The Quest for a Better Singing Voice
I have always loved singing. I have a fond memory of getting up with a few of my friends in our church one Sunday and singing Mansion Over the Hilltop, off key and out of tempo. I remember the pastor saying it was not the best, but it was the realist. HA HA! We gave it everything we had. Steve Memel would have been proud. I never really got much exposure to singing but later found out my mother was a very good singer. I guess I had inherited her natural talent.
As I grew older, I began to develop a love for music, especially the guitar. I was in our high school choir but cannot recall receiving much individual instruction. It was more of a group thing. From there, I went into college and audited a choir class, mainly for the babes. During the audition, I had to sing The Star Spangled Banner (NICE, huh? Talk about pressure!) which quickly killed any chance of me getting any dates.
Since I couldn’t sing very well, I decided to do what I KNEW I COULD do, I wrote songs. As time went on, I discovered if I was ever going to get my songs noticed, I had to sing them. I didn’t have any friends who were interested in singing my songs, so I did them. Well, that was not such a great idea. Most of the people who heard me sing were just being polite and let me finish because of our friendship. Don’t get me wrong, I was not some dog howling at the moon, but I did not have a polished, refined voice. I still don’t, but Roger is helping me get there. I spent many nights praying for God to grant me a nice singing voice.
That eventually led me to YouTube and a myriad of singing lessons. I came across Brett Manning’s Singing Success and was sold on it from the start. After watching him do the lip trill/lip roll/bubble/motor boat exercise, I thought it was crazy and deemed it a waste of time. How foolish I was! When I saw Seth Riggs do it, I knew it had to be right. After all, he coached Michael Jackson. How could HE be wrong? Wouldn’t it be cool to see a video of MJ doing the lip trill?
I borrowed the program from a friend and began working through the lessons. I finished lesson six and had made quite a lot of progress. Since I am a baritone, I was flipping /breaking/cracking at G4 or so. I could not go higher than a G4 without flipping to falsetto. I had no head voice and I often had headaches if I sang too high. What could I do to fix this? Enter Roger Burnley and Singing Made Simple.
I think I first heard about SMS through an email. I could not believe that Roger was providing free lessons over the same things Brett Manning was charging money for. I decided to invest in Roger’s program, although I had no idea who he was. LOL I later found out he studied under Seth Riggs, so I knew he had the ‘right stuff’.
I sweet talked my wife into going halves on SMS 1.0 for my birthday. That was back in 2010. To be honest, I only watched the DVDs and did a few of the exercises. I didn’t feel like I was making much progress. I wasn’t. I will tell you why later.
I took a break from SMS and worked on some other programs for a while. I always felt that providence had led me to Roger. Maybe he was literally the answer to my prayers. I decided to give SMS one more shot and began working through the exercises. I sent Roger a recording of me doing Honestly by Stryper. He replied that I had a good start on my voice but that I needed to ‘thin out my vowels’. What the heck did that mean?
I went back to Singing Success and worked on the vowel shifting exercises. Maybe that was going to help. Guess what? It DID! I was able to ‘thin out my vowels’. At least Roger has not mentioned it since then.
Back in early 2012, I was sent a notice by Roger’s administration that they wanted to move me over to SMS 2.0 for FREE. WOW! What a nice guy! That sold me. I was hardcore SMS all the way. Since then, I have been working the lessons religiously and have sent several recordings to Roger. He has given me lots of advice but it has only been recently that the comments have been more admonishing and not as advising. I think that means I am making good progress with my voice. I hope so.
As promised, I will now divulge the reason for my lack of progress-incorrect voice placement. Shortly after I was moved over to SMS 2.0, I was given a free 15 minute Skype session with Roger. To show you the kind of guy Roger is, he wound up making it a 28 minute lesson ( I hope he doesn’t charge me for the extra 13 minutes. LOL). Can you guess what we started with? If you said lip trill, you are correct. We did that, the tongue trill, and the humming exercise. When we moved to the AHH scale, Roger immediately had me stop and worked on getting me to place my sound more in my cheek area.
THAT was the secret!
I had been singing incorrectly for over 40 YEARS!
I had also been using chest breathing as opposed to diaphragmatic support.
Since then, I have strived to keep the sound in my cheeks and I can feel and hear a big difference. My wife says I sound better and I feel better about my singing. I want to extend a HUGE THANKS to Roger for all that he has done for me. He can help you too if you give him a chance. Look what he did for Macy Gray! You may not be a Grammy winner, but you can definitely be a better singer and feel better about yourself. The program will work if YOU work it.
Happy Singing,
David R. Henry
P.S. I am now an online vocal coach to thousands of people all over the world and got to sing to over 800 people at a big local hotel on 3/3/19 all thanks to proper technique. IT WORKS!
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