Posting this for Stump....
Jcluesman,
Sounds like (as mentioned above) you are not gating at the start and end of the note. Youre starting and stopping the air at the source... lungs/diaphragm. I think youre making progress a bit with air flow, there is an increase in the sound quality on the last one... but its still flat. But it will take time... so dont get discouraged.
I was helping friend learn to call one time, and we went round and round with everything... youre not gating, youre using the tip of your tongue, not enough volume of air, too much pressure, too slow air, too fast... and on and on. And almost every time his response was "I am!" or "I did!". I bet for weeks we kept butting heads... Finally, one morning he calls me completely ecstatic. "LISTEN TO THIS!!!" and by golly, he had a good quack. I asked him, "So how'd you figure that out?" His exact response, "I did what you told me to!". He said it was the craziest thing... he was driving along practicing in the pickup, and all of a sudden he got one good note. Took him a minute or two to get to it again, but then he was able to repeat it pretty regularly. Turns out, for him, it wasnt that he wasnt trying to do what I was explaining, it wasnt that he didnt understand what I was telling him to do... nor that he couldnt do what I was trying to teach him... but he had to train his body understand what it was that his brain was trying to tell it to do. And the he got there was trying over and over until he got it right accidentally, and then try and zero in on it, and start doing that on purpose.
Think about the air flow/presentation like this... and if you have an air compressor and a few fittings and a ball valve, you can make a perfect example of it so you can see/feel it in real life...
Say you have an air hose, and it has a valve at the outlet end. You open the end valve, then hold your hand over the end to feel the flow, and then plug in the compressor. The flow, velocity, and pressure builds up over time until the maximum capacity of the compressor is reached. Now unplug the compressor and the air flow decreases over time from residual pressure in the tank. Now shut the valve at the END of the hose. Open the valve. Immediate full flow/velocity/pressure. Shut it, instant off, no ramp up or down in flow. Now, put your thumb over the end of the hose with the valve on, see how you can manipulate the air? reduce flow, increase velocity, alter the pressure, fan it out, a little jet stream, etc... Now we apply that to calling...
Your diaphragm/belly is the compressor. Your lungs are the tank. Your wind pipe is the hose.Your throat is the valve. Your tongue/mouth cavity is the thumb. In reality, I feel the tongue plays a role in stopping the note, but its combined with gating so its kind of poorly shown in that example.
The start and stop of a note is dependent on the actual air flow starting and stopping. The quality of the sound produced between the start and the end is reliant on your mouth cavity. A good note starts and stops abruptly and is completely controlled. You cant controll the air if its allowed to move freely to equalize pressure.
Listen to your recording again, then listen to the old one I posted and the one of Stumps... are you getting closer? One thing I think people do is look at things as a whole, and try and do it all at once... break it down into parts. The start of the note, the body of the note, and the end. Pick one and get it, then the next, then put those two together, then learn the third and put two together, then put all three together. Right now youre after a specific result, not a "perfect sound". My techno example is good for gating and starting the note. Trying to end the note with K or G helps me get a good note finish. The hard part I think, is the body of the note... you need to just do a single long note, hold it, and change the variables while holding it, all the while listening for the sound quality you want. Once you do it once, you know it exists and you can keep chasing it. Sooner or later, your body will remember what it did to get that note, and you can start replicating it, and start committing it to muscle memory. (thats why bad habits are so hard to break - they become muscle memory and become "natural")
At the risk of looking like a twit, and for sure sounding like a smurf on helium... here is a link to "The Quack" track on an instructional I did a long long time ago (I bet more than 10 years ago now). Keep in mind, I have learned much since then, my calls have gotten much better and different, and my calling style/preference has changed because of it. So what you hear here, I may or may not admit to :P But you're welcome to laugh and mock it all you want... I was probably a little over-eager at the time to do an instructional because local people kept asking for one, when I really wasnt ready to do one. Its about 25 megs and I think 26 min long?, so be aware its a large file.
http://www.webfootcustomcalls.com/soundfiles/thequack.mp3Cheers
Wade