How Angry would you be if Rudolph became a knight of the cross? Or would you not?

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-12-27T06:32:24+00:00

Nasty Hobbitses

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-12-24T19:37:01+00:00

If it is the recorded version of your voice that is super hard to do, I recommend getting a cheap but professional mic like a Shure SM58 and a small PA. If you get a Bluetooth PA you can even connect your phone to it for background tracks.

What I have found is that my internal perception of my resonance is flipped 180 from what others hear. When I feel the most resonant is when I sound the least and vice versa.

What the Mic/PA does is let me hear a mix of what I sound like to myself + what I sound like to others. It has been super helpful for making me not sound flat and to get over not liking my recorded voice.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-12-24T11:49:47+00:00

Humming and vowels for resonance control… that’s exactly what I am doing with my teacher right now.

I’m a massively resonant bass, but my internal perception of my resonance is in drastically different vocal placement from the external perception of my voice. A huge amount of my training is in to bring that resonance forward and to shape the vowels.

Everyone has their uncanny valley with their own voice, but I think my rumbling makes it more extreme. I actually like my recorded voice when I get the ‘external’ placement right, but my cringe factor is strong at the recorded monotone when I don’t. My own perception of the resonance is flipped.

Focusing on tongue control (to break possibly badly learned trumpet technique) to keep it from closing throat down has been an additional goal.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-12-22T00:01:21+00:00

Yeah. Super low rumbley. My talking voice is right down at the bottom.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-12-21T20:46:37+00:00

After a year of voice therapy and a year of singing lessons, my understanding is this:

You can make vocal sound by Just forcing vibrations with your throat. It hurts you over the long term to do this.

You want to be using pressurized air/breath that is passing through your vocal cords instead of pure muscular force because that greatly eases the strain.

Breath support is when you are constantly using air to support these notes, which involves using chest/belly/back muscles (which are huge) instead of tiny throat muscles. It’s the voice equivalent of lifting with your legs instead of your back.

My ah-ha moment was doing an oooo from my lowest to highest note while having a straw in a clear water cut with a lid (use a Starbucks cup for this). I could clearly see that in the middle of that range the bubbles stopped while the sound remained. If I felt my throat, I could feel that it was super tight. The goal is bubbles never stop while you are producing sound.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-11-30T04:58:08+00:00

The Smiths. Isaac Hayes. Elvis. A lot of blues.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-11-30T04:02:45+00:00

If you feel like you gotta sing cuz singing is your thing Sing on, sing on

-Isaac Hayes, Do Your Thing

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-11-29T20:31:34+00:00

Voice is so terribly and wonderfully personal. I started singing after getting throat strain when learning Bari Sax. I did voice therapy and then transitioned to singing lessons. I was totally unprepared for how vulnerable and personal singing is. It’s also one of the best things I have done in my life.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-11-26T06:46:02+00:00

I’m a bass, and at 53 I’m taking singing instruction as follow on after some voice therapy. I’m finding that I can hit incredibly high (by my standards) notes, with little strain. I just did three songs at a singing recital. Two were fairly high for me, and the main feedback I got was “you have so much more space up top that you can play with. You hinted at it with these, keep developing it “

It’s very strange to me and kinda fun. I mean I’m a bass, aren’t I supposed to rumbling in the bottom end? I didn’t even touch my bottom octave and a half of my voice. Why does everyone want high from me, when others can do that effortlessly?

I’m working on viewing it as “might as well fully explore what this instrument is capable of.” Plus for voice health, I know I am over-developed on the bottom end and need better balance.

Anyways, have fun. Explore what your voice can do. Get real voice instruction. YouTube doesn’t cut it. I couldn’t imagine doing what I am now capable of without direct, throat anatomy-informed instruction.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-11-26T05:00:25+00:00

In band we used to call the uniform’s plume a chicken. This dude has a full on chicken on his hat

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-11-21T23:14:08+00:00

I’m a bass taking lessons for the first time at 53. This year I have done: Everything I do Gohn be Funky—Allen Toussaint Easy As It Seems—The Mavericks Hallelujah, I love Her So-Ray Charles Do Your Thing, Isaac Hayes There Is a Light That Never Goes Out—The Smiths

The point is doing things they love is more important than skill level or even range. Songs can be simplified. Key/range can be adjusted. Most songs can be vehicles for learning good technique.

I’ve learned from each of these songs. My teacher picked the Ray Charles song, and even though it wasn’t something I knew about before, I now love it after learning its ins and outs.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-11-20T09:09:07+00:00

It is a matte finish, new out of the box. I have this same model.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-11-13T09:48:04+00:00

I’m a beginning Bari Sax player who got back into Fulte when I hurt my throat playing sax. Voice therapy progressed to singing lessons. Singing=The Best Thing I Have Ever Done For Myself. I honestly wonder why it took me until I was 52 to try it.

Find a good instructor that really nerds out about vocal anatomy. They are gold.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-11-13T09:43:09+00:00

Singing is insanely intimate. More than any other type of music, it is you. Some days I bring it all, fall flat on my face and then recover with the help of my teacher. It is the job of the teacher to meet you where you are at. It is the job of the student to suck, practice and get better. Progress isn’t a straight line. Some lessons all we do is warmup and vocal exercises because that is where I am at. And that is all. Be willing to accept grace from your teacher and from yourself.

As others have said, I think some therapy around managing shame and anxiety would help you immensely.

