r/screaming • u/fjgwey • 1d ago
Playing with your voice >>>> watching 500 tutorials saying the same thing. Abandon expectations; GO STUPID RIGHT NOW
Lessons learned/TLDR (context below):
Forget about vocal fry. Well, it's mildly useful but focusing so much on it gave me such a bad habit of falling into it and squeezing out my voice when trying to push; it was counterproductive. It's a texture that should be added on after the fact, not a foundation.
So many screams that people call 'fry screams' are using false cord distortion; I learned this thanks to Chris Liepe, amongst a few other people. Learning this changed my whole perspective on how I should approach it. Really there's not a whole lot of difference between "fry screams" and "false cord screams" in terms of anatomy; it's more so airflow/compression.
Trying to start with distortion and work the voice into it didn't really work well for me; I found starting with the voice and working distortion into it was more effective. This ofc comes with its own issues of overprojection, but that can be worked on after the fact.
Biggest shout out to Mark from Kardavox for his videos talking about being playful with your voice and abandoning 'singer brain' and perfectionism; make silly noises and work them into something usable. Even if you do the 'proper technique', it won't sound that good anyways when you're a beginner. Forget about sounding good and focus on sensation instead.
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God damn it they were right. I'm very much a beginner but could do really basic false cord mids/lows; I wanted to start learning to do high screams but couldn't figure out how to add it to my head voice. I want to be able to do high screams that many people call 'fry screaming', think pitched/hybrid screaming, but I couldn't even get to step 1 because no tutorials on them were working for me. Vocal fry was pretty much useless and I couldn't compress correctly in a way that wasn't immediately painful.
I was finally able to do it when one night I just let go of any expectations and pushed the shit out of my head voice; at first it was almost all air (because of tension + psychological barrier) but I felt a rattle so I kept doing it more and more while trying to keep my voice in and suddenly I unlocked it. Then I played around with that sensation for a couple days, trying to compress that and finally got something workable.
There was some strain because I was pushing my voice so high, and the usual discomfort/mild pain from false cords but nothing out of the ordinary. It also sounds really stupid, like a dying crow because I have to add quite a bit of twang to get the distortion, but now I have something to work with instead of just being stuck! The distortion itself feels like exactly what I'm looking for; false cord with some crackle in it. Now I just need to figure out how to maintain that feeling with less twang and 'screechyness'.
Ironically that gave me more control over my false cords so now I have better control my false cords in my chest voice too; whereas before I was basically just pushing air to activate them, I was able to find a Kargyraa-like 'middle point' while playing around with compression.
Moral of the story: get a little silly with it!
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u/C4ndlejack 1d ago
Yeah people linking "vocal fry" with "fry screams" have no idea what they're talking about. You can't go from vocal fry into fry scream. The former uses zero pressure and chest voice, the latter requires a lot of pressure and is accessible via head voice, as you found out.
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u/fjgwey 1d ago
Yeah I learned it had little relation fairly early on but still kind of kept with it as it was the only thing I had; it made for such a bad habit which encouraged tension as I pushed my voice higher, which is already a problem for my clean singing (which I also practice a little) lol
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u/marx-and-metal 1d ago
vocal fry is only useful after you develop your fry scream, and it’s only the compression in vocal fry that helps. the vocal fry itself has no relation to fry screams, but the compression involved can be carried over to fry screams to help sustain longer screams safely. blame melissa cross for the fucked up terminology
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u/ImponteRottameMuscle 1d ago
You can't go from vocal fry into a scream and that's a fact, but personally I wouldn't label vocal fry as useless, it actually helped me find my fry scream in a weird way by trying to replicate its feeling through compression with good support. And I'm not talking about a whisper or fake fry, but a solid fry scream in chest voice
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u/Not-even-Music 1d ago
Playing around and just making noises is so important for unlocking the sensation of how to make a bunch of different sounds.
It’s the way to find your own sound too
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u/Impressive_Let3046 1d ago
Re: your second paragraph, Chester Bennington is commonly cited as a majority fry screamer, but a lot of his screams were actually “pitched screams.” Dave Benitez did a few videos on pitched screaming and that was a big aha moment for me.
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u/BimmySchmendrix 1d ago
Not to be the "well actually" guy but a pitched scream is still either a fry or a fc scream...
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u/blubdubdub 1d ago
its made up words anyway with like 3 different meanings depending on who you ask
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u/topherdeluxe 1d ago
This is how I know it to be. For me anyways. A good fc or fry can be added into (or onto) a pitched note. Imagine singers that sing a long held note and slowly start adding fry.
If you can’t add a pitch to it, you may by screaming via overdriven true folds and that’s not gonna last long before it leaves damage.
