Set Your Voice Free

Rating:
Summary: Roger's book has worked for me
Review: I can't vouch for the physiology involved with singing as I know little about the subject. What I do know is that working with the excercises on the included CD has helped me in 4 months more than anything in the 5 years I've been singing. I have gained considerable control and consistency which has so frustratingly eluded me up until this book. I work the exercises in my car to and from work with astonishing results. I recommend this book to anyone who has the discipline to make the exercises part of their daily/weekly routine.

Rating:
Summary: Roger Saved My Voice After 5 Weeks of Laryngitis
Review: I got sick about six weeks ago with a head cold that also caused a sever soar throat. After the cold went away and I took antibiotics to clear up the infection in my throat, I still could not get my normal speaking voice back.

I went to an ear, nose and throat doctor that gave me cortizone to shrink the swelling in my vocal cords and he also recomended I see a speech therapist for 6 - 8 weeks at $250 per session.

The Cortizone only helped a small bit with the swelling in my vocal cords and I relapsed after the cortizone was gone. My speech therapy was not getting me any results after about 2 weeks so I took matters into my own hands and found this book called "Set Your Voice Free"

I also contacted the author, Roger Love, via email about my situation. He responded back to me almost immediately, probably less than an hour later. He emailed me back telling me which excercises in his book to do. I listened to the CD that came with the book and did the exercises.

The next day I could tell that my voice already sounded better. Two days later it had improved yet again and by the 4th or 5th day I was completely recovered.

I also did a couple of private lessons with Roger over the phone because I use my voice a great deal in my work for presentations and speaking on the phone. He helped me speak in a way that will prevent me from having future problems with my voice and he also helped me make my voice stronger, warmer and more inviting when I talk to clients or anyone else for that matter.

I also like to sing (shower, car, wherever) and as a side benefit from the use of the book, CD, and sessions with Roger, I am able to sing notes that have always been out of reach to me and I seem to be able to get a little bit higher range and strength at those ranges every week.

Even if you don't do the private lessons with Roger like I did, you will be able to immeasurably strengthen and improve your voice with just the book and CD.

He's a great guy who really cares about his clients and if you like to sing he can help you do things you wouldn't believe.

Rating:
Summary: Set Your Voice Free has dramatically improved my voice!
Review: I have always been very self conscious about speaking in public and I never thought I would be comfortable singing in any environment. After reading Set Your Voice Free, I have noticed a dramatic change in both my speaking voice and my newly found ability to sing along with my favorite music on the radio. I have read the book several times and done the excercises on the CD and I am very happy with the results. The book also has some great tips and some fun insider information about famous celebrities. This book really helped my voice.

Rating:
Summary: Very helpful book!
Review: I have always loved to sing, but was very inconsistent. Breathing from my diaphragm comes naturally to me, but the only way I knew how to sing notes was to use power to reach them, so I was hit and miss. I also had no chest voice to really speak of and was sure that I could only sing high.

Desiring to be on the worship team at my church and wanting to improve my singing and finally having the money and the time, I started taking lessons about 3 years ago with a private teacher. She is great! From the beginning of my lessons with her I had to tone down my power dynamic as it interfered with learning her technique. I kept pushing my notes.

Studying with her I greatly improved my high voice and developed my chest voice, which we were both surprised to discover I had. Still, there was that bothersome range that frustrated me. My husband kept telling me that my mid range notes were often flat. Also, with songs that had notes in that range I found myself either straining in my chest voice or popping into my head voice, neither of which felt or sounded all that great. No matter how hard I tried I could not bridge that gap smoothly.

A few months ago I decided to read books on singing to see if I could pick up some more tips. This is the third one I have read, and so far it has been a gold mine for me. It is easy to read and not overly technical, as the other books were. Some other reviews are critical of the science, but I never really read the science part anyway. ;-)

Roger's exercises really helped me with those pesky notes that are right in between my high and low voice. His exercises really showed me my flaws there. The first time I did them I was so bad that I wanted to quit! But I persisted and the second time found that they were easier to do. His description of the middle voice being a blend of high and low voice and his demonstration on the CD makes it easy to understand and grasp.

It explains breathing in a way that I can easily understand, and from what Roger wrote I realized that I needed to bring my power dynamic back. I had shackled it for so long learning my teacher's technique that I had lost touch with how to use it. My husband told me that my voice had lost it's passion, and by giving myself permission to really let my breath go again, I am re-discovering it.

