hey Chris Liepe here with the mixed Voice Plus Distortion problem and how to fix it
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[Music] if there's one thing I've learned from singing Alice in Chains you better sing
Alice in Chains like you because nobody's gonna sing it like Lane and if you try to
sing it like Lane you might as well just start smashing raw egg all over your face be you
that really is the first tip to mix voice with Distortion because we hear other singers
do it and then we try to imitate what they do rather than learning the tone and placement
of our own mixed voice and then adding a distortion over the top this is a key mindset shift that
we have to make if we're going to be successful using mixed voice and Distortion gritty mixed
voice thick mixed voice any of these things I also need to say that if you can't support
your voice properly if you don't understand what it means to sing freely without tension
to sing throughout your range without your throat tensing up you won't be able to do
anything that I'm going to be talking about in this video click the link below and join
my free voice course and I'll show you how to dial in your support and the fundamentals
so that you can start working powerfully and gritty throughout your whole range so we've
talked about singing with Distortion as a product of compression right lifting something
heavy hey I'm gonna lift this desk I'm gonna place that sensation of holding back the air
as high as I possibly can in my throat I've done lots of videos on that and it's a great
way to get into distortion but the issue comes when we take the posture of chest voice Distortion
okay I got it and then we try to push higher hey like the coordinate the muscles just don't
go that way and so we can't follow if we get a nice distorted note in our chest voice using
compression it's awfully hard to follow that up and at the same time when we figure out
how to resonate in a mixed way
wow all right yeah yeah oh I'm real high well when we try to do the lifting something heavy
there had compression to our mixed voice
it it just doesn't work we can't simply apply the okay start holding back air start holding
back air with uh the area above your throat with the mixed coordination particularly yeah
the dying cat mix coordination that many of you have grown to learn from the channel the
fix lies in embracing your vocal break in a very specific way you might say that sounds
weird I'm pursuing my mixed voice so that I don't have to break like isn't that the
whole point of mixed voice well no if you try to get to mixed Voice by eliminating your
vocal break a lot of times not all the time but a lot of times you have trouble getting
into a powerful or a distorted mix a lot of people do that by doing this you know I go
I have no break and I can go from chess voice stop the head boys I'm backing off on the
airflow partially this is part of what I'm doing and part of what a lot of people do
they back off on the airflow and support right as they feel themselves about to cross their
break but if we do the opposite and when we feel ourselves start to break we go into it
and I've I've talked about the vocal break in a lot of ways as being helpful for screaming
this isn't necessarily screaming it's just gritty mixed voice but the same sort of principles
can apply if we lean into it instead of shying away initially it's going to be like this
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this really ugly thing that happens
even in my voices I'm doing that you can hear these tiny if you isolate these little microseconds
you can hear these interesting nuggets of blending happening so if we want to get a
gritty mixed voice we have to learn to first place our mix
clean yeah
hear my voice quivering and breaking
now think about that high mix note think about it being pure and then add that sensation
of your voice breaking to it
[Applause] yay there it is oh it's this constant dance between clean up and letting your voice
fall into what it feels like to crack as you're trying this especially if you're trying it
for the first time you may very well go this doesn't work I can't do it you throw your
hands up right away I understand it is really really hard to embrace something like oh I
finally hit the note clean and now I'm gonna let myself intentionally fall apart and and
break over it I don't even know how to do that I don't even know how to fall apart once
I've got clean it takes a lot of practice and I can help you with that I have lots of
exercises in my course that help us expose this kind of thing so be patient with yourself
and don't try it a couple times I can't find my break I'm done don't do that be patient
with yourself and try doing this at all different points of your range try going just above
where your break would be hey and then and then let your self fall apart into your break
you're kind of falling down into it because your break is below where that mixed note
is
[Applause] hey I'm dialing it in sometimes it's a little too Breaky oh there we go yay
the other kind of cool thing is that we can moderate how much broken upness we want right
so if I want to go yeah that's just a little bit of grit but if I want to really let my
break be exposed and and Teeter in there [Applause]
yeah there's some neat things you can do as you're as you're playing with that balance
and now a final tip don't let yourself get locked into one way to feel Distortion or
one way to feel mix there's lots of ways and lots of placements that can help you enter
mix I've covered those in lots of other videos and lots of other places I don't want to get
into all that here but the point is whenever you are static in your approach you get locked
you get locked up and you're unable to be rangy whether you finally found that one mixed
note or whether you finally found that Distortion tone you like if you try to stick to that
and move it around your range your Distortion moves around your range in the same way or
you're trying to move your mixed voice around in a certain way we we lose the fact that
for both to be successful across your entire range you have to dynamically resonate and
dynamically Place sometimes vowel by vowel word by word syllable by syllable and that's
one thing that Lane Staley was incredibly good at and what I've learned from him uh
to a to a large degree let's listen to my performance of rooster that little portion
that you heard at the beginning notice how my voice and and my sound changes a lot you
know there'll be one that has tons of distortion one that's a little thinner one that's uh
sort of uh nasally sounding well that's not nasally sounding uh Distortion that's that's
really falling apart and Distortion is just a little bit gritty by practicing going all
over the place and doing lots of different things with your voice even in one little
phrase you free it up you don't get lost in the tension of trying to keep your voice in
one certain sound that's a huge huge problem for a lot of people let's listen here they
come to Snuff the rooster hear that who's there I brought that back just a little bit
it's subtle
oh yeah
I am now notice I let myself break up a little bit more towards the end of that
or just let that happen rather than trying to control the note as I was flirting with
my break like I'd instructed you earlier in this lesson it got a little too yeah but that's
okay it ended up working fine and I'm actually sounded really cool foreign
that was a huge one now that was a good chest voice you know breakup yeah
you know he ain't gonna die
listen how he changes you know
yeah very crow-ish very nasal at the beginning of this phrase and then let my resonance transfer
sort of out of my nose towards the end
this helps you with your mixed voice and Distortion because you're dynamically placing
note for me no no but here no no no
no no
getting that balance of of Leaning into that falling apart with your break oh no he ain't
gonna die
again right there that's something that lane does so well die I moved that around
it's not just die or die that movement I
creates that interest and it keeps me from being tense because I'm open to anything and
open to experimenting and moving around huge huge huge thanks for watching all the way
to the end and thank you so much for engaging in my videos and asking questions and that's
the reason this video is made because of your guys's questions again if you want more specific
help with your voice dialing some of this stuff in the best place to start with me is
by joining my free course Linked In the video description we'll see you for more