hey chris liepe here with how to sing like chad gray and we're gonna stick to the Mudvayne stuff
for this video maybe we'll do some hell yeah stuff in another video chad gray has an incredible
range of tones in his voice i'm excited to get into the various nuances of his screams and his
distortion and his clean singing managing your airflow is the first thing that you really need
to hone in on when you're looking to do things like chad gray and other singers in this genre
if you'd like more help with the foundations that help you manage your airflow your support
being able to use different types of pressure and hone in on different points of resistance in your
vocal tract to get different sounds click the link below and join my free voice course that's
the best place to start with me and there's lots of ways that we can work from there from happy
so there's two different types of vocal distortion he's using here there's the
there's the buried underneath and then there's the slip
and then he goes back into that first type of distortion let's talk about this first
it's really good he starts on an m because that's extra accessible to us in a lot of
ways so we're going to start by singing that that just any way you can make sure
you're not doing that you're just mmm and then i've done this in so many other videos
we're going to lift something heavy and feel what happens in the very upper part of our throat
it will not be instant for you as you dial it in because you're not used to feeling what it
feels like to sing and lift something heavy at the same time buried underneath that's the sound
hear how it's not
it's not placed low that actually makes me cough if i do that buried when we lift
something heavy we close off the air at the very top of our our throat that's the false cord area
we could do that we don't want to be old managed we want to be here
buried underneath yeah okay now listen to how he goes into that slip
okay now here there's two ways that i like to look at this kind of thing he's abandoning into
this word slip and here with hands hands hands so we've got this first posture here hands
well we got barry buried underneath and then hands we're moving the resonance
back buried underneath is very forward we're focusing on the front of our face
and the the resistance that's coming from our upper throat buried then we're going to move
we're going to move the resonance back our focus back to our soft palate and at the
same time we're going to pull a little bit of support out so that we we break our voice cracks
hands hands here i'm sighing into it buried underneath hands and slap and then we're going
to keep it back and slip off the wheel and then bring the resonance forward so it's a combination
of thinking back towards the soft palate taking the focus off of our face while keeping
the sensations that we're feeling in our throat high this allows us to have this varied approach
buried underneath and slip off the wheel and slip off the wheel
and there's all sorts of ways that you can throw your voice if we listen to slip
he really stops it there's no pitch in there slip slip and slap off the wheel
and slip off the wheel that's not hand slip off the wheel or hand slip off the no it's this is
oh you can even hear that the the way he's shaping things oh god really focusing on
this soft palate back there there's a bit of nasality there okay next from the same song
okay so here he's throwing up to a higher pitched screen scream that doesn't sound quite as
like the other one did this is a different sort of listen to the first one here
that one a little bit more and this one
what we need to think about here is a note
kind of an ambiguous note that we can throw our voice to i'm thinking about it like this
even though you don't really hear that note that
that timbre of that scream makes me want to reach for that note
internal pathway to contention but i can't hit that note with any amount
of grit i can't maintain this level of compression internal pathway to contention
that's not what it is but if i reach for that note and allow my voice to break
moving my face out of the way and then focusing the resonance not on my soft palate but forward i
get that nice bright vocal cords disengaged screen then i think adding compression back in i know
this is a lot to think about but it's all airflow management and i help you with this in my courses
internal pathway to contention let's add the grit over it and then let's break into that screen
internal pathway to contention can hear a little bit of that pitch up there as i as i reached up
for it and allowed my voice to crack if i dissect this process the internal pathway to contention
you can hear a bit of that pitch back there but it's it disappears as the false chords engage
as we lean into the vulnerability of our vocal break as we're pursuing that pitch
we can't possibly hit in that posture now you might say wow that's intense aren't you really
tense no i'm intense but i'm not tense i'm feeling out how the points of resistance
work in my neck to be able to get that level of grit next from dig
okay so this right here is similar to what we just did everything that i am
yeah i hear that a little bit in the back
but here this is much much yellier the center of pitch here is uh is is beefy lower dig dig
but it's still grittier than the compression that we heard
in the first in the first sample then this one here
