If You like, I can offer some tips for generally improving singing, both live and for recording.
1) Take small steps. The human vocal organs can easily get scarred and it'll severely limit Your musical career if You injure the thin membranes in there over and over.
Just like working out, bodybuilding, with weights, etc., or even jogging...any physical activity, give Yourself time to rest between "workouts," time for the body to heal and grow stronger. Start out singing near the same range Your speaking voice is, just extending the speaking voice level a little at a time, adding more power and holding notes out longer. This will also help down the road because it will make Your singing of higher or stronger notes simulate the way You pronounce words when just talking to someone. This avoids slurring and flighty, fake sounding, pseudo-operatic singing, which usually tends to also throw the singer off pitch eventually. Instead, it helps You practice powerful, precise singing that punches someone in the ears with clarity.
Resting the cords, especially when practicing, also involves allowing Yourself water or other non-dehydrating fluids (coffee and a lot of alcohol dehydrate the body) between each try. You'd be amazed at how just taking a few drinks of cool water will improve the singing after taking a short break. On stage, we all (all 4 of us sing a lot of harmonies and choruses live) keep about 3 gallons of water just offstage. It also renews the other muscles, like the ones that help You breathe, which will extend Your endurance for long shows, especially when sweating for an hour or more under hot lights.
2) The BEST way to produce good vocals is to put the body fully upright and lean Your head back. The human respiratory system gets most of its power to pump the lungs and promote sounds by the diaphragm pushing straight upwards. The diaphragm, if You aren't familiar with it, is a membrane under Your lungs and organs which pushes up and makes Your lungs pump air out. The outside air pressure on Your body then tries to rush back in and fills the lungs again. Letting the diaphragm push, its only real job, and letting Physics take over and fill Your lungs automatically, it all helps You to not gasp for air on vocals and helps You get way more power and control. When You're being microphoned for vocals on recordings, the level of the microphone has to be raised significantly up to "line level," usually by a pre-amp. Most recording engineers prefer to boost the gain for this level until the signal is really "hot," .....is coming in so strongly that almost every little breath can be heard. Engineers also frequently boost the vocals up around the 8 kHz to 18 kHz ranges, which means even more of Your breathing and any whispers from pronouncing words comes through the mix, so You can hear as much of the vocals as possible in the middle of all the guitars and drums, etc. When this happens, if a singer is gasping for air or starts concentrating more other things, You start to hear it all on the recording. This can be EQ'ed later, but believe me, mixing guys and especially Mastering engineers HATE to have to go over simple things like this. They start hating the vocalist, seeing the person as lazy and unprofessional, cause the Mastering guy's always having to fix their mistakes.
If You start You vocal career off by practicing control, by using the body like it's supposed to be used, You develop good habits right off the bat. Way down the road, probably by the time You're ready to record or whatever, You've gotten it down to something automatic and can instead focus on the emotional parts of singing, instead of worrying about technical details.
This leads to point #3) Practice early on learning where You are relative to the microphone. Live or on recordings, the only way people are gonna hear You really is with a microphone. Microphones have sensitive membranes that try to pick up the air pressure You're shooting at them and try to translate that air pressure into electrical signals. Get too close to most microphones and Your breath and power will send the microphone's own diaphragm flying down into other parts near it. This causes all kinds of pops and booms. They're a total bitch to try to get out of a recording mix, though it's not really as noticable among the energy and acoustics in live gigs. Still, when playing live, where You are relative to the microphone can cut down on whether the crowd even hears You over the amps and drums and crowd noises. There's always a different distance a singer needs to be, from the microphone, depending on which mic they use and how powerful the singer is. I could run down the list of all the brands and singer types, but that would fill up this forum. Even if I did, it takes a lot of experimenting to figure it out. Some singers want a growling supernaturally dark sound, and for that it's usually best to almost swallow the microphone, not caring about how clear the vocals are. Some want a perfect sound where You can hear all the words clearly but with little to no distortion (many singers add distortion, chorus, etc. later, during mixing, or have the house PA mixers do it after a send from a dry but amped microphone signal). In that case it's usually best on most mics to stand about 8 inches to a foot away and use a pop filter.
One trick we use, even live, that we've never seen anyone else use, is the other guitarist and I put two microphones wide enough apart so we can stand between them, facing the side of the stage, where we have large plywood panels set up. When we want piercing vocals that are extremely clear and at the same time more powerful than normally amped mics can produce, we jump between the microphones and face at an angle between the crowd and the plywood panels. The shouts reflect off the panels and are picked up on either side of our heads. When we do this, we can hear the reflections and we can ADD to their peaks by singing at a resonant frequency which boosts all the notes we want. We also have standard microphones for regular vocals, but it's amazing how powerful and clear using the two mics setup is. We actually have to put them at half the volume of all the other microphones and instruments because the harmonics produced by the technique will literally drown out every other instrument, including our guitar amps at full gain. But, it sure cuts through all other sounds when we need it. If You experiment with stuff like that, mastering microphone placement can turn a newbie singer who doesn't have power yet into a raging storm and still won't blur Your clarity or melody, and You won't have to boost the volume/levels/gain to insane amounts.
