The Prevalence and Practicalities of Vocal Distortions
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00:00 Welcome to The Voice Vibe
00:24 The Singing Dream
01:35 Meet Aliki: Vocal Distortion Expert
03:27 Real Life Stories and Challenges
05:30 Aliki's Journey into Metal
10:23 Understanding Vocal Distortions
15:02 The Complexity of Naming Distortions
24:20 The Importance of Connection in Teaching
27:36 Setting Realistic Expectations
28:20 The Journey of Mastering Distortions
36:25 Understanding Different Types of Growls
44:11 The Role of Microphones in Metal Vocals
48:05 Practical Demonstrations and Techniques
52:48 The Importance of Consistency and Fundamentals
55:37 Final Thoughts and Encouragement
Welcome to The Voice Vibe
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Philippe Hall: Hello and welcome to The Voice Vibe. I was just talking with my co host and we were having a good laugh. So, how are you today? How are you singers? Singers, this is what we do. We sing, we learn about singing. We're talking to you about singing. We've been singing professionally for so long.
The Singing Dream
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Philippe Hall: It's almost making me feel very old, but the whole reason for us being here is to help you help you singers get some insights, get some inspiration and some guidance on how to advance you along your singing journey, because.
Let's face it, at the end of the day, you have a singing dream. It's your personal singing dream. It could be just, I want to play guitar and sing with my friends, out in, on the terrace, at a barbecue. It could be, I want to be a Broadway star. I want to be an opera star. I want to be a death metal star. Write my own music.
Singing songwriter. Everybody has their own individual dream. And, you know, You have to take steps to get there, right? It's great to have a dream, whatever you can visualize and imagine, I believe you can achieve, but you have to have the steps to get there. And so what we want to do is share our experience with you and help you inspire you, give you whatever guidance, any little bit of wisdom you can pick from us.
and let that inspire you and move you forward along your singing journey to realizing your own personal singing dream.
Introducing Aliki
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Philippe Hall: I love my guest today. And Aliki, Aliki is the name of my guest. Aliki. Aliki, Aliki, Aliki. It's such a cool name. And she's laughing. She's laughing at me right now. I'm going to introduce you to Aliki.
But what is special about Aliki?
Vocal Distortions: Myths and Realities
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Philippe Hall: This is somebody that is passionate about helping singers personally Incredibly passionate about what she does and we're going to be talking about the world of vocal distortions Because vocal distortions for so long decades and decades Singing teachers would say, Oh, don't do that.
You're going to ruin your voice. And then 40 years later, people are still singing 300 shows a year doing vocal distortions. So they started to think maybe there's a way to do this without trashing your voice. Now, let's be honest. There are probably more singers in that phase that trashed and destroyed their voice.
Than the ones that actually made it through that's because we didn't have a lot of knowledge We didn't have a lot of tools. We didn't have a lot of know how Now we do there are safe ways and effective ways to sing all kinds of vocal distortions And that's what we're going to talk about today. So welcome
Aliki Katriou: Hi.
How are you? I'm doing okay. I'm disorganized today, but it'll be fab.
We'll figure it all out.
Philippe Hall: All right, great. We got our headsets on. We look like pro podcasters here. I'm a little bit high energy because same thing. This is real life, people.
Real Life Stories
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Philippe Hall: Let's talk real life, okay? Real life is that my daughter today had to go to camp.
And Daddy is getting up and getting her ready. And guess who woke me up? My daughter. She's like, Boof! Daddy! Daddy! I'm like, alright, go get dressed and eat your food. And then a few minutes later, she woke me up again. It seemed like a couple seconds later. And I said, all right, let's get you dressed. She's like, and eat your food.
I basically repeated the same thing. And she said, I already ate dad. I'm like, okay, great. Come on, let's get you dressed. You know how to do it. Nope. I don't know how to do it. I need you to watch. All right. So helped her out. Now we go to piano practice, right? Piano practice. And I was, had to be the mean dad today.
So singers, we're going to be a little strict with you. Play those notes! Alright And I'm like, You've been having lessons for three years, and you can't tell me the difference between a whole note, and a half note, and a quarter note? And she's like, Eeeeeeeeeeeeee No, I wasn't that brutal, I promise. My daughter My daughter I love my daughter to death.
And, because she's just talented, you know? And the whole thing is focus. If we're not focused on what we're doing, it's so easy to get a little bit off. You So easy. So in our, in our practice, we want to be focused. So last time we spoke a leaky, it was only a few weeks ago, but the time before that was like years.
Yeah. Crazy. So I had a leaky on, on the voice masters live stream talking about distortions because realistically in the world of distortions, how many really, uh, highly qualified people. are out there teaching it. It's still quite a small number. So this is, this is pretty brown, groundbreaking stuff.
