At first, Green Day was part of the California punk scene. Childhood friends Billie Joe Armstrong (guitar, vocals) and Mike Dirnt (bass; born Mike Pritchard) formed their first band, Sweet Children, in Rodeo, California when they were 14 years old. By 1989, the group had added drummer Al Sobrante and changed their name to Green Day. That year, the band independently released their first EP, 1,000 Hours, which was well-received in the punk scene. Soon, the group had signed a contract with the local independent label, Lookout! Records. 39/Smooth, Green Day’s first album, was released later that year. Shortly after its release, the band replaced Kiftmeyer with Tre Cool (born Frank Edwin Wright, III); Tre Cool became the band’s permanent drummer.

Throughout the early ’90s, Green Day continued to cultivate a cult following, which only gained strength with the release of their second album, 1992′s Kerplunk. The underground success of Kerplunk led to a wave of interest from major record labels; the band eventually decided to sign with Reprise. Dookie, Green Day’s major label debut, was released in the spring of 1994. Thanks to MTV support for the initial single “Longview,” Dookie became a major hit. The album continued to gain momentum throughout the summer, with the second single “Basket Case” spending five weeks on the top of the American modern rock charts. At the end of the summer, the band stole the show at Wo odstock ’94, which helped the sales of Dookie increase.

By the time the fourth single “When I Come Around” began its seven-week stay at number one in the modern rock charts in early 1995, Dookie had sold over five million copies in the US alone; it would eventually top eight million in America, selling over eleven million copies internationally. Dookie also won the 1994 Grammy for Best Alternative Music Performance.

Green Day quickly followed Dookie with Insomniac in the fall of 1995; during the summer, they hit number one again on the modern rock charts with “J.A.R.,” their contribution to the Angus soundtrack. Insomniac performed well initially, entering the US charts at number two, and selling over two million copies by the spring of 1996, yet none of its singles — including the radio favorite “Brain Stew/Jaded” — were as popular as those from Dookie. In the spring of 1996, Green Day abruptly canceled a European tour, claiming exhaustion. Following the cancellation, the band spent the rest of the year resting and writing new material. The end result is what is called by many, the best album of their career, Nimrod.

Nimrod was well recieved by most critics and fans. The album sold 80,000 copies in it’s first week to land at #10 on the Billboard charts. The first single from Nimrod was “Hitchin’ A Ride”.  The single made it to No.5 on the modern rock charts and was in heavy rotation on MuchMusic and MTV. The next single the band released would not make it to number one (it’s highest position was #2), but it is now probably the most well known songs Green Day ever wrote. Featuring Billie Joe on accoustic guitar and vocals, “Time Of Your Life” became the song to play in any remotely sad situation. The song was even used on the last ever episode of the hit TV show Seinfeld (it was also the most watched finale in the history of TV). Along with Seinfeld, the song was also played on E.R on two different shows.

Nimrod has sold about two million copies, the lowest sales total out of their three major label albums, but it probably garnered the band more respect than they could have expected with another Dookie or Insomniac. The band also vastly improved their live show and even one “Best Live Performance” at the Kerrang awards.

After nearly two years with barely any mention of the band, Green Day returned in late 1999 to play Neil Young’s “Bridge School Benefit Concert”, their first live accoustic performance. Green Day began recording their follow-up to “Nimrod” shortly after, which would eventually become “Warning:”. Early in the recording process, the band decided to fire their new producer, Scott Litt, and produce the album themselves, marking the first time since “Kerplunk” that anyone but Rob Cavallo produced the bands recording. After they finished recording, Green Day decided to do something else they hadn’t done before headline the 2000 Vans Warped Tour. Green Day played an amazing set and brought more fans to the tour than any other year in Warped’s history (their Toronto performance alone attracted 7,000 more fans than they had any other year).

“Warning:” was released in the fall of 2000, and is by far Green Day’s most ambitious album to date. If its first singles, “Minority” and the album’s title track, are any indication, the album could prove to be extremely successful. Just four weeks after the release of “Minority”, it sat atop Billboard’s Modern Rock chart; no other Green Day song has hit the top that fast.

In September of 2004 Green Day  released “American Idiot”, an album which lashes out against the American government and the media. “American Idiot” was the first Green Day record ever to debut at #1 on the Billboard Charts, and other music charts around the world. The album’s title track, was an instant success. The follow up single, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” experienced a must greater success. “American Idiot” was nominated for seven Grammy awards, and took home one, “Best Rock Album”. In August of 2005, Green Day took home 7 Video Music Awards from MTV.

