MARY ZIMMER: Screaming Technique, Boosting Singer Confidence, Vocal Harmony Shortcuts

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by two notes. Audio Engineering two notes is a leader in the market for load box, cabinet and mic simulators. Gunner, the days of having iso rooms or having to record an amp at ear bleeding volumes to capture that magic tone. The Torpedo Live reload and studio allow you to crank your amp up as loud as you want, but record silently. Check out www.two-notes.com for more info. And now your host, Mary Zimmer.

Speaker 2 (00:00:37):

Hey everybody. Welcome to the URM podcast. I'm your guest host, Mary Zimmer, AKA metal, Mary Z or Mary Z, whatever you want to think of me as. And I am a vocal instructor. Some of you guys know me from the YouTube channel that I host called Voice Hacks by Mary Z. And some of you guys know me as an actual singer from the different bands that I've been in previously, Luna Mortis, white Empress, and currently Santa Marta. So you're used to hearing these Dear Somebody episodes with aal, Joey and Joel. But I'm going to try it today. And if you want me to do this again, please submit questions to Al at URM Academy with the subject line. Dear Mary, oh and I have been on this URM podcast before. If you guys missed it, it's episode 95 to be exact and to hear that podcast episode, just go to URM Academy slash episode 95 Studio Voice Hacks with Mary Zimmer.

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So hopefully you guys will be able to find that. Also, I wanted to start off the podcast by last time I didn't make a correction. I kind of just didn't want to interrupt the flow of the information we were doing. We were having such a good conversation, but I actually, I started off with a website called voice hacks.net, which I then moved and turned into exclusively YouTube. So if you guys have been looking for that, the answer to that is that I took it down about a year ago and I moved it to YouTube. So it's Voice Hacks by Mary Z on YouTube, and it's basically just youtube.com/voice hacks by Mary Z. So you can find all my stuff there. I'm on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram for voice hacks as well. I also have personal pages if you guys are interested in following me as a singer because I tend not to include my actual singing too, too much on my voice hacks channels.

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I want to be sure that you guys are getting quality information and quality lessons. And I, if you want to check me out as a vocalist, I figure you can Google that and check out my other channels and my other bands and things like that. Okay, so let's start this. Everybody knows that people write in questions and I have to say, you guys gave me some incredibly awesome questions and this episode is even going to be a more really thorough vocal nerd out time if you guys wanted to get some serious vocal advice and information. This is the episode, not that last time, but I feel like the questions that you guys asked this time were super targeted and super specific and they're requiring me to give a lot of detail and I was super stoked. It's not too often I just get to talk for over an hour on the only subject that I know best, and that's voice stuff.

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Okay, so the first question is from Johan Martin, thank you Johan. He says, Hey Mary, really enjoying your vocal advice. My question is, while many practice to reach higher notes, is it possible to learn to reach lower notes? Essentially, can I go from a baritone to a base two with enough practice? My voice can get really round sounding in the lower register and mostly anything under a G will just sound like air coming through my nose being hungover. Can however, make me go down to the D sometimes? Can I learn to control my register better or is liquor the only way? Oh my gosh. Okay, so this is a really interesting question and a lot of you guys actually asked me some questions relating to voice range. So I have gotten up my midi keyboard here because I want to make sure that we are going to be talking about things in really specific terms and I want to play some things so we can talk about what notes we're talking about here.

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So first we have to talk about voice type. So what is Johan asking? So he says, can I go from a baritone to a base two? So for those of us who don't know what that means, because everybody's at a different level, the baritone is like a medium range male voice, like a David Bowie esque. So not super low, not super high. Also, there's a lot of rock singers that fall in baritone. I would consider Marilyn Manson in a baritone range, probably Cory Taylor, maybe high baritone. He does sing pretty high, but he can also sing pretty low. So we're talking about medium voices here. Bass two is really not so much a voice type, but it's actually a choral arrangement notation in choirs, they split bases and altos and well, a lot of all the parts really could be split into multiple groupings. So generally if they do that, if a composer writes for a choir and they decide they want a not so low bass part and then a super low bass part, they'll label them bass one and two, depending on their preference for what they choose to call the high base part or the low base part.

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So we don't really think of that in voice lessons. And I want to also say that I have a classical background and started my training in opera and all of that. And my music education is primarily a huge reason of why I'm able to answer all of these questions today. But the one thing is some of the things don't quite translate. So in the classical world, they divide up people's note ranges. They call this your voice type in a system of classification called the F system. I know you guys are probably going to laugh at that FACH, very German F, what the fuck? So of course it was the Germans who my last name is Zimmer. Zimmer. So I feel like I can poke fun slightly at my ancestry, but it's kind of a stereotype that Germans are organized and engineers and scientists and all this.

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And of course, so they were the ones in the classical world to really formalize a standard of classification for vocal note ranges. And within the note ranges, color, voice, color, so from bright to dark. So we do not have such a complex method of classifying people in the modern world, although I do refer to fox charts all the time to kind of just generally see where my students are sitting. But I will say that there are a few things about voice type and note range. So why did they go through all this trouble to classify the notes? Well, the reason why is because they wanted to come up with the ultimate form of casting excellence and specificity that these opera parts are written for exactly a dark voiced soprano, which that sounds weird to a lot of us who are unfamiliar with that, but that's actually common to have a dramatic voice in a higher note range.

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It occurs in the rock and metal world too. We do have our set note ranges, but we also, I mean and in r and b and pop in all non-classical singing really as well, but it doesn't really matter as much in the classical world. I'm not honestly that sure if color matters, I'm going to duck because there's a bunch of classical people throwing their shoes at me right now. But again, well sometimes color would matter if it requires more movement. I think a bright voice might lend itself if it's more legato and heavy, a dark voice might lend itself. But overall in the modern world, we don't really look in things in those terms. We just kind of go by basic note range. And also we have a different way of singing called belting, which is basically our modern way of singing that's not classical.

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Anything from country to jazz to rock heavy metal, and we'll go over that later. But the voice types that we have, the reason why we need to classify ourselves is not to limit ourselves. It's just to acknowledge roughly where our start and endpoint begins. So Johann's asking, can I change my voice type with enough practice? Basically can a baritone is a medium male voice. A bass is the lowest male voice and a tenor is the high male voice. And then a very, very high voice would be like a counter tenor. And these are very basic classifications. I'm really simplifying it. Classical people are going crazy right now because I'm not going through all this crazy detail about fox. But again, in the modern world, we don't need this much information on it. You can Wikipedia fox if you're really interested in it, but what we find is that if you don't sing within your note range, it becomes very difficult because your voice is a set shape.

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It's an instrument, be it organic, it's an instrument, and it has a set size and shape just like everything else in your body. So it's not going to magically change size and shape. So what makes a wind instrument or an instruments sound the size and the shape for some reason because we can't see the vocal chords without looking with a special camera singers have this kind of weird idea that we can really change our vocal range and we can't. And I know this is very disappointing. However, I've been teaching for over a decade now and I've taught hundreds of people, and I will tell you that most people all freaks of nature aside because the one consistency in all of this vocal stuff is that there will always be an exception. There's always going to be one guy who has a seven octave or something crazy, Mariah Carey with the whistle tones, and those people are just that one person.

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And I've taught hundreds of people and never had a total freak of nature. And in fact, I've only maybe had two people who had sort of extraordinary vocal ranges. And by that I mean nearing the four octave range. And I don't mean, and again, it's like the same way you have to think of your vocal ability like the NFL. There's going to be one or two freaks of nature who are extraordinary athletes, but everybody who made it to the NFL worked hard and learned their technique and also was an extraordinary athlete, but certainly consistently they're not that freak of nature. So for everybody out there who's going to be like, actually so-and-so has a seven ocular, just hold on for that and just realize 99.9% of people fit into the general range of human ability. And from just my personal observation, so me having taught hundreds of people all different vocal ranges for over a decade, what I've observed is that most people can access approximately three octaves of notes with their vocal chords that they're given.

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Now, where those three octaves start and end will depend on whether you are a bass, a baritone, a tenor, low, medium high, and there's low, medium, high for women too. Alto is the lowest. You can probably tell by my speaking voice that I am an alto. Then we have Metso soprano, which is a medium voice and we have soprano high voice, and the super, super high whistle people are the cholera tourist sopranos. So it's all transposed. So here's what I have to say about Johan's question about can he go from a baritone to a base to with enough practice? Most people when they practice a lot and they find that they're increasing their range, they're getting new high notes and getting new low notes. Those high notes and low notes were already there within the shape of their vocal chords, set preset ability range of that instrument.

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It's just that a lot of people don't take singing lessons right away or maybe didn't realize how to access those notes. Most people when they come to me don't realize how to access their full three octaves until we go through it and we learn what we have to do and what part where and all of that, and then we get access to every single note. So can you probably get better at your available low notes if you're a baritone? Sure. And so he says, my voice can get round in the lower register, and anything under a G will sound just like air coming through my nose. So what I think he means by a G if I'm a baritone.

