@Phillip Vautour The Origin is a great, general, and forgiving mic. The main problem with mics is that it's not one size fits all. Before spending a lot on a mic, it can really help to book a couple of hours at a studio with a lot of mics (they'll record multiple at the same time) and get their opnion on what sounds best for your voice. If you sound great on a $4k to $10k mic, I guaranteee that you'll be able to find a mic in that same family of sound color for much cheaper - sometimes even an exact clone.

@Martin Sinclair , @Shajeen Islam : I likely said this in the episode, but it's been a year and a half since then... Recording you voice is definitely putting you under a microscope. Hardly anyone's voice sounds good to us raw. We're used to room spatial acoustics/reflections and psychoacoustics like masking (our brain ignoring certain sounds) and localization (where we perceive the sound coming from). You don't get that with a close mic's diaphragm. Instead, you get it very raw. Combine that with being used to hearing your own voice inside your head, adding a whole different level of harmonics and noise compression that no one else hears and is directly tied with your self-identity, and suddenly this disembodied voice you're hearing in the recording sounds nothing like what you just heard yourself sing. This is why a lot of people remove one ear of their headphones when recording, to "bring the room back" for a more natural, non-distracting sound. It's also why mixing your voice with something as simple as a compressor and a little reverb makes it suddenly sound far more pleasing and natural to us.

I know this isn't definitive answer or grit types line by line that you're looking for, but I want to give you a more complete understanding rather than trying to strictly define what you're hearing with a particular name. It's all a spectrum. The names I gave them in my course were simply to define the sound and physical feel for commonly heard grit used along that compression and pitch spectrum. Compressed vs uncompressed is a much better way to think of distortion, with how much compression (or lack thereof) possible relying heavily on the pitch under it. When analyzing what's being done, the first thing to look for is the pitches being used in relation to the bridges. The typical vocal bridges (highest pitch until a break or choking) are around these pitches: 1. Men — E4, A4, C#5-E5 2. Women — A4, C#5-E5 Lower pitched grit tends to be more compressed to make up for the looser vocal cords and lower chest-voice formant (formant = resonance and pressure in the vocal tract). Higher pitched grit tends to be more uncompressed to make up for the tighter/stretched vocal cords and higher, lifted and back, head-voice formant. However, you have some leeway with this spectrum, just like the first bridge isn't a hard stop for clean singing chest vs head (you can pull chest-voice higher with thicker TA muscles and pull head-voice lower without engaging the TA muscles), you can also compress grit above the first bridge and uncompress grit below the first bridge. That's where things get much more complicated to answer... UNCOMPRESSED LOWS Being more uncompressed the lower you go below the first bridge introduces a lot of air and chaos that can be difficult to control without sounding weird. Tom Waits is a famous example of someone who does uncompressed grit below his first bridge. COMPRESSED MIDS Getting very harsh sounding grit just above the first bridge requires lighter throttle so that it doesn't grind. Hetfield hurt his voice by staying loud and compressed up high, including moving towards his second bridge where it wants to uncompress naturally. Doing that is too taxing on the voice.

Only 30% of the article is free to read, taking it all the way up to a couple of paragraphs about diffusion. I know some ways to confuse diffusion models, but I honestly find it fascinating how similar we think to these two models. I've seen videos about AGI asking the question of how we define consciousness, and at what point can we distinguish between consciousness and the way we learn and piece together information as human consciousness. I was surprised by the number of apparent crossovers between how AI and humans think. I guess that makes sense, since we think within our own paradigm and have aspired to build neural networks out of machines. In any case, I'm sure that takes this conversation WAY off track given your summary of the article.

This isn't really a style I listen to, but I've had a couple of students who were. The shouty nature takes a lot of balance to not hurt yourself. The album reminds me of the song Mother, by The Police, only slightly more underground. It's a chaotic and cool vibe. How much are you training your voice for pitched singing specifically? Without a clean foundation, distortion is MUCH harder.

@Dolores Mephistopheles Welcome! Love the Faust reference. Are you thinking of a blues-like growl, grit, guttaral screams, or something else? Do you have an example?

@Ajay S Welcome! Tell us a little more about the genres you're into, your goals, and your struggles.