It seems like it's been awhile since we did one of these, where you identify various grit techniques you hear. This is Judas Priest live from 1982. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9PjOhz3FSM At only three seconds in, Rob Halford says: "Hey Memphis"! - Is this motorboat grit? I'm not sure because I know Metallica is sort of the quintessential example of motorboat grit, but here I'm hearing the subharmonics emphasized more than I ever do in Hetfield's vocals. The only time Hetfeild came even close was maybe on ...And Justice For All and he blew put his voice. soon after. Meanwhiule, Halford is going strong at 74 years old! Clearly Halford's using a different, healthier technique than Hetfield was using on ...And Justice. Throughout the spoken intro, what is the grit technique, or grit techniques Halford is using? The spoken intro gets much grittier at 24 seconds into it when he says "The Metal Gods"! Is that Hardcore Bark? I associate Upper Grunt more like what Mick Jagger does on Start Me Up (that was a great critique/explanation you did on that)! If he isn't using Hardcore Bark when he says "The Metal Gods" and it actually is Upper Grunt, what makes Halford's Upper Grunt so much more distorted than Jagger's? MY FAVORITE QUESTION IS COMING UP - PLEASE ANSWER THE QUESTION IN THE PARAGRAPH BELOW : ) The singing starts at 47 seconds with: "We'd taken too much for granted"- Again, I can't tell if thjis is Upper Grunt of Harcore bark. Is there some sure telltale sing that it is one or the othjer, or is possible for a singer to straddle the line between Upper Grunt and Hardcore Bark? If you only answer one thing I really hope you answered what I asked in the above paragraph. At 52 seconds he sings "And all the time it had GROWN" - I put "grown" in caps because he gets a different,. more gurgly, more distorted sound on that word. How does he get that effect? It sounds so cool! Afterwards, for at least the next minute or so, it sounds like Upper Grunt - there is still nothing as gurgly sounding or as filthily distorted as on "GROWN" at 52 seconds.

hi Draven, firstly I want to thank you again for making the smoker's voice video for me way back, it finally helped me make the distortion click. I had to take a few months break and just have a few of questions to pick up where I left off: 1. getting higher fry: when combining head voice/falsetto with smoker's voice, I notice that I can't move the resonance anywhere past the middle of the soft and hard palates. when I try moving the smoker's voice forward to a twang position, the sound comes out very thin and sometimes hits the throat. is there something I'm missing? 2. low overtones: when I combine head voice/falsetto notes with the smoker's voice, I find that sometimes there's overtones of one octave down. how do I train to consistently eliminate this and achieve just the high note? (similar to Will Ramos' or Alex Koehler's highs) 3. progressing: once I'm comfortable with the base scream on different vowels and plosives, is there any recommended next step in transitioning to screaming songs? or is progression past this point just self practise and experimentation? I've also included a very short clip of my practise today, would really appreciate if you can help me see if I'm on the right track. thanks 🙏

Some say: "Well, you don't really use your vocal cords when you scream; you use your false cords, so if you're hurting your true cords, you shouldn't even be using them." There's the legendary story of Corey Taylor who had perhaps the most ferocious scream in metal. It's even got it's own name: the Iowa Scream! Iowa was Slipknot's first album and many maintain that Corey's screams were never as brutal after the Iowa album because he had sustained damage to his true folds. Now think about that: Corey Taylor essentially invented his own technique for the Iowa scream and then he screws up on HIS OWN TECHNIQUE TO WHERE HIS VOICE IS NEVER THE SAME AGAIN! You'd think a guy would be a master of his very own technique. You'd LIKE to think so, wouldn't you? Then there's the case of M. Shadows who screwed his voice up terribly and there is some confusuin as ro whether he actually had surgery for it or not. There's also the case of Matt Heafy, who had a great sounding scream, did it well for quite a ferw years, but then blew out his voice. He went on to record an album of all clean singing because he was recuperating. Finally he came back with his "safe scream",. but Trivium fans maintain that the "safe scream" Matt Heafy used never sounded as good as his original scream which begs the question: Was his original scream fixable? With some minor tweaks, could he have kept doing his "original scream"? After all, it's hard to believe that his "original scream" was so dangerous that it had to be ENTIRELY CHANGED to make is SAFE! So, with that in mind (especially the Corey Taylor incident with his Iowa scream being something he could never truly do as well again) what do you think are the main things that screamers do that end up injuring their voices?

A SUBMITTED QUESTION ***** I've been doing what you told me and realized something when switching between resonances. Whenever I go high/into head voice and I want to go back down to chest voice my larynx gets stuck, it's a really odd feeling. I was trying to go back down from head voice while using the straw when I felt everything jam up into place with air nowhere to go - it created a really pressurized chamber inside of my mouth combined with the puffy cheeks. I have been trying to cry but I suspect I've been doing it wrong. I feel tension in my throat when I'm crying so I guess that's not correct. Also, I'm still not able to utilize forward placement. The most I've been able to feel is vibrations in my nose. The straw warmup did clear my chest voice out but it's not helping me even while doing the sirens because of the larynx thing. ***** Great question! This is something a LOT of people struggle with at first, both with the straw AND the missed fundamentals of the singing voice that can smooth out the transition of chest and head voice as well as ghelp you with more effortless singing in geneal. STRAW VS NORMAL SINGING For the straw sirens, don't worry too much about your voice flipping. It's mostly about a stretch from as low as you can sing to as high as you can sing while staying SUPER LIGHT (light and sqeuaky on the top end). As you learn more about and implement better cry vocal mode, it will smooth out, but that's not the main point of the sirens. Most vocal flips, or getting stuck trying to "switch resonances," happen because the chest voice wasn't places well to begin with—where even chest voice is mixed, which I'll describe more below. Singing into the straw is where you want more emphasis on cry and twang. It actually takes a bit more effort than normal singing, meaning you have to give it both more twang and cry than normally required. Cry is the foundation. When normal singing, it's all about lift and sob; or rather top-down whimper ("Michael Jackson" voice or feminization of the voice) putting resonance up and out, behind the nose and eyes, and ALSO sob relaxing the larynx. Both of these together relax the larynx and give you a mix of head-voice and chest-voice resonance throughout your range—more chesty down low and more heady up high, like a giant cross-fade. Twang, edging acoustics, or pointing the voice behind the nose or eyes adjusts your sound color. Front to back is edging to curbing (bright to round). Up and down in that spot is the top-down whimper of cry.

Very cool vocal performance by Sia in this song: https://youtu.be/t2NgsJrrAyM?si=jgioXLPW0FiGAl0C&t=242 Wondering if anyone has ideas about how she achieves those interesting vocal "chirps" when she sings "I'm alive..." around 4:00 into the song.