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u/InvisiblemAYn 1d ago
I learned how to fry(more focusing on endurance and consistency now) from trying to learn how reach Vic Fuentes’s high clean vocals. Then i read some more of trying to mix falsetto with chest and how fry has a similar feeling to doing falsettos and started going from there. Just randomly sing-screaming a few times a day has helped in developing it definitely that no tutorial has ever managed to taught me
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u/sicinthemind 1d ago
Spot on dude, you have to be willing to try and get it wrong in order to get it right.
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u/marx-and-metal 1d ago
most goblin noises are high false cord sometimes with tunnel throat, almost never fry
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u/SasquatchWasShaved 1d ago
You’re pretty much who OP is talking about. Keep working on your goblin fries, you’ll get it. Twang hard push up. Sounds like a goblin being used as a snowplow
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u/marx-and-metal 1d ago
I can do goblin noises both ways, but most people do it with high false cord because it’s easier and safer. high fc goblin noises sound like will ramos, goblin fries sound like dickie allen (he actually uses mixed screams, because it still takes a little false cord activation to get the noise)
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u/marx-and-metal 1d ago
don’t listen to chris liepe on scream types, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and his screams don’t even sound good. there are a few different techniques that are all grouped together as fry (thanks melissa cross), some are safer than others but they all rely on the same type of compression. false cord distortion relies on the false folds putting pressure on the true folds. there are other types of screams too, like epiglottic and inhale, and you can mix most exhale techniques together to get different sounds.
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u/fjgwey 1d ago
I'm not presenting him as the sole arbiter; other people also talk about this very fact. Kardavox also tries to avoid perpetuating that normative terminology for this reason.
Of course there's arytenoids, epiglottis, etc. but that's kind of besides the point.
I'll say at least in my case; my screechy crow noise and my lows don't feel fundamentally different distortion wise. The former is just more compressed, that's it lol
The problem with people calling the stuff Oli Sykes, Chester, etc. do "fry screams" is that it misleads ppl into thinking it's fundamentally different from "false cord screams" and also creates the association with vocal fry. I was a victim to this as well lol
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u/marx-and-metal 1d ago
the screams that oli and chester do are not false cord. oli did false cord on the first two albums, and brought it back with dehumanized and the rerecording a couple months ago, but in general both of their screams fall under the fry umbrella. melissa cross gave us the term “fry scream”, and it fundamentally refers to a form of compression rather than a form of distortion. there are voiced fry screams, arytenoid fry screams, and false fold fry screams. they are all anatomically different from false cord screams, which rely on your false folds compressing against your vocal folds, which is a different type of compression from fry. kardavox is also a great resource, but his specialty is epiglottic screams, which are different from false cord or fry. chris liepe confuses fry that relies on false fold activation with actual false cord screams. the two are different, and they feel different in your mouth and throat, even though they rely on the same muscle.
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u/fjgwey 1d ago
I think we're kind of talking past each other here. I didn't say that they do "false cord screams", not in the common understanding of it anyways. I said they use false cord distortion, which is true and you're literally agreeing with me.
That's all my claim is; notice I'm not making any prescriptive claims about definitions. I'm just saying descriptively that the way people use the terms is misleading.
I didn't call them false cord screams; I said they use false cord distortion.
My point was quite simple, a lot (not all) of what people refer to as "fry screams" use false cord distortion. I'm not gonna argue about technical definitions; I'm sure you know a lot more about it than I do. I'm only talking about how the terms are understood in the public consciousness.
This is why I find Kardavox's approach of using descriptive language (e.g. "what people call false cord screams") and terms like "airflow permissive/restrictive" much more pertinent
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u/marx-and-metal 1d ago
the distortion is a combination of the compression and the muscle activation. false fold fry screams use fry compression, which is why they are under the fry umbrella, and they feel much more like other types of fry screams than false cord screams. false fold fry screams do not use false fold distortion, they mix false fold activation with fry compression. false fold distortion is a combination of false fold activation with false fold compression. you wouldn’t say that a fc throat singer is using false fold distortion, you’d say that they are activating their false folds underneath their true folds. mix throat singing with fry compression and you get false fold fry screams, mix throat singing with false fold compression and you get false cord screams. the activation is only one part of the distortion. same with arytenoids, which is what chester bennington used for both his sing-screams and his fries. similarly, most “mixed screams” combine false fold compression with arytenoid or vocal folds activation. there are a lot of terms and most of them are way too broad (thanks, melissa cross), but fundamentally there is fry compression and false fold compression, and there is vocal, arytenoid, and false fold activation (epi screams usually don’t use either type of compression, but they can be mixed with most types of exhale screams)
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u/marx-and-metal 1d ago
for high fry, there are two methods that i’ve found work best. the first is finding your vocal break (voice crack) and leaning into it with compression. the second method is to sing higher than you can comfortably until you get distortion, this is how sam carter has said that he found his scream
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u/BimmySchmendrix 1d ago
I feel like a lot more people need to try this before talking about glottal stops, pushing air from diaphrams and compression...