that placement is very different than this
now he's got his voice his mouth dog right but there's more going on here he's still allowing his
voice to break now whether he discovered it this way or not i don't really care but uh if we can
bring that pitch and then add compression dig that's more like the first the off off
of happy dig bring the residents back lower dag is close but then
that's closer right because we have this
sense that we're falling apart on the note not just compressing the note dig dig dig dig dig sigh
the shape of the mouth is huge here
shape of the mouth the different in difference in pitches and he's got a really pure
fryish i had to hesitate to use that word but fry sound on those higher screams that i haven't quite
figured out how to harness with my voice but in in working with with other singers that do this
working with your vocal break as you manage your airflow is huge but also the mouth shape
you are creating a different resonant chamber as you work with different pitches
to target even though we're not going for specific notes next scream with me
i chose this example because and he's doubled in other places too but the doubling really affects
the the end tone quite a bit particularly with this kind of distortion if i'm just singing and
i'm evaluating my tone as a singer singing with distortion and i'm comparing it to this
i'm missing the chorusing that's happening in this playback so if i go stand in the corner and
scream with me fine if i add the distortion that we were talking about earlier stand in the corner
and scream with me scream with me it sounds kind of one-dimensional that is what's happening stand
there's a bit of that breakup going on in addition to the compression stand in the corner and scream
with me there's that happening it's not just this stand in the corner and scream with me
there's it's messier than that but it actually sounds cleaner because of the doubling so as
you're dialing in this keep in mind that listening to studio recordings where there's production and
doubling and effects can skew your perception of what they're actually doing it's not as full as
it sounds because i think it's actually tripled we've got the middle one and then we've got the
the ones on the side that softens it and it makes it seem it makes it sit as in in the melody better
okay but from this same song listen here because there's a subtlety that i want to bring out
hear how he goes more towards that folly a party broken broken up thing on away
we've got that harmony there that's it's getting in the way a little bit but
feel like feel like slipping very forward feel like but then listen on a way
it starts with the away but then he's got that at the top right feel like slipping away
we've roasted it what we've done is this feel like slipping away
and we found that place where our voice is existing in between my chest voice and my
head voice resonance and we've leaned into it feel like but then we've also gone back to that pitch
so this is different than what we've done before we don't really care about a particular note
we care about a particular texture here we're using the same technique but we're we're really
working with the the note where it's part of the melody so it's this balancing act of how much
primary chord engagement do we want to have heard versus how much the false chords cover that note
away
feel like slipping away next from forget to remember
when i turn my back on you single note i want to point out the lack of compression that he's
using here when i turn my back on you when i turn my back on you when i turn my back on you
when i turn my back on you i
i turned my back on myself and became let me turn my this almost sounds a bit uh anthony keitis
in a weird way when i turn my back on you it the the vowels all kind of sound
uh the same a little bit not a lot but a little bit and it's a very rhythmic sort of thing but
he's not doing this when i turn my back on you however if we go to the next sample here
just i mean within the same vicinity of the song we're going up a little bit in
pitch but then we've added that distortion that we talked about at the beginning it's
important to notice the contrasts that exist within chad's voice to sing like chad gray
we're not always going to sing like this sometimes we're going to sing like this
and we're going to sort of unify the sound when i turn my back on you
we're going to do stuff like that we're going to lengthen sometimes
we're going to scream like really bright and open sometimes we're going to do this
and sometimes we're going to go from clean on myself no compression to mild gritty compression
selfishness but this one does not have that breakup selfish
no selfishness right it's just compression selfishness as opposed to selfishness
very different sound by him being able to exist in both worlds over different lines even all three
worlds right clean compressed and abandoned we'll call him those three things he's able to add lots
of interest and lots of dynamics it's not about being or doing one thing if you're getting a lot
out of these samples make sure you check out all the videos i've done on corey taylor make sure
you've watched them all lots of great tips there as well again if you want more help dialing in the
fundamentals with your voice click that link below and join my free course we'll see you for more