A Mini Biography Of My Karaoke Career
My Vocal Journey
If you’ve stumbled upon this about page, then you are a little interested in the story of Melody Beats and (more importantly) my start as a singer.
I was never talented as a singer when I first started. I was your regular, ordinary guy who just loved karaoke and sang just for fun even if I sounded terrible. And for the longest time I always believed that great singing was only from genetics, not from hard work…
Which is completely false.
That’s why I just wanted to share a quick story of my vocal journey to let you know the ups and downs of figuring out how to improve my voice.
And after many years, I finally found a way to transform my voice. A system that can allow anybody to sing even if you’re tone deaf (but most people aren’t tone deaf…)
But anyway…
Let’s get started starting from my childhood.
2004: The beginning of my love for singing started
I loved karaoke.
And I still do.
The difference though was that although it was extremely fun… My friends and family would flinch when they see the 7 year old me go up and grab the mic.
And then moments later I would go screaming into the mic singing classics like “Uptown Girl” by Elton John or even “Barbie Girl” by Aqua (A must for every karaoke session…)
And I always had the thought that the louder I sang, the better it sounded. At least, according to the karaoke machine score.
But either way, I had a lot of fun. But this was around the same time that I was unknowingly getting brainwashed that you could never improve your voice.
And here lies the three culprits:
1. The First Offender: American Idol
When you see 4-year-olds belting out Mariah Carey doing insane runs and hitting those incredibly high notes…
You can’t be helped but be impressed. But as I’m watching this, I’m thinking that this must be genetics and you probably had to be born with an amazing voice to sound like that (there’s only so much training you can do when you’re 4 years old.)
And I saw no “bad” young singers. They were all fantastic. The only time you saw a terrible singer was an adult singing so people can boo and laugh (which is sadly by the show’s design) but either way…
As a kid, I believed that you’re just born with a wonderful voice.
2. The Second Offender: Your Genetically Talented (and untalented) Friends and Family
The second thing that reinforced my memory was that there were some people who were just “naturally good”. I’m sure you have someone you know that just had a great voice without any training and could sing on pitch and hit those incredibly high ranges with a great vibrato. And then you had the 95% of friends and family who didn’t have a great voice (which I fell into!)
And then when I asked my cousin, they just said they didn’t really train, and it already sounded like this.
Which further reinforced the fact that I thought singing was all genetics. And because I believed in that, I thought there was no point in vocal training (which I was pretty wrongn about…)
And that’s how my singing career was halted at the young age of 7 years old.
2014: Middle School
This was around the time where you can tell I still wanted to sing since I recorded myself on my laptop singing Naruto songs (As you can tell, I was a big fan of the 2nd opening of Naruto…)
And this was a good basis of where my song started. But even during this time, I still had some hope but didn’t decide to do any vocal training.
2017: Freshmen Year in College
This time when I was browsing through the web after a game of League of Legends with my buddies, I stumbled upon this singing course that said it could improve my voice.
I had doubts about this program but followed it anyway and commit.
So 5 times a week I was doing these singing exercises in the boys’ dorm where I would shower for 20 minutes doing those silly exercises with the “Mum” and the “bloooooooop”. As first my roommates got annoyed but then they lived with it.
I don’t have any recordings of this (as I was showering) but after a whole 6 months of doing these exercises and having my friend play the piano; I asked them if my voice improved.
They said no.
And then I quit again thinking that there’s no way to improve your voice. In retrospect, this singing course would be beneficial if you were already a decent singer looking to improve but it was not designed for beginners starting from scratch.
2019: Junior Year
So I tried again and buy another singing course (I’d like to say persistence is my middle name!). This time it was with different singing exercises with “googs” and “moogs” to get that voice warmed up.
And then I did this 3-5x a week for 6 months and asked my friends to re-evaluate with the same song “Piano Man” by Billy Joel.
They said I might’ve sounded a little better, but I still sounded bad.
Welp… There goes my dream.
2020-2023: Hired a vocal coach and started teaching others how to sing
This was the turning point where I realized a great vocal coach can make or break your singing voice. I went through a couple mediocre and bad ones. There were some who were really great at singing naturally but didn’t know how to teach someone from scratch. And then there were others who were strict and forced me into classical singing. Luckily, I eventually found a good one. And here is where the defining moment was.
My voice was actually improving.
I don’t know why I was so obsessed with improving my voice but I just wanted to sound good when I sing. But I found my way, and it was through this systemic training that showed progress and worked exactly where I needed to work.
And it amazed me. I finally saw my voice improved and transformation with my vocal coach. Of course, I had to put in hours and still practiced 3-5x a day but I found the right system at my current stage to get to the next level.
And that’s what I know how to do. I learned how to go from a complete beginner to an intermediate-advanced singer if that even makes sense. After polishing my pitch, runs, vibrato, and control I’d like to say that I’m definitely an intermediate singer just at the starting line for advanced players.
And that’s not all, I learned a system so that any beginner can learn how to sing starting from scratch (since I was there.)
And even better is that I could improve this system so that anyone can decide to learn it (it works for everybody even if your tone deaf.)
I’m now able to practice on my own but I of course still hire a professional vocal coach because you can’t beat an expert with more experience giving you live feedback on your voice telling you what you need to work on at that exact moment.
And this is just the start of my journey.
Thanks for reading this and hopefully with the tips and knowledge I share you can improve your voice.
Thanks,
Anthony Nebel