One, breathing,
You obviously need to learn how to control your breathing when singing. To help you build some sense of control, an awareness, try this:
As you walk, breath in four steps, hold your breath four steps, then exhale four steps. As in if you can count your steps as ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR, it's going to be IN-IN-IN-IN HOLD-HOLD-HOLD-HOLD OUT-OUT-OUT-OUT.
It's a commonly known technique. You can vary the number of steps for breath in, hold and breath out as you please.
Two, singing,
Find a place where your voice is comfortable. A comfortable pitch for you to sing without straining or forcing anything. Just sing out your most natural "lah". Then, fing that note on your guitar or piano. Starting from that note, play a one octave scale ascending and back down. If an octave is too much for you, then do five notes. The full octave would be:
do reh mi fa soh lah ti do ti lah soh fa mi reh do.
The five note thing would be:
do reh mi fah so fah mi reh do.
After the first scale, raise your starting point by a semitone. Then repeat the sequence. After a while, you'll reach a point where the upper notes are too high for your comfort. Now, stop there, and keep doing those exercises. With time , your range and reach will improve. It's a bit like weight lifting or doing press ups. At first you can only do 2, but with time you'll get to 5, 10, 20, 50, even 100.
I was given these tips by my voice coach, and they are effective. She happens to have gone to Berklee to do her voice thing, so you may want to respect her opinion (or maybe not :eek: )
Let us know if it works!
