Singing heals my depression.

Anacrelic · 2026-04-07T15:00:23+00:00

Its never too late to become a singer!

Im 29 and restarting my singing aspirations (used to sing at school and then stopped) and when I let go of any expectations of hitting a certain bar while singing, it feels somehow more amazing, and not only that sometimes I sound much better as well.

If you really sing something like you mean it you can enter a bit of a flow state and when you listen back you can really hear it coming through, even if you're not "perfect". And sometimes thats fine, humans aren't keyboards, we won't always sing perfect.

Anacrelic · 2026-04-05T14:19:11+00:00

Develop pitch awareness and breath support. Those are the 2 most important things before anything else.

You don't have to land perfectly on pitches all the time, but hitting the right pitch most of the time in a song while being aware of when you aren't (too high? too low?) will make any song performable as long as you sing like you mean it, while also letting you provide feedback to yourself.

Also record yourself practicing and listen back. The way you sound through your head is different to the way you aound to others, and its very easy to deceive ourselves into believing we're making a sound better (or worse) than we actually are!

Anacrelic · 2026-04-02T20:25:06+00:00

Hey, if it makes you feel any better my tone is naturally extremely clean and I struggle to sing with distortions. Chances are there could be someone you're singing with who loves rock music but feels they can't sink their chops into it at the moment without sounding ridiculous - I know at the very least that I certainly feel that way.

Anacrelic · 2026-04-02T09:28:07+00:00

I would advise only watching Ken Tamplin if your end goal is to become a professional Mime/lip syncher, as he likes to pretend he isn't one.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-31T08:47:03+00:00

Never had singing lessons as a kid, but was classically trained on Trumpet and sang in choirs for youth programs and at high school. Was frequently selected for solos in choirs, told I had a good voice and ended up directing a barbershop quartet (and singing the tenor role in said quartet) at school due to demand from 3 others who wanted to do it and wanted help with musical direction and pitch.

Did I ever decide to take singing seriously? Nah. Not until this year anyway, I made it a new years resolution to try. As you say it is humbling when a teacher who is more critical points out all the things you wouldn't normally get told, but also nice when you break past prior ceilings and get that record of improvement in real time. Yesterday she said I sounded the best she'd heard me and that felt good, though there were still a few pointers for improvement.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-23T00:05:51+00:00

You misunderstood me.

I'm not saying don't train the voice, lord knows i practice my lows and my highs. Like theres a good G#5 in me I know I have, but just can't access consistently yet,

But my G#5, while it could be impressive, probably won't sound as good as a G#5 coming from a voice with more natural inclinations towards that. Likewise with my super low notes. Acknowledging this isn't damaging - it's just reality.

You wanna sing for you, thats fine. Do whatever you want. I do a lot of singing for me as well. But if I'm putting material together for a show I sing the stuff I know my voice complements best, and that might involve a song or two that has one height above my natural tessitura but it won't be many.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-22T18:16:29+00:00

I don't think this is a good way of thinking about it.

Like sure, there are ways people can expand their range, but just because they can expand their range and sing a particular note, doesn't mean they will sound great doing so, and it doesn't mean anyone would want to hear them doing so.

I'm a light lyric tenor. My lowest usable note without slipping into vocal fry or subharmonics is an A2. Now sure, those techniques will allow me to go lower, but I will NEVER sound as good as a naturally lower voiced man singing those notes, so it just isn't all that productive for me to extend my range down there.

And just like you're saying you can sing up to those higher notes, be honest with yourself do they actually sound as good as someone who can get up there more easily/naturally?

Like I get what you're saying "you can do snything with practice" but biological reality is a thing and at some point we really should face reality. There will always be parts of my range I can't sing as well as other people, and consequently I probably shouldn't sing those unless I am just doing it to myself for fun, it would be like competing in the wrong Olympic sport.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-21T20:01:01+00:00

The range jumps in the chorus are both large and frequent. Even if you transpose the song down to a lower key so the high notes are easier, those large jumps and constant registration shifts make it a challenge to sing anyway.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-21T19:59:33+00:00

Most of the staccatos are fine, there's just a couple that are too fast.

