Getting bored of screaming

[Mago]

I can't imagine DIO, Coverdale, or Bruce Dikinson growling like a big fat racoons from hell. ;-)

I know people who "sing" in death metal band wich earing skills is like shit... or even worse. In a regular singing style they are totally out-of-tune grannyfuckers.

PS: BTW Marco I can't wait to listen to your growling!

Singing and growling are 2 totally different styles of vocals!
They have some stuff in comon and some not...

I also can't imagine DIO growling like a racoon lol, but I also can't imagine DIO singing on stuff like Amon Amarth
Wouldn't fit to the music at all! Same the other way around, Rainbow in the Dark with Johan Hegg? No thanks
Now that I think about it: DIO on Amon Amarth could work pretty cool haha...for sure better then the other way around.
But my point is: it depends on the context!
Personally I like to have both styles. I rarely listen to bands that only have growls or only clean vocals. the 2nd one more often then the 1st though

About your observation:
In my experience guys who have a good ear for tone are better growlers/screamers then guys who can't find a pitch at all (or hold a rhythm for that matter too).
I'm not the greatest singer around, but I can find a pitch and hold it.
Doesn't make me a great singer, but it helps doing the growl thingy.

Yeah man, I can't wait to start working on it! Need a weekend off for that, has been pretty stressfull for me lately! But it will be huge I think

 

[Mago]

Regardless of how much some people may like growling/screaming vocals, this is absolutely 100% true. It is much easier to write/arrange a song when you deal with brutal vocals. It's also much easier for bands to find a "singer" that does this kind of vocals than to find an actual singer.

I think it's hard to find really good musicians of every sort.
And if you pick up one of the many guys who "does" brutal vocals but isn't experienced enough you'll most likely end up in 2 ways:

a) Stuff sounds ok live and at rehearsals and when it comes to record you'll shit bricks because it sounds like crap.

b) After he few gigs he'll start spitting blood.

I also call BS on the statement you quoted, because coming up with a boring vocal line is as easy as coming up with a boring death thingy. IMO
It gets hard when you try to make stuff interesting.
but at the end of the day it still depends on tastes

I can only talk for myself, but when I write music I feel like some parts call for clean singing and some call for harsher vocals.
Forcing stuff never ended up well for me.

 

[Keregioz]

I also call BS on the statement you quoted, because coming up with a boring vocal line is as easy as coming up with a boring death thingy.

Well in my experience when you have a verse you want to write brutal vocals for you don't really have that many options, you usually just end up following the groove of the drums or riff. So, whether it will be boring or not it depends mostly on the music because basically the vocals are gonna be the same monotone growling over and over again. When dealing with singing vocals on the other hand there are infinite combinations and it demands a lot more effort to find something that works for you.

 

[Mago]

Well in my experience when you have a verse you want to write brutal vocals for you don't really have that many options, you usually just end up following the groove of the drums or riff. So, whether it will be boring or not it depends mostly on the music because basically the vocals are gonna be the same monotone growling over and over again. When dealing with singing vocals on the other hand there are infinite combinations and it demands a lot more effort to find something that works for you.

You can also see it the other way around:
with singing you have a lot more tonal options to make it interesting, thus beeing easier then having to work with a "limited" thing as growling ects.
There are a lot of variatons in harsh vocals, but mastering all of them IS pretty hard -> that's why it can get monoton if you only use one technique at a time.Same as if you'd only use 2 notes while singing.

 

[Keregioz]

You can also see it the other way around:
with singing you have a lot more tonal options to make it interesting, thus beeing easier then having to work with a "limited" thing as growling ects.

The way I see it is that because you have an unlimited amount of choices you can make you also have a much bigger chance to make it sound bad, so it requires more effort to find what is right. With growls you have a very small number of paths you can take and just choose which sounds right to you and it's almost impossible to go wrong (since they all sound pretty much the same ). How many times have you heard anyone complain over how bad the vocals were arranged? It's always just the voice that gets criticized.

There are a lot of variatons in harsh vocals, but mastering all of them IS pretty hard -> that's why it can get monoton if you only use one technique at a time.Same as if you'd only use 2 notes while singing.

