hey chris liepe here with how to get better distortion out of your voice in three
approachable steps if you follow the steps correctly
i wanna find something
somewhere
is
part of developing healthy and good sounding distortion in your voice is by having an awareness
of different points of resistance and how things feel in different parts of your vocal tract
if you'd like more help with this i have a free course called seven highly effective
vocal exercises that won't annoy your neighbors if you haven't joined it yet there's a link below in
the video description join that free course it's seven lessons and it helps you unlock some of
these sensations and strange things about your voice that i'm going to touch on in this video
on a deeper level and you can do it and you can do it quietly which is really cool alright here are
the three steps for developing better distortion in your own voice first find your compression
threshold i haven't talked about this specifically on the channel before we if you've been following
my channel you know that compression is holding back air learning to manage your
airflow and a lot of times you see me do this i'm lifting this heavy desk as i lift the desk
i tend to hold back air i use my false cords without even thinking about it as i
lift something heavier to try to lift this desk that affects my vocal tone if i sing a note hey
and then harness that sensation of lifting something heavy hey as i lift my good it
starts to sound trapped but if i balance airflow and support with that holding back of air hey
there was a point at which i was adding enough air to compensate for the fact i was holding back air
where i started to get a little bit broken up right this is the compression threshold
i'm talking about you have to feel it out the easiest way to do it is literally sing a note
and try to lift something heavy try to hold that pitch steady make it a comfortable note
you can hear kind of going in and out this is this is the compression threshold
for healthy grit this kind of tricks your body or aligns things correctly or helps you use
your tissues in the right way if you're supporting correctly i've talked a lot about proper support
and i talk more about support in my free course if you've got that lined up feeling out
this threshold where you cross from simply it feeling sort of pinched off to being a clean
more powerful compressed voice and then right on the edge of grit
this can take a while to feel out but absolutely having this this bodily gesture right hey
hey
let's experiment with different parts of your range just do it over hey for now
you can hear me kind of getting there balancing how much push i need
uh with how much i'm lifting here now it's important
that you don't create tension in other parts of your body you don't want to be going you want to
be loose let you know in this case my my biceps and and you know partially my shoulder muscles
another way to do this is to is to do a body weight squat and as you squat up really focus
on your your leg muscles as you kind of go and pay attention to that threshold where you your grunts
become they go from clean and sort of trapped to slightly gritty again this is not instant
i don't want to see any comments of i tried it and i can't do it you have to do this over and
over and over again and really experiment with it okay so that's tip one find your compression
breakup threshold step two use vowels don't let them get in the way
harness the difficulty of some vowels to help you ease into your distortion chester bennington is a
master at this some of his best tone that he gets when he's distorted comes off of the e vowel so if
we take this idea of the compression threshold and we say the word c or free or b or whatever
you want to do the vowel needs to be e on a middle chesty maybe slightly higher chesty note e
that's not the best sounding yet but what i'm doing with that e vowel
as i'm approaching that compression threshold is i am trying to place it as forward as possible
and feel as much vibration in my face as possible as as i ease into my compression
you can hear it getting more brash my my compression is is becoming more extreme and
i'm moving that note with my mind i'm moving that the placement of that forward you can even see my
jaw move forward just slightly that's not a tense jaw that's just placing the resonance
you can even hear me experimenting with my my nasality
turn that on and off and experiment with placing it so that your distortion feels comfortable
and higher in your throat not like this we don't want that at least for right now we want
hear that he and there's some weird tones going on as i play with my compression threshold and
placing that vowel it will become a cleaner tighter sounding grit listen
that has less of that that sort of awkward overtone in there right
then practice moving this around in your range now because you're on your e vowel if you're
just starting to work with distortion your range is going to feel limited don't worry about that
right now just worry about making these transitions
then you can finish it off with a different vowel
maybe maybe something like this once you've got those balances
and then as your voice sort of breaks apart as you change vowels lean into that even more and
it creates this nice sort of playground of different sonic variances in your grit so
we're using vowels and in this case as i as i get closer and closer to the end of that phrase yeah
i open the vowel up once i found the placement through e
and then as my voice starts to fall apart as i'm moving my placement around
i lean into that i add more support i think more compression
and it allows me to open up that grit open up that distortion there's a couple more sounds for you
notice i'm gradually opening those vowels up and yeah i'm i'm moving some air but
i'm not moving as much air as you think i'm compressing more as i'm working with the vowels
all right step number three we've all got money notes notes that
we know are really comfortable and also sound really good in our voice
use these to capitalize on your distortion and reserve your distortion for the money note and
let everything around it be pretty clean approach your compression threshold but don't let yourself
get gritty on purpose until you hit your money note this is going to create all sorts of happy
accidents but this is a fantastic way to really lean into your voice in an area that's comfortable
and then let other notes that are also fairly comfortable but that are not as aggressive
surrounded it's going to help you develop over the long term really really versatile distortion
because you're capitalizing on a strong point both from a sensation point of view and an auditory
point of view with your voice so for me uh one of my money notes that i really enjoy is b4 yay
i like that note because i can sing it in a lot of different ways and you may have
notes like that too or maybe you're working in that direction i've done other videos on that
so i'm going to work in around that note and i'm going to intentionally make this note using
my vowels for me and playing with my compression threshold
yes i'm on e
i want to make a little line around my money note
yeah one where i come down from it and one where i go up to it
so everything else around it is just good but not gritty we don't need to be gritty everywhere
we can be gritty on our aggressive money notes
and sort of trick our voice into coming along for the ride with the rest of the notes eventually or
let yourself screw up be free with it let your voice crack as you're experimenting
but really dig into this what we're doing is we're sort of arcing in to these to this money note
and then experimenting with some of the other things i've talked about
but you're also giving yourself permission to rest within the phrase within the line
you're giving yourself permission to uh have different resonances and different things going
on in your voice so that you're it's not just like okay i gotta sing with distortion
and you're turning it on and off you're practicing easing into it and out of it
now right there there was a different sort of area where the grit kind of came naturally
because i wasn't trying to trying to be gritty everywhere
my voice kind of fell back into the posture that i had on my money note lots of happy accidents
there i went down a whole step and i felt my voice kind of start to fall apart so i leaned into it oh
there that oh i lifted something really heavy right there and there again
so it's this idea of choosing a note and then letting your voice
do whatever it wants to do around that note but choose a note that you like
doesn't have to be b4 probably won't be b4 it'll probably be some other note experiment with
how many ways you can bring other notes in and around that note and practice the other two tips
with it i hope you found this helpful if you want more tips like this again click that link below
and join my seven highly effective exercises that won't annoy your neighbor's course and
get into exploring vocal track sensations a little bit more see for more videos later