Rasp and a really small falsetto range, followed by???

Please forgive my ignorance in knowing the terminology to explain this. Back ground, I am a singer who sang most of his life in chest, strained chest, and falsetto. When I got to the point about 5 years ago that I was writing music that required more I started studying on the internet (no money) on how to sing without straining. This led to discovering my head voice and a long process of losing bad habits like singing too loud. I developed my head voice and worked very hard transitioning between chest and head.

Issue #1)

I feel like over the years of straining in chest that I have some kind of damage as my voice seems to have a permanent rasp. I no longer strain while singing at all and I find no pain or fatigue anymore, but the rasp is almost always there through the lower range of my head voice. I have learned to live with it and it has become endearing to those that like my band, I just wondered what some of you thought.

Issue #2)

While working hard to develop my head voice I neglected my falsetto, so once I was able to perform comfortably with my head voice (with a couple of falsetto notes I had left used strategically) I started to work with falsetto.

Here's where my terminology will fail, I am a guitarist so to explain my range I have to relate it to guitar. My chest voice goes comfortably from the big open E string to the F# on the 2nd fret of the little E string. My head goes from the G on the 3rd fret of the little E string to the D at the 10th fret. But my falsetto is weird, from the D# up to the next F, I can make it come in lower to replace some notes of my upper head voice but really no lower than B (7th fret little E). Consequently, I will use different registers ascending than descending, and depending on what I need out of the note I will go between upper head and lower falsetto to get the job done. In the recordings below, Hell Today is in the Key of Am and Holding Down is in Dm so there are plenty examples of say the D note at the end of my head voice range being made with one or the other. Is this normal for others? To have such a limited falsetto range?

Issue #3)

At the top of my falsetto I have this other register. I don't know what it's called but with it I can go from the F# at the 14th fret little E string up to the B note on the 19th fret. I am just starting to develop this range so it may go up to the C eventually but right now I am just getting it to sound more full. What the heck is this? chest>Head>falsetto>???

You claim that your 'head voice' stops at D5, being replaced by falsetto. What actually happens is that your technique is failing, I'd wager. Same goes for the whistle notes you're discovering in the sixth octave.

I have no way of backing this up with studies or cited facts, but my current understanding of all these tricky words like head voice, falsetto, chest, whistle, etc, is that falsetto and whistle correspond to poor execution of high notes, while head voice is the opposite (properly resonant). (Note though that some people use 'falsetto' as a word for _all_ kinds of these higher notes, regadless of if they're failed or resonant).

The 'break' that people claim to have between chest and head then, becomes more an issue of failing to locate the correct resonance cavities.

But then of course stuff like cord closure 'n shiz comes into the question, and I sorta don't know what I'm talking about anymore.

Feel free to ignore this post

You could be right I'm no judge! My main concerns are for tone and complete ease of execution, and with some exceptions of some elusive tones (which are special effects really) I am achieving these goals on personal experience level. I am certainly not going to debate that I could use some traditional training, but neither could I debate what my wallet currently reports. I have found some great resources recently from reading pages here that have opened up new practices that I am putting into my regular day to day, coupling that with a phobia of straining in any slight way. Thanks for your post, anything that can point me towards bettering my technique I am grateful for. I love to sing.