What to look for in Youtube tutorials? The good, the bad, the ugly.

Guess who’s back?

Everyone knows that Youtube is a vast, boundless source of information and funny video clips of cats. Furthermore, anyone that’s into metal will have likely encountered the widespread fashion of vocalists doing videos titled ‘How to scream/death growl/do metal vocals’. They are a quick and easy way of getting information about performing vocals for all you budding Corpsegrinders out there.

However, the vast majority of them are utterly useless.

So, I figured I’d put together a quick guide telling you what to look for from vocal tutorials and also give an idea of the things to avoid. I didn't use tutorials when I learnt how to death growl, so I kinda stumbled onto these kinds of videos after I could already do it. The amount of videos out there is almost infinite, so I've just taken the first five I found on a youtube search and split them into good, average and bad and then given bullet points telling you why!

(N.B. My analysis of these videos has nothing to do with musical style, or how good the vocalists actually are- just with their teaching styles)

Good

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6e1-Sc6BfM

Alxxxs  (Broadly death metal, but gives ideas about other styles as well)

-Nice and simple without a one directional response to vocals, and can actually ask her questions if the need takes you.

-She says its not step by step, but it kinda is. The technique breakdown and actually showing you how to craft a sound is still there.

-She demonstrates an understanding of style analyses, and the idea that vocals and the tone you choose is very much genre relative but still remains open minded about applying the ideas.

-Deals with wrong technique and hurting yourself, as well as people warning you off. Which is something not many people do deal with, but something you’re going to encounter a lot of.

-We differ on the false chord thing, inhales and all that jazz. But all the same, at least she deals with it in a direct and clear way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFeYs2Fee2Y

Aaron Squires (Shagrath-y sound)

(Uses a completely different technique to me, but as a tutorial it’s pretty good)

-Clear and easy to understand.

-Tells you what’s going on inside his throat a little bit.

-Actually breaks down his technique into graduated steps and gives you a starting, middle and end point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stHvPsSbvqo

Blix (Burzum-y sound)

- There’s technique analysis. I’m not going to go into this further.

-Again, Blix gives you a step by step process to achieving his sound and breaks it down a little.

-Has evidence of his regular singing, and loads of other stuff (always a good sign, as you wouldn't trust someone to teach you guitar unless they had evidence they were good, why should vocals be any different?)

Average

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp2Cr5Y-wLI

Som Pluijmers (Ex-Cerebral Bore, Slam Death Metal)

(the good)

-Deals with in depth throat biology, which is always good (what she’s doing is explaining the false chord idea as using muscles, which is basically is)

-Emphasis on practice and repetition, starting small and dealing with basics (e.g. breathing and diaphragm). Rome wasn't built in a day.

-Very realistic view of how people start (I started in almost exactly the same way she did) along with recordings of her 13 year old self.

-She addresses maintenance of your voice in the long term

(the bad)

-Saying hurting yourself at the beginning is ok. This is not a good attitude to have, as if you start hurting yourself, you’ll keep hurting yourself.

-She only really deals with Slam technique and achieving one sound, not necessarily a bad thing but bear in mind that this doesn't apply to everything!

-No real breakdown of how she actually does what she does in her throat- just lots of her achieving growls immediately.

Bad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjXQyeYz19U

Dopey TheDopeSmokenKlown – (Broadly Slam and Deathgrind)

-He talks more about taste, different genres and how much various bands suck rather than about technique and performing vocals. Which is never a good sign.

-Advocates hurting throat. Just… no. What he’s getting at is vocal scarring, which is a thing you can do, but it has consequences.

- He’s less than accurate in his go-to-techniques. Like with Som above he tries to teach by just going look and then growling a ‘finished product’, without going into how he got there. However, at various points he can’t even hit his default vocal and has to think about it and re-try. No one who’s any good should have to do this when doing a style they use regularly.

-“Don’t think you can learn it” – Yes. Yes, you can. If no one could learn, no one would even be able to do anything. If it can be done, it can be learnt.

-His style of presenting is arrogant and stand off-ish. Not a vocal thing, but it’s generally nicer watching videos where the guy talking to you isn’t really negative.

All in all, the key theme is to look for teaching of techniques with developed/graduated examples rather than just growling and saying broad generalised things and avoid videos where keyboard warriors are talking nonsense about stuff they don’t know. Also, remember they're not the be all and end all of information on vocals.

-E

Inhales vs Exhales

Greetings denizens of the underdark,

    Is what I would say if this were a Dungeons and Dragons session, but it’s not. I’m only half sad about this. But away from my crippling socially unacceptable pass-times and onto vocal technique analysis! This blog is going to be a brief, bullet point run through of a topic everyone into metal has an opinion on regardless of whether they’re a vocalist or not: Inhales and Exhales, and why one of the two is better than the other. I’ll breakdown each technique as best I can, then list the advantages and disadvantages and give you some examples of vocalists who use them.