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So guys, for this purpose, let's call middle CC four. Okay. Just to be aware though, GarageBand logic pro tools, a lot of MIDI programs call it C3, but I'm calling it C four because I do have that old school kind of background a little bit, although I really don't, although I'm really open and progressive and modern about my techniques. That's just the traditional way in piano lessons, they call it C four. So if middle C is C four, that's this note right here. Then what happens is with a baritone, I think your G is the G two down here that you're talking about. And so this note, he's saying anything under this sounds like air coming through his nose. And usually when it goes like this and it just turns into air in your low register, that's actually your larynx falling out of position on the low range.

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It could be because that note is just not physically within your natural vocal range, but if you're a baritone, I can usually get my tenors to sink to end on this G. I think a baritone could get to the F or the E possibly. Again, it's going to depend if it's a brighter baritone kind of range. You don't necessarily have to be a tenor. It might be if your color's kind of bright, you might not get that low. If your color's kind of dark, you might be able to get one or two notes lower. Again, I would actually have to hear you. I can audibly usually pretty much tell the difference between someone's actual capability border or just their current access availability at that time. So when you sing lower than that, he's trying to get down to the D or he says he can go down to the D when he is hung over.

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Oh my, that's really low. And for a baritone that's extremely low, this is base territory. I almost never have anyone sing down here. I've had maybe two people in all of my time who could sing this low. So this is the D two. If middle C is C four, if you're doing your MIDI programs would be D one probably. So what we're thinking about here is when you're hung over your vocal chords, so the shape and the size of the chords change your range. So we know this when we go through puberty, for example, when women go through puberty, the larynx lengthens, the vocal chords lengthen by only three millimeters. It's significant. They sound like an adult, not a child, sometimes much less though there are very high pitched adult female women, but then the men increases by 10 millimeters in length during puberty. So it's a huge length change.

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Now think about guitar strings, bass strings, stringed instruments. The longer the instrument, a bass of any kind, orchestral or otherwise is longer. It's the longest stringed instrument and it's the lowest, and that would happen in thickness. You look at these like a regular guitar and same thing that goes from thinnest to thickest, from highest to lowest. Same thing. It's just physics guys. Same thing with your vocal cords. So if you're a man and you have a longer thicker set of vocal cords, it's going to be lower. Okay? So if you are hungover, your vocal cords might be thick because of swelling. A lot of times we're drunk, we are yelling over people or whatever, and our vocal chords start slamming together and they puff up and they swell. But all kinds of respiratory swelling can happen from a night of drinking and partying and just doing whatever to your body.

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A phlegm coating can add thickness to it, et cetera, et cetera. So what we really find is that that D may not always be there if that's not the natural size of your vocal cords. So that being said, when you are trying to sing lower, you could probably see if that D is part of your natural register or not. If you think of yourself as a baritone and you're only getting it hungover, it's probably not. It's probably only happening on those days to be quite honest with you, our vocal thickness, again, some days, this is why I don't ever recommend writing on the very peaks of your ranges, either low or high because it's not super reliable. Your body is your instrument, and this is kind of what sucks is that it has its own whims of how your immune system, your rest, your hormones, everything are that day and that time.

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And it could vary some of those things slightly the thickness, but it should only be slight. I would say what you could do is you could work on stabilizing the larynx. I have some good videos on my YouTube channel on singing with the neutral larynx position. Google that, and basically you want to support all the way down to the low register. I can sing into a baritone range. It's frightening. I know I'm super sorry guys, but when I do it, the way I do it without allowing my larynx to fall out of position to where it gets breathy is I'm using a lot of air support and I'm putting volume into it. I'm really stabilizing it. So that's horrifying. I know that was the G too that he was saying was his lowest note as a baritone, as good as a teacher, but as a performer, no one wants to hear a woman sing that low.

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So I don't really use that except for lessons or demonstrations. Okay, so that was really a good question. So let's go ahead and take a look at the next question. Let's see. So, okay, the next question is from Vaughn downward. Vaughn asks Mary, in one of your videos, you gave what I feel is some of the best advice for people who are starting out on vocals. It was something along the lines of don't try to practice along with vocalists outside of your range as it will only discourage you. My question is, do you have any other recommendations to help boost confidence or deter discouragement? Additionally, you said vocal range is a matter of physiology. So what's the best way for someone to learn their range and stretch out the range as best as possible? So on the last question point there about the physiology, I already kind of went over that you need to take some lessons and you need guidance with people.

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I do want to mention one thing I didn't mention in the last question that I said I would address later, which is limits on our type of singing. So our rock voice, our non-classical voice or our country voice is this way too, or anything that's basically modern singing primarily is going to go forward In singing, we have to use abstract pictures in our mind it's called tone placement. Literally imagining your sound traveling somewhere and it will sounds kind of silly, but it's actually in fact how the voice works because your physiology is the neurology. The voice is connected to your abstract thought, not your direct thought, which is why it can be so hard to learn how to sing. But if you know that you can hack the system and we use pictures in our mind to control and direct the sound. And I have some good videos on tone placement if you guys want to check it out.

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And the tone placement for rock singing is we imagine, and modern singing is imagining it going forward. Like, Hey, this kind of thing is I'm picturing it going forward. This is what will make it sound like a modern singing style like rock pop r and b country, not operatic. If I was going to opera sing, I would imagine all of my notes low or high going up, and then I get a much rounder operatic sound even in the low end. So what we want to do for rock singing is we want to imagine it going forward. This being said, you can't do all tone placements in all three of your available octaves. Many you might actually end up with three and a half total octaves once you get this would be including your falsetto. When I'm saying people can sing three octaves, I mean your whole range from ultimate high falsetto to ultimate low bottom, I mean everything.

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But for men, sometimes it ends up being three and a half because you get a little bit more on the low end. Even though I have a low voice, I'm still a female. You can still tell that by listening to the voice. So because my vocal chords I think are shorter still, and Adam's apple is kind of a visual representation of seeing the extra length in a man's vocal chords. Women, you cannot see the Adam's apple men. They're certainly longer. We can really see the Adam's apple and you can almost observe the larynx moving up and down a little bit as we sing and whatnot. So when we're rock singing our belting, our forward tone placement can only be done in our lowest two octaves. Once we get to the top of our second octave, we need to switch to either a mixed voice, which is sort of imagining the sound going between your eyes.

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It could be like a Bee Gees super falsetto, Justin Timberlake, he Michael Jackson, he that kind of sound, I just want to love you baby. That kind of stuff. That's kind of a mixed voice. And then we've got our full on falsetto going straight up for the high. That'd be more like our hair metal and falsetto, those kind of things. So we can't belt, we can't keep that forward. Hey, placement higher than our second octave. So you need to get with a coach. You need to learn how to access all of the areas of your octaves. I have really good tutorials to get you started. I give lessons on Skype voice [email protected] for rates and booking. I teach people all over the world so I can coordinate with any time zone anywhere, so I could try to help you out because sometimes it is hard to tell at first, you're going to be stretching things out.

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When I first started belting, I thought I was teaching myself to belt. I had only classical training and I wasn't very good at it, quite frankly, but I got better over time once I learned all this stuff. But okay, so early on I thought I could only belt to this, which is the A above middle C. So this is, hey, this be like a tenor alto kind of high note. But I learned that if I kept my larynx neutral, actually that isn't quite to my three octaves. So I learned that, oh, I can actually go all the way up to the C and sometimes the D, if I'm having a good enough day and it is a little brassier like, hey, like that. But I can definitely do it now with no problem, but still there's a limit beyond that. I really do need to flip, and I find that.

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So once you know the benefit of knowing your range, for me, this goes back to Vaughn's first part where he says that I said something like, don't try to practice along with vocalists outside of your ranges. It will only discourage you. I am not trying to limit people from trying to go for their full capability. Anybody who's taken lessons with me know that much to their chagrin. Sometimes we learn their full capability. Every note that they're able to sing, we learn how to sing and get at even if they don't plan on using them all. Some people only plan on rock singing and never want to use that high octave, the third octave and their falsetto, but we do it anyway. So what I mean by that is not to limit yourself, but if I as a contralto the lowest voice type, if I go to sing Hart, Anne Wilson, who's an extremely high soprano belter, amazing belter, I'm going to be really disappointed in myself and I'm going to think I'm a terrible singer.

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Why can't I sing Wilson? What's wrong with me? You start beating yourself up really hard and in the classical world, this doesn't happen as much. They make you aware right away you're going to be in a type and that's expected and everybody has a spot and you feel pretty good about it. Like, well, everybody has a place. Altos have this place and tenors have this place and there's roles for everybody and songs for everybody and repertoire for everybody. But in the rock world, we forget that it's the same. We just don't go about classifying people that much and talking about these things that much. So once we know kind of what our voice type is, then we can listen to songs, hear where the highest note of the song is, plank it out on the piano and find it, find out where the lowest note is, and then we can decide relative to our highest and lowest notes, is this a good song for me to sing in the original key?

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Here's the other thing, I don't mean don't sing the song at all. I mean, I could sing heart songs if I wanted to, but I would need to transpose them down significantly, probably to a third down or something crazy. But even meso soprano stuff like a Lady Gaga song, like a meso song, I feel like I still want to transpose that down a whole step personally. So you can move things around. There's a lot of plugins and tools and transpose buttons on keyboards and all kinds of things. Capo for your guitar, whatever it is, just move it. A lot of singers, professional singers do this. I mean, I don't know. A lot of people do this. They write it in a high key and then they play it down a whole step live. I mean very often. So I mean, don't fool yourself. There is no magic.

