Hello from Fort Worth, TX.
alancr
Pro Posts: 41
Hey Everyone!
I've been a guitarist for a long time. While playing in a band in college, I would sing backup. Invariably, I would lose my voice every concert. One day, while singing in the car with a friend who was a great vocalist, he showed me a couple of basic things that helped with my singing. I worked on these for a while and developed a much better tone and was able to stop destroying my voice. At least, for the most part.
At age 26, I was asked to sing a solo for a chapel service. This was my first solo ever as an adult. Everything went very well and I received a lot of compliments. Not just polite comments, but very positive ("wow, you did an amazing job"..."man, you've really got a great voice", etc.). One of the individuals said I sounded like Andy Griggs, who was popular on the radio at the time.
Over the years, I did a handful of solos and sang backup when needed. However, I never really devoted any time or effort into further developing my singing. Thinking this through, I couldn't quite figure out why. Now, I think I understand. For almost 15 years, I have been married to a woman who is an amazing singer. She was classically trained, but also learned to sing pop, country, etc. Her voice reminds me a lot of Martina McBride. Because she was always so good, I found myself feeling self-conscious singing around her. So I just didn't sing all that much.
For the past 10 years, I have been writing songs. I have frequently found myself frustrated trying to find others to sing my songs. I would always be much more interested than them. When listening to one of Ken's videos, he said something like "maybe you're a songwriter and you've always relied on others to sing your songs...maybe it's time for you to start developing so that you can do this yourself". Rough paraphrase, but you get the idea. This really got me thinking and decided it was finally time to do something.
So here I am at 42. I like all kinds of music. Rock, country, bluegrass, blues, gospel, jazz, etc. My range is somewhere between baritone and tenor. A4 is about the highest note I would be comfortable hitting in a solo, although I do a respectable C# when warmed up. My goal is to increase my vocal stamina and the ability to use the higher notes in my range to where they sound good and not strained. I just purchased the bundled course on Friday and started doing the level 1 warmups yesterday (6/13/2015). Looking forward to seeing where this goes.
Probably more than you wanted to know, but thanks!
Alan
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