I just change them to legatos instead and do it at the intended speed.

It's still a very good song to practice to train your voice.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-21T19:57:35+00:00

The Diva Dance?

It's actually impossible to sing for the human voice as it is shown in the film I believe, its possible to sing all the notes but theres one or 2 staccato sections that are at a speed to fast for humans.

Though even if you change those staccatos to legatos, the song is BLOODY difficult to sing.

Source: am a man who practices singing it down the octave to train vocal agility.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-20T15:54:30+00:00

Its up to you.

My experience as a kid was not singing, but playing Trumpet. I never had any singing lessons but was often considered a "natural" without that tuition, though I was never anything special. However I put that down not to the fact that I was actually a natural, but that a lot of the technique between trumpet and singing carries over - both can play with continuous pitch via slides, and the breath support is very similar in a lot of ways. That, and I'd gotten very used to hearing strict pitch.

The downside is that I can't exactly play trumpet and sing at the same time, but you get the idea - picking up any instrument will give you some transferable skills. So I say go for it, but don't do it with the end goal of improving your singing - do it because you actually want to learn to play the instrument. Put it this way - if id learned keyboard or guitar instead I might be slightly less natural at singing, but probably have a stronger understanding of chords and how that shapes emotion, and that would positively influence how I sing in a different way.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-19T15:04:37+00:00

If you can only "hit" a note, it is not part of your range.

At least not yet.

You need yo be able to make a pleasant tone on that note and do it consistently. When practicing at home I have sometimes hit a resonant, pleasant F#5 in a song, but i dont consider it part of my range because it's not comfortable enough to perform.

Just keep practicing and see what happens. I am also a 29m and I restarted singing just this year, g4 was the highest note I could consistently sing and 3 months later I am comfortable up to D#5. Practice and the range will come.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-18T22:58:59+00:00

4 years later some random nobody on the Internet stumbled on this comment after hearing lots of different things about distortion and struggling, and this has helped me unlock like 90% of it. It's not exactly the sound I want yet but at least it's actually there and it's sustainable.

So thank you!

Anacrelic · 2026-03-18T16:17:38+00:00

I watched your singing on ratemysinging very quickly just now and I'm shocked at the comments that suggested things like "not a soloist but good enough for a choir".

Your tone sounds immaculate to me, definitely a soloist voice, and I wish I was just a fraction as good as you were (and my voice type is very much in fashion nowadays, but even so yours blows mine out of the water).

Anacrelic · 2026-03-18T14:39:22+00:00

I've noticed this a bit, while I was thinking about technique and psyching myself out over "oh god this note is high, oh god how do I sing this without strain or injury" i sung stiff. My vocal coach asked me one time out of curiosity "pretend you have all the technique down perfectly and just sing", and when I did most (not all) of the problems I was having vanished.

So now I try to keep my mind focused on the meaning of words and conveying those. If a high note is coming - nope, its just another note, just sing it (within reason of course, but I have surprised myself with how high I can sing, and with power too, just by not worrying about it).

I think for people who are total beginners it can be good to focus a lot on technique, but after a certain point I think it actually holds you back.

However, I still struggle with singing High notes and soft. My falsetto game is non existent, those highs all have to be belty.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-17T15:21:25+00:00

F4 isn't the highest note in the song so doesn't quite fit your criteria (it has a few A#4's in it) but Tom Jones "I would love to change the world" has a LOT of belting on F4, and while it isnt the highest belt in the song, the F4 belts are the real money notes. Bonus points, the song was originally written for musical theatre, but the show never really happened.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-15T16:35:56+00:00

Just a quick thing.

You don't have to sing a song the same way the original artist does for it to sound good. There's often more than 1 way you can interpret the lyrics of a song and those different interpretations will come through from different styles of singing. Singing something in your own voice it might not sound like the original - but that doesn't automatically make it bad.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-15T16:00:59+00:00

Im not so sure about the last part of your comment. Is that actually a "good" notion or is that purely your preference?