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Everything that is being done to make it easier and for people to sing more efficiently they're doing, especially when they're a high paid high charting performer, there's millions of dollars here. Don't think that these people don't have coaches and then they're not putting 'em in certain keys. I mean, they really are putting a lot of thought and effort into this. So the other question Vaughn had asked was, do I have any other recommendations to boost confidence or deter discouragement? And that I wanted to tie in to another question from John Cudo that says, hi Mary, thanks for taking my question and for doing this for the community. Really appreciate it. I'm hoping you can share some tips for dealing with singers who seem to have a difficult time singing even after you've built rapport and get along. I have come across a client who still just seems to have some sort of insecurity they can't get past and I can't figure out what it is. Any insightful suggestions you may have on how to bring out the inner rockstar. Thanks for taking my questions. So I'm tying that in with Vaughn's. Do you have any other suggestions to deter discouragement?

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Really, singers can really get inside their head and because our abstract thought controls literally is controlling the muscle mechanism in our larynx and everything, if we are feeling frustration, we can really psych ourselves out. And I've been there and I've done it. I lost my voice on stage in the middle of record labels looking at my first band and stuff, and it was terrible. It was like I literally lost my voice in the middle of a set in the big important scenario. Fortunately, this person came to see the band anyway, even though he saw me do that on this video, and it went okay from there, but I psyched myself out because of stress and whatnot. So I didn't have anything physically wrong with my voice, but I lost it because I was freaking out. And also, so what do we do to get around this?

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Number one, if you take lessons and you learn technique and stuff, you'll get, it's not so much about you being a quote, good singer or bad singer, people who are singers. You guys take it really, really personally because we've got these myth shows like American Idol and the voice that makes you think that people either magically have it or they don't. And again, the freaks of nature are just that the freaks of nature. There's just a very few amount of people who have naturally perfect tone placement and everything. And like I said, even the amazing vocalists out there in the pop world, the Beyonces, I mean, I'm sure somebody has coached her along the way. Like I said, there's millions of dollars writing on this stuff. People are heavily invested in this stuff. The reason why is you need a set of tools to give you confidence and you need to think of yourself.

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So for the singer, let's start with solutions for the singer, for yourself, and then we'll give some solutions for the producer, the singer, for you to not just get discouraged is remember that everyone in the band, they're going to do the same thing to them. Even worse. I've watched guitar players have to punch sweeps over and over and over, just horrible, just go and going. So even a professional singer, when I was recording an album with Jason Soff, he told me, look, you have to do all these takes because you can actually sing good, and I don't want to Auto-Tune it if you can actually sing because, so he made me work harder because I was better. So you don't really have to try not to think of it. It's just you. Everyone in the band is going to go through the ringer and nowadays, because we can punch things in and comp takes and all this stuff, they're going to make you do little nitpicky things over and over and over.

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So if you go in with this attitude and you already know that you're going to have to do it, it's not going to be this disappointing thing because I think the worst and most disheartening thing is if you go in with the mistaken idea that you're going to do it in one take and you're just going to do a great job and have a great day, that's not realistic for anyone. No one in the band is going to have that day is not going to happen. Just know right away you're going to have to do a hundred takes. And like I said, it might actually be because you're better, not because you're bad, because sometimes if someone's not doing well, they just stop taking takes and they just go, okay, we'll just autotune it. So you never know. So you definitely want to keep an open mind and singers think of yourself as like an athlete.

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Athletes get coached constantly from the first day that they're in sports and they expect to have to develop over time. They know that they can't lift the full weight the first day. They expect that they have to work towards it. I mean, singers, you have to think about that, that some days are going to be better than others and that you need to keep working and maybe you need a coach. You need tools to give you confidence. If you go in the studio and you've never taken a lesson and you have no idea what you could even do to correct something. So say the producer is very constructive, which they should be. By the way, singers be aware that there is a line. So you need to take constructive criticism and do constructive takes. When someone says that's a little off time, I think you're a little ahead of the beat.

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We need to do that again, you need to think of a constructive, use your problem solving skills. Think of a constructive solution to that. Well, okay, I'm ahead of the beat, so I need to slow down. Don't look at it as like I did a bad job. Ah, me, I did bad. I'm bad. It's not that. As long as the producer is staying constructive and saying, you were a little flat, you were a little sharp, you were a little ahead of the beat, try to do that with more grit. Sometimes they're going to have you sing the same thing in five different ways with five different attitudes just so that they can play around with him later in the mix. They might already be all perfect. So I mean just you never know what's going through the producer's head. He's got a whole construct and he's not looking at you good or bad or worthless or not.

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He's just looking at you as like, he's got to get a well. I say, I wish there were more ladies, get out there, start recording, start producing. So he or she maybe sitting there with a construct. You're just an instrument to them. So they're just trying to get this sound of the instrument that will go best for the mix and for that song and maybe a few extra takes to have options and whatnot. So just remember they're not necessarily playing American Idol Judge and going, that was terrible from the other side. Now if they're giving you those kind of comments, and this is what now, so this goes to the producers. Now, you can't be giving personal comments if you want to keep a singer encouraged. I'm sure you're not doing this, John, the guy who asked about the client who's insecure, I'm sure you're not doing this, but I just want to put this for everybody that's listening, in case it didn't occur.

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If you say, dude, that was just a shitty take, man, I dunno. Just do it again. That's not necessarily that negative or necessarily that personal, but it's not constructive. The person on the other end doesn't know how to solve that problem. A shitty take. What about it is shitty? If you'd say, well, you're kind of going like this at the end and I want you to do it long all the way through, like tell 'em something specific to go for. It will keep everybody feeling encouraged because then they'll be occupied with their mind with the problem solving skills. Be very specific. Even if you haven't taken lessons, you know what it is you're trying say, try to give it a little bit more anger or whatever. I think that would be really great. Don't be super patronizing though. If you're like, you can do this man, and it's super cheesy and it's not believable, they'll also be kind of turned off.

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So try to say like, no, I really heard that's starting to come out there. And I think if you just did it one more time and you just put a little more energy into it, you'd have it direct them because they can't always hear everything. A lot of we're competing with the volume inside of our head a lot and play them back. The take producers be like, okay, so I want you to listen to this and hear how you're a little ahead of the beat and then let them hear it and be like, okay, this is cool. And one of my friends that I interviewed for the Voice Acts channel, Sabrina from Seven Kingdoms, they're on Napalm Records, they recorded at Morris Sound with the Morris Brothers in Florida, and she said that Jim had a really interesting thing that he did, and one is he would play it back to her mistakes and say, this is the other girl.

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And then he would say, do better than the other girl, do better than that, or whatever. Or you can do it better than the other girl. It was kind of funny. So that was a little interesting thing. Another thing is if someone's really having trouble keeping with a melody, just give him a little mid melody in there with it, in the monitor with them, for them, whatever it is. Obviously it's not going to be that just a little something in with the mix in with the guitar for them to follow a melodic line. Sometimes it is hard for singers, for those of you guys that are doing metal and there's not a lot of distortion, there's not a lot of direct pitch reference for singers. It's just like almost. So you might have to do that, especially for newbies who need just a little bit more.

(00:37:37):

They don't have as much recording experience. And again, we're always competing with the volume inside of our heads, so it is already really hard for us to hear. So singers just try to think, keep an athletic perspective. One time my very, very first band, not Luna Mortis, Ottoman Empire that I was in, but the very, very first band I was ever, ever in right out of high school, these guys came looking for me because the singer had a massive breakdown. What I wanted to say to this question is that every time you guys work with somebody, every time you go into a studio, no matter who it is, there should always be an exchange of mutual respect. First of all, if people are talking crap to you, there is a line where you do need to say, I'm not going to take this. If they say, man, you fucking suck.

(00:38:26):

You're just a fucking piece of shit. Can't. You're such a fucking shitty vocalist. That kind of stuff, like direct insults, really derogatory, non-constructive things should not be tolerated. That's super unprofessional. It's super small time as Joel would say, no small time. So don't be with small time people. Professional people should be able to work in even a frustrating situation with constructive attitudes or at least take a break and walk away. It should never be this personal mud slinging thing. So always stand up for yourself even if you need to work on your ability and you have constructive things you need to improve on with your instrument. It doesn't need to be personal insults. There shouldn't be any berating, there shouldn't be any of that. Just to preface all of it. Okay, and so that being said, every time you go in producers and musicians, when either side, every time you work with somebody, that's an opportunity for you to show them that you're really cool.

(00:39:21):

Remember that not for you to be in competition with the other person. If you're like, he's not going to tell me what to do, then don't even go into the studio. You need to be cool because you don't know. It might be a really good scenario if you do what they say and you end up not really liking it. That's an artistic difference, and maybe you guys can work that out with constructive conversation, but you need to, if people think that you're really cool, they're going to pass that along. They're going to be like, yeah, it was a pleasure to work with so-and-so, even if you're a new singer because you took the constructive criticism well, or even if you're a new producer because you were really constructive and positive and people had a great experience and they got a great result. So you always want to take advantage of that.

