hey chris liepe here with how to warm up your voice for singing with distortion
i guess i was just
one of the biggest mistakes singers make when trying to do aggressive or harsh singing is
that they they go straight there or they try to make their voice go there too soon without having
a proper warm-up and what you'll find if you're not properly warmed up for this kind of singing
is that your voice never really behaves how you want it to behave during that particular
singing session so i'm going to share with you three lines from great artists great singers
that i use to warm up my voice for distorted singing we're using inspirational material from
artists we like and then dissecting them in a way that's helpful for our own singing
and then in that process we get to the point to where we can do a little bit more of what
these guys are doing but in a healthy safe way big part of that is warming up
if you like this kind of approach this way of of learning about your voice and trying things
you will love my free voice course join that by clicking the link below in the video description
i want to introduce you to the newest member of my studio gear collection a hot plate dual burner why
is this in my studio well it's not actually in my studio it's just outside my studio so i can
heat things up during sessions or whatever it's just nice and convenient to have clothes
but i recently got this and the way it functions struck me the other day it works a lot like my
voice works when it comes to distorted singing when we first turn the burner on and we turn
it up to its desired level it takes quite a while for the ready light to come on this thing is slow
way slower than when i use a normal stove top this thing's been sitting cold for who knows how many
days or how many hours and when you turn this switch on you've got to wait you've got to wait
for the heating elements to to get to the point to where they're they're fully engaged and then
for the heat to transfer up into this surface and this is the way that i think about singing with
my distorted vocals i don't just turn that aspect of my voice on and then expect it to be there
i have to turn up the heat and expect that it's going to happen gradually and then when it's ready
we can expect the performance that we want so that's how i approach these three lines in my
warm-ups i gradually turn up the heat i don't have expectation that i'm going to be able to
get there in a certain amount of time i just play with these lines and i wait i wait until
i feel like that green light goes on and that's a sensation thing how long does it take it
depends it depends on all sorts of things that are happening in your own voice so go into these with
no expectation and watch me turn up the heat on my voice as i'm inspired by these lines line one
inspired by the live chris cornell in 1992 singing jesus christ pose listen to how he sings it live
he's very clean up there and you start i'm going to start
even cleaner i will start by warming up my head voice first on your starring
man your jesus christ's pose i will sing it almost entirely in head voice first
and yes yeah and i'll throw my voice up just like he did in there he starts on the low
octave and you start on me in your jesus christ's pose i'll do that several times
and as i go down just like he did i'll gradually turn up the heat on my voice i'll add compression
i'll add volume but i'm not expecting myself to be able to hit this high d in full voice at all and
or even in mixed i'm staying in head voice and you still run man you're jesus christ falls and
you can hear me going bringing a bit more chest in as i come down as i gradually turn up the heat
my voice is kind of shaky and fiddly weird but that's okay this is part of warming up this is
part of sounding good and you still run man you jesus christ pose okay i'm gonna keep turning
up the heat but i'm gonna start light every time and you stare and you stare at me in your
land you saw in may you can hear even the way he did it he starts light
starts clean and then grits it up as he gets to the bottom of the line i'm working in reverse
this is really healthy and the best way to warm up your distorted voice really your voice in general
start clean and high and turn up the heat as you work down my goal is not to get this
line perfect chris cornell condition by the end of my warm up it's to feel out my voice
and yeah i might take part of the line and by the way i'm not warmed up i'm
doing this on purpose i'm showing you how i warm up real time in this video
there we go i'm practicing turning up that heat as i'm bringing the line down
and main in your jesus christ pose now i'm running out of breath i'm i'm paying attention to my body
when i got into the the lower part of that line i ended up bringing up my neck tension a little bit
i don't want that i want to feel that out i want to reject that loneliness
jesus christ pose that's feeling better i feel like i'm able to put my hand on the burner or
look at the light a little bit just tap it and go oh okay that's getting getting warmer this is good
almost ready okay again i'm not going for perfection i'm going for warm-up learn your
story and you stare at me then you jesus christ pose in your jesus christ polls on your star
that's feeling really good notice i'm able to get a little bit more girth up at the very top
