David Benites recently released a video On AI in music, which is timely, with AI poised to put tens of millions of people out of work, including musicians. There's a clear, objective difference between using AI to wipe out medical problems we've tried and tried to find a solution for have't been able to do it, and a company in an industry that has no actual need for AI, but wants to buy some AI robots to get around that painful problem of actually having to pay men to work. To allow AI to be legally used in industries where no objective need for AI can be shown is really going to be debilitating to the people currently working in these industries, such as the music industry. People with the requisite ability are excellent at creating music without using AI as a crutch.They've been proving it for hundreds of years. People who never bothered to put forth the necessary effort to develop that ability, or who simply lack the aptitude to excel at music have always been weeded out of ever being in the hunt for attaining success in the ultra-competitive music business. That's what made rock stars special - so few people could do it! AI threatens to make a mockery of the music business by allowing people with very little aptitude for music to be able to sound good, despite never having put forth the necessary effort or exercised the self-discipline to develop great ability for singing and songwriting. Not only does AI threaten to allow anyone, no matter how little aptitude or skill they may possess, to become singers or songwriters, it threatens music's humanity. David Benites says: "With AI, you can make your voice sound perfect now. You can use fake voices made by AI on anything that you want, in any direction and for that reason, I think now it's more important than ever to let your voice to sound as messed up and raw and wrong and honestly, as F'd up as possible. I get that that's the least 'voice teacher thing' that I could possibly say, but I think that it's important that I say it. And I want to come on here and talk with all of you watching about why it's so important that we keep expression real.

The internet is abuzz with a whole lot of people saying "Oh no, Oli Sykes is using inhale screams! He's going to ruin his voice. Again"! Just as many people are saying: "Oli has been a professional vocalist for twenty years. Do you really think he's going to be so dumb as to use some technique that will ruin his voice"? This all came about after Bring Me The Horizon announced they were re-recording their 2006 debut album and some clips of their recording sessions were released, including some where Oli Sykes was using inhale screams. Oli responded to the noisy confusion he had inadvertently caused with this Instagram post: "These r inhales, yes. There's like 3 or 4 moments on the record I did it, end of Medusa being the main bit...the rest are all full chest...but someone enlighten me on how these are dangerous /bad for your voice? I've always considered it so gentle on my chords (sic) it feels like cheating..don't get ppl crying" Someone "enlighten" you, Oli? As you wish. After spending the last three days scouring the internet, refusing to take time off to eat or sleep... Ah, "Three Days" - reminiscent of late nights spent in the clubs in the 90s: "Three days was the morning. My focus three days old. My head, it landed" All that hard work paid off. First, I found a YouTube comment by someone claiming to be Melissa Cross who put forth the following thoughts in about as humble a way as a human being possibly could: "They are NOT dangerous- they are simply less efficient. The vocal folds react the same to inhale and exhale- it's just inefficient bcz the air is limited bcz it is going the wrong direction, msking it more difficult to transfer to a sound with a recognizable frequency (pitch). It takes years of education to understand the acoustics, aerodynamics, articulation, etc of human voice. Most people who discuss.vocal.mechanics are truly full of absolute bs based.on a narrative they make up based on their own anecdotal experience- i have yet to see ANYONE who gets it right so far."

I know it’s weird, but I often go down a path of research, ending up reading scientific papers about singing and health. I want to share some of my thoughts with you from these studies, and perhaps propose an invitation or challenge of sorts that would be fun to share stories from. SINGING AND OVERALL HEALTH I remember a few studies that came out during COVID about singing affecting VO2 Max (essentially how our body best processes oxygen) and how the benefits to the lungs actually helped COVID victims. I had a friend who had COVID pretty bad, but sang his way through it every single day, using an announced livestream to keep him motivated to show up. It was brutal, but he did it, and it got him through it—likely mostly the emotional aspect of it. That got me wondering about overall health being affected by singing, which led to a lot of studies on singing's emotional calming affects on the body. I'm sure you'll agree, this makes total sense as a singer. From the most passionate screams and belts, to the most intimate and soft, singing is cathartic, and we cathart all over the place; Haha! It was cool to see real scientific studies behind it. SINGING AND BLOOD PRESSURE Yesterday, I came across a study on neurogenic hypertension, or rather the study of how you stress can affect blood pressureI how singing affects blood pressure. It turns out there's a large amount of studies on how singing can cause acute hypertension when pushing or straining your way through singing, or from extreme emotional expression. I guess that's no surprise after seeing veins popping out of people's necks, singer's of bands I've been in before blacking out while sustaining a long and loud note, people turning red in the face, and some screaming students I've had giving themselves headaches. Thankfully, that affect is only temporary. But it still begs the question of how blood pressure is affected when singing comfortably, shaping rather than pushing, and relaxing into the release of the voice, no matter how harsh the resulting sound might be.

Here's a rather depressing (but I think mostly accurate) assessment of the modern creative market. Thoughts? Vive la resistance! https://www.honest-broker.com/p/four-steps-to-hell

I used to think that this was the only way to get a truly heavy grit. I was led to believe that compression based grit could only get you so far and after that you had purposely make you voice break and exploit that break for very heavy grit when singing or for fry screams. Maybe that's a great way to go about fry screams. I'm no expert....especially on fry screams. Recently though, I've come to the conclusion that exploiting the vocal break for grit is too unreliable. Your voice is always going to break a little differently, so it's really an "accidental position." By accidental position, I mean that you're going to have a very hard time of consistently recreating it in a consistent way. You never know exactly what you're going to get. I've come to think that by playing with various acoustic positions (placements) and using grit that comes from various points on the spectrum between compressed and decompressed, you gain control and consistency. What do you all think? Do you like using the vocal break for grit?