It's true you can use some variation on these vocals but in the end you're just singing on one note -> monotone.

Btw, I'm not judging people for liking this kind of vocals, I get why they do (most of the time), and I even like them sometimes (in very small doses), but being easier to write brutal vocal lines for songs is just a fact.

 

[ratsapprentice]

but being easier to write brutal vocal lines for songs is just a fact.

It's not a fact just because you believe it strongly.

They aren't really comparable. They aren't just different styles of vocal.
It's like comparing writing hip-hop vocal lines and orchestral singing, the only similarity is that they are using the human voice.

Also, about it being easy.... I could write a thrash song pretty easily in about 10 minutes, it would be shit, but it would be a thrash song.
Most things are easy to do to a poor standard.

 

[updog]

i agree with keregioz... from a songwriting point of view, you only need to figure out the rhythm and no actual notes. the standard is irrelevant; you can be good or you can be shit, but it still generally should take less time to arrange lyrics with no melody as there's A and B for melodic vocals and only A for screamed ones.

that said, i'd rather compare it to hip hop, etc. type of vocals as well, than actual singing. it's hard to do right and sounding good takes a long time and lots of effort, and while it does have similarities with clean singing, screaming pretty much only has as much common with it as rap vocals.

 

[ratsapprentice]

the standard is irrelevant; you can be good or you can be shit, but it still generally should take less time to arrange lyrics with no melody as there's A and B for melodic vocals and only A for screamed ones.

You could say the same thing about drumming, it doesn't make it any easier to write drum parts.

 

[updog]

You could say the same thing about drumming, it doesn't make it any easier to write drum parts.

i'm not sure i'm following you... playing drums makes writing drum parts loads easier.

 

[ratsapprentice]

I was referring to the fact that there are no notes on a drum kit.

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

Hey guys cool thread!!

 

[Uros]

Growls/screams/whatever should be considered rather as rhythmic instruments. They have their use, like nearly anything else out there. For example, much of death metal is consisted of riffs which are very busy in their nature, where it could be pretty much next to impossible to write a vocal melody over it. Lots of death metal has no tonal centre, constant change, and is really fast. That's where aggressive vox come in. They help to maintain/increase intensity, don't worry about their tone, while having some parts of your usual clean vocal lines - lyrics to follow (yep, good growlers/screamers out there CAN make the lyrics really good pronounced) and groovy, which many people like. So, there you go.

Frankly, to all these people that tend to be so rigid in their opinions - world is not black and white, hopefully you'll learn that.

 

[Trevoire520]

I'm bored to death of screaming/shouting vocals in modern metal too. Not that I don't like aggressive vocals. It's just that clean singing seems to be almost completely absent in metal at the moment. It seems a bit of a cop out just for the fact that it's much easier to scream/shout than it is to sing, and that screaming vocalists seem to very rarely get any criticism even if they suck at it. Whereas singers tend to get a much harder time when it comes to criticism.

 

[Extreme Vocals]

Being a Vocal coach, I can usually spot trends early as i'll see my younger students all start requesting sessions of one type or another. Change is definitely coming to metal vocals. I've always encouraged vocalists I work with to expand themselves and become as fluent with thier instrument as possible. If they seem to be only doing monotone screaming i'll try to show them guys like Mike Patton and Devin Townsend so they can see what possibilities there are beyond a simplistic yell.

5 years ago the people I always got asked about getting someone to sound like were Randy Blythe and Angela Gossow. 3 out of every 5 lessons would involve a reference to one of them. To my suprise I never get asked about them anymore and one name comes up constantly. Ripper Owens. Not sure where it came from (I get the feeling his videos from the Roadrunner concert had a hand in it) but he seems to be the man in demand.

Clean singing and gritty vocals are on the way in. Even my most brutal clients have started asking about making sure they can still sing if they want to, and how to blend clear notes into thier screams. I'm really glad to see the broadening of sound.
I'm hoping its showing that screamers are taking themselves more seriously. What allot of people don't realize is that many of these guys don't scream the whole time because they want to. They have bad chops and blow thier voice to shreds and can't sing in any way after a couple of songs so they don't even try, or they do the screamer / singer vocal duo. I'll be glad to see that go the way of the Dinosaur.

