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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?

For a long time the main thing on my mind when going into a practice session would be how to get better at creating grit or distortion. I was a distortion freak! I find it as fascinating as ever to be able to sing with grit and I've even gotten a little bit interested in screaming, but mostly it was about singing melodically with grit or even pitched screaming, which essentially is the most extreme end of the spectrum that goes from singing with light rasp all the way to using pitched screams. Recently I hit a plateau. It didn't seem like any more progress was possible unless I made some type of fundamental change. It occurred to me that the quality of your gritty singing is going to be dependent on the quality of the signal from the source - the true folds. I'm no expert in acoustics but it makes sense to me that if we're using the false folds and other supraglottal structures to saturate the clean signal with distortion, then the more robust the clean signal is, the better you're going to be able to saturate it with distortion. In essence, good quality clean vocals lead to good quality gritty vocals and low quality clean vocals lead to low quality gritty vocals.

A SUBMITTED QUESTION ***** I've been doing what you told me and realized something when switching between resonances. Whenever I go high/into head voice and I want to go back down to chest voice my larynx gets stuck, it's a really odd feeling. I was trying to go back down from head voice while using the straw when I felt everything jam up into place with air nowhere to go - it created a really pressurized chamber inside of my mouth combined with the puffy cheeks. I have been trying to cry but I suspect I've been doing it wrong. I feel tension in my throat when I'm crying so I guess that's not correct. Also, I'm still not able to utilize forward placement. The most I've been able to feel is vibrations in my nose. The straw warmup did clear my chest voice out but it's not helping me even while doing the sirens because of the larynx thing. ***** Great question! This is something a LOT of people struggle with at first, both with the straw AND the missed fundamentals of the singing voice that can smooth out the transition of chest and head voice as well as ghelp you with more effortless singing in geneal. STRAW VS NORMAL SINGING For the straw sirens, don't worry too much about your voice flipping. It's mostly about a stretch from as low as you can sing to as high as you can sing while staying SUPER LIGHT (light and sqeuaky on the top end). As you learn more about and implement better cry vocal mode, it will smooth out, but that's not the main point of the sirens. Most vocal flips, or getting stuck trying to "switch resonances," happen because the chest voice wasn't places well to begin with—where even chest voice is mixed, which I'll describe more below. Singing into the straw is where you want more emphasis on cry and twang. It actually takes a bit more effort than normal singing, meaning you have to give it both more twang and cry than normally required. Cry is the foundation. When normal singing, it's all about lift and sob; or rather top-down whimper ("Michael Jackson" voice or feminization of the voice) putting resonance up and out, behind the nose and eyes, and ALSO sob relaxing the larynx. Both of these together relax the larynx and give you a mix of head-voice and chest-voice resonance throughout your range—more chesty down low and more heady up high, like a giant cross-fade. Twang, edging acoustics, or pointing the voice behind the nose or eyes adjusts your sound color. Front to back is edging to curbing (bright to round). Up and down in that spot is the top-down whimper of cry.

Very cool vocal performance by Sia in this song: https://youtu.be/t2NgsJrrAyM?si=jgioXLPW0FiGAl0C&t=242 Wondering if anyone has ideas about how she achieves those interesting vocal "chirps" when she sings "I'm alive..." around 4:00 into the song.