hey chris liepe here with a special treat we've got brita gertz extreme vocalist
long time vocal coach and i get to interview her here on the channel
she's had a huge history of being very aggressive teaching people how to do this
and has some amazing language and perspectives to go along with it and as you guys who are into
aggressive vocalists have been studying my channel don't miss this advice don't miss these tips
in this video we're gonna learn according to brita how to scream how to sing with distortion
hey britta hey chris what's up well thank you so much for the super nice introduction
before we go much further if you like what you hear in this video and some of the tips that
you get she's got a course coming out click the link below to get on the waiting list for this
course and you'll get an email as soon as it's released okay so how you learned to scream it's
so long ago i think it's like something like 18 19 20 years ago when i picked up a microphone and
um screamed into it when i joined um a thrash metal band the thrash metal band cripper that
i was in for a very very long time and like we didn't have any like we didn't even have youtube
tutorials or something like that and um so like i made every possible mistake one could make on my
journey and how to learn how to scream and um this is exactly like what got me interested into like
finding out how you actually do that and what's going on um anatomically so yeah that's uh yeah
i really learned from my mistakes you learned from failure you turned failure into discovery
and and and introspectively grabbed those failures and went huh how does that feel ah that feels
interesting and then leaning into that and then of course like in exchange like with other singers i
learned a lot and i picked up a little bit up here and there but like the the thing for me was when
i discovered what is going on in the anatomy of it and it was so interesting that i don't know i just
kind of like it was like um a smoother ride from that moment on when i understood what is actually
going on so the what's going on was was the was the moment for you speaking of of what's going on
what would you say to the term fry screaming hey that's a fry scream no it's not that's a
false chord scream no that's a fried screen and then there's this there's this argument
that goes on i think via i mean really i mean even with experienced vocalists
what's your take on on those terms and how that fits with what's really going on and how you feel
things in your own voice i get confronted with this question a lot like oh brutal what do you
think like is the singer singing in fry or is that false chord or whatever um like one thing first
like when i learned how to do it i was just like going by sound and i lived and sung happily before
i even knew that the term fry ever existed so like uh it's really like a terminology fry is um a word
that when i look at it it doesn't mean just the one thing right so we have one word for like
different kinds of fry it's like a fry family i would say so everything that sounds because
fry to me is a sound it's like has to do with like putting uh something really tasty into boiling oil
that it makes so everything that has the more like finer lighter distortion characteristics
that is at the same time produced with not a lot of airflow going on got it speaking like you can
hold the tone very long this is what i call a fry so kind of like the word flower right like it's it
means slightly different things to different people depending on what you're visualizing
in your head yes exactly and also like i got to know like so many different voices throughout
my teachings and my my workshops that i find um some for some people it's easier
easier to go and lean into this kind of fry some are like like from the whole poster and
the placement that they do naturally in their voice and i try to work with that um to like
have an easier entrance to this whole distortion thing going on okay so so fry is a descriptor word
or a descriptor word that stands for a family of sounds like you're saying square that with
the term false chord well false chord is um a term that describes a part in our throat
and it's also used as a terminology for um a singing style but like for me that doesn't
necessarily mean that the false chords as a body part are only active in the false chord technique
because like when you sing in like a and like a mixed voice like a false chord engagement
can add a lot of like grit and heaviness to your to your fry sound so your false chords
can be part of a fry engagement your fry sound can be part of a false chord engagement because false
chords you're describing anatomy there when you're saying the word fry you're not talking about
a particular part of your anatomy and as a matter of fact you get a fry sound from
false chord engagement but you could also get it with with no false chord engagement vocal
vocal fry according to an ear nose and throat specialist right is is simply it's like your
your most disengaged vocal resonance right you're the loose flappy vocal cords and i think some
people if they think about wait fry and screaming how do i make that and i mean that's a quiet
frog imitation how do i make that into something usable yeah but it's also like imagine you're um
you're teaching a baby on how to stand and how to walk like the route to go to be a pro athlete
and succeed in the olympics and running is a long path so like it's not just that you make
something faster to make something more smooth and like useful so there's a lot more going on and
like the whole body needs to be in a certain kind of state to achieve certain kinds of kinds of
sounds so like i think if for some people it is a good way to approach the whole fry thing with
