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Old 04-08-2010, 09:22 AM   #2 (permalink)
ElephantSack
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: ATX
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Above all else, practice. Practice practice practice. Half an hour a couple of nights a week is a little slack, in my opinion, but I fall off my regimen sometimes, too. I would recommend buying a keyboard to practice singing scales with. Keyboards don't go out of tune, so you'll know you're hitting the notes.

Also, I was trained to sing primarily rock n' roll, so from early on I was taught to PROJECT. Lots of people don't really know how to do this, even people who can hit the notes. What I call "practicing at half-volume" is not really going to help when it comes to doing the real thing. If you plan on singing with a band, you're going to have to be able to project, so I recommend finding a place where you can set up a keyboard and you're comfortable with singing at full volume.

Another thing is just letting it come out, and not letting your mind focus on things like your posture. Although posture is important, if your mind is on your posture, it's not going to be on the note you're trying to sing. And it's true, you can damage your vocals if it's all coming from your throat. Because it's a delicate balance between relaxing the throat and pushing from the diaphragm. It's easy to blow out your voice because many people confuse using their throat as using their vocal chords.

And there will be things like determining your range and where your break between chest and head voice is (basically where you stop singing "from the gut" and switch to falsetto).

So basically what I've been doing to practice singing lately, starting in C, is practicing the basic "Do Re Mi" scale, and switching it up a bit. Doing things like "Do Re, Do Mi, Do Fa, Do So, Fa Mi Re Do", and doing "Do Mi So Mi Do", and working those up the scale will help to determine where your break between chest and head is.
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