I realized that when I let my natural breathing ability fly the way I had before I took lessons that I discovered this middle voice. I taped myself as he recommends (you really need to do this to hear the improvement) singing songs that used to give me fits and found that I kept sounding better and better on them. I am glad I taped it because it feels weird at times singing that way and I was sure it did not sound good until I played it back.

I am not sure though, if this book would be helpful to someone who never took lessons. I cannot say for certain, but I really don't know if this book would have been as helpful to me if I had not already developed the technique I have with my private teacher. This book helped me improve on her technique.

I suppose it is possible that someone can grasp the concept without the benefits of private instruction. The book is inspirational and fun to read and the exercises are fun, also. I highly recommend!

Rating:
Summary: Worth the money...
Review: I have been studying voice for about 10 months using the Seth Riggs method both from his book SINGING FOR THE STARS and from associate Speech Level Singing teachers.

I found Roger Love's book to be very helpful and not at all a repeat of the Seth Riggs book.

The exercizes on the CD are especially helpful and I have made some new progress.

The cost of the book and CD is less than the cost of one voice lesson, but worth many times that.

Rating:
Summary: I recommend this book
Review: I picked this book up on a whim, and I was very pleased to read that someone had put together a book that contains much of my own philsophy of teaching voice. I'm only giving it 4 stars because the name-dropping throughout the book is irritating at best, and as some others have noted, his descriptions of what the vocal folds are doing during vibrato, etc. are not very scientific or accurate; however, the descriptions do help with visiualizations and it truly isn't necessary to know the science to learn to sing well.

Other things I like about the book are:
-connecting the speaking voice to the singing voice
-encouraging people to train their own ears by recording themselves
-exploring the middle voice
-the "do-it-yourself/imitation" approach; this works for many people

It's good that a CD is included; it really helps people hear the difference between doing it wrong and doing it right.

This is a good place to start if you want to learn to sing.

Rating:
Summary: Love has talent -- but hard to apply for a struggling singer
Review: I was so into this book and was totally convinced that Roger Love would help me find my voice. I went so far as to meet him in person to get a one on one session. After 2 months of reading the book I found no improvements whatsoever in my voice. I was doing all the exercises, trying to breathe correctly -- and I just couldn't do. So I figured, if I met him in person, maybe he'd show me what I was doing wrong. So I paid the heavy sum to meet him personally and thought -- this is it -- I'm on my way. He did tell me what was wrong with my voice -- but no real tricks on how to fix the problems. I figured I paid this vocal genius the money -- now tell me the secret -- show me how to find my voice. The lesson unfortunately didn't help either. The guy is indeed talented, knowledgeable of his craft and I have great respect for him as a singer (his voice was unbelievable), but as a student, I couldn't grasp his teachings. I have been singing since I was in high school, which is close to ten years ago. I picked up some bad habits along the way, so I was trying to mend them and learn to sing the right way. It just didn't help me at all. Finally, I gave up on the book. I searched for vocal lessons elsewhere. I found a teacher who helped my voice tremendously in just one lesson using a technique started by Seth Riggs, known as "Speech Level Singing". It's working for me so far and I suggest maybe trying a book using this technique. But honestly, I think it's best to get a person one on one -- cause books can be vague. Learning to sing really takes professional guidance. There is so much involved in doing it right (which roger DOES actually go into extensively in this book)-- breathing, posture, position of larynx, type of foods you eat, drink (best to drink just plain water -- no teas, caffeine -- a tip from Roger), I mean -- so many factors, it's best to have someone right there guide you. Well, I hope this helps. Good luck. It's a tough road.

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent and Inspiring Guide...
Review: I'm one of those who honestly felt that I had got my $... worth and then some in the first five minutes of working with this book. I've sung in bands and theatre with moderate success but always been frustrated at the entirely hit-or-miss nature of my grasp on 'how to sing'. It's never been something I 'do', but rather something I can 'usually get away with'. Love's book helped guide me in short order to a part of my voice that I've found on occasion on my own (usually in the car, or occasionally an inspired moment on stage, but almost never simply 'on demand') which I now realize is the middle voice he refers to in his book.

Are there other ways to get there? No doubt. Is he first and only instructor to speak of this sort of thing? Of course not, but he's the VERY FIRST who managed to reach ME despite myself. Does that mean he will reach you as well? Who knows, but I'd say it's a pretty safe gamble you will take away something from this book and cd in short order if you approach it openly and with a good sense of humor.

