On topic:
Mary, you have some singing talent! A great foundation already and your voice sounds really pleasing. Also very nice vibrato. To my ears there's some intonation issues but those are minor and happen at some spots, not all the time. And intonation issues is something that does happen with longer term singers, too. So in the end you can be quite confident with where you're at already.
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As for shemp - here's my opinion:
He wasn't trolling. He gave honest advice. Now instead of replying 'Yeah sure, that would be a good idea, I'll do that - why not having my singing be judged on a specific forum' (while I absolutely agree that we do have singers/singing drummers on this forum and ultimately, a musician's ears can tell whether things sound nice or not - singing included) Mary's (subjective) (over)reaction was to call shemp a troll etc - which he isn't IMHO.
Mary, why didn't _you_ just ignore shemp's initial reply and moved on? Would that have been so hard? I don't believe you. I guarantee you you'll grow as a person if you open yourself up to a more objective way of processing info that others are giving you. Shemp gave an opinion, his initial post wasn't trolling or stirring anything up. It was _up to you_ to either react or ignore. You chose to react - you have the right to do so, but a bit more objectiveness (or the attempt thereof) would have been a classy idea - just my humble opinion.
Now some opinions might not be to someone else's perfect liking, but hey, that's what they are - opinions. Not a bad idea to look this term up in a dictionary if you aren't sure what an opinion is. Granted, on a forum opinions have to be expressed in a certain/acceptable way but that's what shemp did.
On shemp in Andy's thread (everybody knows what I mean):
To me we had a similar
I'm sure many forum members agree that _after_ shemp's participation in Andy's thread, shemp built up somewhat of a nice reputation contributing info in many other threads (and a few created by him) across the forum. People started to interact more with him and respect him. And didn't you notice the way he was replying in a consistently controlled and mild way free of harsh expressions, accusations and other crap (that many other members couldn't stay away from)? What does that tell you? The man has good control of what he's saying and the way he's expressing it. But - sometimes his opinion might differ from others. Well wake up, that's natural!
You know what? I haven't seen _one single post_ by him that was aggressive, trolling, stirring things up or whatever. _None!_ If in doubt - go back, reread whatever you want, but _without overreacting_. Why don't you try to embrace different opinions? It's up to _you_ to start a fight or get over it, simply ignore those posts and that's it. 'shemp, you aren't that bad' or something to this effect was what I've been reading in a good number of posts. Frankly, I _never_ had the impression he was a troll. And even in Andy's thread I didn't see the need to ban him at any time. In fact I was wondering why people couldn't embrace a different opinion (expressed in a controlled/reasonable way) and move on. But they fired back, even using some language. That's not nice, folks!
In Andy's thread people (it seemed) were waiting to see shemp being banned. I was thinking all the time: Why? For what reasons? Do we ban people because their view isn't commonly accepted? Would you want to be a member of a forum that bans people for no reason? Can't people open up their eyes and move on, ignoring shemp's opinion? No, obviously they couldn't. It takes a reaction to create a conflict. And honestly, shemp had a marvellous way of consistently replying in a controlled fashion and using _zero_ hard language. Open your eyes - many can learn from him! And please don't misinterpret the absence of admin/moderator posts in the beginning of Andy's thread and the fact that shemp wasn't banned right away when people started saying he should be banned for weakness/lack of resolution on the admins' side. It was because there was no need to react, that's why! Really, I was scratching my head why people were overreacting so badly. I don't want to have people taking up what has been discussed in Andy's thread, but that's what people could have done - moving on, ignoring the opinion of one single member - who changed the world - Drummerworld - by a single/a few posts. But why? Because many members showed strong reactions. Now imagine they would have ignored that man - what would have happened? N o t h i n g.
Personally I regret learning he's been banned (nighttime in Europe when it happened - I just stood up) - not by me for sure. As an admin/mod I won't do anything to restore his account, respecting the opinion of some (probably even many) members of this forum. Personally something tells me to have a few PM's with Bernhard in this matter but I won't do this as 'the forum' seems to have a problem with shemp, not the other way round. I do hope though that the other admins/mods will think this over for themselves and maybe change their view. Let's imagine his account would be restored: Folks, show a tiny bit more respect towards opinions that you might _not_ fully share, grow a tiny bit more as a person and - voila, problem solved! Some stuff is purely mind related. Change your mind (or simply embrace different opinions) and the problem is gone instantly! Does that hurt? In a way - yes, but you'll grow as a person. Not that bad actually.
Just to sum it all up: Anybody else's words don't force anybody to anything. Yet shemp's words had a tremendous effect in Andy's thread, but did shemp force anybody to anything? Please go back to what actually happened. Once you understand that it's up to you to make whatever you're making out of it - if you blow some words up by huge magnitudes you might feel insulted or whatever. If you take those words/an opinion for what it is, you can easily get over it, with zero overreaction.