4) If You have one, by all means practice every chance You get with a Reverb effects processor of some kind. On recordings and on house mixes You or a mixer can add in other effects like delay, chorus, special FX, whatever, but one thing a great vocalist, and You can ask any pro band who's been around for 10 years or more, one thing any great vocalist does with effects is uses just enough Reverb and no more. Each singer in fact should know exactly the amount to use at all times, on all songs. The best way to do this is to start out singing practice by putting just enough Reverb with the vocals WHILE You are singing, just enough to hear a slight "tail".....meaning a little echo, after You stop singing. No more, no less, to start out with. The reason for this is that singers throughout modern times work best and learn best and practice best when they've got a slight bit of echo of their own voice, ringing around them. Amazingly, the singer starts to develop better and better pitch, better vibrato, better volume, the works. All recording engineers, even if they send all the other instruments directly through the board "dry," without any effects at all, every single recording engineer will give the main vocalist a little Reverb not only in the vocalist's earphones but also going straight into the mix right from the start. Just a little, just enough to allow the vocalist to hear themselves with a slight echo. Almost every vocalist who gets this privilage develops way better technique and puts a lot more into the vocal mix. If You're in Your car and without access to a Reverb, but want to practice while singing along with some CD, try cupping one hand (we in our band actually pick times where we have straight road conditions and drive with our knee while cupping both hands, or at stop lights, in slow traffic, etc., though we're all extremely experienced drivers......not a trick for amatures) cupping one hand around and behind one ear or the other, allowing a little space from the front for the sound waves to bounce around Your car with the traffic/road sounds and air, and then into Your ear. This simulates several different room reflections/decays that most Reverbs simulate.
This also teaches a little trick that experienced musicians who record their own stuff know about:
One way to TEST how good a mix is when rehearsing Your songs or planning to record them, is to make test copies of scratch tracks, with as much of the total band as You can find, and play them at low volumes on Your car CD. This is because many audiences not only listen to CDs in their cars nowadays, but signals sent over radio, converted to MP3s, pumping over a club's PA system mingled with crowd noises, many different practical situations where Your CD is gonna get played, they all reduce the decible levels (sound pressure pushing the air of each instrument and singer) of every professional CD, so that what's actually heard by the human ear in the audiences is a very limited scope of the original recording or of the live band. In other words, a lot of things reduce much of what's actually on a CD or being played live, so that when it reaches the listeners' ears, they only hear part of what You wanted them to. If someone can turn down the volume on a CD, while driving in the car, down to pretty low levels, and can still hear most of what the person recorded, then it'll hold up under all the other conditions Your CD or live show is gonna be put through. The listeners are gonna hear the most important parts You want them to hear. After You figure out what people are actually gonna hear no matter what the conditions, You can add icing on the cake so to speak, more guitar parts, more vocals, the candy, the extras, knowing that they might get lost in a lot of listening situations, but if the listener takes the time to pump the tune through a good sound system, they'll get an extra bonus, on top of what they'd normally hear in the middle of loud road and car noises, air rushing by, etc. Also, the people who boost their car bass to thunderous levels, that also distorts the true sounds put on a CD and "masks" other frequencies....burying a lot of vocals and other sounds. Anyways, playing around with the cupped ear in rooms or cars where You can't grab a Reverb unit, or where You don't have the right acoustics You want to practice with, that helps immensely, as does practicing with just enough Reverb every chance You get.
4) Speaking about effects, if You can, try to practice sometimes with Delay also. Try singing (and recording, even if only on a small 4 track) without a Delay effect and then try the same thing with Your voice recording to two tracks (if You've got a multitracker to practice with), one track panned a little to the left, one to the right, both at the same levels and volume. Add just 20 milliseconds or 30 milliseconds of Delay to it while You sing. You'll be amazed at how full Your voice sounds.
You have to really watch the volumes when You do this, cause this will cause Your vocals to boost a good deal. 20 to 30 milliseconds of Delay isn't enough for the human ear to hear an actual echo. Instead, the ears will hear a much richer and more full vocal sound, especially if You record in stereo.
It's really really easy to do this live also, like I described with our multiple microphone setups for choruses, above.
Later on, when You are recording though, just ONE vocalist doing this technique will fill up a huge spectrum of overtones and harmonics in the mix. There's a recording law that says (very acurately) that if two sounds are at the same frequency, the louder one will drown out, bury, cover up (what pros call "masking") the more quiet sound. If Your vocals on a recording or live have all kinds of overtones and harmonics that go from like 800 Hz up into the kilohertz ranges, some or most of the vocals will get lost or buried by the guitars or other sounds in that range....OR....Your singing will drown out some of the guitar sounds, depending on whose volumes are louder. Professional recording artists have the bass drum and the lead vocalist as the "middle" of the mix, dead centre, usually loudest parts of most songs. Anyways, it's a great technique to use for times when You want a much more full singing sound, and it also helps You to practice Your singing, because if You use the stereo technique, with a little Delay, You won't try all the time to sing louder and louder and You won't strain Your voice early on. People who overwork their vocals at the beginning of a practice session or trying out a song, the rest of their performance will start just dropping off, which is just a waste of time and could hurt the vocal organs a little or a lot. Using this technique, You'll tend more just to concentrate on the actual notes or what You want to say or get across, cause the power will be there in everyone's face anytime You need it, with just a little effort. It's really comparable to someone with a machine gun and two ammo clips taking on a person with a stick who's 30 feet away. The guy with the machine gun doesn't have to work nearly as hard and can concentrate upon the kill more.
