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Originally Posted by btoto
Wow, you know your job...............I did what you said i.e pushed air without sound and now I'm sure..........yes it is my throat. I don't know why I thought it was back of my head 
Ok I'll be frank with you. Actually all these problems with pain and mucus started to appear after I sang and played Nirvana's "Drain You" for several days, trying to sound like Cobain too much. Maybe this is the reason, but it's not that hard song.
Yes, mucus started to come around over last week. I mean, it's not it causes me so much trouble. And sometimes I even like..........because, you know that with mucus it's easy to get raspy and sound cool. But it becomes irritating while talking.............I know that it annoys people I'm talking to. I guess they think that I have a bad desease and going to die soon...lolz 
Ok I'll try to sing lower for a couple of minutes after I finish...........well, actually I doubt I can do it. Let me explain the situation:
I do all the singing and guitar playing at home. But I do it when there's no one around. And it happens not that often. I mean I'm kinda ashamed to sing when my family is at home. So as soon as they leave, I pick up my guitar and start singing. And I don't do any warmups because I know that I have for example only 35 minutes, and I want to enjoy myself all that little time. 
I guess now you understand me why I don't any warmups. Simply because I have little time for singing and I want to use it for my own songs. 
Also, if it's possible for you, can you please download Nirvana's "Lithium"? I want to know what Cobain is doing in chorus. The "Yeah Yeah Yeah" part. Because as it sounds to me, it's not screaming......and I don't want to scream, I just to be able to do that thing he does, it sounds to me more like an agressive singing rather than screaming.
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mmmm hmmm
well, i used to be in the same position. its really crippling i know. i used to have to do the same thing. however!....
you can keep your voice in a more ready place if you vocalize throughout the day. you can do low volume humming, or hum tunes or doing familiar songs or commercial jingles, just whatever. and do the lip flutter sounds like when you were little and playing with cars. do this with scales and stuff and try to keep the flutter going constant as you rise and fall. you will be able to feel the shift in opening the throat in order to keept the pressure constant. so you owe it to yourself to learn ways to sneak in vocal cord energizing throught the day. or go for a walk or a jog, this really helps warm you up, dont grunt though or make too many forceful sounds. you can do pushups and crunches or workout. you can sneak in alot of sounds then and noone will have a clue. Ya know, if they say we're getting ready to go to the store blah blah, you can start crunching or working out. now this will get obvious over time. but if you work enough you can have enough confidence so that you can at least do warm ups while they are at the house. Im 28 and still wouldnt feel comfortable singin around my sister, or much of my family. if you dont warm up you can expect only limitation and increase in harming yourself(hence the overprotecting mucus). its like running track, lifting weights, golf, bowling, anything.
Trust me, mucus is not gonna let you get the most bang for your buck. once you learn proper technique you'll look back on this post and say wtf? plus your vocie will get better tone and you wont sound like a zombie. have you checked out any of the rasp instruction posts and soundclips? its all a trick really of banking the air off of the back of your throat. theres not too many vocal effects you can do but pushing too much air is never one of them, especially in head voice. you might have been doing some fry which is when your cords just flap from the pressure. you need to look into the isolation exercises and keeping your larynx relaxed and not tensing up to get your notes. Theres a lot of muscles in the throat area. you need to work with seperating them. its like drumming. think how crappy it sounds if you cant quite seperate your foot from your hand. the greatest drummers have their brain signals completely split between limbs. great singers do the same.
When warming down go from your highest note down to your lowest like siren. do this a few times. or at the least continue to hum and vocalize...and do eee's . I'll check out lithium. i know i have that nevermind cd...it is on there isnt it? Im so happy, cause today i found my friends...etc? yea! yea! yea!. (now i want to go sing it, first thing tomorrow when i wake up! my fave was come as you are) i can already tell you most of what cobain does is just rasping off of the back of the throat, with various amounts of falsetto and head mixed ..which basically means more or less cord activation....closing the cords or opening them. THis is what everyone does. there's not much else! just takes practice to learn it without overstressing the cords. i might post a sample of it maybe. doesnt take a lot of push, not as much as it sounds! (especially with well warmed up flexible cords....ahem, hint hint)
work with isolation. once you can work with the cords alone you can pretty much take your pick as to what you want to sound like. the isolation thread has some stuff in it.
take care. and dont forget to sneak in some warming up from now on at least.