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]