quandry (not beginner)

i don't know the answers to your questions but sometimes a more untrained voice is better that a trained professional voice.

I am currently taking lessons so I could shed some light if you like...
i find that i can hit the notes when i concentrate but still after so long (singing prob 5 to 6 solid hours a week at least) if i stop concentrating i go totally flat and suck...its painful because it takes the fun out fo singing and just makes it tiring

Because I can't see you sing ... or hear you ... I am guessing that this is due to the fact that you are not warming up. If you are warming up this could be because you are tensing up to hit the higher notes. Also, you might be thinking of 'reaching'the high notes instead of coming over the top of the high notes ... (making sense). When you practice what do you practice?
also iv been wondering why some people sound like singers and other sound like people wanting to be singers, and its not to do with hitting all the notes either, i can do that. and people tell me i have a good voice but get a singer from a decent pub band and me side by side and youll easily be able to pick the 'singer' ... what qualities define what we view as a 'provessional sounding voice' ??

The reality is if you can talk you can sing. Singing is like speech only it is extended. People wanting to be singers or the ones that sound like they want to be singers are the ones that do not use their own voice. Instead they imitate or copy another singers voice. When somebody is trained and learns how to project his/her voice correctly then he/she is able to show the most out of his/her voice and again anyone can be taught. Hence, the proffessional sounding voice is the trained one the one that is projected correctly.

nah i warm up properly, i just think i must not have the pitch of the notes embedded right in my head, cause i will go flat regulary when im not concentrating :S my voice is a LOT better than it used to be, i think i may just be nervous of missing notes and that tenses my throat up, causing a strained sound. i practice songs of different genres, just sing through them, play guitar at the same time. kinda just average practice. i was doing scales but the warmup cd iv got pretty much covers that to so thats great. im just not sure how to turn my ok voice into a good voice.

you need lessons for turning it into a "good" voice. it's working for me anyway. I may not be good, either, but i'm better after lessons all year.

yeah lessons help heaps, iv only been to about 3 i think but made huge leaps forward in those...

everytime i go and work out what i need to learn i end up with a big list, then try and do a little of each thing and end up not really getting better at any of them...i think i need to devote time to each individual aspect of singing separetly to really make good improvement, eg. 2 weeks purely on breathing, two weeks on pitch, work on timbre etc... pretty much as a body building masters the basics and then goes to 'advanced shaping' to really specialise and maximise his workout

The idea of working separately on different aspects of singing is intriguing, though I'm not sure it would be so easy in practice to isolate them. Singing to me is like a golf swing--you dissect it, and you come to realize that certain things aren't right--but then the effort to fix the problem invariably throws something else out of whack! At least for me it does!

I'm intrigued by what you do to improve timbre--do you have exercizes for this?

Best,
Jersey Jack

'positioning the voice' as it were makes a huge difference to timbre, so if you focus on 'head voice' by trying to have no resistance to the flow of air, even if it asounds high and weak, then gradually using that feeling to have kindof a 'pilot' light for where to aim your voice, then you add more and more power to add chest voice to that sound. this technique has helped me a lot to be able to hit high notes with no lead up (eg the 'yeah' in kryptonite by three doors down)

you can also reach the same notes by pushing your voice hard from the chest, but it gets gravelly and can hurt sometimes, but iv found after a bit of practice i can hit the high notes with a little bit a crunchyness in my voice if i want to, or sing them clean.

so iv now got some sounds and timbres to use in different songs to mix them up a bit

I think your questions just boil down to more practice and confidence ... singing is pretty much like any other instrument and 2 years is some experience, but still having to concentrate at that point is not surprising ... I mean I think for any instrument (guitar, bass, drums, piano, etc) at the 2 year point not many people are at a level where they are playing effortlessly - at least not many people I've known (certainly not me anyway ;-p) - singing's not really much different - especially when your voice can be SO affected by state of mind/tension/stress/etc too ... being able to do it confidently and effortlessly will likely come with time.

As to people sounding like 'singers' and people sounding like they want to be singers ... I think that is partially that effortlessness that comes with time/confidence - and I suspect that people you would classify as 'singers' are people who as someone else said have really found their unique voice (which also comes with time/confidence)