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.

Nik said: "If you scroll through Instagram, TikTok, they're just bedroom kids screaming. Somehow everyone knows how to do false cords and the zombie noises." Oli interjected: "Yeah, yeah, and everyone's got this kind of like, like it's funny like the technique of screaming. Not that there's no technique to screaming, but like, that wasn't something I would think about before, you know, I would just like, yeah. Just want to scream. Like it was just screaming. I never thought about like I might damage my voice or anything like that. And sometimes I'll see someone going 'you want to scream like Oli Sykes? This is how I do it" and I watch it and I'm like "is it'? Cause I don't know that. Like that's, I have no idea how I do that. I never think about it. Do you know what I mean"? I know what he means; I speak English quite well, but I can't say I understand his mentality. Just as if I were going to be a public speaker or an orator, I'd want to learn how to speak without jamming "like" into every sentence. I'd want to try to eliminate saying "um." I know why people do it. They're using that time to think about what they are going to suppose for example, if I were asked: "How do you sing"? Hopefully I wouldn't start like this: "Uh, well, it's like, I mean, when I sing, like I have to relax...." Hopefully, I'd start more like this: "You want to know how I sing? I'll tell you exactly how I sing [that bought me a whole lot more time to think about what I'm going to say than the former example]. The first thing about it is I need to relax. Why would I relax? [I know why I'd relax but by asking that rhetorical question, I've given myself more time to decide how to explain it.] I relax so it will sound good and so I don't get hurt. That means I'm doing some stretches. before I start. I want all the muscles in my neck to be ready for it. I don't want them tight. I want them to be supple and flexible so I don't get hurt and so singing will be a little closer to effortless because ideally, singing should be almost effortless.

Hey guys, I realized something yesterday while I was trying to sing high-pitched songs from skid row and cinderella. I pushed a lot with my support leading to that almost Robert Jones's hyper compressed voice when I tried to sing high. Eventually, something suddenly flicked a switch in my mind and I decided to back off from the support and focus on technique/placement. The results I got were almost magical as I was struggling a lot for the past 6-7 months with singing. I was able to sing "I remember you" and "18 & life" properly without any problems. Can you guys please tell me how I can retain this discovery so I don't completely forget it and have to figure out from scratch again?

Getting traction with new music is not easy... https://www.statsignificant.com/p/has-new-music-become-less-popular?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F16278f72-faf9-41c7-a49f-b4278c10b7ec_1248x880.jpeg&open=false

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.