this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2024
86 points (97.8% liked)

No Stupid Questions

36167 readers
1412 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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?

all 33 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] foggy@lemmy.world 38 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

I am a decent metal vocalist. I have taught all kinds of people to do deep guttural growls, from children to adults male and female.

Without creating a wall of text that will only confuse you... Two words: Exasperated sigh.

Sigh like you just died on the final boss and realized you never quicksaved.

Sigh like your dad just made the most anguishingly bad pun you've ever heard. There needs to be some disgust in this sigh.

Kind of say "uhhh" and "eww" and "ugh" at the same time.

The goal is to push air hard and leave the throat muscles loose. This will make your throat flap about and distort the sound coming out.

Okay we're getting toward wall of text, but, have you ever had a cough for a long time? And your cough got nasty sounding, even after you were all better? You trained your muscles to relax, thats why it sounds different, and you did it to help push mucous out. Screaming is pretty much the same. Once you're comfortable with all this, give it a nice loud: "Ahhhhhhhhhh!" But relax your throat as you push more air/push harder. That's where the distortion comes from.

Edit: check out extreme vocal institute for more tips. That guy explains this stuff brilliantly, and he gets into very detailed specifics.

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

Fun tip! And now I'm sure there are people nearby wondering why I'm making these strange noises.

I've always wondered how you guys can go more than one song without hurting yourselves.

[–] bizarroland@fedia.io 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's exactly the kind of information I was looking for!

I'll give it a try! You mentioning it made me realize that every time I've tried to scream I have been tensing and putting a LOT of compression on my voice, which is probably why I can get so loud. I've definitely not tried it without compressing my voice.

Thank you!

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago

Dude, that's awesome :) I love the entire explanation.

It's the same basic way I learned to growl too.

[–] TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

any tips for not injuring vocal chords?

[–] foggy@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

If it hurts, stop. Don't practice in pain.

[–] arandomthought@sh.itjust.works 24 points 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 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Classy@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I just want to know what the dude from Lamb of God does to make himself sound like a jaguar

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 3 points 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.

[–] Nemo@slrpnk.net 15 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Personally, I scream for icecream.

[–] bizarroland@fedia.io 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] felbane@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

There's that awful dad joke that foggy was talking about; Use it as inspiration for your exasperated sigh.

[–] TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

BING QI LIN!!!

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I try not to.

The last time I did, it was around 3 in the morning and I just won my first chicken dinner in PUBG (when it was still new) and screamed

FUCK YEAH! SUCK MY NUTS!

Which woke up the whole house.

[–] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 16 points 2 months ago

Q: How to scream
A: Toxic, competitive gaming

Actually, that checks out perfectly.

[–] tourist@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 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 10 points 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.

[–] Mango@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Honestly OP, it sounds like what you're doing is dramatically more interesting. Can we get an example?

[–] bizarroland@fedia.io 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I suppose. What process should I share the media through?

[–] Mango@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Iunno. Peertube?

[–] all-knight-party@fedia.io 6 points 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.

[–] walter_wiggles@lemmy.nz 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Get OP some singing lessons stat!

[–] bizarroland@fedia.io 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] ludrol@bookwormstory.social 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So you would need metal singing lessons instead of traditional ones.

[–] bizarroland@fedia.io 2 points 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 1 points 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 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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 1 points 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)_/