like the grudge sound the sound that you just made like oh it's a good thing for some it's
confusing because like the the fry vocals like yeah um it feels completely different than oh
they both belong in the frye family but it's not just making something louder louder to me
it's less like giving more air into it and trying to reach someone in a far distance and that's not
the right projection it has a lot to do with with like a placement that you can play around with and
also like with the projection and compression that is a really really a big topic um that i
talk to my students a lot about because like um there's also this open throat
thing and uh that is kind of like the opposite of like a good compression and as a metal vocalist as
a harsh vocalist you need to have good control of your compression and what you're doing with that
describe the transition how it should feel when you go from that
that sort of clinical definition of fry to the to the more engaged uh upper throat
false chord compressed sensation just describe how one might get that transition well there
there are different kind of um passes that you can walk on but one thing that works well for many
um is like i imagine to be like an old guy this actually is like uh it's a it's like a
grandpa that one of my students has and he's like when i talk like that like my grandpa
and it's it's not like a whisper in terms of yeah it's more like an engaged whisper
that also leans a little bit more into the front so when you think of like having um your frontal
part engaged in the sound like as a resonance room favored compared to the back part like yes
that would be front so um this is where it's way easier to project that into
and then some people also say like when you lift something heavy something heavy yeah and yourself
an old man lifts something heavy you've got that yeah or like uh like some people even like when
they do something in the bathroom uh so this is like everything so uh i think that every
person who is able to speak um has probably made one or the other fry sound already but just
is not aware of that so i try to pay attention to my students
and i and i encourage them to to pay attention to whenever they are lifting something heavy
when they are um like laughing um along for a long time and at the end it's just like
well these little creeks come out um this is something that
um is very useful um to find the right placement and to go from there so but
yeah with these like kind of like oh guys speaking just like the grandpa of i don't know like
homer simpson is that the grandpa right sure speaking like that yeah that's very very
very near and close to the fry and then when you mix in way more of the grandpa
and just a little bit of the uh sensation you end up maybe with with something like
but for me it feels like it's way more than all right very very cool that's awesome so
take us from there from that this is not musical what we've done so far is not musical at all
but if we go from from these you know gateway sounds to making a note to actually singing
with it how can we start to develop those sensations always try to achieve a certain
kind of way how to sing in a clean way that we have a good layer um that we have a good um like
just a good path to build upon our our distortion so um when you sing sometimes um when you sing
very melodic you work a lot with like a different breathing support so that's that you have like a
something like that maybe very soft but for especially for the fry sounds um something
very annoying and monotonous is a way better layer to add those sounds and so you want to keep your
your breathing support rather pretty engaged and then maybe like think of something like this so
it's very monotonous in the beginning and it's very continuous and then um take away all the
consonants from what you want to sing because like i mean we can sing vowels we cannot think
that's not something that we can really sing so when it's when you want to sing something
like um in my course there's actually um uh an example song that you can learn with
and and sing along to so there's a um a line that goes cavernous into darkness so
cavernous into darkness and when i take all the consonants away it's like
and then um i tried to sing that on a fry yeah yeah yeah yeah
carefulness but i rely a lot on the vowels um underneath it so i don't get
too distracted by all the consonants and sometimes when you sing consonants that are produced in the
back of your of your mouth it throws you off so just leave them away and start with
something like that it cuts your airflow and and directs your placement to the
back when you want to be keeping it forward that's why constantly that's why that works
so you know caverness cavernous cacao uh
maybe bring it up so i can have a bit more compression easier
exactly it's very good and like like um no one should be um ashamed or afraid um to just try that
out because like we all sounded like that when we started and um like um to learn from people who
can do that can be very uh very i don't know um weird because like you hear all these sounds that
work so well but like i mean like failure is 80 90 of the process oh that's so awesome thank you
for doing this for giving us wisdom and practical things to try to work this stuff
into our voices again if you want more from brita click that link below and join the waiting list
for the course i've seen some of the course and i'm going to be going through the whole thing it's
going to help reinforce some things that i've been working on and it's also going to help me learn
to internalize some new things that i've had trouble with
but more on that in another video we'll see you for more