Singing: How I started

This is the last blog I'm going to start... for a while anyway!

I'm inspired by different things each day so I have appropriate blogs for each of my interests. :)

As you can see, singing is an interest of mine!

I started having private lessons around the summer time and literally started from scratch... everything was pretty bad and I've come along way in that time. Coming up to around 6 months.

Obviously, it's a very long process when you're just starting out and with having Aspergers - I am a perfectionist and very technical about my singing. I'm very into perfecting the basics before I move on to singing songs for fun - I feel I can't have fun singing unless I know it's the best I can do!

My big musical inspiration is a guy called Adam Lambert - he appeared on American Idol a few years back and he inspired me to take singing lessons. It opened up my eyes and I found a whole new world of music! I love glam rock which I'd never really listened to before I heard Adam. Adam is also the current front man for Queen. Being a big fan of Adam I did my research on Queen and to say I'm a massive fan is an understatement. Freddie Mercury is an inspiration to many and I'm certainly now one of those many.

Another guy who originally got me interested in music was a guy called Rhydian Roberts who appear on the UK X-Factor. I liked the fact he was different, had an amazing voice but was fun too! I got to meet him outside the Liverpool Echo Arena when he was touring in 2009 and he's a thoroughly nice guy. I always remember him telling me I looked like a pop star! Little things like that always stick with you...

Basically, I like lots of different musical styles... what I appreciate most is a very good technical singer who is fascinating to watch and likes to write their own material.

I could talk all day about musical inspirations but I mentioned the main ones...

So I have a singing lesson once every 2 weeks and in between those lessons I try to get at least some form of practice in each day.

A very good book I follow is Jamie Vendera's 'Raise Your Voice'. It's very technical which I love. I also have the connected books called 'The Ultimate Breathing Workout' and 'The Vocal Workout Diary'.

The diary is very good, it's a good way to learn - using exercises from the other books you have exercises to do each day. This involves sliding to your highest note using the right technique and the same for your lowest note. It also involves the same for falsetto development and also for rock screams! (I hit a new record the other day which I'll talk about below). Also transcending tone is involved which I'm currently having a few difficulties with!

So vocal tone and vocal range have been things I've been practicing a lot on... well everything really!

I found I was making little progress at one stage and I figured out a lot of the songs I was trying to sing were sung by tenors - I'm a bass-baritone so my comfortable range is below a tenor! This results in the songs being in the wrong key and that's were my pitching goes off.

Like I said, I'm very technical about my singing and I'd love to keep in contact with others who are the same!

I'm very happy with how my range has progressed since I started... My range goes from a C1 to a C6 - for those who don't know a C4 is middle C on the piano. So C1 is the 1st C on the piano and C6 is 2 octaves about middle C. My vocal breaking point is at an A4 - after this I go into head voice. It might sound impressive but it's nothing if I don't get the right tone and use my voice appropriately for the songs I sing.

I'm planning on uploading a few covers in the New Year after my microphone has come through the post!
That way people can see my progress and also I'm all ears to advice!

I think I'll leave it there for this blog and hope I didn't waffle on for too long!

Barry x