Aliki's Journey into Metal
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Philippe Hall: Tell us a little bit about your journey.
Did you just, you know, as a child walk around going, I'm not going to school today.
Aliki Katriou: Oh, no, no, no, absolutely not. No, I, I was one of those many, many, many kids that never, ever made a distorted sound. And as an adult, I feel deeply confused. When people say children make these sounds and so do kids and I'm like, well, no one in my entire school ever did so I don't know who we're talking about, but I've definitely heard some kids on trains make those sounds in English speaking countries question marks, but Seems to be a thing.
No, I I was very squeaky clean. I was not interested in distortions Um I always listened to metal, and I always liked metal, but I always liked the entire umbrella of metal, so it wasn't just extreme metal, death, black, and all of that, uh, even though I love that stuff. And I made a couple of sounds during my teenage years and thought that it wasn't particularly interesting.
The arrogance.
It
just does it by chance, happens to do it without pain, and then it's like, whatever, and moves on with life. Um, but
then, I I was trying to find a band, and I realized that it's very, very, very difficult to find a band when you're a female, in metal, if you don't make distorted noises, because if you don't make distorted noises, they assume that you want to sing.
In head voice. Uh, And that you want to form a symphonic metal band. So I was like, I would rather be in a death metal band. Let's learn this stuff. So I started learning it. And then, I realized that I didn't know what I was doing. And the people, uh, who were teaching me, or all the tutorials on YouTube, Let's politely say we're garbage and didn't know what they were doing.
So I was like, wow, this is really problematic. I can't function this way. I'm too nerdy. Uh, I love to be directed mentally, uh, rather than through imagery or emotion. I'm like, no, no, no. I want to understand.
Um,
on every level, what is going on? Um, and that wasn't really being offered, not because it wasn't available necessarily, just because I, by chance, didn't find it.
Philippe Hall: Fair enough. That's, that's happened to me. You know, it's, you have to search. I'm like, this can't be this difficult. You know, I, I, why is there something wrong with me? Right. Is it, it's just, I'm not a born singer. You know, I've had those feelings and that led me to search. There's something I do respect a lot about you is you're incredibly curious and, um, I mean, if you want, if you wanted somebody to, to like sniff out truffles for you as a human, a leaky would figure out how to do it, even though we use dogs and pigs to do that, I mean, she would figure out a way cause she just so relentless in her pursuit of knowledge.
And I love that about you. So never expected that one, did you? I didn't, but I love it. Um,
Aliki Katriou: Yeah, I would, and now I need to stop myself from going down that rabbit hole and not
find out how to sniff truffles. Um, so I do feel a morbid motivation to do this and to go there.
Philippe Hall: Uh, I know it's a little weird. I would love that ability too.
I'm a little strange. Okay. But let's say you, you went into this journey So, what have you discovered and, um, how has it guided you through, through your evolution in the past? I don't know, let's say four to six years, eight years, 10 years. How long have you been really digging into it?
Aliki Katriou: Uh, definitely 10 years at this point. Um, but it's probably been longer. I don't time a concept, um, the construct.
Philippe Hall: But it's great.
Challenges in Learning Distortions
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Philippe Hall: It's great to talk about it because a lot of singers, you know, getting into this, we talked about before the podcast, most people will write me or in a consultation, they want to sing.
They say, I want to be able to do just a really nice light distortion. And I want to be able to, and I'm like, okay, that's great. And then, but they, they expect they're going to be able to do it in a couple of weeks. Or four weeks or six weeks. And I'm like, you have no idea of the control level you have to have to this.
And so when, when we're talking about, you've been into this for like 10 years, gives just, I'm not saying that now, now, if you knew where to go right in the beginning, if the journey would have been faster, right? Yes.
Aliki Katriou: Yeah, it would have been faster. Um, I would still. Um, I would still be good at certain things and suck at other things.
Um, like, there are definitely sounds and distortions that, I'm just like, URRRRGGGGHHHHHH Just like, Please don't make me demonstrate this. I will get you there, I will get you there at breakneck speed. But, just don't, not me. I don't want to do it. I hate the sound. I don't want to practice it, just know. Um, so there is still that.
But, I think So, I think one of the first things that I noticed going into distortions was that there was incredible bias from both sides. There was this strange idea from contemporary singing teachers that their style of music doesn't have distortions which was, you know, absurd. It is very, very difficult to find any type of music that doesn't have distortions, and a lot of them.
Um, I, I'd say maybe only certain pockets of classical operatic singing don't have as much distortion, but it's just, it's everywhere. And then the flip side of that is the people who are into metal and into extreme stuff, Actually, more people that are into rock hearing more distortion than is present.
