I finally understand why I've been stuck! Pushing too hard was the only repeatable way I could get distortion on notes. Fry scream has never been too hard. But real, on-demand, comfy distortion? Never. Cranking up my "gain knob" tended to just produce even cleaner, tighter tones (heavier mass) rather than the burbly grit I'm looking for. I took a break from learning distortion when I started making myself pass out in the middle of the best compressed grungy tones ~2nd passagio (G up to C#) even though my voice wasn't feeling any pain. Coming back into it in the past few months, trying to learn completely different coordination, I realize how seriously challenging it is for me to isolate adduction (heavier mass) from compression (more respiration pressure + constriction up top). This is why only "pushing" works: a huge force of wind overcoming heavy mass distorts - but too forcefully. If I could lighten up my mass while maintaining compression, then distortion would be a breeze! What's helped me learn differently this time: 1. Trying to always keep a little wind in the note - I visualize adding some of the 'h' sound (as in 'hot') to things, which took me a long time to grasp but is working out nicely. Doing it without a note sounds a bit like a constant wheeze. This seems to be part of the distortion "gain knob". 2. Using cry tilt more - Thanks to copying Draven's default singing mode, I'm currently obsessed with isolating cry exactly. Over-crying in silence with no other efforts (while doing chores, etc.) to exercise that strength and coordination, regardless of what my face decides to do. 3. More TA/CT strength-building - distorting positions are usually unstable, and more strength makes stability naturally easier. At constant pitches across my range, I do the "superhero": mmm-ee-yeh-yah-yoh-oo (my souped-up version of Maestro Kyle's "hero") with lots of quack at the y's. Doing these slowly in the tenor range feels 100% like lifting weights and *works* like gangbusters!

What’s something you’ve been working on that you’re excited about or proud of? Share a clip with us! Raw and unedited, straight from your phone works great—even if you don't see this until after the weekend. I'm really excited about what recording the attached clips means for me. More on that in a bit. I got a little too into it and loud by the end of the clip, which made the distortion harsher than I intended, but still totally comfortable. The song is the second verse of the song "The Weight" that I wrote a while back. It's taken over a year of work to change my voice from The Silent Still’s style into the newer “Hard Rock with a Southern Gothic soul” style. I only recently finally fully relaxed into the new voice. I feels a bit nostalgic too, like I’m going back to a lot of the gospel roots I started in 35 years ago, but with FAR more skill than back then. 150+ songs in, I’m excited about bringing the top songs of this bunch to fruition later this year. ***** As the main vocal coach here, I want to note something for any of you still struggling to really nail a new vocal technique or sound. The average timeline to go from learning a completely new technique, sound, or vocal shape, to being able to naturally relax into it seems to be: 1. Two to six weeks to build a general understanding and feel for it. 2. Two to three months from start to be able to do it on purpose, but still having to think about it. 3. Eighteen months from start to do it without thinking much about it. Some people are more intuitive about certain aspect of the voice and speed up that process greatly. Some haven't built the foundations they need in order to have something solid to build on top of, and end up taking years to get where they want to be. Sometimes it can seem like each new thing requires going back to the foundations and rebuilding one piece at a time into the new thing. But on average, each new thing you add follows the above timeline. That's not to say you can't train multiple things at once.

David Benites recently released a video On AI in music, which is timely, with AI poised to put tens of millions of people out of work, including musicians. There's a clear, objective difference between using AI to wipe out medical problems we've tried and tried to find a solution for have't been able to do it, and a company in an industry that has no actual need for AI, but wants to buy some AI robots to get around that painful problem of actually having to pay men to work. To allow AI to be legally used in industries where no objective need for AI can be shown is really going to be debilitating to the people currently working in these industries, such as the music industry. People with the requisite ability are excellent at creating music without using AI as a crutch.They've been proving it for hundreds of years. People who never bothered to put forth the necessary effort to develop that ability, or who simply lack the aptitude to excel at music have always been weeded out of ever being in the hunt for attaining success in the ultra-competitive music business. That's what made rock stars special - so few people could do it! AI threatens to make a mockery of the music business by allowing people with very little aptitude for music to be able to sound good, despite never having put forth the necessary effort or exercised the self-discipline to develop great ability for singing and songwriting. Not only does AI threaten to allow anyone, no matter how little aptitude or skill they may possess, to become singers or songwriters, it threatens music's humanity. David Benites says: "With AI, you can make your voice sound perfect now. You can use fake voices made by AI on anything that you want, in any direction and for that reason, I think now it's more important than ever to let your voice to sound as messed up and raw and wrong and honestly, as F'd up as possible. I get that that's the least 'voice teacher thing' that I could possibly say, but I think that it's important that I say it. And I want to come on here and talk with all of you watching about why it's so important that we keep expression real.

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.

The internet is abuzz with a whole lot of people saying "Oh no, Oli Sykes is using inhale screams! He's going to ruin his voice. Again"! Just as many people are saying: "Oli has been a professional vocalist for twenty years. Do you really think he's going to be so dumb as to use some technique that will ruin his voice"? This all came about after Bring Me The Horizon announced they were re-recording their 2006 debut album and some clips of their recording sessions were released, including some where Oli Sykes was using inhale screams. Oli responded to the noisy confusion he had inadvertently caused with this Instagram post: "These r inhales, yes. There's like 3 or 4 moments on the record I did it, end of Medusa being the main bit...the rest are all full chest...but someone enlighten me on how these are dangerous /bad for your voice? I've always considered it so gentle on my chords (sic) it feels like cheating..don't get ppl crying" Someone "enlighten" you, Oli? As you wish. After spending the last three days scouring the internet, refusing to take time off to eat or sleep... Ah, "Three Days" - reminiscent of late nights spent in the clubs in the 90s: "Three days was the morning. My focus three days old. My head, it landed" All that hard work paid off. First, I found a YouTube comment by someone claiming to be Melissa Cross who put forth the following thoughts in about as humble a way as a human being possibly could: "They are NOT dangerous- they are simply less efficient. The vocal folds react the same to inhale and exhale- it's just inefficient bcz the air is limited bcz it is going the wrong direction, msking it more difficult to transfer to a sound with a recognizable frequency (pitch). It takes years of education to understand the acoustics, aerodynamics, articulation, etc of human voice. Most people who discuss.vocal.mechanics are truly full of absolute bs based.on a narrative they make up based on their own anecdotal experience- i have yet to see ANYONE who gets it right so far."