5) Like the people above said, they're totally right, practice. That's really good advice. Like any organs or muscle system, if You don't use it, You start to lose it. It's much better to have a few short practice sessions, even just in Your car while driving, a few a week, once a day if You can do it....much better to have a few a week or once a day that are short and sweet rather than one really long one just once a week, then not singing for the rest of the week. I've been in bands with back up singers who would find every excuse not to practice their vocals when we jammed, wouldn't sing all week, and would try to fit it all in one long cram session. Made me wonder why they wanted to do backup vocals, cause that method of practicing always killed their voices and never helped them improve at all. I think it was just because back in the 1980s, being in a band was a prestige thing, to get girls and impress people, and back then, every 3rd person we knew could at least play one instrument OR sing, but if a band guy did both, people tended to respect them more....superficially. (sigh, the 80s...oh well). Anyway, try Your best to do short singing runs many times a week and avoid going a long time without at least singing a little, avoid trying to belt out the vocals in one giant singing session then going without for a long time. Your vocal organs will just atrophy in skill and Your control over them, the longer You go without using them for singing. They also will get hurt most likely and way overworked if You don't use them and suddenly decide to jump on a shout fest.
Last point: If at all possible, ESPECIALLY if You're new to singing, try every chance You get to sing along with a SINGLE instrument melody, played from a perfectly tuned instrument, at the same time as using either a metronome or very very simple drum rhythm. I can't emphasize enough how well this helps Your pitch and volume control, along with Your rhythm skills. This is especially needed if You plan on singing for a hard rock or metal band in any way, because most of Your vocals are gonna tend to be bursts of power and much faster than the average singer's. Even if You plan to sing metal tunes where You have legato (long, held out notes) runs, we all know most metal singers tend to have faster rhythms and louder instruments behind them. The faster someone sings the more they need to practice staying on pitch. As a raging metal song flies by, I've heard many amature or newer singers start dropping below or rising above the right notes, just slightly. Record labels usually won't even come close to taking You seriously if the people singing can't hold pitch. Sometimes they just sign a band anyways, if they think a target audience won't care about an off pitch singer....if it's a matter of style and quick fashion over artistry, but this doesn't happen much, because only a few bands are seen by label guys as having the potential to draw that target audience, so, why take a chance on someone who can't stay on pitch?
When I write to use a single instrument melody, I mean take a guitar and play just single notes, no chords, not too much distortion.....just single notes, simple, and play the exact notes You plan on singing. OR, take a keyboard and with one finger play the exact melody You plan on singing. It should really be an instrument near what You're gonna sing along with live or on a recording, something the band's gonna use. It should also be one that matches the timbre and tone of Your voice most closely. What I mean by this is that not every singer's voice tone resonates well with a piano. Not every singer's voice tone resonates well with a guitar soloing either. You should try to find an instrument whose vibrations don't have harmonics that sound "out of tune" or vibrate too much when You sing those exact same notes at the exact same volume. Using a simple drum rhythm, precise, perfect tempo, or a metronome, it will help You develop a great sense of rhythm and space in the song. Eventually You can move away from using an instrument or a metronome....as You develop, You'll just naturally have it in Your head, but if You're a complete amature at singing, You should try singing along with a perfectly tuned instrument, playing exactly what You intend on singing. I've been in many recording sessions for pro bands and You might be surprised to hear that when they begin laying down tracks, they'll start with a simple scratch track by the drummer, to base a rhythm for the entire band. Then they'll play a single voiced instrument, a simple melody, of what the lead vocalist is planning on singing. These two or more tracks, the drum basic scratch rhythm and the single instrument melody, they're played alongside the vocalist, or guitarists, or keyboardist or whomever, while they record their real tracks. The scratch/reference tracks, with the simple melody and basic drums, they aren't sent to be recorded, they're just played through the headphones of the other musicians. This gives the band a perfect pitch and ideal base rhythm to use while laying down their stuff. The scratch/reference tracks usually have absolutely no effects on them and are usually about 40% quieter in the headphones than the singer or guitarist or whatever who is laying down the real track recording. At a little less than half volume, the singer/guitarist/instrumentalist subconsciously hears the true pitch and basic rhythm but it doesn't distract them from their playing or singing. Some bands drop the scratch/reference tracks volume down to even less than 40%, but I've never heard of it going below 25%. That low and the ears don't really hear the scratch/reference sounds when the blazing lead guitar is going off or when the singer starts belting out high vocals.
I hope You have a lot of success with learning the vocals.