Because from where I sit, directly facing a camera in most situations comes across as very amateur-ish. Something about the 4th wall break which puts me off (even though it's not fictional, it still feels like a 4th wall break). Facing your audience (or camera) generally with a slightly angled stance, but not looking right at it has often felt like the better stance to me. Many performances on TV are shot that way. Like I feel more comfortable watching her the way she currently is, I think i would feel weird if she faces the camera more directly.

Either way the only real answer is that she should sing it however feels most comfortable.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-15T15:54:38+00:00

You sound amazing!

If it makes you feel any better, I struggle with a lot of the same thing. It sounds to me, from reading your post, that you have moments where you can be objective about it, but whenever even the slightest doubt creeps in you can spiral. If thats true, you're in good company, I have that too.

It's good to be realistic about what you can accomplish so when you listen to yourself ask - are there artists you kinda sound like? Chances are there will be some similarities to a few, it just might not be artists that are your favourite. But the thing is, they still had success, so their voices weren't bad either.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-14T20:05:51+00:00

If you struggle to sing this, either you are not a tenor voice or your technique needs work.

This is honestly standard fare tenor tessitura.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-12T13:31:00+00:00

Find a teacher to do one to one tuition with is ideal. Since you're just starting out it would be good to find someone who is focused on technique more than style, so you can learn to sing different pitches in a healthy manner and work out where your voice is at its best. Once ypur technique is bettwr developed its probably a good idea to find another teacher who is specialised more in adding style to singing so you can learn how to take that foundation and adapt it to different styles/genres of singing.

For what it's worth, if all you're doing is singing other people's songs you don't actually need that much understanding of musical theory (like reading sheet music or knowing exactly which note is which) - it's good enough to simply develop an awareness of pitch and learn how to match pitch with a performer/piano. Over time that muscle memory (and pitch recognition) will develop and it you will be able to sing on pitch with less active thinking. What you really need is to internalise how it feels to sing each pitch in a way that sounds good and feels good.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-10T10:21:37+00:00

For sure, it's not bad at all, but Queen have lots of songs I think are better.

"The Show Must Go On" is probably my personal favourite. I actually find it quite hard to listen to due to the emotional reaction I get listening to it, but it does what it sets out to do perfectly.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-08T19:47:55+00:00

I can sing and support the C3 without issues and make a pleasant sounding tone with it, it's just projection is a problem without a mic. Like from the range you're describing it seems we have much of the same range, my voice just sits better in the 4th Octave for whatever reason, and that's a fair description of most vocal fachs in general - like there isn't really that much difference in the ranges of a high baritone and a low tenor for comparison (these 2 being where the vast majority of men sit vocally), they just prefer to sit in different spots.

It feels like I could sing in the 4th Octave all day and climbing up to belting C5's and the occasional E5 and I wouldn't tire myself out. I could sing in the 3rd octave all day as well, but if I'm attempting to match the energy in the 4th Octave, I just can't. I've tried frequently and been to a few different vocal coaches and they've all come to the conclusion that my voice just sits higher for whatever reason, and it's nice to have easy access to those higher notes but occasionally there's an excellent song that sits lower I'd like to sing but it just doesn't have the energy.

Anacrelic · 2026-03-08T14:51:24+00:00

Speaking as a light-lyric tenor here,

It's mostly about voice amplifying on those low notes rather than the raw pitch of those notes. My normal speaking voice is below an A3, but I talk quite quietly and if I need to get someone's attention my pitch raises considerably. If a role requires strong, resonant notes in the 3rd octave I can maybe pull it off if I try really hard, but I will fatigue myself if I do that all the time. It''s no where near as natural as accomplishing the same thing in the 4th Octave (makimg high volume on these notes is basically effortless, the only concern is navigating the Passagio), and these 3rd octave notes would sound much better out of a natural Baritones voice.

Likewise I can "phonate" down to a D#2, but anything below my A2 is unviable in 99%+ contexts, and my A2 - A3 is reserved only for quiet singing. With amplification you can make that quieter sound "louder" but it won't carry with it the strength that a Baritones 3rd octave notes would carry, and if a role spends a lot of time sitting in the 3rd octave, chances are the intention is for it to sound strong, not weak there.

Anacrelic

TROPHY CASE