1. Know thy voice.

Spend quality alone time with your voice. Take your voice out on dates, so to speak, and really get to know it. You might even try recording your singing voice to hear it more objectively. Find out the answers to these questions:

Is my singing voice big or small? Thin or full?
What kind of vibrato do I have? Fast, slow, medium, heavy, thin, non-existent? Am I able to sing both with and without vibrato? When I sing without vibrato, does it feel different in my body than when I do sing with vibrato?

What is my full vocal range? What range am I most comfortable singing in?
Where is my passaggio (the pitch(es) where the voice changes registers)?
How long can I sing without taking a breath? (i.e. How well do I support my breath?) What do I notice in my body and what do I notice about my tone when I start to run out of breath?

How does it feel in my body when I am singing well and when I am not singing well?
What kinds of food and drink affect my voice negatively/positively?
How long does it take for my voice to "warm up"?

There are no right or wrong answers to these questions—everybody's voice is different. The more informed you are about your own voice, the better you will be able to care for it and improve it.

2. Take care of yourself.

Your body is your instrument and you only get one. So, stay hydrated. Get enough sleep. Don't smoke.

3. Support your breath.

You've probably heard this before by every choral director and voice teacher you've ever had—and there's a reason for that. Proper breath support is imperative if you want your tone to sound the best it can. Unfortunately, it seems like every pedagogue has a different way of explaining breath support, which leads to a lot of confusion. This is an area where a personal voice teacher will come in handy for you. He or she will work one-on-one with you to help you learn or improve your breath support so that your tone is always supported. [Read: "Choral Cliché: Support the Tone."]

4. Keep your jaw loose.

A tense jaw will cause your tone to sound constricted and may even cause you to sing out of tune. So, reduce your jaw movement to only what is necessary and don't chew on your vowels. For example, if you are singing a major scale on "ah," there is little need to move your jaw while ascending from pitch to pitch. Keep your jaw as stationary and as loose as possible, and think of making the shape of the vowel inside your mouth rather than with the muscles in your lips.

5. Read ahead of the beat.

When reading music, always have your eye at least one or two beats ahead—that way you can anticipate what's coming next and you'll be less likely to be caught off guard when you encounter a curveball interval jump. This can be especially helpful when doing a cold sightread through a new piece of music.

6. Listen louder than you sing.

Aural multi-tasking—the ability to listen to yourself while simultaneously listening to other singers and musicians in your ensemble—is a challenge that every choral singer faces. Please: Do not plug up one earlobe to be able to hear yourself better. Why? If you have to do that to hear yourself, then you aren't training yourself to listen holistically.

If you're having trouble hearing yourself in the group, one trick is to angle your music book or folder in front of you (but without completely burying yourself behind it, of course) so that some of your sound bounces back to you as you sing. Use acoustics to your advantage.

The best way to avoid vocal straining is to sing correctly. No matter how experienced or inexperienced a singer may be, many have at one time or another strained their vocal chords. Whether you are singing once or twice a week or once a month, take care of your voice and use it properly every time you sing. The voice is a singer's instrument. Care for it the way a musician cares for their instrument.

The usual symptoms of vocal straining are tightness in the throat, a raspy tone or partial loss of voice or range. Many singers will experience vocal straining or partial loss of voice after long rehearsals, multiple shows or singing in higher ranges. If you prepare yourself for these situations, you will sing more comfortably and will not experience any straining. Below are 5 ways to help you recognize and avoid straining.

Breathing Correctly

One of the most important parts of singing is your breathing. If you are running out of air and still pushing out the notes, you will experience straining.

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Http://voices.yahoo.com/how-avoid-strain…

First – You need a lesson on camcorder microphones. The standard Consumer level camcorder, HD or SD Microphones, are all the same. They get their best audio to a point about 4 feet from the camcorders microphone. The further than that you move, the audio capture quality diminishes. In a noisy environment, that fall off is near vertical.

So off you go with your camcorder, you get to the concert and your in the 17th row on the floor. The band comes on, you fire up your camcorder and start recording. The concert ends and off you go to your editing program. You get the footage on your computer, view it and this is what your going to hear. The audios best parts are of the bands biggest fan, sitting right in front of you, singing, talking, foot stomping, yelling and snorting. Then the nearer background noises are mostly the same thing. The band, if they can be heard at all, are very faint in the background of the audio.

If you want the best possible audio, do what is required to get a feed from the mixer to camcorders MIC port or a Digital Audio recorder. Be prepared to offer the cable you need to use on their system, this means having many cables at your disposal. Then, because you cannot get to a microphone, have fun syncing the audio and video back together.

Second – HD camcorders answer

Getting a HD camcorder is taking a step backward in Video Quality. HD camcorders Interpolate the video, which means of every 25 frames of video, 4 or 5 frames are taken by the lens assembly, the other frames in between these are filled in by the camcorder inner circuitry, thus giving you not true video. MiniDV tape camcorders give every frame of every shot and usually cost less.

Http://simplevideoediting.com/learn/part…

Http://simplevideoediting.com/learn/part…

Consumer level HD camcorders have 4 problems. 1) Blurry, fuzzy, out of focus areas closely around people in videos taken by consumer level HD camcorders. 2) Any movement, even a wave or lifting an arm, while in front of a recording consumer level HD camcorder, results in screen ghosts and artifacts being left on the video track, following the movement. Makes for bad video, sports videos are unwatchable. 3) These Consumer level HD camcorders all have a habit of the transferred to computer files are something you need to convert, thus losing your HD quality, to work with your editing software. 4) Mandatory maximum record times – 1 hour, 30 minutes, 8 minutes, 3 minutes – four different times advertised as maximum record time for some consumer level HD camcorders. No event I have ever been to is that short. Either take multiple camcorders or pack up with out getting the end of the event on video.

MiniDV is currently the most popular format for consumer digital camcorders. MiniDV camcorders are typically more affordable than their HDD and DVD counterparts. Each MiniDV tape will typically hold an hour of footage at normal recording speed and quality. MiniDV tapes are available for purchase at not only electronic and camera stores, but also at drugs stores and grocery stores, making them easy to find while your on vacation. There are literally hundreds of MiniDV camcorders available; both in standard and high-definition. And add the fact that to get a HD camcorder that could produce better video quality footage, one would have to spend in excess of $3500 for that camcorder that could produce higher quality video.

Http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/p…

What I use – Http://asimplelife.ca/boss.html

You DEFINITELLLLY have potential to be REALLY good. I'm not just saying that. I've been a singer for a long time now, and i can tell when someone who has potential, and you do, miss! With some singing lessons, you can be good. At first i thought it was actually judy garland singing!

With all good things, theres gotta be some bad things as well..
Soo..
1. You have too much vibrato. Vibrato is that "shaking" you do with the notes, at the end of the note. Try to stop doing that so much.tone it down a little bit.
2. Your singing is very breathy. In order to stop that, you need to take big breaths from your diaphragm and belt out a few lyrics. Then, when you need air, take a breath. But make sure you're breathing enough so you dont have to gasp for air.

You have a nice tone to start with, try to join a chorus or vocal program at your school, if they have, or if you have the money, get private singing lessons. You can get good with lots of practice.

Good luck!