Greetings from Toronto, Canada... and looking forward to good things from this program

Hi, @steves!

Nice introduction.  How long have you been working Ken's program?

I noticed in your videos that you do need to work on your breath support. 

Since you are a guitar player anyway, if you aren't already doing this, you might want to play the chords along with Ken on your audio exercises.  Go ahead and do this standing up, so you can take advantage of the added support when you stand and sing.  (Do your recordings standing, also)

Play the chords as you do your vocal exercises.  That way, when you work on your support, you will have your guitar strapped on and can get used to supporting while playing guitar chords.  It will embed the feeling.  Also, it helps you to know what chord you run into tension on, you can stop the audio and work on one tough scale and accompany yourself...  I do that all the time.

On your recordings, you should isolate the noise that is happening in the background.  I don't know if your acoustic guitar is electro-acoustic with a bad battery, or what, but you should clean up the noise in the background.  It's constant on some of your tunes.  That way, when you start really getting the results you want from your voice, it will be on a clean recording.

It's nice to hear from you.  Really concentrate on doing the Audio Exercises every day, with great concentration and attention.  You will be doing these from now on, and the more efficiently you practice, the better your progress will be.  You have a good basis from which to build your voice, and you can achieve the gains you want to make through diligent work!

Good Singing to You!

Bob

Yes, a gate would reduce the noise when you aren't singing or playing, but it would be there when you were singing or playing.

Are you using a mixer?  You could put on headphones and listen with the volume turned up, and disconnect the mic, and see if the noise goes away, then disconnect the guitar (if it's got a pickup) and see if it goes away.  It may be a signal/gain issue.  You should not have a -10 dB switch turned on at the mic and then crank the volume at your interface.  That can just magnify small amounts of noise.  You could have a bad cord.  You could have a low battery in anything that has batteries.  You should use the process of elimination to see what you can do to eliminate or reduce the noise.  That will really help your recordings.  If you don't fix it, you will have the problem in most, if not all of your recordings.

It may be the way you have your gain staged on the way into the computer or the mic input sensitivity on the computer itself.  You might want to read some articles on signal-to-noise ratio.  That might help you to isolate where you have your gain incorrectly staged.  Compression can also make the noise floor rise up to crazy levels when there is little sound being compressed.

Bob

Do you know anyone that could loan you a mic?  That way you could verify or eliminate the mic itself as the cause.  The shielding on the mic cable could have come loose at one of the connector ends.  That could cause intermittent noise.  A song or two did not seem to have the noise, but I didn't take note of which ones in your six or so demos.  You could check that and see if you recall anything different in your setup at the time.

Are you using acoustic (without electric pickups) guitar, and are you recording it through the vocal mic as you sing?  If so, then you have the mic turned up loud to get the guitar into the recording, and it will pick up room noise, computer fans, room fans, traffic outside, etc... and if you are using a compressor with a lot of makeup gain, it will really pump up that sound when you aren't singing into the mic.  I don't have garage band, so I'm not familiar with the NYC setting, but if you use a lot of compression and a lot of makeup gain, you will get pumping background noise.  A gate or expander could help with this, but you DO need to see if your mic is pumping a lot of static into your recordings.

Experiment with some of the other compressor preset settings, or instead of using compressor presets, try learning compressor controls and find your own settings that aren't so extreme.

Oh, yes... You said as the mic gets warmer, it seems to get worse.  My main condenser mic is a TUBE mic.  Tubes have to warm up, and eventually go bad.  If it doesn't have a tube, then it has transistors.  Those go bad, too, and sound a lot like the sound we're hearing on your recording.  It might be hard to find a shop that could troubleshoot and repair an intermittent transistor in a studio recording mic, but if anyplace has such a sleuth, Toronto should be one of the places you could find someone to do that.  Surely Los Angeles or possibly even Nashville would have someone who could fix your mic, if that turns out to be the problem.

Maybe your best bet is to ask a friend, music stores, or even a recording studio if you could rent a mic.  It wouldn't have to be a thousand-dollar mic.  Just a condenser that you could use to substitute for an A/B test on your system.  Certainly you could find someone in a craigslist ad that would rent you a mic for a couple of days. Put the ad in the musicians area.

Bob