For a long time the main thing on my mind when going into a practice session would be how to get better at creating grit or distortion. I was a distortion freak! I find it as fascinating as ever to be able to sing with grit and I've even gotten a little bit interested in screaming, but mostly it was about singing melodically with grit or even pitched screaming, which essentially is the most extreme end of the spectrum that goes from singing with light rasp all the way to using pitched screams. Recently I hit a plateau. It didn't seem like any more progress was possible unless I made some type of fundamental change. It occurred to me that the quality of your gritty singing is going to be dependent on the quality of the signal from the source - the true folds. I'm no expert in acoustics but it makes sense to me that if we're using the false folds and other supraglottal structures to saturate the clean signal with distortion, then the more robust the clean signal is, the better you're going to be able to saturate it with distortion. In essence, good quality clean vocals lead to good quality gritty vocals and low quality clean vocals lead to low quality gritty vocals.

Nik said: "If you scroll through Instagram, TikTok, they're just bedroom kids screaming. Somehow everyone knows how to do false cords and the zombie noises." Oli interjected: "Yeah, yeah, and everyone's got this kind of like, like it's funny like the technique of screaming. Not that there's no technique to screaming, but like, that wasn't something I would think about before, you know, I would just like, yeah. Just want to scream. Like it was just screaming. I never thought about like I might damage my voice or anything like that. And sometimes I'll see someone going 'you want to scream like Oli Sykes? This is how I do it" and I watch it and I'm like "is it'? Cause I don't know that. Like that's, I have no idea how I do that. I never think about it. Do you know what I mean"? I know what he means; I speak English quite well, but I can't say I understand his mentality. Just as if I were going to be a public speaker or an orator, I'd want to learn how to speak without jamming "like" into every sentence. I'd want to try to eliminate saying "um." I know why people do it. They're using that time to think about what they are going to suppose for example, if I were asked: "How do you sing"? Hopefully I wouldn't start like this: "Uh, well, it's like, I mean, when I sing, like I have to relax...." Hopefully, I'd start more like this: "You want to know how I sing? I'll tell you exactly how I sing [that bought me a whole lot more time to think about what I'm going to say than the former example]. The first thing about it is I need to relax. Why would I relax? [I know why I'd relax but by asking that rhetorical question, I've given myself more time to decide how to explain it.] I relax so it will sound good and so I don't get hurt. That means I'm doing some stretches. before I start. I want all the muscles in my neck to be ready for it. I don't want them tight. I want them to be supple and flexible so I don't get hurt and so singing will be a little closer to effortless because ideally, singing should be almost effortless.

I like to sing melodically with grit, so I've never actively tried to learn false fold screams. Then I came across a guy who said that the more you work on your false fold screams, the false folds adapt in a way so that they can vibrate faster than the false folds of the typical non-vocalist!!! That's amazing. No wonder these guys who have been doing them for years and years get so much more distortion. It's not as if the flase fold scream is some ultra-technical technique. It's about as basic as they come and maybe that's why screaming is more in vogue than singing with grit: It's harder to sing with grit and manage both the clean note and the grit you place over the top than to just create distortion. I thought: If I learn to do false fold screams, my false folds could adapt in a way that they vibrate faster, which could give me better quality, more badass grit when I sing with grit. So, maybe there is some benefit in learning to scream even though I'm not a screamer. I have looked at numerous tutorials for false fold screams including Gabriel Bonhila's channel (he does a tremendous Alex Terrible type scream) and David Benites Extreme Vocal. Not one of them uses a hyoid pull. They don't even use a similar sounding term. It's amazing how much distortion they can generate without using any constriction. They create far more distortion than I 'd ever even need to! Not only do they not ever mention a hypoid pull, they don't even say to use constriction! I thought: "How can they be creating so much distortion without one of the three essential in gredients? My curiosity was piqued. I'm wondering if maybe hyoid pulls are only necessary for singing with grit but not for screaming. One said specifically: "Do not squeeze or narrow your vocal tract." I tried letting the tract remain open and I got a much better false fold scream than I did when I was trying to make my vocal tract narrower to get that "thumb over the water hose" on my airflow! I couldn't belive I'd never thought to try that.

This two and a half minute video video shows how to use stop plosive consonants to build cord compression for vocal strength: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAiQPCuN_Lw It looks like a good exercise, but I'm not sure, because I had heard that using glottal attacks, hard glottal onsets, vocal pops, etc, makes the cords slam against each other and is destructive because of that. So, my question is, is using these stop plosives an effective way of building better cord compression like in the type of exercise that the video shows, or does it create a "vocal pop" or "glottal attack" that makes the vocal cords slam together and hurt them?

Suppose a band has just been signed to a record contract and they are going to a nice recording studio to record their album. They're trying to get the album recorded reasonably quickly. if they're in the studio for 8 or 12 hours, or however long is typical, how much of that time would the lead vocalist actually be singing on a day when they're recording lead vocals? Taking into account things like double or triple tracking and doing harmony parts, how many hours might a lead vocalist be expected to sing in one day? Would that vocalist be expected to sing as long the next day and the day after that for a lot of days or would they likely record guitars or bass the next day to give the singer a break if he had to sing a lot of hours? What would be considered "a lot of hours" for a lead vocalist of a hard rock or metal band in the studio?