Felipe Carvalho said

That said I did link a few videos of yours here and there as examples :P. Hope it's fine.

No problem Felipe. Actually I'm pretty flattered. Thanks. Well, unless of course it was on "what not to do."

Hey man long time no see! hope your doing well

Hi everyone, I'm a self-taught (mostly) instrumentalist (bass, acoustic & electric guitars, keyboards) and vocalist. I started out when I was 17 (guitars, bass), then played bass guitar in various bands, then suddenly I realised I'm an old man (33) and had to start making, performing & recording my own music before I die - statistically speaking, I still have 30-40 years' to go.
The turning point happened when I decided to start singing (actually whispering, and mostly out of tune). Something wasn't quite right - I knew I was able to learn any instrument given time, but singing felt like running and banging my head against a brick wall. So I bought Kevin Richard's BTC course, learned how to 'connect' registers. But it still sounded gawd-awful. I contacted Phil M., and tortured his noble ears with my moaning and grunting on and off pitch for several months. I also did some KTVA and found all three coaches' methodology quite compatible. Currently I'm finishing recording my third self-released album with my fellow musician guitarist. Will happily post some examples of the work-in-progress for your critique and/or enjoyment. BTW, I'm probably the least experienced of you all ('light singing' for 2 years plus 'more serious practice' for 1 year)...

Colin here.

Been interested in vocals since the age of 14 or so. Back then I tried to imitate death metal vocalists which didn't work at all. Around the age of 15-16 got into Paradise Lost and thought the singer's rasp was amazing. Tried to imitate that and didn't work out too well, either. Then 2 years later or so I started to sing along to (more like hit notes along to) clean metal vocalists and to my surprise I could hit high notes without experience, but they weren't exactly too powerful sounding. Not to mention my ability to sing calm was somewhat limited. Took a vocal coach for about 1,5 year but working out with her didn't really work. She'd tell me that I'm a baritone and while I got told I had a 3 octave vocal range, the high notes just didn't really increased. Stuff such as breath support and vowel modification weren't explained, in fact, she told me that ''for my music style'' breath support wasn't really necessary to begin with!

Took a year of a break, in the meantime taught myself on how to belt. Eventually met Phil and ever since been taking fun vocal lessons with him. I hope to play in a band one day today and write own music.

Some of my favorite singers include Ronnie James Dio, David DeFeis, Mike Howe, Nick Holmes, Tony Martin among others.

I'm 21, forgot to mention that.

Oh yeah, the reason why I joined is not only because I'm a student of Phil, but also because I like to talk about my passion. So there.

HeyYouNotYouYou said

My favourite singers are Rody Walker from Protest The Hero, either of the DragonForce vocalists, and Russell Allen from Symphony X.

Cool! They are all great. Rody Walker is probably one of the best singer of his generation. I don't know how he learnt to sing like that. I was thinking about covering some stuff from Protest the hero, more focusing on his cleaner tones and find someone for the screams, but i think i will handle the screams myself

I wrote a big reply, but I timed out and lost it, so I'll just say that I'm 24, have been training since I was 21, you may have seen me on TMV or TRP (hi Wabba), and I've pretty much owned every program a la KTVA, TVS, RYV, and HVT at some point, all with various levels of success, though I've honestly found most of them to be better than they are bad. I guess whether I like it or not my all-time influence has to be Geoff Tate, just because of my love/imitation of him when I started singing (plus that's why I bought TVS first haha).

I'm thinking of buying Phil's program, since it's set up a LOT more like an actual teacher/voice lessons instead of just a program.

Lastly, I'm glad I discovered this forum for "exiles" . I actually think the other place has gotten a lot less "this is really X's forum so his product is always the top suggestion" than it used to be, but I almost think 99% of the discussions on there is pretty much mental masturbation and way too sciency haha.