When I was in a theater class during my freshman year of college, we began every class with a series of stretches and a vocal exercise similar to
this annoying MIDI. The idea is to start as low as you can and slowly move up to the top of your vocal range and back down again as smoothly as possible. It should be done relatively slowly, so that you can accurately judge which range areas you need improvement in. If you reach any point at which you can't sing as comfortably and your voice breaks, don't worry about it. It's normal to have to skip a few notes here and there, because no one's voice is perfect, especially not an untrained one. You should also repeat the low to high and back cycle as many times as possible before running out of breath, which will improve your ability to hold a note for extended periods of time, if that's important to you. However, keep in mind that the most important thing is to perform the exercise slowly enough that you can realistically evaluate which parts of your range need improvement. If you speed through it for the sake of getting more wave cycles, you're not really improving your voice any more than you would be if you just didn't do the exercise at all.
Also, I don't know exactly how well you understand music fundamentals, and I'm sure this is already common knowledge to almost everyone here, but I had trouble with it when I was new to music and there may be someone here who could benefit from the explanation.
When most people listen to music, they hear the relative pitch movement of the melody, which is the
relationship between notes relative to the root of that key. What this means is that
D, E, F#, and G have the same relative relationship to each other that
C, D, E, and F do. However, recognizing the movement of relative pitch alone is not enough to be able to perform a song correctly.
Absolute pitch, or
the exact pitch of a single note regardless of its relation to any other, is also very important, as you can sing the correct relative pitch melody but still sound like crap if you're singing it based on the wrong absolute root note for the key. This is why so many people can sing decently without music, but suck balls when they attempt karaoke.
Before I go any further, I apologize to those of you who already know this, since I'm sure this is common sense by now for most of you. However, up until about two years ago I had absolutely no concept of absolute pitch and consequently, I couldn't figure out why so many people thought I sucked when I was singing along with music, while so many other people thought I was a really good singer when I was just singing to myself.
Now this is the part that gets confusing, because I wrote some MIDIs to use as examples, but I'm not sure what the best way to organize the information is, so if anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate it. Also, it doesn't help that I can't link
directly to the MIDIs, so if anyone knows of a better free file hosting service, please let me know!
EE.mid - Vocals and instruments are in E phrygian mode
E Sing.mid - Vocal line from EE
CC.mid - Vocals and instruments are in E phrygian mode
C Sing.mid - Vocal line from CC
EC.mid - Vocal line E over C instruments
CE.mid - Vocal line C over E instruments
To an average person, EE and CC both sound the same, unless of course you're listening to them back to back. Anyway, if you listen to one and then listen to the other a few hours later, unless you have absolute pitch (which only a small percentage of the population does) you will most likely think you heard the same thing twice, or something may seem slightly different, but you won't be able to identify why. So, if you're an average person with no musical training, you can hear EE or CC and memorize the melody easily, but it is extremely unlikely that you will be able to recall the exact starting tone, so the version of the song stored in your head will change keys throughout the day as external audio stimuli effectively distract you, and you won't notice any difference. Consequently, if the original song is the CC version, but you were just listening to a song in E phrygian mode, it is quite likely that you will remember the vocal line as E Sing, rather than C Sing. Fortunately, most people can automatically readjust so that the relative pitch melody now matches the version of the song being played. However, most people are not trained to be able to sing and measure pitch correctly, and therefore end up trying to sing every melody of relative pitch notes beginning from whichever absolute root note is most comfortable for their vocal cords to produce. Consequently, if you're most comfortable singing from the absolute pitch of E, you will sing E Sing. Without music, it sounds right, because the relative pitches stay the same, but when sung over the correct music, you end up with the abomination that is EC. Similarly, someone who's comfortable singing from the C root note would sound pretty good singing something like C Sing over CC, but terrible over music in virtually any other key, such as if the song were transcribed to E, which is demonstrated in CE. Examples like this are why it's imperative to find a real
singer for your band, as opposed to just somebody who sings.
Once again, I apologize for making a long, boring post about something that most of you probably already know, but I managed to live for almost 22 years without understanding this, and figure someone else here might be in the same boat.
Also, the same principles of relative and absolute pitch apply to growling as well, but for some reason most people don't seem to realize this, which may provide an explanation for why most of them suck at it.
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