Mm.
Mm.
So like the flip bias and problem where, you know, people will think that ACDC is constant distortion. And you're like, The majority of it is clean. It's not distorted for too long. It's like, beginning and end of phrases, words here and there, but a lot of it is just squeaky clean. Um, and then also, These weird ideas in more recent years transforms into a dinosaur and a grandpa, but in more recent years within quotation marks with bands like Imagine Dragons where people will come in and say, How do I do this distortion?
And you sit there and you're like, You sing it clean, and then an audio engineer puts a distortion effect on your vocals. That's how you do that one. You don't, basically. Ah! Which is very frustrating. But, so there's that. And then the second thing that I noticed was different genres have preferred distortions.
So it's like, if I hear an epiglottic distortion, the likelihood that I'm listening to metal is immediately reduced. If it's a false fold distortion, the likelihood that it's pop is very close to zero. It isn't zero, it'll never be zero, but it's very meh. And. And I noticed that this was something that was distressing singers.
So you'd get, let's say, gospel singers coming in for lessons, and they had had a lot of lessons about distortions, and a lot of people had told them how to do growls, and how to do basically a false vocal fold vibration, and they were so distressed, because they could hear that it's the wrong vocal fold.
Distortion because they were looking for epiglottis and they were like, this is not the right sound for gospel and they're like, okay, cool, interesting. I hear you. Let's not take you in that direction.
The Complexity of Naming Distortions
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Aliki Katriou: Um, And then of course there's the practical stuff, which is the names and how we refer to distortions is just an abomination.
It is absolutely unhelpful. It's terrible.
Philippe Hall: What do you mean? What do you mean? Let's unpack this. It's, it's great names. I, I've thought about this a long time. Well, again, and again, and again, basically it's like, Why do people coming up with these names right just today? What is the big deal with the term compression?
You know, when did adduction become compression? And if you look at any medical literature, any science or any research, you know, it's like, if you, it's not compression, but if you look at 30 day singer or some other trendy, uh, technique, it's called compression. It's like, Okay. I guess we just have to go with the trends.
People want to give everything a name. We're humans. What did the first humans do? They named everything. God said, name everything. Okay. I guess if it doesn't have a name, it doesn't exist for us. So there is, you know, that core motivation. Let's give this a name. People are like, Oh, that's a cool sound.
What's it called? It's called, you know, we'd need to give it a name. So, but you're absolutely right. Names can be troubling. So unpack that for us a little bit.
Aliki Katriou: So we like to name things. It is the way that our brain organizes and structures the world. It's like labeling things. And creating labels for identities and stuff like that.
It's, it's an illusion. It's a construct. Um, and it's a mass delusion that we collectively agree, uh, to participate in. It becomes very problematic when we start thinking that this mass delusion is reality. That's, uh, challenging. It's also very problematic because it creates an illusion of knowledge, or even sometimes an illusion of mastery, where it's like, because I have a word for it.
I will now assume that I know more about it, or that it is more familiar or more known. And we're like, oh, well that's false fold distortion! And it's like, yeah, and it originates in a truth, which is that the false vocal folds are active and are vibrating, and are creating the sound and part of the result.
Thanks for listening! But does that mean that we understand what's going on? So it's kind of philosophically crossing over into the weird land of metaphysics, uh, and stuff where it's like, Oh, metaphysics. And now we think that we know what we're talking about, but we have no idea what we are talking about.
All we have done is build up this huge delusion. And we're both like, yeah, nodding meaningfully and no one knows what's going on. So there's that issue. Um, and then the other issue of course, is that the, the names and how we refer to things is not standardized, which means that wherever you picked it up from and whoever you're communicating it to, you don't know what you're communicating.
It's like if I roll up into a room full of Americans and I say communism, they're not thinking about what I'm thinking of as a Greek person. And we together are definitely not thinking about whatever Polish people lived under. It's just a different construct. So that's really problematic. And we need to go back, in a way, to the sound.
Which is what sound did you hear? What does it sound like? Because that in and of itself has so many problems already. It has perception of sound. How are you hearing it? How am I hearing it? What's your interpretation of it? What do you think is going on? Does your ear function the way that my air functions?
So many problems. And then you're adding a label. That's random on top of that. And it's
just,
uh, how do we even start to unpack the catastrophe that has occurred? It
Philippe Hall: sounds like you've been teaching for a while.
Yeah. It's just, it's a common dilemma. First of all, it's your dilemma as a singer. You know, other singers saying different names, teachers go to different coaches. They calling things different names. You'd think you're totally confused. Yeah. And in the beginning, it's just this cramp, this brain cramp, trying to sort and connect all the dots.
that you've heard and then getting to the point where you realize, I really don't know much about this. And then that perception, the hearing, everything, it's an evolution. It's an evolution. So don't stress out if you're on your singing journey, just accept this. It's really well meant. Advice, just accept that you're on a journey.
