Adding grit to vocals without damaging yourself!

I have more than my fair share of grit; so, here's my two cents worth, based on my own experience.

My grit is produced primarily by the side of the throat muscles pulling down, and immediately affecting the lower jaw (and more).  This action also affects the inner throat muscles surrounding the larynx and the nasal pharynx.  These throat muscles pulling down and sideways are also frequently an expression of anger, frustration, or sorrow.

A melodic sound, works frequently much in reverse--it is a down drop of the central part of the jaw muscles (with its ensuing relaxation of the side of the throat muscles).  It is usually a happier emotion.

Hence, there is an opposition between a gritty and a melodic sound (anger vs. happy).   If your natural voice is preset for one, you have to work a bit harder at the other.

To produce a girtty sound, simply grrr (and pull down on the side of the throat a tad more) and assess how your muscles are set around your throat and jaws.  Imagine you are really angry with someone.  When singing, what you want to do is to add a touch of this grr muscle set to your normal melodic singing.

When one is singing with volume, the grr producing muscles are under a great deal of strain.   So, to produce the grit without a great deal of strain, recognize that as the volume increases, the grr can still be produced with volume by lessening the grr-producing muscles, primarily because (in my amateur opinion) that the taut side-of-throat-derived muscles still have their near-same effect, when less taut but under more vocal-volume-pressure conditions.

Anyhow, this is my own experience.

Last edited by WebAndNet (2008-10-28 06:56:03)

CC,

Rychemaiden is correct about all three instructors.

Jamie has an excellent chapter in RYV II,  "For Hard Rockers Only". It also includes excerpts and tips provided by Melissa Cross, Elizabeth Sabine, and Jim Gillette. (Hope I haven't left out anyone). 

Excellent !

Last edited by Nightprowler (2008-10-30 11:36:10)

Firstly: what is grott/rasp/distortion exactly? well, vocal "distortion" is the decay of a sound - its not a pure note, so don't think of it in terms of producing a note. It's the decay of a note. There are two way to approach rasp/grit/grott: as a vocal trill or as a decayed sound.

Jaime Vendera has a great example in his Raise Your Voice II series: he calls it a "gargling tone" but its basically a vocal trill. The sensation is like gargling without water. Its produced in the soft palette. The trick is to get the placement correct. You want it deep down and not high up in the mouth. Its hard to explain - you'd really have to hear his audio example. A good example of a vocal trill singers are Ronnie James Dio and Brian Johnson of AC/DC.

The other approach is taking a pure tone/note and gently backing off the air pressure until the tone decays and distorts. Getting the right amount of air pressure to get the distortion is tricky and takes continuous practice. But once you get it, you just have to work on getting good resonance so it projects. A distortion singer is someone like Bon Scott of AC/DC (RIP).

Some singers can do rasp/grit naturally while others (like me) had to learn it. I was "gifted" with an incredibly clean vocal tone ala Steve Perry/Geoff Tate/Don Dokken so grit didn't come easily to me. I had to learn it and even though I don't use it much - its nice to have it in my bag of vocal tricks.

Melissa Cross - A word of warning: "The Zen Of Screaming" (version 1 or 2)will NOT really teach you how to scream. Melissa Cross is a former cabaret singer who teaches extreme singers how to do it without blowing their voices. She can barely do it herself, but her methods are sound.

Last edited by Rockaholic (2009-01-25 21:46:48)

Kinda funny how all people have built in things and lack other things.
  I often have to work to get clean, I can go from Bon Scott to Plant with ease but now Ive added that Axel pang and whine sound and it helps me clean and thin and add compression, I find that the right amount of grit can get me right thru my breaks with ease also.  Ciao for now.  John

This forum is must for people like me.

Regards

jeromy23

Hello

This posting has been very useful to me because I've been struggling with the same problem and it has become an obsession!! I sing in a rock/metal band but unfortunately, I have a very clean and clear voice. Over the years, I've been trying to develop that "grit" in my voice but I find it very hard. I don't want to have that voice all the time, and I can easily scream in a more "metal" kind of way (archenemy), but I find that very boring since it's not what I want to do. What I'm trying to learn to do well is "sing/scream". Courtney Love does this extremely well, it's a real scream with a pitch, not quite a scream though, mostly an angry voice. When I sing in a low volume, I'm able to achieve this, but as soon as I sing louder, it is though my throat stretches or widens and the effect is lost. Webandnet mentioned something about muscles pulling down, how does that happen, is it like putting a little tension in your throat?
thanks a lot

Last edited by marla_singer (2010-08-27 09:35:22)