Frustrated new singer

Hey guys, chiming in as another guitarist who's trying to learn to sing. After reading some reviews, I decided to go with the Brett Manning Singing success program. I figured I spend about 2 hours every day in my car, so that's some practice time.

Anyway, I only started a couple of weeks ago, I'm running through the first set of exercises. At about Ab above Middle C, my voice does something strange. Doesn't seem to matter if it's the humming exercises, the lip rolls, or the "nay nay nay" exercises.

What's happening is that my voice does this horrible donkey-bray. It seriously sounds like I'm trying to imitate the "Hee-HAAAW" of a donkey. What the heck is happening, and how do I fix it?

I guess that's the difficulty of a CD course, there's no way to really get feedback.

are you straining when you hit that high of a note in your range? if you break up or squeek out like a donkey does it feel tense? and are you using a lot of strength to get to that note? if so, that's probably the maximum of your range. It'll take a while to get past that natural barrier.

Your sitting. Breath support will be poor. Try sitting up straighter in the car to properly support your diagphram. Singning in a car is a bad thing to do anyways.

I've been doing Singing Success for a while now, and it really does show some amazing results.

While I'm not completely disagreeing with AluminumNeck, at the same time I still believe the car is the best place for this program. You do want to make sure you have proper breath support, but focus on placement.

For me, to get past my bridges, I would practice the squeaky vocal fry at a speech level volume quite frequently until I got where I wanted to go.

Also, while doing the lip rolls, keep your larynx low and comfortable, producing a dopey sound. You need very little breath for the lip rolls, and I've noticed that keeping them nice, clean, and thin eases any strain.

Most importantly though, remember that this isn't gonna happen over night. Practice every day, and don't get frustrated. You'll be seeing results before you know it. I hope this helps man. Keep us updated on your progress.

-Jordan

Thanks for the tips, guys.

When I hit the problem point, it's not that I'm straining, if anything it's a release - like tension just cuts out. I'm not running out of air or anything, so I don't know what's going on. If it's my current upper limit then it's my current upper limit and I'll slowly work on extending that.

I'll definitely try sitting straighter in the car though. I don't have a soundproof room in my home, which I'd need given my current (non)comfort level with my singing so the car's it for now.

I'm still keeping the lessons up every day. I figure there's not much point in moving on to the next disc until I can fix problems like this one so I'm keeping at it.

Cab you record it and send it to me so I can hear it?

I sing in the car all of the time.

When I record, I'm also sitting:confused:

+1

It's not *that* bad of a thing to do. If you can sit up so you can maximize the overall area your lungs can expand towards your diaphragm then you are fine.

If car time is your time, and you get 2 hours of it, that ROCKS.