Lung Capacity

What do I mean by lung capacity and how is it different from breathing techniques and all that other stuff I harked on about before?

• It’s generally defined as the maximum amount of oxygen you can use, or have in your lungs at any one time.
• It’s generally measured by scientists in millilitres per kilogram of bodyweight per minute, but it’s more commonly given in litres per minute.
• The average male athlete has a lung capacity of approximately 3.5 litres per minute, though this is by no means near what human beings are capable of. The average adult human can hold 6 litres of air in their lungs, it’s just that they don’t use all of that space in normal breathing. A notable exception to this rule is Spanish cyclist Miguel Indurain (pictured below) who is documented as having had a lung capacity of 7.8 liters per minute.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Miguel_Indurain.jpg)

This has fairly obvious applications for singers as the larger your lung capacity, the easier it’ll be for you to hold out notes and keep singing for longer without taking breath. But what is it that stops people from maximising their lung capacities? 

Without getting too technical, there are two things that can potentially restrict your lung capacity other than just not being able to breathe in as much air. Firstly, the oxygen itself actually needs to make it to the muscle tissue that requires it (this is less of a concern for singers than it is for athletes) and secondly, the muscle tissues that get the oxygen need to be able to convert the oxygen they receive into energy. Failure to do both of these things can result in a reduced oxygen capacity, and this has obvious consequences e.g. increased likelihood of getting stitches while exercising, shortness of breath etc..

Now you know what it is, how can you improve your lung capacity?

The most common ways of improving lung capacity are all based around doing either normal cardiovascular exercise e.g. swimming, or intense sessions exercise for a short period (usually around 5 minutes), then taking a short break to recover and then doing it again.  All the various kinds of interval training are a very good example of this.

 However, given that not all singers will want to commit the time and energy required for doing loads of regular exercise, I’ve detailed a relatively pain free exercise I use regularly that should allow you to increase your lung capacity below. If this one isn’t to your liking, there are plenty of different approaches to achieving a larger lung capacity out there, all it takes is a quick google search to find one that works for you.

Mississippi Meditation Exercise

1) Sit down, put on some relaxing music or a favourite album. Not TV or anything visual, it’s too distracting and detracts from your ability to do the exercise as it draws too much attention.

2) Close your eyes, meditate and sit for 10 minutes without any specific goal, breathing through your nose and out your mouth, steadily and regularly.

(http://www.buteykocourses.com/uploads/76035/images/194932/nosepower.jpg)

3) While still relaxed, and without any over exertion or hyperventilating, take in a deep breath and hold it. Begin counting. Obviously, a regular count is what’s needed for the purposes of the exercise  –I find using “1, Mississippi, 2, Mississippi, 3, Mississippi” works for me but use whatever works for you, as long as you can ensure your count is regular, otherwise you lose the point of keeping the count.

4) Make note of what number you reached when you could no longer hold your breath.

5) Repeat regularly, keeping records of how well you did. I usually do this exercise 2 or 3 times in one sitting with ten minute gaps in between, as I find that I do better on the 2^nd and 3^rd tries. Over time you will notice a gradual increase in the number you reach, and this should directly translate into an increase in your lung capacity.

A couple of examples of how to translate increased lung capacity into songs…

The Lightbearer- Aeternum

Listen from 1.34 - I had no idea what to do for that section of the verse and decided a long scream would be cool, and my increased lung capacity lets me do it in between the verses just as easily live, assuming I haven't been abusing my throat before the show.

Darkness It Shall Be- Marduk

Just listen to what Legion's singing, and try and see where he takes breaths. It's mindblowing, especially given it's in a live situation.

For the more academic amongst you, this article is an interesting examination of lung capacity in singers and provides a good source for finding further reading: 

 http://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/52595/1/soa007_024.pdf

-E

Vocal Analysis: Chris Barnes (Six Feet Under)

Hello one and all,

        Seeing as I promised you a regular series of vocal analyses and was stuck on choosing who to start with, I figured I’d go with one of the people who inspired me to do all of this and set my life down this crazy path in the first place.

The idea behind these articles is to give you a brief insight into the style of the vocalists, their history and how they’ve shaped the sphere of Extreme Metal vocals, and generally make you think a little about why it is people sing the way they do now. And yes, dear reader, that includes you.

And just to make it painfully clear, I’m not getting into the obvious arguments of who’s the better singer for Cannibal Corpse.

So without further ado, I give you…

Chris Barnes!

Brief Overview

Undeniably one of the most influential extreme vocalists of all time, Barnes’ early output with Cannibal Corpse and approach to performing vocals inspired a new generation and, I would argue, pretty much lead to the invention of a whole genre.

Anybody who’s been into Metal for five minutes will have heard the classic opening lines “Something inside me… it’s… it’s coming out/ I feel like killing…you” from Cannibal’s 1994 classic Hammer Smashed Face off Tomb of the Mutilated. Indeed, for some people it’s the only death metal they ever really get into or listen to.

The guttural throaty growls on evidence here are typical of Barnes’ style, rhythmic growls tempered with held out notes to fill out lines, occasionally peppered with his distinctive high screams. But he didn’t always sing like that, and nor does he know, for reasons I’ll get into later in the article.

After leaving/getting kicked out (depending on how you interpret the story) Cannibal in 1995, Barnes has been pushing Six Feet Under as his main project, his vocals being mixed with their trademark groove infused Death metal to great effect.

