I know nothing of singing

[MixolydianPony]

Exactly what the title says. I have no idea what I'm doing, and it seems that every time I sing for more than 30 minutes, I loose most of my range, so I'm obviously doing something wrong. Not to mention the fact that my tone is... poor.

I need a list of exercises and such that I can work on. I'm willing to dedicate around 4 hours to learning every single day, I just need to know what to practice. I have absolutely no idea.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: Before someone mentions this, yes, I sing from the diaphragm. I've been playing wind instruments for years and I'm intimately familiar with the concept of air support.

[Legion]

Relevant: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=855

[Versilaryan]

To give any real advice, I'd have to listen to you singing.

[Navron]

If I know I'm going to *attempt* vocals, I often warm up with some scales (up and down, major and minor), some arpeggios, and other techniques just to get warmed up.

*Note that attempt means I still have yet to feature a song with vocals.*

[Goggles]

That post that legion linked is virtually everything I've been learning in my "lets learn to teach choir" class at college, that's some really good stuff there.

In terms of warmups, one of the things we're always encouraged to do is warm up the head voice, the falsetto range. We start by doing 'sirens', where we just scoop up from our low register to around as high as we can go, then back down, on an "ooo" sound, sometimes just starting from the high point and going down from there. Then there's always singing chords, moving chromatically; using different syllables in singing scales; etc.

I honestly don't know if anything I said helped, I'm a instrumentalist myself, but here's to hoping it does!

[MixolydianPony]

I've managed to determine exactly what my problem is. I tend to raise my larynx while singing, which if I'm correct, is very very bad, because it causes strain, and makes the voice tighter and tighter as you go up. Now the question is... how do I stop doing this? It's become as second nature to me as brushing my teeth, I don't even think about it...

[Versilaryan]

Sing something that isn't at all strenuous to sing. Something in your normal speaking range. Focus on being as absolutely relaxed as possible. The only thing doing any work should be your mouth and your diaphragm. If you feel any tension in your voice, stop, relax, and then try again. Force yourself to stay relaxed.

The problem is that your neck muscles are tensing up. So eliminate that. Keep your jaw loose and your neck relaxed. Force your shoulders as far down as they'll go, and then let them go. They should stay there. Keep your chest muscles and arms relaxed, as well, as those can all directly lead to strain in your neck.

Once you get that down, it shouldn't be too hard to force yourself to relax when singing higher or lower stuff. Without all that tension and strain, you should be able to go higher and sing clearer than ever before. It's a strange concept, relaxing more to get higher, but it's really what you should be doing. Otherwise, you'll tense up and make it harder on yourself.

[MixolydianPony]

Alright, I'll try that.

Thank you all so much.