What you know today, you will laugh at yourself in a year or two because you will have evolved. And when you're working with singers, different singers, different nationalities, I'm always, um, this sounds strange, but I usually say to somebody. To a new client, it's going to take me a few weeks to get to know how your, your voice.
But more importantly, how you think about singing and what I say, I observe, I like have a couple of different approaches, so I'll give one and then I'll observe what does the, their brain translate that into action? How does their brain translate what I said into action? And if it's not translating the right thing, then there may be another approach or another phrase or another.
And so a lot, it's. It is tricky business, right? It's tricky business because we don't get to see it to be real easy. If I say hold up two fingers Everybody can see they're holding up two fingers You know, but you don't see what's going on on the inside. It is thought controlled. So all these things have to line up and Of course it's our daily ambition or, and our daily struggle as coaches is, and it just shows you care, right?
You care. You're trying to reach the individual where they are and move them forward on their journey. And you're right. It gets really complex. So, but I love the, why did you pick the title for this podcast? Because it's really, it's a cool title.
Aliki Katriou: So I was Considering all the information that is out there on distortions, and
I was contemplating that very often we don't talk enough about how prevalent they are, which arguably is something that is needed way, way, way more for singing teachers. Like, singing teachers really need to understand how commonplace distortions are. Not because they have to teach them. But just because, and I think this has improved massively over the last 15 years.
But really it would be amazing and beautiful if we could all get to the point where when a singer comes in, they're like I like this sound, there's a distortion in there, we listen to it together, you hear the distortion, I hear the distortion, we're all there, and we can agree on a common reality, that the distortion is there.
And you don't do this weird gaslighting thing where you say, Oh, that wasn't a distortion. Or, well, I don't hear it. Or the worst one, which is, Well, I think that in that moment they made a mistake and they could injure themselves. And it's like, why? Why? And it doesn't mean you're going to lose your student.
It's like, have more trust in people. They're not. We don't go to singing lessons. Well, most of us, as a student. Most of us don't go to singing lessons because we think that that person is a deity. We don't think you're God, we don't think you have all the answers, we don't think that you hold the secret.
Unless marketing has worked really well for us and we're deeply confused about reality, but hopefully, Our brains are functioning, and we don't think that you have the secret. We just think that you're more knowledgeable than we are.
The Importance of Connection in Teaching
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Aliki Katriou: So we come in as students, and we want an interaction, a communication, a relationship.
We want someone to see, where is my voice at, at the moment? What can I do? What are my struggles? I want to go into a room, And be able to swear at my singing teacher for like 35 minutes about the fact that I practiced and nothing came of it. And that I had a garbage week and it's been terrible. And I want them to just be a human and just be like, Yeah.
Because the likelihood is if they're teaching, They have that experience. They've been there. They know what that's like. They didn't just sail through life doing fabulously the whole time. So it really is about connection. And it really is about trusting that connection. And knowing that if there's something in your toolkit that you don't have, That student might go to another teacher temporarily for one lesson or for a couple of lessons or you can have lessons together where you observe what they're learning so that you can then help them practice.
And it's just this huge thing, like you're not going to lose them just by saying, Oh yeah. That thing is happening. Yeah, I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to teach that. So there's the prevalence side, which is very much the teaching side, and then the practicality side, which is one of the magical things that human beings are not talking about around distortions.
such as the names are not standardized, the initial sounds that you make can be so grotesquely irrelevant to the final product that you need to trust the process even more sometimes than in clean singing. And if you've ever had clean singing lessons, You'll know how different the initial sounds are from the final sounds, like it's horrifying and it can be even worse with distortions.
So, Things like that. And the speed of acquisition, of course, is a huge one. It takes really long to learn distortions for most people. It's not a fast thing. And why is no one talking about it? Arguably, because it's good marketing, right? You know, you just roll up, you say, I can get you there in one lesson.
And it's like, why? Why are we lying? I mean, I guess the answer is money, but
if we tell people it takes longer, theoretically, this is going to sound really cynical and bad, but we get more money. Yeah. And that's not saying that I am not trying my damnness to get everyone there within
one lesson. You think I don't want to be magic?
Setting Realistic Expectations
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Aliki Katriou: I want to be magical if possible. I want to get there quickly.
I want you to be super happy and excited and motivated in every lesson. But I can't guarantee
that.
