Vocal Control Question
 

hey, I've actually got a pretty legit vocal question!

ok, my band does Carcass-ish dual vocals...and I do the low growls. Anyways, I have a pretty decent, deep, cool sounding tone...but my main issue is a lot of times it changes mid verse.

kinda like my growl becomes less harsh and more like a Max Cavalera shout, and then turns back into a growl...I'm suspecting this has to do with me using more or less air. But I really can't control it..and it sounds really stupid.

has anyone ever witnessed anything like this, and know the cause, or have advice?

ok, I'm going to post a video of my band...

This song is better than the last one I posted...but still don't make fun of my retarded bass player's stage moves.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkqANj0aGlM

Bumpin' dis shit!

help me!

I don't do growls or gutturals or anything like that, but I can give advice on the control of airflow. Find pyramidalis, about four inches below you navel - this muscle:
http://www.meddean.luc.edu/lumen/Me...muscles/pyr.htm

What you want to do is to use this to press upwards, because, when you do it right, it will drag both the diaphragm and the belt muscles with it, basically turning you into a human bellow. The routine is as follows:
Breathing in - Don't breathe. Just drop pyramidalis. When I practice this, I open my mouth wide as if surprised (though with jaws relaxed - always relaxed) and let my whole body sag and the stomach go out like a bayern beer keg. The point of this is that you create an under pressure (or whatever the correct English word is) in your lungs and so air rushes in faster and easier than you could ever drag it in. When you have it, all you do when you need to breathe is relax pyramidalis, and your lungs are full in an instant. But it takes a while to get down!
Next - connect the support. This is done when you tense pyramidalis, working upwards. And you only do this once, full force right from the start, regardless of the volume and strength you use in the song and don't relax it until next time you want some more air. Important note - it is very easy to start tensing your shoulders or even your back and neck. Don't do this, for all practical purposes you are strangling yourself. I'm entering my second year of serious study in this and I have only just reached the stage where I don't need to constantly remind myself to RELAX.

Also, when you breathe in it is very important to not close your throat, as this will a) result in a lot less air to work with and b) screw up whatever sound you want to achieve. To practice this you can do like this:
Breathe in like described above and place two fingers lightly on your adam's apple. When you open your mouth and relax pyramidalis, it should go down a little bit.

This is some of the basic techniques I use to sing everything from lullabies to opera, and rest easily with a tasteful vibrato on a single note over three or four measures. There's quite a lot to this, give a shout if you want more.

this is actually really cool....I just need to work on it some more.

I think my main issue is that I fluctuate on my air output. and I go from good growls to an angry Austrian power lifter and back. but this technique seems very advanced.

I'll have to look into it extensively.

I think I know exactly the problem you describe, and I put it down to one or even all of those three issues - not keeping the support connected all the way, closing the throat or simply not having enough air available.
This seems very advanced and complicated to begin with, the huge advantage is that it takes away the pink fluff and bullshit around doing vocals and turns it into describable biology and mechanics. This is the technique that was first developed in Italy back in the 17th century, when opera as we know it was really becoming the shit, and some things just are universal.

I've been working on this, and I still try to breathe in...but the good thing is that it's not that much....but after a while I do have to take a pretty good sized breath...

when i first started doing death metal, i could only do really deep growls. luckily, that's changed now.

my advice for you is not going as deep and putting more power and diaphram into it

Yea I know, it's a bitch to begin with, and I had a teacher that stood in front of me every week telling me what I was doing wrong.
When I get a new song I sit down with the text and, if available, sheets and do a little mark everywhere there is a suitable pause for breathing. Then I sing to every such point, stop, place a hand on the pyramidalis and really exagerate when relaxing it, letting everything sag from jaws to knees. This is partially to find the absolute bottom of my lungs, making sure that I don't drag in air but instead let it in, and in the end to make it an automatic routine. It's often an assload of work, a single A4 normal printed sheet music can take hours. But it's extremely useful, not least if you're in a choir - it's a lot easier to just sneak in an extra breath here and there, since you don't make any sound and it goes so fast. Same goes for solo stuff really.

Then of course there's a lot more like tonal placement, how to shape vocals and using consonants and other stuff, but I don't know how useful any of that is in growling.

that applies alot to my growls given the fact that i try to annunciate as well as possible while growling and also screaming

yea thats true

I only put extreme emphasis on annunciating with my mids and highs since a vast majority of the time that helps raise the pitch higher(I've got a vocal range on the lower end of the spectrum). With low vocals, I tend to annunciate less because annunciation often works against me through raising the pitch when I want it low.

ON TOPIC: I know what your problem is. My guitarist has the same problem which is why I DO NOT let him help me with vocals. You aren't pushing enough air through and you aren't vibrating your false chords slow enough. I had that problem when I was first getting started with vocals years ago but I quickly learned to exert more force. I don't really know how to tell you to fix the issue because the only thing I know to do is push harder and more consistently. You can't be having inconsistent exhaling.

Either that or you aren't using false chord or fry screaming. There are many other ways of screaming so you might be using one of those.

PVB, do you happen do have any links to some of your music?

My band hasn't recorded anything but I could record some vocals right now and upload to our youtube specifically to exemplify some stuff.