(00:40:08):

This goes back to the story I was about to tell for my first band, and then the reason why these guys went looking for me was because their first singer had a total meltdown in the vocal booth with a guy who was a very constructive, he's the guy I ended up learning a lot of recording from, so I know he was very constructive, cool dude. But she had a breakdown and so extreme that she literally fell down in the vocal booth and started punching herself in the face. I'm not even kidding, I'm not even kidding. This is a real story having a really long time ago. So I feel like I could say it without any names and don't even actually, I don't even know who the singer was so I couldn't even say it. But anyway, this is where the extremes that our negative mind can take us to.

(00:40:50):

So if you go in with a healthy attitude and already know that you're going to have to work really hard all day, that you're going to have to do a ton of takes. And if you have a guy in there who's super, super insecure, it's a lot of it is probably because they don't have any direction. You got to give them direction. If you give people specifics, they can feel a lot more confident and sometimes you have to tell them how to do the thing too. This is why it's good sometimes for producers to take lessons a little bit too, so you can kind of understand what would be a direction for a singer that you would say. So if someone says, well, I don't know how to make it a little grittier, you could say, well, when you're pissed off, or you could say, try to feel the feeling of being anger a little bit more attitude.

(00:41:41):

Their feelings is a good direction. You could always tell them basic things like just get louder, whatever it may be, but try to be specific and guide them and maybe have a few lessons or listen to some vocal seminars to get some constructive ideas of what to tell that person. But you could probably get them to feel more confident if you specifically help guide them to what they need to improve upon. They're not going to just magically lay down like a stellar vocal track. Like anything I've ever recorded that people said, the vocals were great, I worked really effing hard at, even though I'm already a good singer, I made sure that all takes were exactly how they needed to be, et cetera.

(00:42:25):

So our next question comes from Nar Magnusson. Hi Nar. He says, Hey Mary. I used to sing and scream in bands from when I was 17 to my mid twenties, but eventually stopped due to various reasons, mainly because the bands just fell apart and I got tired. I was self-taught. So I don't know if my techniques were really any good. I never really got sore, but I had a tendency to blow out my voice at rehearsals and shows. I did, oh, sorry, I think I did something close to a fry scream. I can describe it as pushing with my diaphragm while holding back with my throat, if that makes sense. Now I'm close to 33 and whenever I've tried to scream in the later years using the same techniques, I just strain my voice and get really sore.

(00:43:12):

Is there a possibility that I've hurt my throat to the point of not being able to scream again? Or do you think I can get back into the groove if I take some courses to learn the proper techniques? I don't have a sore throat and I'm not hoarse. Thanks for doing this, by the way. Loved your podcast episode. Thank you. So number one, and I should have said this at the very beginning of the podcast, is that I am not a medical professional. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a physician or anybody in any sort of medical way, and no vocal coach is vocal instructors are teachers and personal trainers. We have a lot of knowledge about the anatomy and the physiology of everything that we're trying to do and teach and what is medically sound and safe and what causes injury and what prevents injury just like a personal trainer or physical trainer.

(00:44:08):

But eventually you need to go to the orthopedic surgeon if there's something wrong, that's what would happen with a trainer. So same thing with us. So first of all, I always tell somebody when they ask this, because I'm not a physician, I'm not qualified to diagnose or cure any illnesses or anything like that or any injuries to the voice. I can give you techniques that can physically prevent injury and help us sing properly and scream properly. But that being said, if you're having, so since you took so long off of the singing, I would say just go to the ENT ear, nose and throat doctor or the laryngologist and have them look at your vocal cords and just make sure before you proceed with anything that everything's kosher. I mean, because you want to eliminate any possible medical problems because there's a lot of medical problems that are very minor actually, a lot of vocalists freak out.

(00:45:08):

They're very afraid to go to the laryngologist. But really honestly, there are very minor things that happen that could be treated that we just need a visual on and that we don't even realize that are happening. Something as simple as acid reflux. We can look in there, your vocal cords are in your windpipe, but they're up near the glottal funnel, which is the convergence of the windpipe and the food pipe. And when you swallow your epiglottis folds over the windpipe so you don't choke on your food. Sometimes it gets past there though, in the funnel, that's when people start choking. But that being said, when we're sleeping and we're not eating, that will be open a lot. And so when we lay down, if we have acid reflux, it often splashes up over the epiglottis and into the lungs onto the cords very often. So something like that though can be healed.

(00:46:09):

It's just a minor irritation and burn, but it can make us hoarse or something and they can be healed if we go ahead and if we take our acid reflux medication, change the diet, change our routine, et cetera, and there's other things that need more serious attention, but you want to know that you just want to go get the all clear, 99% of the time it's clear. I mean, most of the time the voice is very delicate and we can really self-assess. You can't just go on screaming for years and singing for years and not have problems and not notice them. You are going to notice your vocal production will be hindered. You'll be hoarse. You won't be able to sing properly or speak properly, you won't be able to make it through sets. You're going to have problems. So if you're having any sort of issue, the best thing to do is just go get the all clear from your laryngologist and just make sure it's okay and safe to proceed with voice lessons.

(00:47:08):

So that being said, now proper screaming, so not knowing we will only make it worse. I just wanted to drive that point home too. Say there was something that could be corrected by a minor thing and you just decided to go about screaming anyway, then you could turn into a more serious thing and some things are irreversible. So it is quite delicate, even though again, many things heal and clear up and many, many people recover from vocal injuries and surgery and all this. Many, many people. It's more people than not. But if you leave it alone and don't do anything, you could end up with an irreversible situation. You just certainly wouldn't want to do that. So just my lessons and my tutorials and these podcasts are not in any way a substitute for a medical professional's opinion, diagnosis, and treatment.

(00:48:04):

So, and only if you are all clear by the doc, start from scratch on the screaming with a coach. Don't try to. If you can't get back to what you used to do, stop trying it, then it's not working right? Just start totally over and start fresh with good technique. The crazy part is the sickest screams are the ones that have the most correct technique. They have the best breath support you can generate the most distortion, and they sound the baddest. The sickest screams are generally the ones that are being done the most technically correct. When people start losing the distortion, they end up yelling because proper screams. So the difference between fry and false chord screaming is that they're both distortion sounds made with no voice in it. So none of no singing underneath it. Hey, okay, so this is for heavy metal screaming for my audience. That is not metal country folks, you're going to be, I'm about to blow your mind.

(00:49:14):

So basically fry screaming is where the vocal cords are completely compressed in the windpipe, and they are not singing though when we sing, they undulate and they vibrate. You can watch videos of this on YouTube if you want. They vibrate in a wavy kind of way. As they come together, they come together along the surface in this waves. When we do fry screaming, they just press together completely the full length and we push air between the vocal cords, which doesn't hurt them at all. And then we also are using that air to vibrate the tissues in the epi glottal funnel, like the false cords and the tonsils and other tissues and the uvula and the soft palate. So this is where distortion should be coming from, actually the wind flapping those tissues around. So this is how we are able to make screams without hurting our voice.

(00:50:10):

Hurting your voice actually comes from yelling, Hey, if I yell too hard, like, Hey, stop stealing my car or something, I'm going to slam my cords together. We can't see this happening. We can't see our voice, and it's hard to feel this because the same reason why the abstract thought controls the voice is also why we can't feel a lot of it till later because we don't have too many tactile nerve endings in there. So if you slam your hands together, you can certainly feel it. There's a ton of tactile nerve endings in there, but we don't really have that in the voice, so we end up slamming and yelling. But really what we notice is that we're hoarse and then we can't finish the set or whatever. So we don't want to be yelling. False cord screaming is where the vocal cords sit open and they don't ever come into contact and we just generate distortion. So let me do a demonstration fry screaming. So with the vocal cords, closed full distortion, no voice would be something like this.

(00:51:09):

Okay? And we can hear there's no, I'm not going like that. Okay? There's no voice in there. It's just distortion. It feels very scratchy in my throat because I am vibrating the tissues. The scratchiness is necessary. However, the studies that have been done on this show that it's really just, there's nothing going on in there. It's just the tissues flapping around and the scratchy feeling is from the friction sensation. So I have videos on how to do this, start with my breathing for screamers videos, then watch my how to fry cream videos and try to get back into it from there. And again, lessons there are screamer coaches. The only one I really recommend besides myself is Melissa Cross. I recommend anything she does. So Zenni screaming, anything she's got out is fine.

(00:51:55):

So stay away from a lot of these amateur videos of just like young kids in their house going, I saw one word ago. I was like, okay, so if you scream, you're going to ruin your voice. And it's like, no, that's absolutely not true. Actually, that person doesn't have a clear understanding of what's happening in the windpipe, and that's a concern. Your teachers should have a very clear understanding of what's happening inside there and whether it's healthy or not. So nobody should ever present you a technique and tell you, this is going to ruin your voice. Then don't do it, whatever it is. So false chord. If the chords are open, that's more of our death metal type of scream. So that's full distortion. Chords open like this.