Philippe Hall: Yeah. I think it's, it's just being realistic, you know? Yeah. Be realistic with yourselves as singers as well. Yeah, sure. We can get you to, um, I just sometimes like to add things to broadcast. Unfortunately, I can't really read that.
Can we, let's see. I'll have to change the color. Anyway, color, color, it's right on me. How about if we put it in white, is that any better? It's a little better. So, um,
you might be able to make the sound really quickly, right? But to actually utilize the sound and have control over that, it's a whole different situation.
The Journey of Mastering Distortions
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Philippe Hall: Can you, uh, talk to us a little bit about how, how long it took you to feel Comfortable with the various distortions and also about the ongoing process of what you're going What you're doing right now Because my son's in the other room and he's got his music just cranked up and if I don't go turn it down You're all gonna hear teenage singing So i'm gonna Give a leaky the stage for about a minute
Aliki Katriou: Uh, so I always describe myself as a bad student. I'm, I'm, I'm bad at most things in life. I'm, uh, I'm very average. I'm very much not talented in anything. Um, if there's anything that I'm microscopically better at, it's, uh, thinking. I, I'm okay at thinking. But in general, incompetent. So for me, all distortions in everything that I do took me years.
For a basic false fold noise, like a really, really simple, which you might not think that that's simple. That is way, way, way easier. And I can get you there much faster than I can get you to clean singing with a tiny bit of grit. Um, that took me definitely two years. Um, and I think it's also a question of how frequently and how much you use it.
The more you use it, the more you realize how much you suck. And the more you realize that, ah, wow, it's really variable. Oh my goodness. It's so different from day to day. Wow.
I'm
really bad at this. Um, so it's like a whole thing, I think. I think there's something very, very, um, noteworthy, let's say, about the five year mark in any activity in life.
It's like if you've been doing it for five years, fundamentally it is different to the beginning. My favorite thing is always like people who have like two or three years of classical singing lessons. And like, I had classical singing lessons and immediately, like, they come in the room and they're like, That's less than five years.
But you just, you, you can hear it. It's so audible with classical singing. And it doesn't matter how good they are. They can be mind blowingly amazing. But you're just like, ah. Okay, cool. We're not at the five year mark yet. Um, so for me, very, very, very difficult. I struggle with everything. Uh, everything takes very, very, very long.
I think the kind of noises and sounds that it would take me, let's say, six to eight months at least to make within my teaching. I have usually reduced this to a handful of lessons, maximum two months, which is magical.
And I wish that was my reality, but it doesn't matter. We'll just give it to other people.
It's like, uh, but. I,
I'm also very lazy. So I'm always trying to find the most efficient way to do anything. And in a way, that really slows down the process significantly. It makes the quality of the process really, really good. But it makes it very slow, because I'm not willing to just push through it, or do more, or use more, like, nah, mm mm, I don't know what I'm doing.
So, there's that. I think it's interesting.
Philippe Hall: Go ahead.
Aliki Katriou: I think one So, just to speak to expectations that humans have. It's a slow process. It's gonna take a while. There is no way to know how long it's gonna take. You could be lucky, you could be unlucky. Just The only thing you can ever ask a singing teacher is, what is an approximate average from humans?
And that's the only kind of information that we actually have. How long it will take you, anyone that thinks they can answer that question, run. Just run a mile away from them. They're scary.
Understanding Different Types of Distortions
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Aliki Katriou: Um, but, Distortions, because they don't have standardized names, and because there are some names, let's say, that are standardized, um, like, let's say there's a majority agreement on what false fold distortion tends to sound like, but the problem is that any distortion, no matter what category it belongs to, whether it's fry, false fold, arytenoid, epiglottic, whatever.
is not a monolith. So when you roll up into the room and you're like, I want Fry, that doesn't necessarily communicate the level of information and specificity you might think it communicates. And we need to figure out what that specificity is, because depending on the exact type of distortion that you like, we might move in vastly different ways, and we might do really, really different exercises.
So, distortion is not a monolith, so just be aware of that, have little references, have things that you can show or indicate. And as much as I love specific examples, we want a combination of specific and vastly broad examples. Because we need a grey area of error. Is that if we can't get you exactly to that specific sound that you absolutely love and that motivates you and makes you feel alive, what is the most successful degree of failure, let's say?
Like, if we can fail in this direction, you'll be really happy and you'll love it. But if we fail in that direction, you'll be Devastated. So we want broad stuff. So the bands that you like and the general sounds that you like, we care a lot about that. And more specific examples, really, really interesting.
Remember, you can choose to sound more or less like someone else. Human beings are capable of imitating each other. It's really fun. There's nothing wrong about sounding like yourself. And there's nothing wrong with sounding like someone else. It's all just a broad skill set. Be open to all of it.
Philippe Hall: I'm with you.
