Over the past month or more I've been working on a study of sorts trying to get down the vocals for Crawl Away by Tool. It seemed like a good piece because there are long, drawn-out notes with heavier grit. I think I've gotten it to a place I'm satisfied with, although I probably am actually using more distortion than he does in the song. But I figured, hey, it is the skill I'm trying to learn so I may as well step it up a notch. This recording is after countless takes to get the very best ones, granted I was learning the more aggressive stuff more or less from scratch over that time. This is the vocals only, so I uploaded it to SoundCloud so you can see the waveform and skip over the silent parts. It was recorded through a compressor but otherwise it's completely dry. https://soundcloud.com/to_the_sun/crawl-away-a-cappella

I've been meaning to post about my progress, but every day there's more of it, so anything I would post would be automatically outdated. I did have a bit of a revelation I wanted to share though. I've been watching that vocal distortion part two video every day and I thought I basically understood the purpose of making that dopey sound you demonstrate while saying "powah become death." But I realized today I wasn't doing enough of it. You actually can pull it back and down into that shape even further, and it feels like it almost opens up your throat a little. Of course you have to keep the resonant anchor vibrating in the middle of your head/top of your mouth. Otherwise, I imagine you would just loosen up your throat which, I know from experience, will tear you up right away. But if you start high and then pull it back and down into that shape while keeping the resonant anchor vibrating, the throat gets wider but stays flexed, and you get way deeper, way more powerful distortion out of it. Definitely hard to explain in words. And of course, I've just begun to understand it, but I feel like I had to share because I'm excited to see where this goes.

Thought I'd share a song I just finished up. Maybe doesn't show off my vocals super well just because it's an old song I only wanted to redo a few lines on and also the vocals are drenched in effects, but it is what I've been working on lately, among many other things. And I do like where it stands. https://tothesun.bandcamp.com/track/heaven-fallen