Like I get the push more air through your mouth and get louder but my voice never breaks. I just get louder and louder and louder until I can’t get louder anymore.

One time a friend of mine was a half a block away in the wrong direction and I screamed their name and they jumped because they said it sounded like I was right behind them talking in my normal voice just very loudly.

But then I listen to singers and they get that raw raspy edge to their voice and my voice doesn’t do that.

How do you do that?

  • arandomthought@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    If you’re talking about the metal music kind of screaming look up “vocal fry” or “fry screaming” on YouTube. It’s a technique, and it’s surprisingly not that loud. Like you wouldn’t use a fry scream to shout at your friend a block away but on a recording or through the mic on stage you can’t tell so it looks and sounds like the singer is screaming their lungs out.

    Also if you try it yourself make sure to stop before it hurts! If done correctly you can fry scream all day. If done incorrectly and ignoring the warnings signs you could end up needing surgery on your larynx. Have fun!

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    The kind of scream you might do in fear or anger doesn’t work exactly the same as when it’s done in a controlled way.

    The answers already present cover how to scream as a vocal technique way better than I could (I can only growl, I’ve never managed to get a proper metal scream). But the kind of scream that you make involuntarily tends to be made by the vocal cords being stretched tight. You can’t scream like that in a sustained way without it hurting. Too much air pressure being pushed through very taut cords, it just isn’t healthy. It’s also more of a head/throat generated sound and will be higher pitched.

    If you want some awesome insight into the various vocal techniques used in metal, there’s a YouTube channel called “the charismatic voice”. The lady that does the channel is an opera singer that has turned into a metal fan, and is now doing research with a university. They recently did some amazing work with the vocalist Will Ramos, from lorna shore. MRIs, electric readings, cameras, etc. They’re building a body of research into “harsh” vocals.

    But the channel as a whole, she’s watching/listening to videos of music, with it leaning heavily into metal. She talks about the mechanics of how the vocalists do it, and she goes in depth.

    With that said, what you were doing, trying to yell for your friend to get their attention, that’s more projecting your voice. When you pull the air in deep, and push from the stomach up, using your body to support that push, you can be very loud with zero distortion. Volume of the voice is all about moving air efficiently. Ever see a movie or show with a drill sergeant barking orders across a big group of soldiers? That’s projection. It’s the same basic techniques that opera singers and stage actors use. It’s all about the air and the way you use the diaphragm with your entire body.

    Anyway, some links

    The channel I mentioned

    The footage with the research

    Some loud vocalizations that aren’t distorted but are musical

    A quickie tutorial on the basic technique of growling

    And one for the fry scream

    That growl technique is essentially the same as the way I learned to growl (though I’m not very good at it), and it matches one another user described in text.

    But, no bullshit, if you’re projecting your voice that clearly a block away, that’s fucking legit power. I can’t sing for shit, just can’t hold notes steady enough to be enjoyed by other people. But I tried. Getting to the point of being able to project my speaking voice clearly over a distance took months of work. So, if you can do that, you can absolutely learn to metal scream/growl, and likely be good at it.

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        I’m fairly certain he has summoned a cat demon from the fifth plane of the infernal realm.

        Either that or he’s some kind of magnificent hybrid of man and beast.

    • tourist@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      During the single mandatory postgraduate session on ethics, a few of us decided to play a bot trivia game over Telegram.

      We all already knew it’s bad to use our education to kill people or do fraud or plagiarise shit. Like, man, I never did that. I’m not gonna fucking do that.

      Anyways, someone sent the answer, “Led Zeppelin”, 1ms before me.

      I slammed my fist on the desk. The entire lecture hall looked at me. That was my only moment of gamer rage where I hit something. Normally I just aggressively grunt or clench my teeth.

      edit: I dropped out anyways, so it didn’t matter if you don’t think about it too much

  • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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    2 months ago

    Look up metal screams / growls. You need to use a different part of your throat for that and there’s training methods to teach you how. Obviously in those cases you’d mostly exclusively use them false vocal cords while when screaming you’d use them and your regular vocal folds for a mixed voice. There’s other ways to add vocal fry but they’re fairly unhealthy and can cause damage, which is why people often lose their voice when screaming too much.

  • all-knight-party@fedia.io
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    2 months ago

    I use the false cord technique to do metal vocals (vocal fry was harder to learn and didn’t click with me), I basically just watched different YouTube tutorials on how to do it until I watched one by Kardavox Academy on YouTube and he likened the feeling of engaging the false cords to sighing exasperatedly, and also going “ruff” very lowly like a dog.

    This explanation alone is terrible, but understanding what he meant and mimicing those sounds allowed me to understand what it feels like when I engage the false cords and now I have enough control to engage or disengage it on a word by word basis or slide into it from a clean voice. It’s definitely as people say, with the right technique it won’t hurt, it can be tough on your voice even when done correctly, but you should never have to stop and cough, that’s when you’re really doing it wrong.

    • bizarroland@fedia.ioOP
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      I have had many singing lessons, they focused more on proper intonation and breath support, vibrato control, scale memorization, stuff like that.

      I even paid for a good chunk of my college by participating in choir. I’m a dramatic tenor and there’s a recording out there where we’re singing Leonard Cohen’s hallelujah and in a crowd of 80 singers I can be clearly heard over all of the other singers.

      Loud voice. No scream.

      I just want to know how to scream.

        • bizarroland@fedia.ioOP
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          2 months ago

          Possibly. The thing is I’m not trying to sing like death metal or anything I just want to be able to put the occasional scream onto a song like Dave grohl does.

          He can transition from clear vocal to distorted vocal and back cleanly, and I would like to be able to replicate that for my own music.

      • flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        It’s deep down in the throat/belly not up near the mouth, from what little experience I’ve had (have managed it, but didn’t really learn)

  • someoneelse@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    You have to stop projecting the sound from the diaphragm and move it to the throat. Essentially the opposite from singing instructions. It is obviously really bad for the vocal cords.

    • arandomthought@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Not if done correctly. Metal singers do it all day long. It’s all about technique and heeding the warning signs when you’re not doing it right.

      • someoneelse@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        Sure, but that’s not what they are asking. A scream, a shout and a metal growl are different things, they asked about screaming.

        • arandomthought@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          And a metal scream and a metal growl are also two different things that both exist. That’s why I assumed they were talking about the former. ¯_ (ツ)_/