I'm with you on that. Um, I'm going to try and get the right, the right, uh, The right
Aliki Katriou: background.
Philippe Hall: Yeah, I've got the color background. And it's like, I'm bored, I don't know, edit it, but where's the text background, so we're just going to flip it to white. So, I think it should, uh, should be able to see it.
Aliki Katriou: Haaaa!
Philippe Hall: So, uh, question for somebody that knows you. And it's a great question. Right, because this is probably one of the typical mistakes you can make. If, and, and there's your go. The growling. First of all, like you said, Okay, what's growling? Um, how loud can you growl live? Right. So now for me, I'm thinking, Hmm, which growling do they mean?
Right. Um, and because people use the word a little bit differently. Uh, yes. So, so can you please ask this instead of me? Of course, of course. Yes. It's a, it's a great question. Yeah. Talk to us about it. So, if somebody comes in to you and says, I want to learn how to growl. Yeah. What, what are a couple of possibilities of sounds that come to your mind where you, you want to ask a follow up question to them and say, which distortion do Are you after?
Aliki Katriou: Yeah, they, uh, statistically, they are most likely to mean false vocal folds or epiglottis. Depending on what rabbit hole they've fallen under, they might mean arytenoids. And if they've fallen really deep down some absurd rabbit hole, they might mean fry. In which case Like we need to have a very interesting conversation about how they got there, why, but whatever, without saying that the terminology is incorrect or, or that the sound that they want to find is wrong, but is that, is that what they want?
Yeah. First, we're
Philippe Hall: going to clarify what are they after? Because different sounds are going to, will have a different answer to this question.
Aliki Katriou: Yeah, then we need to figure out, like, let's say if it's false fold distortion, because as mentioned, no distortion is a monolith. What do we mean? Do we mean 80s Swedish death metal?
Do we mean the Florida sound? Do we mean deathcore? Do we mean opeth? wide and loose and really hollow tunnel like and just beautiful or super crunchy gnarly nasty most people would think deathcore um it's a question of do you want it to be socially acceptable or unacceptable which Moves the needle from deathcore and death metal or grindcore and like noisecore and all that stuff where it's like now you sound like you're vomiting and dying at the same time.
I'm gonna get really excited, but no one else is gonna like what you're doing.
So
prepare yourself. Fun. Um, so it's all those questions and. I would say if, if we're talking metal vocals, and we're talking, Mm? Let's say we're talking death metal or black metal. My volume capacity is identical to my clean volume capacity.
Any volume is game. for listening. It's like, let's do it. I can go super loud. The quieter I go, if it's false vocal folds, the harder it becomes, and sometimes, the more painful it can become. Um, so that one's weird. With fry, it's usually the opposite. So usually not much volume, just meh here, very dependent on the microphone, which also restricts the genres it can reasonably be used in, in a live setting.
Philippe Hall: Yeah. Let's jump on that. It's a great, uh, question that Satya has, and I'm sure a lot of people have this question. So let's talk about the illusion of volume. distortions because, um, most people will come in, um, and like, it'll come to me in a second ever clear, uh, Most people will come in and they have this illusion because of the intensity of the music and the sound and way it's all layered together.
It is designed to make you go, you know, just really pump you up. And so when you want to sing, you want to like put so much force. Behind it because the music is putting that energy into it and you feel that drive inside And then when you break it down, most people are really shocked at how much Lower that that volume is I love what you just said clean singing volume Don't try and get louder, I mean as a general rule, you know Perhaps, but that there's this drive, there's this perception drive in there that you've got to just scream your lungs out and your, your voice is going to pop out of your mouth.
Basically, if you try and do that, you're going to trash yourself. So it's, you've got to recognize the fact that this clean singing, I'm so happy you said that plus the distortion creates an illusion of crazy intense volume.
Aliki Katriou: Yeah, I think in relation to volume, this is the one thing, like if I had to mention what is the major benefit that classical singers have.
It's their understanding of volume and their knowledge of volume and how to produce volume and this awareness that volume and force are irrelevant. If you need more volume, it kind of works in waves. The voice works in waves. Um, there will be a moment where you're not giving it enough volume, everything is, let's say, too under energized, and it's never going to happen.
You're not going to get a distortion, you're not even going to get the clean sound that you wanted necessarily, it's too little. Then you've got More, which might function, but then if you go too far in that direction, the sound starts to become quiet again. So if you're going maximum force, a lot of muscular effort, a lot of muscular engagement, and the sound is not loud, you've gone too far.
If you give it less and less and less, it'll probably get louder. That
Philippe Hall: gives
Aliki Katriou: me space to vibrate. If you squish things too close together, they can't vibrate as easily. So it's just physics 101. If you want it to go in the wind, don't squeeze it together so that it can go. Don't do that. That's not going to be loud.