Before I begin, I’d like to point out that I have a LOT more experience with exhales, given my own musical taste and the resulting vocal techniques. This will most likely be reflected in my analyses below.

WARNING: Doing inhales puts a large amount of pressure on your vocal chords, because you’re breathing in a shit ton of air, and this can damage your throat (you can begin to develop vocal fold nodules). I take no responsibility for you messing up your throat. If you want to do inhales- that’s all well and good- but be careful, and be prepared to live with the consequences. Also, this article assumes good technique in both inhales and exhales and wasn’t written for what I consider ‘bad’ technique, so if you disagree with me on points of technique some of this will be irrelevant to you. Also, I’ve ignored people’s own individual ranges (e.g. soprano, tenor etc) for the purposes of this article.

Inhales

• In basic terms, an ‘inhale’ is when you draw air into your throat and close your vocal chords together to create sound. You can create a whole range of sounds from really low through to very high (which is where the term ‘pig squealing’ came from).
• They’re easier to get good at quickly, as all you have to do is draw air into your throat and experiment with creating the noise you want to get. Although, it can take a while and a lot of innovation to get some noises (for example the more nasal pig squeal is a bitch to nail because, as the name implies, you have to use your throat!).
• Volume wise, they tend to be a lot less loud than a comparable exhaled vocal, but not so much they’re an unfeasible option during a performance. Though it would be imprudent of me to not point out that most vocalists who use inhales cup the microphone in order to make up the difference in volume.
• The ‘bree’ sound that is characteristic of the vocal style (both high and low pitched sounds) is usually created by making a sideways Y-shape with your mouth. While the mouth shaping is really integral to the style it makes it really hard to accurately say words, and while that isn’t of paramount importance all the time, if you’re like me and like saying things correctly then it poses a slight problem.
• Most vocalists who use inhales do so while their body is arched over and their back is bent. This is possible because they’re drawing air into their throats and they don’t need to maintain a ‘pillar’ of air flow into their lungs, but it doesn’t really help or hinder anything technique-wise it’s just a style thing.
• No real mid-range: given how hard it can be to articulate words, combined with the whole ‘bree’ precedent, it’s really uncommon for a vocalist to use mid-range inhales. This results in there being no dynamic range within the genre- it’s basically entirely super low brees, and ear piercingly high inhaled shrieks.
• Advantages: quick to learn, massive potential range.
• Disadvantages: Puts a lot of pressure on your throat, associated prejudice, low volume, can be hard to say words and articulate them properly,
• Famous practitioners include Annotations of An Autopsy, Job For A Cowboy, Mars Needs Cheerleaders, Twitch of the Death Nerve, Gutted With Broken Glass. (N.B. not all of these bands use inhales all the time).

Exhales

• An ‘exhale’ is when you air from your diaphragm up through your chest, through your throat and out of your mouth (that isn’t technically biologically accurate, but thinking about it this way helps develop good technique). This can be any kind of vocal from a death growl, thrash vocals, punk, screaming or even clean singing would technically be considered an exhale.
• You can create a massive range of sounds using exhales, as you can utilise your entire vocal range within whichever style you’re performing e.g. you can death growl really low, low, mid-low, middle, mid high, high and very high using exactly the same technique.
• In terms of volume, it’s possible to perform exhales basically as loud or as quiet as your normal voice can go. Though, this is dependant on both the individual’s ability to project and the type of vocal.
• Most vocalists perform while stood up straight and sing more or less straight into the microphone, as breathing is fairly important when performing exhales.
• Advantages: Less risk of throat damage, more sounds in the mid range, louder and easier to project.
• Disadvantages: Takes greater time to learn, can be harder to switch between vocal extremes
• Famous practitioners: Cannibal Corpse, At The Gates, Black Dahlia Murder, Arch Enemy.. (and most Metal vocalists)

Way of making sure you’re exhaling

There is one really easy way to make sure you’re exhaling, or inhaling if you’re trying to do that. Put the palm of your hand in front of your mouth, and growl. You should be able to feel warm air being expelled onto your palm. If this is happening, then you’re exhaling. Inhaling causes the air in front of your mouth to be sucked in, so you wouldn’t feel anything, apart from potentially a slight cold sensation.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I much prefer using exhales and think they sound far better and are less risky to use than inhales, but this is just my opinion. This post kinda turned into a more in depth analysis of inhales than I had intended, but it's hard to cover all of the different techniques and styles one can use while exhaling and compare them with the two or three that are most commonly used by inhaling vocalists. So this article has turned out a lot more biased than I had intended, but yeah. Feel free to ignore it.

P.s.  I couldn’t be assed doing a separate blog post to recommend this site, but it’s awesome. Only really deals with clean singing but a lot of what’s on there can be applied to extreme vocals with a little experimentation.

http://voicecouncil.com/technique/

-E

Next Post:  Dynamics and using your vocal range

[edit 4/7/12 : Completely forgot to also point out that you can get more or less any sound you can get by inhaling also by exhaling. All it takes is a little ingenuity and practice]