(00:52:36):

Yeah, that kind of thing. Again, there's no voice. I'm not singing yo. Yeah, so that's a big difference from singing with grit or rasp. There is where we can do both at the same time where we sing with the vocal chords and we generate distortion with those tissues simultaneously. That's like our blues, our gritty singing, our Marilyn Manson, faithful Faded, that kind of thing. The singing with grit type of stuff. Hey, the Hetfield, yeah, that kind of stuff. It's multi genre, that kind of thing. But again, in that case, I should be singing nicely underneath the grit, Hey, and I should be able to do grit on top of it with my soft palette and other tissues without hurting myself. So get a coach, watch some of my tutorials for these introductions. Maybe it'll be enough to reorient you, but again, I wouldn't do it until you have the all clear from the doctor, especially if you've been having a consistent hoarseness and things.

(00:53:40):

Just always guys get the all clear. If you've been having issues, then you just need to know, is it my technique or not? What if it's something that you need to take acid reflux medicine for, then technique's not going to help you. So, alright, next question. We have a question from Joel Monet. So Joel sent a whole bunch of different questions in Joel's questions. He said I could pick and choose. Thank you. Joel says, any advice as to what fitness regimen most lends itself to being both physically and vocally explosive in live performances? So I would say, here's the thing. For my rock and metal people, which is the majority of the people I coach, but also I would say also country western, they're putting on huge arena shows. And really, if you're not just sitting with a guitar and everybody that's going to be walking around and running around on stage, it's way harder than it looks.

(00:54:40):

It's way more intense than you think it's going to be. It is so physically demanding. It's crazy. And especially if you're going to do something like really powerful belting, singing with grit, screaming where you need to be using a lot of your energy, your cardiovascular shape is going to be key. You have to get in shape. Like before tours and things, I'll have to work out before a series of shows, I mean and intensify the workout. You may want to do workouts where you progressively get used to the heat, especially if you're doing an outdoor festival series, hot yoga, these kind of things. I mean, obviously within reason and again, always under the guidance and approval of your physician and your physical boundaries. Again, that's disclaimer. Do these things at your own risk though I recommend everything to believe to be medically sound. So a lot of people have told me this though.

(00:55:32):

I've been doing a lot of interviews for my voice X channel mostly has been with people of the rock and metal genre who have an intense vocal load, but all different style singers. There's a variety of styles and they've all kind of talked to about that, about how they have to be in shape to keep up when you're on stage. And I mean, it's really intense. You need a lot of air to sing or scream correctly in any style. And then you also need a lot of air to move around on stage. So you've got to be in shape. I see guys up there that are heavy set and sweating and just struggling through the set. Being fit is important because you don't want your job to be attacks on your body. You do want to try to make it a little bit easier on yourself.

(00:56:11):

You don't want to be, it will help you get more longevity out of your career. You don't want to be the guy who's middle aged and overweight and sweating and really taxing his blood pressure and his heart by doing his career. You need to, I would say just have good vocal support. You just need to have your heart in good shape and have good cardiovascular shape. That's really what you need. Because very frequently singers get black out, get lightheaded ladies, make sure your iron levels are up because men, you do not need to take iron generally. So for any reason, if you take too much, it's toxic. So that's why they don't put it in men's vitamins generally. But women lose iron on a monthly basis generally. So women generally need to make sure their iron levels are up and that their oxygen storage for their blood, their hemoglobin, that it's at full capacity and all that.

(00:57:07):

So I would say next question from Joel, again, he had a series here was, do you notice that your mood when singing can drastically affect the quality of your vocal tone. Do you have any personal life hack or ritual that helps you mentally stabilize yourself before performance? So that is tone placement. I would say what I would use that the mood is going to change your vocal tone because your abstract thought controls the voice. And the reason it does that is because you have to be able to speak expressively without thinking about it. You can't. And sometimes it's so strong, the emotions control the voice so strongly that you say something in a tone of voice that was way meaner than you wanted to, and you didn't even mean to say it like that, and it just comes out. So we have to hack that by taking lessons and learning about things like tone placement, where we purposely visualize mental pictures that will give us control over our sound.

(00:58:10):

We don't let so that regardless of our emotion, that we have a great more deal of consistency. For example, when I'm singing rock music, I know it's always going to be going forward whether I'm singing low or high, and I'm going to be trying to visualize my laser beam going forward in my mind and concentrate on my breathing, and then I can circumvent any emotional problems that I'm having because controlling my instrument through a separate means, so then I can just sing however I can live if living is without you or whatever, it's, I put the level of emotion that I want to because I'm controlling it through my mental pictures and my vocal technique. So that is what I would say is the best thing to do. If your emotions are just controlling your voice, you're going to have vocal problems because you're going to end up yelling. Your pitch is going to be inconsistent. You're going to have a lot of issues. It's okay when we're speaking. It's not good when we're singing. So do you communicate Joel's next question, do you communicate to an audience differently based on their friendliness or hostility, or is your only concern the quality of your music? So to that question, I would say that different cultures, I definitely personally as a front person, I prefer to have people who react back to me like an American audience.

(00:59:36):

Other audiences and other in different parts of the world will react to you differently. And so I personally took a little time to adjust to that. It really threw me off guard at first when I was encountering international audiences. So for example, in America, whenever you're like, come on, hey, all that stuff, they do that right back to you and it's really fun and you can get them going and get everybody going and you expect people to be yelling funny things, throwing drinks, whatever. So my first time in Belgium when I played at the Metal Female Voices Festival, I totally did not understand that culturally the Belgians had a different way of receiving the audience or receiving the performance. So I came out for the first song and I was like, ah. And I was trying to get everybody involved and chanting and stuff, and they just weren't.

(01:00:36):

And then afterwards, they clapped really enthusiastically. They really enjoyed it and I was so confused. I was like, are we doing a bad job? And I get backstage and I asked the other people I was performing with. I was like, what the hell? Because I didn't have to do the second song. So I thought, I said, is this normal? Is this how this is? And they're like, oh yeah, that's how the Belgians are. That's just what they do. They think it's respectful to be watching the audience, watching the performance more quietly, less interactively. So that threw me off because I do gauge a lot of, I do communicate differently with the audience based on how they feel. I mean, if it's a hostile audience, I mean there's times where you are showcasing to a record label and you have all these dudes who are so, so better than this right now and would so much rather be doing something else and standing there was an attitude.

(01:01:34):

Watching the band at your showcase, that is not the time to try to get the crowd going or anything like that. They won't do it. And yet somehow you've got to give this killer performance. But you can't be like, come on motherfuckers, you can't really, you're going to do that, but you won't get a response. You can either do it fake to show that you're a good performer in those situations, you have to do a little bit of that. But for the most part, if the audience is really hostile, I won't try to get them to do the chance. So then when I came out for my second song in Belgium, I kind of changed, readjusted the way that I interacted with them and I didn't try to get them to do so much of the fists in the air and all that kind of stuff. And definitely the Japanese was also a different kind of audience. These guys were the opposite of Belgians though. They were super enthusiastic during the song losing their mind going absolutely crazy. But then between the songs absolutely quiet like a pin drop, they want to hear everything that you have to say. Again, in both cultures was a case of respect. Americans, I guess you know how we are.

(01:02:41):

Not that we're disrespectful, but it's loud all the time, pretty much even between songs. Someone's like what? They request a song. There's always the free bird guy where bird, you hear people yelling things between songs and you just get used to a certain rapport. I think Australians would be like that. They seem like they would be. I haven't played there yet. But anyway, next question from Joel and his series of questions. What are you listening to right now? Who are the top six sick, six sick vocalists that just made you want to sing? Well? Okay, so I decided to answer it as who I think are the top six sick vocalists right now rather than who my personal influences are. I mean, some of my influences that made me want tossing and scream one was definitely Thomas Lindbergh from at the Gates hearing his incredibly amazing screams and the seven string guitars just blew my mind away.

(01:03:41):

I remember it was so intense, I had to turn it off Slaughter the soul at first. And the same thing with Carcass Jeff Walker. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is the most sickest thing I've ever heard. And I had to come back to it. I had to fully digest that stuff. It was crazy. And of course Angela Goso, huge, huge, profound influence on me as well. And belters, honestly, as weird as it's going to sound like Mariah Carey circa 1994 was perfect. Belting technique and stuff like that really made me want to sing well and be a better singer because I wasn't always, I've had to work at it. But the list I would say of the top six sick vocalists in, and again, I put the ones in rock and metal, I, sorry guys, I realize you are M is a multi-genre show and I do teach multi genres, but I definitely know that the audience is predominantly rock and metal.

(01:04:38):

So I picked rock and metal because I could only pick six and he said six. That kind of was like metal. So what I've picked is the first one I've picked for clean singing is Miles Kennedy from Alter Bridge and stuff. This guy is such an incredible belter. He is a super high voice. He's a very high tenor singer. And then he also has good of his extra falsetto as well. And he can mix well. I mean he's just a phenomenal vocalist, just can't really get any better than that. The next person I have on the list, because of the screaming and just giving amazingly, and also because they're an amazing clean singer, but it's kind of been overshadowed recently as my homegirl Elisa White gloves from Arch Enemy. She's the newer vocalist for Arch Enemy and she does basically fry screaming and it sounds so awesome.

