I want to emphasize "most of you" because certainly there are a few of you who seem to be getting value of out of the forum. Good for you! I'm going to try to avoid opinion and just deal with the objective. There's only one post written within a week and it's my post about a coach's hilarious take on teaching what compression is. The next most recent post is also by me. Thyat was a serious question about "bleeding air grit" but not good enough to warrant an answer. Fair enough. This is free, so if my posts aren't good enough, they don't deserve help. I can either learn to write better or I can leave. Maybe I will leave since my last couple posts failed to pass muster for what is considered a worthwhile post here, but I'm not claiming my posts are anything special. At least I try though and I've never descended to a point where I enlisted artificial help to try to improve my writing. What you see is what you get. If that's not good enough, fine. I'll sleep like a baby tonight. I haven't seen anyone here whose posts made me think: "Now that came from a truly profound mind." Yet here we are on a forum for people who take air and turn it into art. No other endeavor leaves an individual so vulnerable, so utterly exposed....yet most of you can't summon the fortitude to write a post, lest it be passed over like my last two were. If you don't mind me offering you some constructive criticism: If the thought of posting here frightens you, develop thicker skin! Music is a business that will eat you alive if you don't have skin like alligator hide. Show business (which incudes singing) isn't looking for people who want it for their career; it's looking for people who must have it for their career because they cannot stand the thought of wasting their life doing anything else. There is a phenomenal difference between "want" and "must." The age-old conundrum in show business is: You can't get a part without an agent but you can't get an agent without a part. Why was that conundrum put there?

A "screaming coach" who ostensibly has an entire academy of aspiring screamers has explained compression! I could not have made this up myself. Here are his exact words: "Put your hands lightly around your own throat and act like you're being strangled. Don't actually squeeze hard from the outside, just let your body react to the idea of it. Notice how your throat naturally clamps DOWN and closes up on the inside. That's compression! That's the exact sensation you need for a solid fry scream." Wow! I can only imagine how great all my favorite songs would sound if the vocalists had only sung as if they were being strangled at the time!

I've heard this term used by you. I think you said it is the most commonly used grit and that it has a smoother sound than compression based grit. I have a few questions about it: Since it is a smoother sound, it it probably used in more melodic rock and metal and not used in something like deathcore? Here's my main question: Since it relies on just what the name suggests, "bleeding air" from the glottis, does that mean it cannot work if you are using perfect vocal cord closure because only "poor vocal cord closure" (in standard contexts) means letting air leak through the cords, since the closure isn't that good and as a result, you can get a whispery sort of sound, even if it's a harsh whisper? I ask that because it's my understanding that one of the main purposes of good cord closure is to prevent a whispery sound since that dries out the throat so much. If my assumption is wrong and you use as good cord closure as in clean singing for bleeding air grit, then if the vocal cords are closed nicely, how does air "bleed' from the glottis?

It's quite unfortunate that even though AI could be restricted to doing things that people either hate to do or that would be dangerous for us to do, often we see AI being used for doing things people love to do, such as the arts! If you can't create art without the help of AI, then perhaps you don't have anything worthwhile to say. If you could create art without AI, but you use it anyway, maybe you don't enjoy the creative process. Perhaps you lacked the discipline or the drive to do the work to develop the necessary skill to be able to go through the process and end up with something you can be proud of. What if you decided that you didn't want anything to do with having artificial help to create art and you relegated AI to the role of something you could use as an information source while developing the requisite skill for creating something you'd truly be happy with? Would that be an ethical use of AI? I hope so! I wouldn't trust AI as my sole source of information on how to develop the skills I need to sing well and it sure can't give me feedback on how well I'm doing, but how about using AI as an adjunct to buying lessons and courses? Would that be reasonable? I think there's an element of the subjective here, but since it would only be used as a supplement, rather than as a replacement for teachers, I think it would be an ethical use of AI. How much help would AI be as a supplement to taking lessons and/or buying courses though? Only one way to find out! I decided to see how much AI knew about what creates vocal distortion. I wanted to see what level of quality it had to offer in the answers it gave me. I was curious to see if it would offer anything more than very surface level information. I asked AI two questions. I'm show you both of my questions and the responses I got. I'll let you be the judge of how well it did in answering my questions. FIRST QUESTION: I asked: "What creates the air restriction in singing with distortion"? AI: "In singing, that feeling of an air "restriction"—often called vocal compression—is the foundational mechanic required to safely create grit, rasp, or heavy distortion.

Some say: "Well, you don't really use your vocal cords when you scream; you use your false cords, so if you're hurting your true cords, you shouldn't even be using them." There's the legendary story of Corey Taylor who had perhaps the most ferocious scream in metal. It's even got it's own name: the Iowa Scream! Iowa was Slipknot's first album and many maintain that Corey's screams were never as brutal after the Iowa album because he had sustained damage to his true folds. Now think about that: Corey Taylor essentially invented his own technique for the Iowa scream and then he screws up on HIS OWN TECHNIQUE TO WHERE HIS VOICE IS NEVER THE SAME AGAIN! You'd think a guy would be a master of his very own technique. You'd LIKE to think so, wouldn't you? Then there's the case of M. Shadows who screwed his voice up terribly and there is some confusion as to whether he actually had surgery for it or not. There's also the case of Matt Heafy, who had a great sounding scream, did it well for quite a ferw years, but then blew out his voice. He went on to record an album of all clean singing because he was recuperating. Finally he came back with his "safe scream",. but Trivium fans maintain that the "safe scream" Matt Heafy used never sounded as good as his original scream which begs the question: Was his original scream fixable? With some minor tweaks, could he have kept doing his "original scream"? After all, it's hard to believe that his "original scream" was so dangerous that it had to be ENTIRELY CHANGED to make is SAFE! So, with that in mind (especially the Corey Taylor incident with his Iowa scream being something he could never truly do as well again) what do you think are the main things that screamers do that end up injuring their voices?