Just relax it up. I'd love to go.
Philippe Hall: Yeah, love it. I love it. Um, do them. Yeah, this. Okay.
The Role of Microphones in Metal Vocals
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Philippe Hall: So we're going to have to do another, um, another meetup because got great questions and just coming for the microphones, how much they affect your growls. Oh my gosh. I mean, I think personally, in my experience, people that are really good at effects and the whole metal and death metal and the genre and the exploration, nobody is using acoustics more and microphones more than this genre.
It's all about those internal acoustics because and how they, how they then. Are, are mixing into the sound. So microphone, huge impact in normal singers don't really understand how to use microphones is my experience, you know? So how much does it affect your growls? So,
Aliki Katriou: it depends. Massively. Um, it depends on the sound, uh, that you're using.
Like, I would say as a good, um, baseline, if you're doing anything Fry related, Massive. You are nothing without the microphone. You rely on the microphone like no other singer does. It's at the level of, like, Billie Eilish. It's like, if we take that mic away, you are doomed. There's nothing you can do if you've chosen that type of production.
Um, for False Fold, it varies massively. So I feel like relying less and less on the microphone is like a badge of honour in metal. It's the way that you kind of separate who's really good, because if you're really good, that microphone should not be making much of a difference. Like if you're really, really, really solid.
Um, but does the mic make a huge difference? Yes, it does make a huge difference, which is also why you get those pockets of, especially old school metalheads, really vehemently. hating on vocalists who cup the mic because you're cheating. You just don't sound like that. And you might as well put a distortion effect over your voice.
Like, why not? If you're going to do that. Um, so it's like simultaneously it's massively, it has a massive effect. And at the same time, for some people, depending on what they're thinking of and what they're imagining. No, the mic doesn't actually do the work for you.
Philippe Hall: Yeah.
Aliki Katriou: And it can have almost no effect.
So
Philippe Hall: it really
Aliki Katriou: depends on what you think.
Philippe Hall: Maybe we can give some, um, we've got a couple of interesting requests, but basically, you know, say sing, I want to hear some stuff because we're, we're having, um, So you might be able to respond to this you guys I'll just be straight up We're gonna have to move on because we have a live coaching call And if you want to join the live coaching call, this is how it works.
So I have a private singing community called the vibe And the vibe, this is the voice vibe and in the vibe community, it's an online community and we do a masterclass with, with, um, coaches like Aliki that are here on the live stream. So it should be a link in the description. You just go check out the vibe.
You can join. We have a live zoom call and we'll be going into detail and working with singers and do a lot more singing there in the next hour. But let's talk about that.
Practical Demonstrations and Techniques
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Philippe Hall: Okay, I haven't done this for a long time, but if I'm going to do, let's say a big volume sound, let me give an operatic sound. Okay, that sounds pretty comfortable for me.
Now, if I want to add like a full on I'm pretty much doing the same thing. And, but it costs me more physical energy. I'm not doing this every day. So, that for me felt like,
Aliki Katriou: that was really, really heavy.
Philippe Hall: So if I'm going to lighten it up, Oh! Oh! I'm not getting the same looseness. Oh! Oh! It feels pretty comfortable.
It's still very dark. But as far as terms of the microphone, no, that Mike's not doing any extra work for me. It's, it's, it's a lot of power. Um, just, just an example of maybe that fits for my own personal, um, what I would call a form of growling for me. It's just, everything's just getting a lot of different things moving there.
And it's a fun sound. I love making this sound, you know, but, and I, if I'm going to go on, going to do that on a regular basis, I'm going to have to practice and get it fine tuned a little bit. So what about, do you know, Understand what the super blonde is asking you word painting metal lyrics and
Aliki Katriou: yeah so The first thing that comes to mind, which is always the first thing that comes to mind Just for me is the word soil It's like it's like the first word where it's like if you're gonna growl soil I want you to make a real meal out of it Like, I really want that S O I L I want so many vows.
I want you to move through so many vows. I love that. And I want to feel fundamentally as if the relationship with the soil is violent. Because I don't want, like, I don't want the Nightwish symphonic metal, Oh, we're one with nature! I want conflict, um, if I'm doing death metal. Um, and I, and I want the really violent aspects of nature, and the brutality of death, uh, and, and how terrible life can be, and I want all that weight.
Um, so, there's the vowel aspect of it, and how you navigate the vowel. Really weird statement in relation to the vowel. Be careful how you navigate the vowel. If you navigate the vowel in the style of, uh, Lamb of God, or, um, Arch Enemy, uh, by Arch Enemy I do not mean with Angela Gossow, I mean with Alyssa, both these two singers fundamentally navigate vowels the way that punk singers do.