(01:05:39):

And she's got incredible stamina. She's an incredibly fit person. I know that helps her a great deal. She made this list for performing with a broken rib during her first run with Ectomy and then also she with her previous band, she did these amazing vocal arrangements of clean things and she was also the clean vocalist with Camelot doing a huge variety of things as well as her screaming. So I mean very, very versatile. Absolutely top of the line gives amazingly stellar performances vocalists Elisa Wlis. Next on the list I have Tommy Vic from Camelot. Amazing singer. This guy, he's more of a low tenor, high baritone because he can sing extremely low, but then he can also sing more high as well. But he has a little bit darker of a voice at times. But really this is a person you can tell sings multiple genres.

(01:06:37):

To be a good rock or metal singer, you need to sing other things besides rock and metal and we'll get into that later, but I think I answer a question along that line, but you can really hear through some of the runs that he does that he has a lot of technical experience in other genres. Super, super on point. Probably one of the best voices in metal right up there with Miles Kennedy. Next on the list is of course Lizzie Hale from Hailstorm. This person is an incredible belter singing with grit, the whole thing. And she belts really high. She has a dark but also high voice. Maybe in the classical world she'd be like a dramatic soprano or a dramatic metso. So she can belt way higher than I'm comfortable with. I can sing a couple of hailstorm songs in the original key, but I always want to move them still down a whole step, but some of them I can't.

(01:07:24):

They fit more of a soprano belter range. Just incredible musicianship there all around. Great tone, just really great tone. Next I put Flo Janssen, another person formerly of After Forever. Now more famously of Nightwish. But I was an OG Flo Janssen fan from the very beginning, from back in her earliest, earliest days after forever because she was always that good if that can be believed. She technically can sing in all styles and will sing in three styles in one song like opera, belting and mixed voice like her ghost love score at Live at Vaan. It's just a super demonstration of ultimate vocal prowess. This is a soprano as well who can belt incredibly high last on the list, but really popular. I put Phil Bozeman from White Chapel because he is just a phenomenal screamer. I would love to see what is going on in his vocal chords because everybody debates with all the processing they put on his voice, which he doesn't need by the way, if you see him live, he's is amazing.

(01:08:32):

But all the processing he ends up having a lot of times on his voice. I can't tell always what he's doing. I think he's fry screaming and doing low fry when he goes low, but he just has an exceptionally big larynx or something. So it sounds really deep. So it's really phenomenal style and it's always a very consistent performance. It's pretty unbelievable. So those were my six sick vocalists. Last question from, oh, not last question, another question from Joel, but again, I really wanted to take some time to make sure that I got to get really thorough with you guys on this because I didn't get a chance to quite get that thorough last time. It was more like an introduction. So next question from Joel is a kind of involved one, but you guys and the URM, you guys are so intelligent and you're so well versed and I know a lot of you people are working professionals that are listening to this as well.

(01:09:38):

So you really know your stuff. You really challenged me with this stuff and I was really pleased. I feel good that I could answer it all. I felt really good. So this question made me feel particularly good. I'd love to hear you nerd out on Bel Canto, SLS re or any other form of vocal delivery that you love or hate or feel any kind of way about. And in that same context, what you think the right path of a mixed martial arts vocalist would ideally look like rather than one adhering to one single rigid school of thought. So I think my way of teaching is the mixed martial arts way. I've got videos on classical mixed voice belting, all screaming, everything you want to know. And a lot of my students get that approach. It's very rare that you'll find teachers who have that approach.

(01:10:27):

So I would say if you want to take a little bit of lessons in each style, you could do that as well. But just be aware that that teacher is only going to know that style and you're only going to be there to know that style. That's usually how it works. So if you have a Broadway coach or a country type of coach, they're only going to teach that kind of music. They will not teach you heavy metal. They will not teach you opera singing. Same thing with an opera coach. You will only learn opera singing. Now it's up to you as the singer to take those elements and decide how to use them in your music as a metal singer. So if you want to start with my channel, that really helps. But one thing, so everyone's asking, what the hell are these other things that he was talking about?

(01:11:12):

I said something German in there. I mean God, what the hell? So really my music education, one of the best things that I ever got out of it was music history. And I have a really thorough knowledge of music history from Western music, European and music history from Greek ancient Greek going up until the 21st century. So if you want that kind of thorough knowledge, I highly recommend the ordering these CDs. They are still CDs, unfortunately. I'm not really sure if you can order, you might be able to order a flash drive or something. I haven't looked into it, possibly iTunes, but I don't think so. But it's so worth it. It's this grouping of CDs called the Norton Anthology of Western Music and also the book that comes with it has little scores in it and you could really learn, has samples of all eras of music going from ancient Greek and through all the genre classifications, baroque, classical, romantic, et cetera, et cetera, modern all the way up until except for modern music to basically the forties from a classical perspective.

(01:12:31):

So that being said, go get that and he'll get to hear a lot of different things and some of these things I'm about to talk about. So Bel Canto is a classical way of singing. That's the first thing that he asked about. That's just a lot of singing techniques are really abstract and this is one of 'em. Generally it results in what's known as this Italian, an Italian style of singing, kind of the type of singing that we hear in very traditional what we kind of know as a generic opera sound. It's like done at Setti and all these sort of Italian composers. And it's a very traditional kind of lyric way of saying with a nice neutral larynx and lots of vibrato. So I think the reason why they established it as Bel Canto was they were trying to differentiate themselves from the Germans who at that time very, very heavy of course dark, kind of heavier style of singing.

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Bel Canto lends itself to a little bit more of a brighter and more moving kind of resonance, this kind of type of movements, but also just the style of composition. If you look it up on Wikipedia, it's a whole bunch of abstract things that could overlap with a million vocal techniques, but I've kind of based on the style of the composers and the singers who do that kind of style, it also uses a lot of tone placement. It's where this idea of tone placement begins to originate. Obviously they didn't have science. The science we know now to know that if you imagine your sound going in a certain direction, it will go there. But they would experience that because that's how your voice works. So they figured that out to a degree and we're starting to use tone placement and acknowledge their resonance and all of that as well.

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And again, I'm sure there's a classical person who will have more detailed information on that. And for all my knowledge and everything, I sang a lot of German repertoire. I have a really dark voice of course, so didn't have that much Bel Canto training. That was actually more for the lyric sopranos. The lyric Mesos was always cast more like dramatic meso and contralto and a lot of what's called German leader, which is German art song and repertoire, which is very deep hunt, it's very dark and all the songs like Death and very Legato and it's different. So the next thing he asked about is SLS that stands for speech level singing. It's a modern vocal technique and it's pioneered by a vocal coach Seth Riggs, and he is known sort of as the vocal coach to the stars. And it's said that over 120 Grammy winners have used this technique.

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But I have never studied with Seth Riggs and I haven't taken any of his lessons or anything. So I actually don't know too much about how it works, but I do know that he is directing the sound forward. He's one of these guys that will give you a certain amount of information but not the entire picture in his free stuff. So I would be really interested in hearing a podcast with him or going to one of his seminars or something and getting the actual details on it. But the resulting sounds of the people he's coached are very resonant, relaxed larynx. So to me that translates speech level to me is the forward tone placement. It's imagining your sound going forward. So it's like what I call belting our non-classical rock pop r and b blues singing. Hey, the reason why we say speech level I think is because when you talk it's also forward, right?

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You're not talking like, oh, I'm an opera singer. You're not speaking like that. You're speaking forward. And you can hear that in singers who do more of a spoken like Frank Sinatra call Me Irresponsible or whatever it is. That sounds a lot more like speaking than opera singing, doesn't it? So I think it's a forward tone placement that results in a nice relaxing larynx. And I think it's a good technique because the way I can tell is because when I hear the people he's coached, if they're making a good resonant sound with a relaxed throat and everything sounds the way it should, that means he's onto a good technique. There are people who have popular singing technique programs that I disagree with because they result in sounds that I don't like that sound tense or medically concerning or whatever. So his sounds pretty cool and interesting, definitely I would love to hear more from him if I could ever go to one of his seminars, I'll keep an eye out.

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But Seth Riggs, you guys, if you're interested more in that, the last thing that he asked about was, and this is again where my music streak knowledge comes in, this is German and it means spoken song. It's also known as spoken voice, Rema and Rema is how I know it most of the time I think people use the word rema to refer to the composition style, but it's the style of vocalizing that was, and it was pioneered by this guy, this composer Arnold Schoenberg at the beginning of the 20th century. And he did modernist modern style compositions until the forties or whatever. So really he would do a lot of crazy things like Sheinberg would write songs based on mathematical matrices where he attempted to use a 12 tone scale and not repeat a note in a song more than once. And he'd use grids to grid that out.

(01:18:45):

Or he would try to use a 12 tone scale and not have a truly random song where the notes are generated truly randomly. He was trying to make art that was truly random and not yet composed. It was really crazy. So I would look into matrices, this kind of modern composition, Arnold Sternberg, but Rema was this speak singing thing that he did. So he had his really crazy 12 tone avant-garde orchestral stuff going on. And then he had his vocalist on top. And I had to do some of this in college because I had the type of voice. Of course, German, low classical dark voice is what they're looking for even into the 20th century. And so it sounds like this fin reason fault to tender Z.

