Song 1 - Vocals progress

Oh my god, singing is so hard. No wait, make that, making your voice sound good is so hard.

I started singing some vocals a few days ago. After my first attempt at singing some parts, I listened back to them. They sucked. And I deleted. It's pretty depressing when you sing and discover is sounds shit. Something was missing. Since then I've discovered a few things, here goes:

Know thy voice.
I had to learn a lot about my voice, and still am. What it's strengths and weaknesses are. What its tone is. How I sound generally. And then, begin using my strengths. Listening back to myself was a real eye opener to learning about my voice. The hardest part was accepting it. I spent a whole day being depressed at the sound of my voice. It wasn't the voice that I envisaged singing the song in my head. That was really hard.
After a while, I had to gather some balls, and rediscover my song with my voice in it. It meant scrapping some lyrics and rewriting. I've since found out that my vocal tones are sort of like a mix between Thom Yorke and Mika. But not. Basically, I found that I like the tones in my voice when I sound depressed and/or falsetto. Letting go of what I had imagined it would all sound like was tough.
Another hard pill to swallow is that my voice probably isn't suited to electro/rock music in general. That REALLY sucks. Its probably more suited to quiet acoustic or insanely experimental music or something. I'm still not sure yet. What I do know is that there's no 'guts' to my voice. Its smooth and serene and soft.

Work the music and voice together in a draft cut
Next time I go to record a song, I'll try to get a first draft mix with vocals included to help compose the song. That will help me understand how the music and vocal fit and then I can change either/or to suit. I will save the time that I spend recording and then scrapping the recording coz it doesn't work.

Anyway, so I've started to find a happy place in the music for my voice that kinda works. Its still needs a lot more thought though. Today I worked on a part which I did 36 takes for it (not kidding), and I still don't like it. I keep discovering new ways that I could be singing the words that would sound better. Its bloody tiring...

Afternoon update: I did another 18 takes of that part this afternoon. And I hate it. It just doesn't suit my voice I think. I'll keep what I've done, but I've decided i'm going to try recording a different set of lyrics for this section later. This is just an example of how seriously hard it is to lay down a good set of vocals. Grrrrrr..

Wear a hoodie
I sound better, and look cooler, with a hoodie on.

I'm tired of writing this, so gunna get back to singing now.