hey chris liepe here and i've been spending time with extreme metal vocalist british gertz
how to scream how to develop sensations no matter your voice type for really aggressive
vocals screaming yelling growling if you want to go deeper with brita and her approach
there's a link that links to a waiting list for a course that she's going to be putting
out here very soon click that link below and join that waiting list i want to ask
you britta thank you for being here again by the way thanks for having me again how do you warm
up for aggressive extreme vocals and is it different than warming up for traditional singing
i would say it is a little bit um first of all we have to understand that we need to have
our breathing support in a very very very good state we when we want to scream um and growl in a
healthy uh and and in good way because like the the vocal health of a metal vocalist when
singing harsh vocals is more or less like really dependent on what you do here if you what you're
lacking here you will feel after the show here um so i make sure that i have my breathing um
uh warmed up so that i'm i'm i'm engaging in like a like a belly breathing that i have my back
straight that i'm not like having a bad poster for singing and that's the very first thing that i do
and sometimes especially when you're on a long route to a to a show or something and you sit
in the van like first seven or eight hours like a good stretch is the best thing to start with
to have like a good poster for singing kind of aligning your body first and then engaging the
the belly yes exactly so um and then the first thing i do which might but sometimes be a little
counterintuitive i go on a very very light hum and the light hum is there to have a very good
closure on full length of the vocal folds with a mouth closed closed lightly not pressed together
yeah and so that we have nasal airflow while we do that so it just can sound something like that
exactly and um i do that as long as my voice needs um to sound
clear so i don't want to sound have any like sounds still in there because that might just um
like with when there's a little bit of air coming coming in the end when the vocal cords
are not closing properly i don't want that because like when you have
closed vocal cords or as close as they can be um then this will provide a super solid basis
for your growls your screams and everything nasal awareness cord closure awareness resonance facial
resonance awareness you're bringing that to the very front of your consciousness before you try
to do anything else that's what i'm hearing you say okay what's next uh the next thing is um i
make that hum a little louder and i make sure that i can move my jaw independently from my uh
my head and without any tension here so when i do that it looks and sounds something like that
and i do not pay any attention does it sound good no like it's just there for me to warm up
and why i'm doing that is because i see many people do that right
no and you in fact it's keeping you from doing what you want to do you're adding all that
jaw tension so but when you just did that when you start moving things around in the previous
warm-up tip you had said make sure that you are you have very loose lips and let me ask you are
your lips any tighter when you start moving your jaw around i would say maybe one or two percent
tighter but not okay the lips follow the motion of my jaw and not the other way around the other
way around would be uh-huh like you're chewing something i'm trying to keep stuff from falling
okay so we need to be experts in shaping techniques when we want to scream and growl and
so our jaw needs to be able to come forward and to come into all kinds of positions without like
any kind of extra tension okay so and then when you were you were moving that pitch around more
on that second warm-up as well were you and were you intentionally working out uh the range and uh
and positioning of your true cords your primary cords to go into your head resonance versus
your chest resonance are you you know what i heard what i felt like i heard was was this
am i right yes that's exactly what i did but you can do that just like very comfortably like
you don't have to worry about like getting rid of that that um switch from your head
to your chest voice like just let it come out naturally like
and then you go a little bit higher and higher and lower and lower but slowly take your time
yeah okay very cool okay and what's what gets you then after you've done these these are calm and
subdued and almost meditative what gets you into the area of of being able to cut loose
it goes on like that for a little while so like i'm i'm adding some yawning because um
our soft palate needs to be able to to be to move freely because this is like really our
our like the one the one thing that you want to learn how to control but it's not really easy
to control so by engaging it in a yawn oh you can really feel it stretching so open your mouth first
and then inhale on any kind of tone that you feel and then i end this
kind of like meditative um part of the warm-up with a literal
unless i can i can do that i'm not moving on to the growl and scream part because like this is
really where it all comes together your breathing support needs to be in in the
place your placement needs to be in the place otherwise like the literal will just stop moving
so you use that as a gauge like i am not relaxed enough i am not present enough to my body to move
on until i can freely do those lip rolls that's my checkbox and so like many of my students or
other things singers who who sing a lot of clean voice in in their um songs they would probably now
go into scales and their exercise but like if you if you're just warming up for doing screams and
growls take these 10 15 20 minutes whatever it takes for you it's very it's very um it differs
from person to person and then i move on to a very useful tool and it's called the vowel triangle or
the vowel diagram you're probably familiar with that chris so um it's it has all the different
vowels um aligned in a triangle uh it's also available as a download in my course by the way
and i move um through all the the vowels in my desired techniques and on different pitches before
i move on to phrasing and i can't stress this enough like the proper placement for each vowel
needs to be there before you start phrasing and seeing very complex things so
um you can start with an ah go to an e e sound like
me
and you can also like like go with these natural pitch variations like that the e is a little
higher than the r and then you go all all around and you can also do that on a fry screen like
and once you figured out how to sing every vowel properly that's when you're good to go when you
say once you've figured out how to do that in various different coordinations and postures
so you're doing it and i don't know that you said this but i'm going to imply it
you do that the the vowel triangle clean first by trying to get everything aligned and sort of
squaring that with the other warm-ups that you did and then you start introducing false chord
engagement you start introducing various fry sounds and you circle the triangle you you go
you go around uh though into those different vowels in those different coordinations but
it's a progression it's not like you're sitting here moving your jaw around and doing clean stuff
and then all of a sudden you're you're you're doing aggressive vowels as a screamer um well
for my warm-up i do that um so like i have my my voice warmed up to a point where i can do that
easily on a warm-up but that is not for training beginners of course beginners will will have a
longer route leading to that um but once i've done my liberals my lip trills i'm i am personally done
with like the clean stuff and they just go on on very easy and light projected screams and growls
i check my my vowel triangle and then i go for more aggressive sounds and and have like
something like that okay that's really that's really helpful to know because
i think if someone who hasn't experienced in their voice
what we worked on in the other two videos if they haven't worked on some of those gateway sensations
and they were to try to warm up like you just demonstrated why i go from these really light
clean introspective kind of sounds to me to doing that there's well wait a minute how do
we get from here to here well you get from here to here by leaning into the sensations that we've
talked about in in those previous videos so that's that's really good to sort of glue that together
what is the point so we we had that that point earlier with the lip rolls
that said that you were able to go move on as you're doing the vowel triangle and you're
warming up these these different uh uh false chord engagements and fry sounds where's your checkbox
for okay now i'm ready to hit the record button or now i'm ready to sing a set screen is set um i
pick the most uh complex um transitions that i do in the set that we're gonna play the night or um
the most difficult sets of transitions that i'm gonna record and when i can do them smoothly and i
don't want to say effortlessly because that would be a lie like it's vocal sports like don't get me
wrong on that but if i can do that comfortably then i feel like i'm ready to go because what i
really don't want to do is warm up in front of an audience like you know like i want to be my 110
before i step onto the stage so i make sure that i can sing all my pixels on my
um super lows or my high pitched screams properly before i do that and that's my checkbox so like
i start with a vowel triangle and then i pick for my difficult parts and then i weave them in
and when i can do that then i'm good to go thanks again for your insights and your your
practical applications for some of these things it's very relatable and easy to internalize
if you want more of this brita's got a course coming out and you can click the link below
in the video description to join the waiting list and you'll get an email when this course
is available again thank you so much we'll see you soon thanks a lot chris