(01:19:48):

And this is a song called Knocked of course Knight. And what I just said was obscure black giant moths killed the sun's splendor. So once again, we have the dark art in the classical world as sorry about that, giving little extra notes here as well. We have a dark sentiment there. So re is something that's interesting and fun and kind of cool and kind of silly, but it's not something, I mean you guys should do some metal re a person who kind of does that. It would be like we hear a lot of avant-garde things that she does. And then more, there's this group called Igor from France and he has these incredibly avant-garde vocalists that he works with. It's just one guy doing most of the music, but there's a little bit of that kind of stuff going on in there as well. So there is, when you get towards more artsy that's going on in there, but it's like speaking on pitch.

(01:20:52):

The rhythms are set, but the pitches in the composition are written as Xs in re or rema. That's how I think of rema more. But anyway, so next question from Joel. Lessons rock vocalists should learn from r and b vocalists. Oh, absolutely. I had to go through a profound time later on in my belting to loosen up my voice. Good metal vocalists always sing other genres. Sorry guys, you got to do it. Open up your mind because otherwise you get too sterile. My problem was I was going too much Bruce Dickinson and it was too straight run to the hills really just straight, straight, straight. No flexibility. I couldn't do any runs. And then it also interferes with blues rock stuff, Queens, rike, Tesla, stuff that you wouldn't realize is actually related in the blues. And a lot of metal and rock melodies are these inverted seventh chords and stuff that are like blues and jazz based and all of that.

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And so you really do the things metal vocalists could learn from doing r and b stuff is runs big time movement and runs. I couldn't do any of that runs and all that stuff. The hey, hey, that kind of stuff before I really worked at it. And of course I have to sing things that are not metal to practice that blues and hip hop and r and b for sure. You need to learn your runs from them tuning, it's going to tune up your pitch a lot if you do that stuff. They have really complicated, it's more of blues tuning so it's going to tune up your ears. And then of course seventh chord patterns and things like that. A lot of stuff is just diminished seventh chords once you look at what they're doing, if you set it out. And that same thing with rock and metal too.

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I found identical melodies in both genres when I've been teaching and stuff, but they're just kind of arranged rhythmically differently for the metal and for the rock. So you're tuning and your runs, you can learn from blues and r and b and hip hop and stuff and I really, really strongly recommend that being a one trick pony is tough because rock music is based off of blues and it has related things going on. So next last question from Joel was what do you consider your ideal signal chain for recording yourself? Of course, this is the recording podcast. Fortunately I have a little experience in that so I can answer that. How would that differ if you were tracking a male vocal? Okay, so I am not a super great engineer or anything. I was constantly in the studio and focused on recording and effectively minored in recording.

(01:23:36):

We didn't officially have a minor at the UW that I went to when I was there, but I learned at our first pro tools rig, we had a full studio with a full 48 channel desk or whatever and all rack of amazing stuff and an amazing mic selection. So I do know a lot about stuff, but I also know enough to know that I actually hate recording and mixing. I don't have the patience for all the detail. I would much rather have somebody like Joey Sturgis or Al or somebody or Joel do it for me. They know what they're doing, they're the experts. But my limited knowledge does help me. I do still have to mix my own stuff from time to time in much to my chagrin. And I do have to record my own stuff a lot just to get my work done in an efficient amount of time.

(01:24:22):

So one thing I used to do when I was first in the studio was I would actually line up all the different microphones. First thing we want to do is make sure the microphone sounds right and if you have a good selection and you've got all different ones. The university that I went to, we had all different ones. Everything, all the classics, Noman U 87 A KGC four 14 Royer, R 1 21, all your sure SM seven, electro voice re 20. It was a really great set of very industry standard mic selections and you also had your standard dynamic microphones and all that. So I would just line 'em up and have even grind core dudes that I was recording and stuff, just do vocals into all of them in the hallway and then we'd pick the best one because you'd be surprised sometimes some off brand thing was really sparkly for the gutter rolls or whatever and I was like, oh this is dope.

(01:25:21):

This is what we're using. And then you get to know kind of how they sound as well. And for your voice, what's warmer, what's brighter, what's darker. They all have a different condenser mics, ribbon mics, dynamic mics. They all have different sounds and feels. But for a rock or a general modern, good standard, I would say that's probably going to be pretty good, would just be for at home and stuff. Especially SM seven B is perfect. That's a more robust metal thing. It can handle screaming and singing. If you want something clear and really nice and you have a big budget, go for the Neuman. Of course the U 87 crystal clear and everything. But again, it might not be if you have a really bright vice person, maybe you won't like that. Maybe that's too much clarity and you want something a little warmer.

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So I dunno. I think a good default is the OSM seven B. It can handle a lot. Then your next signal chain would be to your mic pre, whatever that may be. Pick a good one. I'm sure Joel and Joey and Al will have very many suggestions for you on what a dope ass mic pre would be for you. Again, it will also depend, some of them are warmer, some of them are brighter. So when you ask if it would differ if I was tracking a man, no it's not. It just matters if they have a bright voice or a dark voice relative to their genre. So if it's a super high bright voice like Countertenor guy, I might choose a warmer microphone. If I have a really dark voice like bass kind of guy, I might choose the clearer microphone. It's going to be up to you and what your ears hear as far as how it's going to sit in the mix, I can't really tell you that.

(01:27:03):

But then after your mic pre, then you go to your, if you have an analog compressor going in, an outboard compressor going in, do that next. If you don't go straight to your ad converter of course, but if you want to do and then to your daw, okay, so whatever that is. So microphone to mic pre and then if you don't have any more outboard gear to a D to daw, I would say microphone to Mike Bri to analog compressor to analog EQ to da. If you like it. Again, you may want to not EQ something to have room to do it later if you have some in the box things. But again, if you have some pieces that you really like and the compressor is really helpful. I really live on compression because it really brings out all the overtones. So if you have a good analog compressor, something I would try to use it.

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And again, it depends on the feel. That's going to depend on what type of music you're doing and how intense it is, the dynamics you're going to need and stuff. So that would be kind of my order of how things, when I'm doing guest stuff, a lot of times I just go SM seven B to ad to dah. You know why? Because I want it to be a clean signal of a guitar where they could reamp it technically into a mic pre or whatever if they want to. So they could take that signal and then go put it through their own mic pre if they want to. I guess it still has gone through the ad, so maybe it might be kind of wrecked if you don't have a good ad converter or whatever. But it should still be pretty good. It's the voice. It shouldn't lose a lot of signal loss or anything.

(01:28:50):

It should be good and solid and 24 bit and all that. So it should work. Alright, moving on guys. I knew this was going to be a long ass podcast I told Al, but that's what he said. People like best and you get sucked in. You get sucked into this awesome information. So we've got just a few more questions and next one is from Michael Bivens. Michael says, hi Mary. What would you recommend for a producer who wants to be able to sing just enough to be able to communicate with other musicians and possibly do some background vocals on records? I usually have to have a guitar to work with vocalists when writing harmonies, et cetera. But it would be great and faster to be able to just sing what I hear in my head. I've been thinking about taking a lesson or buying an online course.

(01:29:38):

Do you have any recommendations? I'm not new at music, so I don't need beginner theory, nor am I trying to be Christina Aguilera, but I do kind of suck at saying so something intermediate would probably be a good fit for me. Thanks for doing the podcast and stay and take care. So I would say for a producer who wants to be able to sing just enough to be able to communicate with the other musicians and do background vocals, take lessons, absolutely. And I would say take them from a person. Always take lessons in the specific genre. Don't expect teachers to be multi-genre like me. Make sure they're highly reviewed and people feel like they've gotten good results out of their techniques. Just because someone is a good singer does not mean they are a good instructor. In fact, people who have more natural ability tend to be not as good of instructors because they didn't have to take as many lessons, they didn't have to work hard at learning this stuff.

(01:30:30):

I did. I had natural ability, but I had a really big unwieldy voice and I needed a lot of lessons to control it and stuff. So that's how I learned how to do a lot of this stuff was going through it myself. So I really think that just take some lessons, make sure if you're a country producer, make sure it's a person that coaches vocalists in that genre that that's their specialty. If rock and metal is yours, I can help you out or a coach in that genre could help you out. For DVDs, there's of course most cross DVDs. Actually I'm going to be coming out a little foreshadowing here. The URM guys and I are going to be partnering and we are going to have some really fantastic course material for you guys coming up this year. So that solution is on the way.

(01:31:16):

We are going to have a really comprehensive rock course available and multi genres and all these other things. So we cannot wait to share with you that stuff. It's going to be a pretty awesome thing. So that's going to come as well and start with my YouTube channel. I mean it's free and I actually give a lot of techniques that actually work out on my YouTube channel. I have a lot that aren't on there, but I have some real good real deal advice on there. Be wary of instructors who just sing a lot and don't give you any information. Those are what I call carrot dangler.