I love a good scream and a brutal vocal line, but I really think without contrast it becomes monotonous. It's like a sentence of nothing but exclamation marks. It looses it's impact, and has no dynamics.

My only other issue that I think is adding to the monotony is that everybody does the same scream. Whether it's growling, or fry screaming, or what have you, there seems to be a single tone for each most people are imitating.It strips all character from thier voice and makes it just like the other characterless performances you hear all day. I'm psyched to see some fresh blood coming. We'll see what they come up with.

 

[Harry Hughes]

Being a Vocal coach, I can usually spot trends early as i'll see my younger students all start requesting sessions of one type or another. Change is definitely coming to metal vocals. I've always encouraged vocalists I work with to expand themselves and become as fluent with thier instrument as possible. If they seem to be only doing monotone screaming i'll try to show them guys like Mike Patton and Devin Townsend so they can see what possibilities there are beyond a simplistic yell.

5 years ago the people I always got asked about getting someone to sound like were Randy Blythe and Angela Gossow. 3 out of every 5 lessons would involve a reference to one of them. To my suprise I never get asked about them anymore and one name comes up constantly. Ripper Owens. Not sure where it came from (I get the feeling his videos from the Roadrunner concert had a hand in it) but he seems to be the man in demand.

Clean singing and gritty vocals are on the way in. Even my most brutal clients have started asking about making sure they can still sing if they want to, and how to blend clear notes into thier screams. I'm really glad to see the broadening of sound.
I'm hoping its showing that screamers are taking themselves more seriously. What allot of people don't realize is that many of these guys don't scream the whole time because they want to. They have bad chops and blow thier voice to shreds and can't sing in any way after a couple of songs so they don't even try, or they do the screamer / singer vocal duo. I'll be glad to see that go the way of the Dinosaur.

I love a good scream and a brutal vocal line, but I really think without contrast it becomes monotonous. It's like a sentence of nothing but exclamation marks. It looses it's impact, and has no dynamics.

My only other issue that I think is adding to the monotony is that everybody does the same scream. Whether it's growling, or fry screaming, or what have you, there seems to be a single tone for each most people are imitating.It strips all character from thier voice and makes it just like the other characterless performances you hear all day. I'm psyched to see some fresh blood coming. We'll see what they come up with.

Great post, really agree on the lack of contrast.
Good to see you around here, you should chime in more often at the Sneap forum, you seem a very knowledgeable guy

 

[Extreme Vocals]

Great post, really agree on the lack of contrast.
Good to see you around here, you should chime in more often at the Sneap forum, you seem a very knowledgeable guy

Thanks Harry. I stay pretty busy, but I stick my head in once in a while. I don't see too many vocal threads, but when I do I chime in if I think I have something relevant to offer. Other than that I read more than I post.

 

[skuller]

Meshuggah is a prime example of this, the music is so interesting but is often obscured by vocal parts which rarely have any complexity or subtlety.

Check out the song "benzin - combustion mix" that meshuggah did. It's a rammstein song played by meshuggah with rammsteins vocalist. So awesome. I think Till is a great clean vocalist in a metal band. This mix shows some real dynamic too.

 

[AndrewB]

I totally agree. I've been listening to a lot of Bullet For My Valentine lately, and the vocals and the melodies are AMAZING. And when the screams come in for a phrase or two, it can give me chills, because it expresses the anger so well. But when some metal bands do nothing but scream, it loses the effect for me, and it seems like they're just screaming because they feel it's their obligation as a metal band to scream as much as possible.

 

[John_C]

Hey guys cool thread!!

Hey, cool condescending superiority complex you got there!

 

[-Noodles-]

I raise my argument for Tool being the best band in the ever, and this thread only reinstates my position.

Maynard doesn't obscure the 'song', using his voice delicately and appropriately.
The band, meanwhile, rock the fuck out on massive grooves that build and release.