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!

I don't have music to share for Music Monday like I had hoped, but I want to still share something valuable. While I no longer coach music career as my main thing, I still enjoy constantly learning about and keeping up with current music business best practices. While researching the validity of a certain music business book, I accidentally came across the Custom GPT, The Musician's Roadmap. I used this tool to map out a full release plan for my songs, collaborations, and poetry, that fits my brand, genre, goals, ideal fan, and more. But to do that, I had to know how to talk to it about yourself. Otherwise, it give incredibly generic answers. If you're unfamiliar with Custom GPTs, to put it simply, they're an AI conversational interface that's trained on knowledge base files and specific instructions to answer your questions. Trained and instructed correctly, they can be very powerful tools. In this case, The Musician's Roadmap is trained on just about anything you need to grow your music career, from recording to growing a fanbase. Like any Custom GPT, the more detailed information you give it about you and what you're trying to do, the better the answer it will give you. One big trick with AI is to get it to ask you questions to help you come up with better prompts or to ask it better questions, especially if you haven't yet fully figured out how to prompt it or what information to give it. To test it, I gave it general information, just to see what type of answer it gives and if it was worth using. The answer was detailed, but as I told it: "This list is vague and overwhelming. Ask me questions to help me form a better plan based upon my brand, music, ideal fans, and more." That opened up the floodgates. The questions it gave me, which I'll put below, helped it give me a very details plan specifically for me. That started a good back and forth conversation that felt like an extremely well-informed expert was brainstorming ideas with me. Any new ideas I had, I would ask it questions about, which it would then compare to it's knowledge on trends, market, and genres. That led to a whole conversation about possible things to do for social media, fan interaction, release schedule, collaborators, hired guests, other creative offerings, and much more. I now have a full, multi-phase, monthly plan to start moving forward with, and good ideas for how to adapt it as I go.

Yesterday i was hoarse, i did mistakes, then i warmed up again, lightly, did much more screaming and i was expecting to regret it later or today, but nothing, no tension no hoarsness!!

Wow! It s absolutely amaizing the difference when warming up, get much more control over false folds and they vibrate difference, more steadily and faster And vocal folds as well, easier to fry,

If you tend toward a basic "choir boy" / naive head voice like me, you need all the tone help you can get. With these tricks I find resonant spots everywhere. #1 this is easy. Turn your head to the 1 o'clock or 11 o'clock position, chin a little lifted. The formant shift especially on high notes is quite tasty. I've seen performers do this in live shows a number of times. #2 coordination building. Ever make funny sounds or impersonate characters with odd voices? I learned to mimic the voice of characters like Stitch from "Lilo & Stitch" or Meatwad from "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" - I think its a narrowing of the vocal tract at the back of the tongue (?), I feel it way in the back just above the glottis. Overdoing it sounds doofy/quacky, but ~25-50% adds a nice layer of brass to most vowels, and it pairs great with cry mode to make high note access easier. Balance is key! #3 more coordination and some strength building. Soft palate position is a HUGE tone knob, as I'm sure a lot of you have discovered. Some coaches train to keep the soft palate closed all the time, which seems to help volume level for no-mic performance, but the nasal cavity is an AMAZING resonator when used carefully. Sometimes I have to really push my soft palate open (edging vowels especially), and its easy to get too nasal at lower pitches. But a lot like the cartoon-character throat narrowing trick: a little does a lot, balance is key, and it stacks great with cry mode. I also find soft palate opening to invite a bit more wind at the expense of more strength in the core and throat to keep things stable.