of my range just like he was live but it's still not that yeah it's still not all the way up there
right i can't do that throughout the whole line yet because my voice isn't fully warmed up but i'm
going to move on to the next line shine down the crow and the butterfly part of the chorus this is
kind of in many ways the inverse of the last line and i'll show you how i use it in just a second
this is an incredible line it's one of my favorite shine down songs but in the last exercise i
started clean high and work down and practiced getting grittier and more engaged with my voice
not full out distortion but you know woke up my voice going from top head voice area down
and engaging in my chest voice now i'm going to do it the other way but i'm going to do it real
clean and thin i'm not going to try to right away get up to that real gritty or engaged
distorted crow or dandy lions it's gonna sound like this initially just like a crow chasing
the butterfly just like a crow hear how loose and sort of whiny and clean and not packaged this is
i'm feeling out my range in that sort of mixed squeeze that i've talked about on the channel and
i talk about a lot in my courses but i'm not going all in yet i'm just getting that pitch basis down
and evaluating how my body feels just like a crow chasing chasing a butterfly dandy lines now what
you'll find as you create this approach is as you ease into this you know stop start with top down
and then go sort of mid-range up you're going to notice that and you use this mixed voice approach
as well you're going to notice that the support that you put in and the relaxed neck and throat
disposition is going to help your compression fall into place and compression is the essence of great
distortion having a handle on that so i'm going to work this in my voice just a little bit more
and keep in mind some of the things i'm talking about just like a crow chasing the butterfly
dandelions lost in the summer sky gonna be some ugly notes that's not the point
the point is warming up and feeling out your voice okay then i might go back then you stand me
now just like the crowd let your voice crack a little bit right now i feel a little dry
just like a crow chasing the butterfly
notice i went to head voice there i'm not pushing my voice beyond where i want to push it and you'll
see with uh various performances of brent live sometimes he'll even drop the octave
right here as he's feeling out his voice just like a crowd chasing a butterfly then he lies
that's feeling better now i'm letting my voice sort of fall into that as i
experiment with compression as i experiment with resonance bringing my resonance around dandelion
yeah all part of the warm-up the key is we want to be open to sounding bad or silly even over
these lines that we love and listening to live performances of some of these really helps me
get perspective because they don't sound all that you know studio perfect live so it gives me some
room to play as i'm warming up my voice okay so we have the top down jesus christ pose chris cornell
sound garden then we have shine downs the crow and the butterfly and now the last one and i'll
do these kind of quickly like i am and then i'll circle back around to each one of them and and put
each one in my voice gradually and kind of ping pong around to these different lines and then
after a while my voice feels good and warmed up and i'm ready to go good old james hedfield
this is why i use it it's spoken it is uh not rangy and this is where i really start to put in
compression-based grit give me feel give me five give me that which i desire
i take the posture that i had from the shine down line and i start start working in a bit more to
it give me fuel give me five give me that which i desire oh give me fuel give me fire work that
around in different parts of my range give me fuel give me fire give me that which i desire
give me fuel give me fogging me that which i desire ooh then i lengthen give me food
give me five give me that which i desire on your star and may give me fuel give me fire
give me that what you desire like a crow give me fuel give me fire give me fuel get me far
lifting something heavy give me fuel give me fog give me that which i desire
ah how does that feel and you can hear my voice start to wake up i can feel my voice
start to wake up as i bounce around from all these ones give me fuel give me five give me
that which i desire give me fuel give me five give me that which i desire oh
yeah just like a crow chasing a butterfly
one new star on may letting my voice do what it does as i approach these different lines
sometimes you hear things not go right sometimes i feel things not go right but that's why it's
important to kind of bounce around and really be loose with what your voice does
non-judgment do what you do let your voice do what it wants to do as you
put these lines in your voice and gradually let that burner heat up then you can enjoy it
and use it record with it sing with it live whatever i hope this has been helpful let me know
what you thought in the comments below be sure to check out my free voice course linked below
and what are some lines that you use to warm up be sure to check out a lot of the other
videos i've done on the channel when it comes to singing with distortion i've done tons so you can
start working this stuff into a more musical and practical place in your own voice see for more