His simple device of using the 'cry' and whatnot have proved invaluable to me in 'remembering' how to find that sweet spot instead of shouting myself hoarse with vocal groping and frustration. Think Robert Smith or Danny Elfman to get an idea of how the 'cry' can sound. It's kind of a vocal 'shoe-horn' to get you into middle voice. Once you start to get a feel for this, the goofy images like 'think of your voice as a purple mist flowing--blah de blah de blah' start to actually become useful as you start to feel and hear when you're going from chest voice to head voice and/or somewhere in between.

Good luck and have fun with the book. Really accentuate the cry when you get to that part. Let yourself be a goofy cartoon character for a bit and laugh and have fun, and you may suddenly realize that your voice is ringing more clearly and purely than ever before. If you've never experienced it before, you'll probaly freak a bit and think "What the shrieking f* was that?!" It will feel very 'unusual' and perhaps even 'un-safe' as in "I don't sound like THAT! OTHER people who really know how to sing sound like that!" Surrender a bit and let yourself continue to explore, and get a pocket recorder so you can record yourself on the fly, even while driving.

Experiment. Laugh. Have fun.

Good Luck!

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent and Inspiring Guide...
Review: I'm one of those who honestly felt that I had got my $... worth and then some in the first five minutes of working with this book. I've sung in bands and theatre with moderate success but always been frustrated at the entirely hit-or-miss nature of my grasp on 'how to sing'. It's never been something I 'do', but rather something I can 'usually get away with'. Love's book helped guide me in short order to a part of my voice that I've found on occasion on my own (usually in the car, or occasionally an inspired moment on stage, but almost never simply 'on demand') which I now realize is the middle voice he refers to in his book.

Are there other ways to get there? No doubt. Is he first and only instructor to speak of this sort of thing? Of course not, but he's the VERY FIRST who managed to reach ME despite myself. Does that mean he will reach you as well? Who knows, but I'd say it's a pretty safe gamble you will take away something from this book and cd in short order if you approach it openly and with a good sense of humor.

His simple device of using the 'cry' and whatnot have proved invaluable to me in 'remembering' how to find that sweet spot instead of shouting myself hoarse with vocal groping and frustration. Think Robert Smith or Danny Elfman to get an idea of how the 'cry' can sound. It's kind of a vocal 'shoe-horn' to get you into middle voice. Once you start to get a feel for this, the goofy images like 'think of your voice as a purple mist flowing--blah de blah de blah' start to actually become useful as you start to feel and hear when you're going from chest voice to head voice and/or somewhere in between.

Good luck and have fun with the book. Really accentuate the cry when you get to that part. Let yourself be a goofy cartoon character for a bit and laugh and have fun, and you may suddenly realize that your voice is ringing more clearly and purely than ever before. If you've never experienced it before, you'll probaly freak a bit and think "What the shrieking f* was that?!" It will feel very 'unusual' and perhaps even 'un-safe' as in "I don't sound like THAT! OTHER people who really know how to sing sound like that!" Surrender a bit and let yourself continue to explore, and get a pocket recorder so you can record yourself on the fly, even while driving.

Experiment. Laugh. Have fun.

Good Luck!

Rating:
Summary: Strong recommendation
Review: I've been focused on becoming a better singer for close to a year now with so-so results. During this time, I came to realize that speech rolls over into singing quite a bit. With this in mind, I picked up the book "Set Your Voice Free" a few weeks back in order to become better with speech and see if I could improve my singing abilities. What a revelation! I not only found the information I needed to help in speech, but also a wealth of information on singing. I had heard before of "Middle Voice" and how important attaining the proper setup for it is, but until I read this book, I never knew what it actually "felt" like. Now, the reason all of the gigs I've had were hit and miss became very clear to me as I realized that middle voice was what I was really after all of those times I'd tried finding that freedom and power that would only come once in a blue moon. I've only been studying this book for a few weeks now, but I feel I'm moving forward at warp speed. We had a gig a couple of weeks back, and our band received wonderful response. I know a lot of that was due to the new found knowledge I'd gained in freeing up my voice and finding middle. This was after only one week of applying the information I'd found within this book. I have a long way to go, but I feel I'm on the right path (finally) due to Mr. Love's clearcut teaching methods for turning around bad habits and reinforcing proper ones in both speech and singing. I strongly recommend this book to all speakers/singers, or anyone who wishes to gain more freedom in how they express themselves.