A lot of good advice in this thread. Anything that Alice posts. And the long post by Yorkshire Yankee (02 Nov 04 - 09:07 PM). Really good stuff there. Cut and paste it into a document file, save it to disk, print it out, and read it every day.

One of my voice teachers had me bring my guitar to lessons, and part of the lesson would consist of me singing a song I had already learned or whatever new song I was working on at the time. Often I would get a verse or two into the song when he would stop me and say, "That last line. Tell me what that means." He was not asking me about some esoteric reference in an obscure ballad, he was asking me precisely "What does it mean?" It didn't take me long to figure out that he knew what the line meant, but he could tell that I didn't, not really. I was singing the line--or sometimes most of the song--by rote. I wasn't really communicating the song. If I didn't really understand it and feel it, how could I put it across to my audience?   

He was a terrific teacher. Not only did I learn a lot about vocal technique from him, but I learned how to put a song across. "Don't just sing. Communicate!

Don Firth