1. Pronounce all consonants – This is very important. Consonants like “b, c, d, g, j, k, l, p, q, s, t, v, w, x, and z” are what are called “voiced consonants.” Pronounce their sounds and you will see that they have a sound you can pronounce. Other consonants, like “f, h, m, n, and r” are imploded consonants. This means that the sounds can’t really be said. For example, the “f” sound is like “fff,” while g, a voiced consonant sounds like “guh.” You must emphasis all consonant sounds when you are singing, whether they are voiced or imploded. If you have a word that ends with a “t” or “k,” you must pronounce it. For example, say you were singing “I want to take it to the end of the rainbow,” you would sing, “I wanT To TaKe iT To thee enD of the rainbow,” which the capitalized letters being clearly pronounced and slightly emphasized. Don’t overemphasize or you will hurt your vocal cords.
2. Vowel sounds are also very important. Some vowel sounds are “dipthongs,” which means they have more than one pure vowel sound in them. The pure vowel sounds are “Ah, eh, ee, o, ooh.” Some vowels, like the long “I” sound, are a combination of these sounds – in that case, “Ah – ee.” When you run into dipthongs, you must pronounce both vowel sounds. You must also pronounce the vowel sounds clearly and by the pure sounds, NOT the same as you would in general speaking. For example, the sentence “Night has gone and day has come” would be “N-ah-ee-ght hAHs gone AHnd dAHy hAHs cUHm.”|
3. Relax your mouth – Singers can’t be tense. Let your jaw drop and remain slack. Let your tongue fall forward in your mouth and rest, flat, against your front teeth. Don’t move it too much when you are pronouncing words, and don’t try to use your jaw to control pronunciation or volume. Stay loose and relaxed, with everything falling forward.
4. When singing, feel like you are always on the edge of a yawn – this will create the correct tone in your voice. It will feel weird, and probably sound weird at first, but that’s how the professionals do it. Make yourself yawn, and then talk in a “sing-song” voice. This is how you will feel and sound (sort of) when you have the correct tone to your voice.
5. Posture is very important for singers. Your feet should be shoulder-width apart (some singers put one foot slightly in front of the other). Your shoulders should be relaxed and down. Your body should be loose – not tense, but not hunched over, either.
6. Breathing is also very important. Always take a deep breath from your stomach, NEVER your chest. A low breath will push your diaphragm down and help you control your air. The idea is to have enough air to sustain a phrase. You will learn how to control your air as you sing. Don’t let too much of it out at once or your tone will sound breathy. Always practice taking a deep breath from low in your stomach, and learn to control from there. Take a deep breath, then try pretending you’re blowing through a straw. This will help you develop breath control. If you’re not sure where you’re breathing from, lay down on the floor and place a folder or notebook on your stomach. It should rise as you breathe – your chest should not. When you’re standing, your shoulders should remain down when you breathe.
7. To create vibrato, you must keep your jaw very relaxed and dropped, and allow the vibrato to develop naturally. If you clench your jaw or try to force vibrato, it won’t happen. You will feel vibrations in your throat, around where your tonsils are when you begin to develop vibrato.
   
8. Practice a lot. You will begin to notice where each pitch lies in your voice, and how your throat and mouth feel when you hit that pitch. Use this to memorize where specific pitches are, which will improve your accuracy.
9. Find your best tone. Tone is strongly affected by your state of mind. You may find that you sound better when you imitate someone else, like an opera singer, pop diva or rock star. Have fun experimenting and don’t hold back! You may be surprised at just how good you can sound.  Find your natural volume. Many people sing too softly, out of shyness or embarrassment. This keeps them from being able to support a good tone. Others sing as loudly as possible, which can result in sharp or flat notes, as well as body tension. Singing at your natural volume should feel good, not forced or constricted.

Enjoy yourself! If you take all these tips to heart, singing could become a habit and better.

If you implement these tips into your singing, you will notice an immediate improvement in the quality of your voice.

These tips will help you to sing with more vocal range, better tone, and much more flexibility. It took me many years to discover these tips, so pay attention, because you’re about to learn them all at once!

The first tip on improving singing is an exercise called the “lip roll”. If you religiously practice this exercise and nothing else, you will notice a large improvement in your voice in a matter of weeks.

The reason it works so well is it does a magnificent job of balancing out your voice as you sing. You see, when you sing there are three main things that need to be in balance for your voice to sound great.

These three things are your air pressure, your vocal resonance and your vocal chord coordination.

Now, these topics are all fairly big, so I’m not going to cover them all in this article. You can however get excellent training at this website , which will help you master these important areas of singing.

For now though, just know that the “lip roll” exercise I’m about to show you balances these three areas, which is exactly what you need to happen to develop an excellent singing voice.

Ok, the lip roll is fairly simple to do, but you need to actually hear what it sounds like to get a good idea of how it’s done.

A little while back I recorded a tutorial demonstrating how to do this very effective exercise. I highly recommend you check out the tutorial, because this exercise can help your singing tremendously.

The second tip on improving singing is to experiment singing in your upper vocal range using a very squeaky “waaa” sound. (Sort of like a baby crying)

When you use this very squeaky sound, you should be able to sing in your upper vocal range with much less vocal strain, because it “forces” your vocal chords to form the correct vocal coordination for your upper vocal range.

Many singers have trouble with singing in their upper vocal registers because they “pull” much of the weight from their lower vocal register up too high. By keeping things really squeaky you should be able to “drop” much of this weight and sing correctly in your upper vocal registers (known as your mixed voice and your head voice).