Now, I personally love punk, but it's a question of do you like punk or do you not like punk? Because you might not want that. I think, uh, generally, Opeth. Opeth and Death are really good references. Chuck Scholdinger just navigates words in such a fabulous way. He's wonderful to listen to. If you're looking at cleans, you can do, uh, consonant hitting, uh, which immediately, like, first person that comes to mind is Bruce Dickinson, Iron Maiden.
You know, like when he rolls into Aces High, he doesn't go, There goes the siren that warns of the air raid. He spits all the consonants. So it's, There goes the siren that warns of the air raid. And that's also how he gets the distortion. It's the distortion of consonants, not necessarily any laryngeal distortion that he's doing on purpose.
Um, So let's see. Ah, match the melody distortion with the words in the lyrics to enhance the emotion. Yes. Ah, fun. There
Philippe Hall: you go. Yeah. Well, I want to keep going, and going, and going, and going. Uh, what I love, but we gotta go. Ha! There you go. Everybody's going somewhere, and when they get there, they're going back.
Yeah. And then they're going somewhere new and we're going to go somewhere else, come and join us. Um, I love the example you just gave and saying go through really chew the word. Um, because you're, this is, this is the key factor in all forms of singing. But when you're using the acoustics in there, you didn't chew the word so much that it left.
You're just figuring out how to turn these vowels around in that same acoustic chamber, and that is so valuable. Every singer needs to do that. Um, it's the main key to keeping a consistent sound, a consistent resonance, a consistent style. If you're leaving it, uh, you're going to not have any consistency.
If you leave it in metal singing, it probably going to snap and hurt for a moment, right? You just left the zone and then the system's just like.
Final Thoughts and Encouragement
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Philippe Hall: We're going to react, um, thank you so much, Aliki, it's always just a pleasure to talk with you. The prevalence of distortions, they're everywhere. And if we can embrace them as just part of life and learn how to recreate them in a, in a healthy way that doesn't cause us pain, we're doing a really good job.
So just remember pretty much every sound that you can make can be done in a healthy way. Uh, Aliki is, is one of my. favorite experts in the world. So if you really want to dig into your distortion monster, bring some time. I mean, this is something I teach, you know, but like Aliki said as well, I have my limitations, my areas of specialty.
So if I'm going to go into all the, the fine tuning of fry screams and just continue, I'm probably going to defer to someone like a leaky because that's just not my bag, but getting, you know, working with, with singers on distortion is something I love to do. It's so much fun. Um, so thank you for being here.
Give yourselves time singers. It's an evolution. And it's better to start slow and really not have any holes in your fundamentals. If you have an, a high expectation, you want to be doing this for years and years and years, there can be no holes in your fundamental technique. So the, it's the slow, but the fast way.
It really is. Take it from me, maybe Aliki as well, who, I always wanted to move fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, and I always had to go fast, backtrack, fast, backtrack, fast. You will have to come back to it if you don't work it out, so take your time. Thanks for being here. Anything you'd like to Say in, in the wrap up here.
Aliki Katriou: No, I would say the only thing is that your body is not a linear event, whether it's physical or in your mind, it is not linear. So don't expect linearity from it. And that means that, you know, if you want to start screaming and distorting and whatever, it doesn't mean you have to sing clean first. You can do them at the same time.
You can work on things. So just don't, don't expect anything linear and don't expect linear progress either. Just chaos.
Philippe Hall: Yeah. Progress is not linear. Investing is not linear. Life is not linear. It's a, it's a rollercoaster, you know, enjoy the ride. You're going to be scared and then you're going to have a great time.
And then you're going to feel like, Oh my gosh, I don't know what I'm doing. And then you'll feel like I figured it all out. I can sing. And the next day you wake up and it's gone. Where did it go? And it might take you months to get that back. But the good news is When you're looking for pots of gold under the rainbow, a lot of things are illusions, but when you really just do this systematically over time, you will be able to wake up and sing whatever you want, and at the same time know that you're not going to go on stage like that, because you can do it better, and you're not going to wake up and sing, right?
But you'll still be able to wake up and just nail it any time of day, because you will understand, you will have developed that. So keep going, guys. Thanks so much for being here, Aliki. Thanks for everybody tuning in. Give Aliki some love and follow. So she's a fantastic expert in this space. Um, I highly recommend her.
So check her out, follow, like, subscribe, have a wonderful, a lot of great episodes coming up here on, on the, on the voice vibe, join us in the vibe live. If you'd like to work with us individually, ask questions. We'll see you guys very soon. Take care, everybody. Thanks Aliki.