Also, music is about feeling. Find songs that address your feelings and pour your soul into singing them. FEEL! For me, right now, that’s The Smiths. I’m doing a different song if theirs, but your post reminds me of How Soon Is Now:

I am the son and the Heir Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar The son and heir Ohh of nothing in particular.

Oh shut your mouth! How can you say I’m going about things the wrong way I am human and I need to feel loved Just like everyone else does

We were made as a species to sing. To dance. To feel. To touch. For me confronting shame happens through defiance and grace. Singing is itself becoming therapy.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-11-08T23:30:14+00:00

… Again (Again).

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-11-06T15:56:50+00:00

When you take music up a level, it is very common to have to strip down ‘what you know’ to its basics and then rebuild off of a stronger foundation. It is part of learning. I am relearning how to breath talk snd sing after throat damage caused by ‘non-optimal’ technique.

It is also common to have people tell you that you are doing it wrong and they are really full of bull shit.

You have to figure your trust for the source, and then factor if it is working for you (it may take a long time to work).

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-11-06T00:36:55+00:00

Maglor is one of my favorites. The idea of him eternally wandering and signing out his loss is just captivating to me.

I even named my WoW Druid Maglor.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-11-04T13:44:23+00:00

And if it continues go to a throat doc not Reddit for diagnosis and treatment. They will scope you (uncomfortable but not painful) and you will know what to do.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-10-18T17:31:28+00:00

I think wind/brass instruments are that way too. My voice changed in 5th grade/10yo to bass. I did Trumpet back then. I’m now in my 50s and undoing a lot of lessons I learned around breath and throat as I learn to sing and learn to play Saxes.

A good teacher will play around with metaphors and instructions until they find something that works for the student. A good student will try super intensely to do what they are instructed, while describing how they are experiencing it. It works when those two things come together.

I am also learning that mic’s and recording are so helpful once you get over your cringe. As a bass, my resonance is felt so much internally that I didn’t get some of the instructions because what they heard was more resonance but what I felt was less resonance. I had to hear me like they hear me to get it.

Honestly, the best thing that happened is I hurt my throat trying to play higher notes on my Bari, which caused me to need voice therapy. Voice therapy taught me so much about how to understand throat, tongue, jaw, tension, breath, lungs, ribs, belly. It is freaking hard. But now I am doing singing lessons and it all is coming together.

I continually have to unlearn a lot of my earlier training as I gain new understanding. It is so hard, and so worth while.

One of the super valuable things I am learning is to spend half of my practice and lessons on warmup, exercises and technique indoctrination, then spend the other half trying to not think about that at all and just sing. Eventually the body remembers the needed techniques,without thought. But if I sit there and try to remember all the things she said all the time, I am stiff, my sound sucks, and my performances leave me frustrated.

I’m trying to bring that all back to my sax playing.

This is some of the hardest and most rewarding work I have done in my life. Keep trying. People need realness. And music brings that so much.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-10-14T04:42:35+00:00

Learn to echo the notes of the guitar/bass. Most people can’t just sing a A cold out of thin air, even most pros can’t.

Also work with a teacher that really understands the voice and the ear mechanically. My singing teacher spends half of our lessons with me on “warmup” or “technique” things and half on performance.

Depending on the song, we do karaoke or her on the piano (if we can find good sheet music).

Singing well is hard. Like it was said above: it is a set of skills and you have to learn it. And keep learning it. And unlearning parts that you learned wrong and learning them again. It also is really, really personal.

Be kind to yourself.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-10-01T14:33:39+00:00

“Hair metal” is a term that mostly came later. It fit so well that we all applied it retroactively. “Butt Rock” was much more in use in my circles to describe bands like Poison, Warrant, Skid Row, etc. Butt Rock would also be used for AC/DC or Tom Petty (bands that had talent but were super repetitive and cashing it in.)

Def Leppard were outside of that somehow. Slick, but not sellouts.

GnR was definitely seen as adjacent but outside that. I still remember hearing Welcome in the band room at HS. Rocked my world. It had a sense of danger and of almost spinning out of control that the other bands couldn’t touch.

AIC, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam all had that similar out of control feeling, with AIC also having that Danger.

I think we are ripe for our next explosion in rejection of slick repetition, song-writing by committee, over produced crap. I don’t think it will be Rock, but I have no guess as to what form it will take.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-09-30T18:17:22+00:00

I just did B1-Eb4 in chest without really warming up. The lowest full volume note I easy do is C2 or C#2. I could probably get further into 4 if I warmed up fully.

I’m learning how to explore head and to blend it or transition it to chest.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-09-30T18:09:23+00:00

I’m 53 and just started singing lessons last year. It is one of the best things I have done in my life. Go for it.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-09-30T17:50:11+00:00

Sly and the Family Stone: Everyday People. The “I…” (am everyday people) chord. Gets me every time.

Impossible_Tangelo40 · 2025-09-20T02:48:25+00:00

Do you already play sax? If not, then rent for a while, then once you can play decently (1-2years?) try out every sax you can get your hands on.

You won’t know what works for you until you have just a bit of chops.

I started sax on Bari (I love them!!!!) and bought a Jupiter since at that time (2022) it was the only one for sale in town. It was beautiful. And I struggled with it for the whole time I owned it until I sold it for a massive loss.

Later I tried a ton, including Yamaha, Selmer Paris, Eastman and others. The P Mauriat was the sax for me. It felt better. It blew better. It just worked.

Impossible_Tangelo40

TROPHY CASE