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This is why I say if you want to hear me s singing stuff, you can look at my personal pages, you can go Google my previous bands and go listen to the record. It's already out there. I don't have to use my lesson time to prove that to you guys. The lessons in the video should be about, they should contain very good tips on what you should be doing. Well, a couple guys on YouTube I do, but they're not rock really. They're more like pop and modern or theater pop theater and r and b. There's a guy named Eric Arseno. I like his stuff. I think his techniques are all right. We have slightly different terms. Every vocal teacher is slightly different terms and it is kind of abstract. So you do kind of want to see out of the good ones, who do you like best?

(01:32:39):

And then another guy that I like is this Dr. Dan guy. He's actually a doctor and a vocal coach from Australia. He has some straight on some really good tips and some really good advice. So start poking around on YouTube and seeing some really constructive things and always the sounds people are making should not sound tense when they're demonstrating or when they're students or when they're showing off the students. And they should be very tangible things that you can use, tips you can actually use, not just think of it like a moon or something weird. It is abstract, but it has to be specific. So look for those kind of things. And if you take some lessons as a producer, it's not going to be music theory in vocal technique. They shouldn't be teaching you to read music at all. So you should learn that from piano lessons and stuff.

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If you're taking classical lessons, maybe they will, but if you could already read music, they're not going to, and I wouldn't recommend taking classical lessons. If you're a producer, unless you produce classical music, it's not going to help you be very specific because you don't have a lot of time. You maybe only want to take a few lessons. Don't take Broadway lessons with a Broadway coach if that's not your main genre that you produce. Do it in the main styles that you produce. Don't waste your time and just go in and get a few functional lessons. Again, you guys are always welcome to reach out to me, voice [email protected] to get some Skype lessons set up. I do coordinate with all over the world. I've got a huge list of countries that I teach in, including China and places where people have to watch my videos through secret internet.

(01:34:07):

So just hit me up. Next question is from Marcus Nan. Marcus asks Dear Mary, I will be auditioning as a vocalist for a legendary doom metal band later this year. This band has started a few years before I was born, which means their career has been going on for 30 plus years to do it right. I know I have to be a nice and cool guy to work with, know the songs thoroughly and be an awesome singer. Of course. Anything else, if you are confused on what it takes to be a doom metal vocalist, which I'm not, but for the audience, we'll read the rest of it. Doom Metal is basically slowed down heavy metal. So the voice needs to be powerful and emotional and the pitch is mostly in high keys. Basically I think I need to train more Ronnie James DIO technique, whatever that is.

(01:34:50):

I would really like to nail this gig. So any advice is welcome. Marcus Nan Finland. So I'm super familiar having played in all kinds of metal bands for my whole career. My band now, Santa Marta has kind of a doomy feel to it, but there's a lot of screaming in it. But in the previous, I've been in a power metal band and a black metal band almost. So I know this though metal very well. It's my main thing and it sounds kind of like you're describing like a candle mess type of band. The OG do metal bands, they have this very do way, but it's really sludgy. So it's kind of weird. We think of do metal more now as something like Paradise Lost or November's Doom or something, which is more darker vocals and more gothic. But no, the OG Doom had more of those classic vocals over it.

(01:35:45):

So if you're going to do that, I would work on your belting. So if you want to practice the Ronnie James D technique, you need to watch my videos on forward tone placement and work on belting rock technique, sending the sound forward, if you want to call it speech level singing like Seth Riggs, that's fine. So I would definitely go forward with the tone and work on trying to keep a neutral larynx, which is a relaxed throat. As we belt higher. The idea is not when we sing higher, the larynx tends to shoot up and we want to keep it relaxed. And I have some really good examples of how that sounds. We can assess through the sound and also how our throat feels. If it feels tense on our high notes, we actually won't be able to sing the high notes. So watch some of my tutorials on belting.

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I got a whole playlist on it and a whole bunch of examples on how it should sound with the neutral larynx and not sound with neutral larynx. So work on that and work on good breath technique, breath support. I've got some good videos on that as well. Next question from Marcus. We're going to do a couple of his here. He's got some really good ones. So I wanted to make sure to get at them was he says, I love vocal harmonies but have no idea on how to go about making them. Sometimes I try on piano how the lead vocal line would sound as chords. Sometimes I learn the melody and start modifying it. I come up with pretty okay harmonies when singing by myself on top of a song I know in and out. Unfortunately, as a producer I rarely come up with anything since the recording process is usually too busy to create something new and amazing, such as vocal harmonies.

(01:37:25):

Most bands I work with don't have them thought out before recording. I think they can come up with stuff in the studio while tracking vocals or they think they can come up with stuff in the studio while tracking vocals, which does not really work about 90% of the time, excuse me, or simply don't realize that they need vocal harmonies. Basically my question is how to create vocal harmonies from Marcus. Okay, so I would use transposing plugins. First of all, just take their vocal line. One of the easiest things I suck at. I sucked at harmonies too until I learned to sing alto in choir. When I was young, I actually had to sing soprano, believe it or not. I could sing hi in my third octave, but that didn't make me a soprano. So later I learned it from just being forced to do it In choir.

(01:38:11):

One thing you should try to do is I always start with intervals, basic open intervals. So again, I find the melody first, like the coldest winter, well heaven inside you. So then I might take the third from that and I don't know, that's not the right note, but that was it. So if I wanted to go underneath it, then I would just go to the third below it and start the same melody, transpose the identical melody and just start singing it down here like the coldest winter will heaven inside you. Then you get your Jerry Cantrell in there. So what you need to do, and a lot of times the harmonies you're familiar with are just parallel thirds and fifths. You can use any sort of harmonized or plug in to do that to show the people, okay, this is the part. A lot of times sometimes I'll just mute the vocal part and then we'll just do oz in the background.

(01:39:20):

Screw it. Maybe we're having trouble with a parallel harmony. It doesn't sound quite natural. Not all good harmonies are parallel. Really good ones will make subtle adjustments and stuff, but that does take a little bit more compositional prowess than your average Joe. So if we're just doing 'em off the cuff and looking for some shortcuts here, I would say use your transpose plugins to put the voice down a third or a fifth or up a third or a fifth. Try both ways, see which ones work better. And then a lot of times maybe I'll just say screw it and do Oz, but I'll still start with what's in that chord right there. Okay, so if the vocal line, I do it less on what the chords are in the guitar and more on what the vocal line is singing because there could be accidentals in there, which are notes that are out of the key or not exactly in the chord that's being played.

(01:40:15):

So what I would do is then again, same thing, what's a third up of the vocal melody? Or if you could go along with the baseline for Oz, a lot of times the bass is like, and then so maybe do some oz high, that kind of stuff. You can mirror other lines in the thing. So I definitely try to think of it like that, what's in the chord. And then also try minor thirds and sometimes a major third below is not going to sound right or a fifths and fourths are perfect intervals, so they may sound too medieval or too strange. You might need to try minor thirds and stuff like that because it depends on the music. Now, just because written in a minor Keith or has a minor kind of melody scale or melody to it or a pentatonic melody, doesn't mean that a minor third will work either.

(01:41:13):

A major third might work for the harmony as well. So try major and minor intervals as well and just play around. So just use those tools that we have, show the singer. Okay, I copied your line, you just did. I transposed it down a minor third, play 'em together for him and be like, do you like that harmony? Then when the guy goes to track it, mute the original and have him sing along with the new one so he can learn the harmony. I mean, that's what I would do. So that's my take on that. So last question guys. We're going to the end of the podcast here. It has been amazing. You guys put me through the Olympics of vocal knowledge stuff, but I still feel like there's a lot more questions I could answer. Please submit your questions for the podcast to a y'all at URM Academy with the subject line.

(01:42:03):

Dear Mary and I will be very happy. Andrew says, and I kind of foreshadowed this, but Andrew Howington says in the last question here, do you have any plans to put together a vocal course in a CD or DVD format? Woo, I'm a collector when it comes to these courses and I believe you could put out a stellar product given your wealth of information and insight. Yes, he says, cheers, Andrew. Yes, Andrew, yes, we are going to be doing that. I've been partnering with the URM fellows and we are just coming up with the most fabulous, really innovative VO program that is going to be super great as far as having a lot of interactive components and a depth of information that you guys are looking for. So yes, I am doing that and I'm really excited and we can't wait to tease more of that and share more of that with you in the coming months.

(01:42:53):

I really appreciate you guys listening to the podcast. Thank you so much for letting me nerd out about vocal things for almost two hours. And again, if you want to get ahold of me, voice [email protected], youtube.com/voice hacks by Mary Z. It's voice hacks like life hacks, tips, tricks, and stay tuned. Subscribe so you can get my latest tutorials and interviews. But it's a great place to get started. If you just don't know where to go, watch some of my playlists. It'll point you in the right direction. Maybe you don't even know what genre you want to sing. Check 'em out, see which styles you like, whatever you want to do. Knowledge is power guys. The more you know, the better you're going to be and the better you can look at things for a constructive perspective and not like a personal perspective. So stay positive, stay constructive, no small time. So thank you guys so much. I really appreciate. This has been another awesome episode of the URM Academy podcast. I am metal, Mary z Mary Zimmer. Thank you so much for having me and have a great one. Guys. Thank you. The Unstoppable

Speaker 1 (01:44:01):

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