Anyone else feel discouraged?

I stopped at the halfway mark through 30 day singer about 3 weeks ago.  I did a recording of myself singing and it was cringeworthy to me.  I stopped cold turkey and booked a lesson with Camille.  Anyone else have this issue?  What did you do to get through it?

I look forward to meeting and working with you, Will! We'll put together a plan to address the issues you're facing. It might take 30 days to build your foundation, but singing is a new skill like any other, and as such it takes time. I hope you stick with it!

I'm having the same issue. Stopped near the end of the the 30 day course on lesson 24, I have made progress but am wondering if I can really meet my goals. I tried singing for people but was super tense and sounded very bad and feel like a failure. Please share what helps you, Will!

I'm sorry you're frustrated with your progress, Jared! I know many people can relate. A few things we worked on in our lesson were:

1. Finding lowest + highest comfortable pitches, in addition to "passaggi" (points of transition)

2. Pointing out any limiting habits to address 

3. Establishing helpful vowels / syllables to use (depending on the issue)

4. Transposing songs to a more comfortable key

Jared,

  I would honestly say that working with Camille is what is going to be the most help to me personally.  I love all that 30 Day Singer has taught me, but I think it was invaluable to hear someone listen to me "live" and then notice different things that I was doing or help me with vowel work. She noticed that I "scoop" the notes in the lower part of my range, something I had never heard of before.  

Camille,

I found a website called Singing Carrots (https://singingcarrots.com) and they have a list of songs and what the songs need to be transposed to in order for someone with a certain vocal range to sing.  You input your range and then it tells you what to transpose it to.  I then took the song with the suggestions and got the MP3 version of the song and used an online transposer (https://transposr.com) to take the song from the original key (which the website gives you) and to a good key for my voice.  I did this with "Little Toy Guns" by Carrie Underwood.  I will let you know how it goes :)  You rock!  Thank you so much for our one on one time today!

That's great to hear, Will! It was a pleasure working with you. I look forward to hearing how it goes!

Thanks so much for sharing the resources you used. Very helpful!

So keep going.I believe in you!!!

Hello Camille and Will,

Thanks so much for your input will and reminders Camille! I want you to know that I love the framework and simplicity of the lessons. They are focused and teach thoroughly. Thank you, as so far this is the best online singing resource I've found.

However, I am struggling with finding a consistent, pleasant tone. I can sing a song fairly well one day, then the next day it sounds pretty bad (to me). When I sang for others the other day (FYI: the first time I've ever sang in front of others because of shyness) I recall tensing up. It sounded pretty bad to me. I tried to do vibrato to mask my bad tone but it sounded muddled and inconsistent. It was very discouraging.

I am happy with the course. But I'm struggling with actually sounding good. I still practice every day. I focus on the main points I've learned. Perhaps you can give me some insight:

Breathing into the stomach.

Raising the eyebrows.

Relaxing.

Knees slightly bent, shoulders back, head up.

Compressing vocal cords if I sound airy.

Singing with broad vowels, and an open mouth for high pitches.

Every time I sing, I focus on these main points, but something still isn't right. I'm pretty confused. Maybe I need to focus more on exercises and not so much singing to my favorite songs? Or maybe it's because I usually practice singing with low volume so others don't hear me?

Will, thanks for the suggestion. Glad to hear the live instruction helped-maybe I will try it soon. I'm sure I'm overlooking something something very obvious, or maybe I just have some pretty bad singing habits.

Hey, Jared!

A huge factor in the consistency and quality of your sound is your vowel shapes. We constantly have to adjust our vowels (some call this vowel modification, vowel tuning, or vowel shading) so that we have (1) the registration we want, (2) our most beautiful tone, and (3) the perception of the intended vowel.

I encourage you to check out this live lesson on vowels for more instruction and ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSp5yKVakmo.