Haha!

Now I have your attention...

I didn't know where to put this so I just stuck it here...

I need help with my voice.
When I was in college, I was using it alot, and it had just got to the point where it was quite elasticky and flexible. My range had improved alot because of the lessons.
Now, its gone back into the 'safe zone' and its really annoying because the songs that I'm writing on FL would be so much better if they had good vocal lines and variaty, and they don't at all. They are all samey.
I've been listening closely to Imogen Heaps style, (She's my favourite artist of all time...not many people have heard of her, google her RIGHT NOW!) and she's got loads of leaps in her vocals, and she can go growly and go sweet and all this stuff...
Does anyone have any tips/advice on getting my voice in shape without paying for lessons?

Any comments greatly appreciated.

And its true, he really did have no underwear.

... I can't sing - but this is what I do:

practice highs and lows... explore your emotions, translate them to vocals. do vocal acting practice: explore dramatic new ways of impersonating personalities. this will help achieve more spunk in your vocals. be bitter, go growl. be tender, so sweetly texture melodies. sing timid, sing angry, try out and practice the different areas of your throat and mouth. surrender to your voice as it is the one most important thing that people can judge your state of mind by. and then, know well what you want to communicate. and hum tunes 24 hrs a day. also, try mimicking animal sounds. and don't give up so easily, just try buzzing like a bee or barking like a dog until you feel happy with the way you have mimicked it. I kid you not, those are some good vocal practices. it would be excellent if you could do a dolphin...

for more conventional ideas, try http://www.vocalist.org.uk/singing_exercises.html

And  - I'm currently not wearing any underwear either -

Although you mentioned you didn't want to pay for lessons, I have a suggestion (however, this will still cost some money). I recently came across a DVD/CD package from a person named "Melissa Cross". She coaches alot of rock singers and her instructional DVD is entitled "the Zen of Screaming". She provides instruction on how to attain a more intuitive technique with singing (rather than to complicate the matter with too much technicality) and her vocal training is oriented more towards rock. I bought it plus her additional "warm-up" cd for about $50 (about what a one-hour lesson used to cost me). I've been using the technique and I found it quite effective in improving my voice and expanding my range. You may want to check it out http://www.melissacross.com/vocal_training_products.php

Oh, I need to learn how to improve my voice! Who can give some good exercises, but not all that boring classes from those web-sites?

      > Iszil

so you want an exercise eh?

ok. take a high note on your guitar and match with your voice.

then take a low note on your guitar and match with your voice.

now do 50 times high - low - high - low (that's 200 notes total)
and increase / decrease sustain, increase clarity, and increase alternation frequency over time (SPEED UP).

then when you are through, sustain the last note you sung and check with the guitar. still in tune? good job. do the same with the high note.

next level.

add a middle note and start over.

then later on, add a seminote higher than one of those notes to sequence and sing that one every second time you come across instead of the original...

don't practice for too long or your voice will wear out... there's a reason for all these boring classes, they prevent you from learning wrong techniques which may permanently damage your voice over time.

so, Iszil... I hope it helps.

cheers.

Cool exercise. I'll use it when I want to record my next two songs. They just need the vocals, but it's really hard to me.
Another thing hard to me is to create a good vocal melody. Most of my vocals melodies are so flat...

      > Iszil

A good exercise to go from higher to lower tones are to take the highest tone u can... and then go all the way down trough every tone in U're voice til the lowest tone... then up again. (of course u can't take the absolute highest and lowest tone but try to get as high and low as u ever can and keep on doing it until u get better)
U can do that from down to up and down again too
Sounds like when somebody is falling in cartoons.

Make sure that u don't cheat, thought. Its very easy to skip some tones, especially round that place where u change type of voice (don't know what that is called in English....)

Work a lot with the stomach... because when u do that u can do a lot more with u're voice then when U're not using it...
U should breath in without the chest going out, everything going directly down to the stomach... If that's a problem u can breath everything in around the chest and then try to push it down to the stomach and then back up again. (that is really some kind of yoga thing but i found it very useful when i was learning to use my stomach better...
If u are using the stomach good u'll find a lot new tones too. At least I did.

And I can think of more if u like but right now I need to go back to reading psychology..

/Denize

Hehe Maybe i'll learn to sing too....

U can always try... And at least u'll sing better then u did before 

lol.
It's likely, considering how well I do now!

It's that bad? =P Haha =)

Lol. Some people says everyone can sing well; there's only effort needed.

       > Iszil

Maybe if u want to sing, u can always learn... best thing for learning is interest, But I don't know about the ppl that cant here different tones at all... don't know what that is in English, again. But it's prob very hard to learn to sing if u don't have any ear at all for tones...

How is the singing going? Tried anything yet?

the word for that is tonedeaf... like my mother is... the opposite of perfect pitch!

but I really think it's a matter of discipline. personally I feel that trying to hit notes is much more than just getting your throat, breathing and mouth right, you have to "muscle" your mind into it too. that's where the whole pitching idea makes it's sense and impact on human hearing - by setting mood - as they come forth from "mood"

singing is a very active process... you have to put your mind to it... you have to want to do it right, and surrender to the entire flow that comes with it: while doing it, it should be top priority of all your brain processes! ... it's not something you can just casually do! and it DOES require training and practice, always!

yes, that's true. When I'm singing songs that I have sung a million times before (not literately) I sometimes miss the tones because I just don't think about it and I believe that I know it so well that I don't try at all... I thought about tonedeaf, the world is the same in swedish... tone + deaf, but then I thought I was just trying to translate it right over... =P

That I've been thinking a lot of... U sing and play at the same time, but I do believe that the singing would be better if u did them one at a time? No matter how good u are...