Bands

Tirant Sin

Leviathan

Cannibal Corpse

Six Feet Under

Torture Killer

Influences

Grateful Dead, Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Venom, Slayer, AC/DC

Technique

•   Started off doing thrash bands, and his vocal style at this time was harsh rhythmic shouting along the lines of early Venom, Kreator and Slayer.  Here’s Violent Slaughter by Leviathan with Barnes on vocals. His structuring is heavily influenced by the other thrash that was around at the time, though you can still hear hints of Barnes’ trademark groove at points in the first minute and a half of the song.

•  Moved into an old school death metal voice on Eaten Back To Life, basically taking the harsh shouting of his earlier thrash style and pitching it lower into a growl. You can hear he’s doing all the growling from the throat on this recording, and this will lead to his voice developing the way it did later into his career. Still, it’s interesting as a case study of the emerging Death Metal genre and it’s differences from the thrash bands that were around beforehand that influenced the first death metal bands.

•  On Butchered at Birth and Tomb of the Mutilated Barnes really came into his own lyrically as well as vocally, pushing the boundaries of what people thought the human voice at the time was capable of, after all, he bragged in the liner notes that an "Electronic Harmonizer was not used to create any vocals on Tomb of the Mutilated" for a reason. People weren't used to this kind of extremity in vocal delivery and Barnes spearheaded it, taking it to new depths.

• The Bleeding is the apex of his style, combining his trademark low growls and rhythmic flair to create what many consider to be the seminal Cannibal Corpse Record. I mean, how many songs can you name that are as brutal as Stripped, Raped and Strangled but still catchy?

• After getting kicked out of Cannibal, Barnes began to focus on Six feet Under and becomes a lot less vocally interesting, as he begins to recycle old patterns and just follow the guitars rather than do anything interesting with his vocal patterns. While this stripped down approach to songwriting can be cool (see the song below), it just isn’t as interesting to me and there’s a reason that Cannibal Corpse went on to far higher levels of fame than Six Feet Under.

•     If you listen to anything Barnes did in the early 90’s and compare it with how he sounds now, it’s pretty clear that singing using his throat has had a massive effect on his voice, which isn’t helped at all by his well-publicised relationship with Marijuana. I mean, he still sounds alright, but he just can’t hit the same lows he used to be able to, and there’s a reason for that beyond just artistic choice.

Legacy

With the extreme lyrical violence of songs like Necropedophile, Entrails Ripped From A Virgin’s C*nt, Butchered at Birth etc.. and ‘I can go lower than you attitude’, Barnes has for my money the best claim to the title of progenitor of the ‘gore’style in death metal, and by extension Slam. I find it impossible to think that bands like Devourment would be doing what they do now without Chris Barnes, their hallmarks of singing about extreme violence, trying to incite disgust in their audience and with their vocal style being, at times, so reminiscent of Barnes at his peak.

Fun facts

•   It’s well known that he has a fairly large ego, look up his feuds with Seth Putnam and Travis Ryan (who he inspired in the first place… go figure…) for more information on the darker side of Barnes’ ego.
•        He’s also an artist, having designed the first Cannibal Corpse logo, the Six Feet Under logo, their ‘Warpath’ album’s artwork and contributing to numerous other bits of his bands’ artworks while he is/ was involved with them.
•   Uses an Sm 58 microphone as a standard, proof that good, reliable but affordable mic’s are used all the way up the industry.

And lastly, here’s his foray into the Used Car Advertising business…

-E

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

Overhaul or Overkill? I’ll let you decide.

Dear much maligned readers,

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve posted on this blog and this is something that’s going to change.

Why? I’m currently taking a Web Design and Creation module for my university course and a large part of how I’m assessed on this is characterised by my ability to create, market and run a blog for the duration of the module- and I thought “Hey! I already did that. Maybe I can have some fun with this….”.  Thus, I am resurrecting Confessions Of A Death Metal Vocalist: Be scared internet, be very scared.

As well as having a very busy life juggling being in bands, university, my social life and a torrid love affair with Glen’s Vodka, I lost my motivation to do the blog because writing it was very much like writing an endless torrent of essays and as any student will attest, this can kill the passion the writer feels for the subject.  I’m hoping to tackle this problem by dealing with my favourite subject in a number of different ways. This is going to result in Confessions… having a range of new content that will hopefully offer you all new insights into being a metal vocalist and all that entails.

The first change is regularity- I’m aiming for at least one post a week dealing directly with vocals in the same vein as what I’ve done with the blog so far. Confessions… is also going to start featuring interviews with vocalists who are actually out there in the scene, playing in bands and doing it for real in order to get their opinions on the rather esoteric subject of extreme metal vocals. I’m also going to do breakdown analyses of famous vocalists’ techniques and writing styles, in order to help anyone open minded enough to try and incorporate new styles or different ways of thinking into their music (Audience cue: Shock! Horror!). Also, for the sake of vanity and those of you who are interested, I’m going to start keeping a gig diary.

There’s also going to be a mind-blowing new layout. I know, I’m far too good to you people.

-E

A Beginners Guide To Dynamics In Extreme Vocals

and here's another video of me talking nonsense, enjoy.

-E

Mouth Shapes in Extreme Vocals Video

So, I've started doing videos. Mostly this is to teach people, and only a little bit because I couldn't be assed typing stuff out. I promise.

and yes, I realise the frame it chose to use as the default picture is amazing.

-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]