I'm starting on a two week layoff to try to finally get rid of the persistent hoarseness that led my ENT to tell me he'd like me to get a second opinion. So, I'm going to be doing things to improve my overall musical abilities such as playing guitar and educating myself on how to out a home recording studio together. I've never used a DAW, but I just bought a computer that has Logic Pro installed in it as well as Final Cut for video. I expect there's gonna be quite a learning curve on these things like learning to use a DAW and learning to make videos! None of it will be as challenging as avoiding the temptation to sing, but I'm so tired of not having a clear voice that it should give me an incentive to stay with this two week rest period. There are still a couple places in the Extreme Singing course I hadn't seen yet. I just watched "Head Voice Edging Grit. As soon as I first heard your example, my first thoughts were: "Oh, Axl Rose's technique...or Rob Halford's technique"! Speaking of extreme singing, it occurred to me that one of the great pioneers of raw, gritty singing was Janis Joplin, but she seems to rarely get talked about in those terms because she wasn't a heavy metal vocalist. Her music wasn't even hard rock, but her vocals were more extreme in the late 60s than what Plant or Marriott were doing. Sabbath started heavy metal but Ozzy Osbourne wasn't an extreme vocalist. Janis Joplin's influence would go on to be felt for decades. Her vocals were intense by any standards!

Has a song ever moved me to tears? Hell yeah! A number of songs have. I think guys tend to be hesitant to talk about this, since crying isn’t seen as manly and of course, I get it. I really do. As men, we're supposed to be tough. This isn’t crying from weakness though. This has nothing to do with how tough I am. This is crying as a result of being heavily emotionally moved by the beauty of a song! I’m a musician. I have to feel things strongly to do what I do. There have been times when if tears were blood, I'd have needed a transfusion as a result of being overwhelmed by the power and beauty of music. One beautiful lady’s music has caused me to spill quite a few tears. Her name is Tori Amos and I've been to five of her concerts. Tori Amos is a phenomenally talented singer, songwriter and piano player. She was the youngest person ever admitted into the Peabody Conservatory of Music. She was five years old. Peabody is for classical music. Around the age of twelve, Tori got expelled from Peabody for continually insisting on playing rock music. It showed she had the right attitude for the rock music world. Still, the seven years she studied there gave her a great musical background! I don’t think there are too many musicians who deliver the emotional intensity Tori Amos does. Many tears have been spilled listening to her songs. Her song Precious Things is a song so exquisite that it can have that effect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpk_ZjdGPnE&t=3s If you listen to the live performance of Precious Things that I've included, you’ll notice that at 5:25 into the video you will hear her being transformed by her music. She's abandoning all inhibitions to dare to be vulnerable enough, to leave herself so exposed as to let her audience see into her soul! Tori Amos is also one of the most passionate live performers I've ever seen. She gives her all in every concert. Once in a while, in a transcendent moment, she’ll even go beyond just “giving her all.” At those moments it’s almost like a religious experience. It's certainly a spiritual experience!

The "bridge" is a term I had heard before finding Rock Singing Success. I had been told there is one bridge, also called a passaggio and that learning to navigate the passaggio well (think of Chris Isaak singing Wicked Game) is the key to being able to sing with tonal consistency from low notes to high notes and not have your voice crack while you're doing it. By tonal consistency, I just mean being able to sing throughout your range and not sound like one person in mode one and sound like somebody else in mode 2. Navigating the passagio meant being able to transition from mode one to mode two seamlessly. That may be valid information. I learned it even before I ever met my first vocal coach, so since it didn't come from him, its certainly possible that it's an accurate description of what the "bridge" is: The thing that you use to move back and forth between modes one and two and not have your voice crack, or sound like two different singers. As far as I know, unless you want to count fry as "mode zero", there are just two modes. Mode one is what you typically use to speak, unless you're Mickey Mouse, and then there's mode two, which is also sometimes called head register. The voice breaks if you're not skilled in navigating the passaggio. I had gathered that you could think of the passaggio as the "bridge" that takes you from mode one into mode two. This was my understanding of "bridge" before I found RSS. R.S. found RSS. Imagine that! Good thing too, since the way I was being taught to create grit was pulverizing my larynx. "Just imagine you're lifting something heavy" - No thanks! If I were deliberately setting out to create as much unnecessary muscle tension as possible, then that would have been useful, but otherwise, no. There had to be a better way. "Just use the least amount of constriction necessary." - OK, I'm paraphrasing, but essentially that was what made RSS different from the way I was previously taught to create grit. My first coach encouraged me to constrict until no air at all was coming out and then just release tension ever so slightly until a little air can finally escape and we have "Grrrrrit"! And Reinke's Edema too!

Dave Mustaine has an inspiring story. He’s a world famous musician now and has been since around 1986, when his breakthrough second album came out, but he hasn't always led a life of luxury. Dave Mustaine earned everything he's got. As a child, Dave Mustaine had a tumultuous home life. His father, while a hard working man, was an alcoholic. Dave’s parents divorced when Dave was only four years old. His family was left in poverty and relied on government assistance to get by. Turns out he didn't know that his mom was an alcoholic as well! She was a high functioning enough alcoholic that Dave never even saw it. He only found out about her alcoholism after she passed away. He had three sisters but one was 15 years older than him and the other was 18 years older. Dave says “It was really weird when we would stay with my sisters. We would move. My dad would find where we were because my mom and dad were divorced. As soon as my dad finds us, we move. We moved to a place, temporarily stay with a relative until we could find a new apartment, and it’s almost always my two oldest sisters or my aunt.” It was a chaotic, turbulent childhood. Throughout that time when they were moving from one place to live to another, Dave started getting closer with his younger sister Debby, who played the piano. Dave decided to learn to play the guitar. It would become the one thing that gave Dave’s life some direction and purpose. At fifteen years old, Dave left home to be on his own. He remained on his own and he describes his childhood as “pretty abnormal.” “Pretty abnormal” is an understatement. Mustaine’s teenage years are probably unimaginable to most of today's kids. Even by the standards 70s, a fairly carefree time when youths in general were given considerably more freedom to do what they wanted, a time when, for example, hitchhiking was considered fairly normal behavior, Mustaine's upbringing was exceptionally rough. It left him wide open to all types of experiences...and risks.

EXCITED TO JOIN THE SINGING JOURNEY HEY EVERYONE I"M REALLY EXCITED TO BE JOINING THIS GROUP I"M A BEGINNER IN MUSIC,I"M LOOKING FORWARD TO LEARNING FROM ALL OF YOU AND SHARING SOME GREAT SONGS HERE THANKS FOR HAVING ME