraltos around and in non-classical circles (where most of the money is to be made), low, distinctive female voices are rare too - the more it stands out, the more people remember it and that's a good thing.

If you can't afford a teacher, just keep your voice going by working on some basic exercises. If you're doing a classical route, try to get hold of Janice Chapman's excellent book 'Singing and Teaching Singing' and work through that - if you're doing musical theatre, you could do much worse than Gillyanne Kayes book 'Singing and the Actor' - there's stuff in there you could apply to other styles too. Neither of those books will cost you a fortune and both will keep you going until you get a teacher later on.

Enjoy your voice and be proud of it!

Allan
(Just a note for your old teacher as well, it really is very hard when people are young to see where their voices will go. Tessiture is not simply a question of notes - someone may well be a tenor but be unable to sing above a g - of course, he won't get a great deal of work, but it's his timbre that will make him a tenor. If we classify voices purely by their range, then we're missing the more important part of the story - timbre and resonance. It's perfectly possible that your old teacher was hearing the thick contralto sound and, because you could also access high notes easily, was thinking dramatic, heavy soprano voice. As you're getting older the low range is becoming more important, so low range, plus thick heavy resonant timbre gives a more contralto sound).

Glad you pointed that out, Allan!

I've just recorded myself on my computer microphone! I think I've been torturing people with my singing voice. It's gone all nasally and is out of tune always around one note in each song I attempt to sing. I've got a cold but my voice is naturally nasally, I can tell :l I think I seriously damaged my voicebox attempting to sing Queen of the Night at age seven... it would be a good excuse to explain how bad I sound these days.

If only range and quality were all that mattered!

With no training at all I have a comfortable 2 octave range, and the basic tone quality of my voice is pleasant. But for all that my (attempt at) singing is awful.

It is that little matter of control. Hitting the note and not wavering, keeping a constant volume, controlled variation in volume, making attractive vowel sounds, appropriate diction, there is a lot of skill just to sing tolerably well, never mind to sing like say Elvis Presly, or Franco Corelli.

A few lucky people seem to have a lot of this 'by nature' as well as a basically sound voice, but if I am ever to sing anything worth listening to, I expect it would need the help of an out-of-the-ordinary teacher and take more work and effort than I put into playing the piano

Don't worry too much about it, Mysticmaddess, most computer microphones don't give a very realistic sound quality...fine for dictating notes, but no good if you really want to listen to the quality of your voice. You probably don't sound anything like the recording.

For the tuning problem, that's just a matter of ear training and voice control and can be fixed. Again, while you have a cold is not the best time to worry about it. Your ears may be bunged up, you probably have gunk in your throat, and you'll lack energy, all of which make your instrument harder to manage and control.

Try again when you feel better, and see if you can get hold of a good quality mike that will give you a better idea of what you really sound like.


Mad Tom, you are absolutely right! The voice is an instrument that requires work to make it sound good, just like any other! Just because you don't sound briliiant now doesn't mean that you never can or will. But it needs application. You sound like a prime candidate for singing lessons...

How bad my singing is now!

I've recovered from my cold eventually but still sound awful. I was far better when I was eight then now, thanks to the fact that I haven't sung for years. I had real vibrato when I was eight but don't even know what's going on with my voice at the moment. My mother says that I'm slightly above average in singing but she might have mother's bias. I'm singing the song (even if it's Grade 8, the only 'classical-feeling' song that I like more is Habanera) too low and probably out of tune but my ears can't pick it up.

The only reason I put this clip up was to show the true talent (or lack of) of my voice and to get more accurate tips on how to improve it without the expenses of a real-life teacher. I just sing and hum to scales which I make on Sibelius at the moment to improve tone and range.

I am about to send you a pm.

There is obviously great potential in your voice and it has a good basic tone. This song is very difficult, and in my opinion, one of the harder out of all the Grade 8 ones. Ultimately though, there are issues as you know which need addressing and I think it would be hard to do this without the help of a teacher.