BEST BAND EVER: Results!
- Thread starter Night Prowler
- Start date
MrKnickerbocker
clap hands
Singing well and properly is difficult.
Growling well and properly is difficult.
Screaming well and properly is difficult.
Rapping well and properly is difficult.
All vocals are difficult to do well and properly, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to enjoy every kind of vocalization.
Growling well and properly is difficult.
Screaming well and properly is difficult.
Rapping well and properly is difficult.
All vocals are difficult to do well and properly, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to enjoy every kind of vocalization.
Can’t wait to see what NP pulls out for Tate the next round:
Scat singing Like A Virgin in a Syracuse Motel 6 shower, as captured by his wife’s flip phone?
A drunken duet of My Way on VHS over a plate of nachos with Rick Astley at a Chili’s in Des Moines?
The guy can do it all.
Scat singing Like A Virgin in a Syracuse Motel 6 shower, as captured by his wife’s flip phone?
A drunken duet of My Way on VHS over a plate of nachos with Rick Astley at a Chili’s in Des Moines?
The guy can do it all.
Yax
Ancient Mariner
Based on what? Good growlers are in abundance. Good quasi operatic Metal singers aren't.
MindRuler
Ancient Mariner
Totally agreed! I'm a singer myself and grunting and screaming is way more difficult than clean singing.
I'm not a big fan of death and black metal but huge respect for those vocalists.
Rap was one of the other examples I was thinking of. It's not popular on this forum, but it's not a style everyone can master.
D
Deleted member 7164
Guest
MindRuler you sing and I believe Diesel sings so I get your viewpoint.
However you've said it is "harder". Harder than what? What kind of formal training and exercise you used for your clean vocals? What are you comparing it against?
Clean voice is normal voice. If you're born with a bit of guts or a throat you can sing without any training. A lot of people can simply sing a tune. Now you get to extreme metal and you can't growl because there is a whole new thing to learn how to do properly.
Vocals ala Lamb of God - Skill floor 4/10, skill ceiling 7/10. Takes time and talent to even sound correct. But from there limited variation and technical growth opportunity.
Vocals ala Iron Maiden - Skill floor 3/10, skill ceiling 10/10. You can be a bland power metal screamer or you can be Bruce Dickinson.
(keep in mind I'm not getting into multi-discipline beasts like Patton)
However you've said it is "harder". Harder than what? What kind of formal training and exercise you used for your clean vocals? What are you comparing it against?
Clean voice is normal voice. If you're born with a bit of guts or a throat you can sing without any training. A lot of people can simply sing a tune. Now you get to extreme metal and you can't growl because there is a whole new thing to learn how to do properly.
Vocals ala Lamb of God - Skill floor 4/10, skill ceiling 7/10. Takes time and talent to even sound correct. But from there limited variation and technical growth opportunity.
Vocals ala Iron Maiden - Skill floor 3/10, skill ceiling 10/10. You can be a bland power metal screamer or you can be Bruce Dickinson.
(keep in mind I'm not getting into multi-discipline beasts like Patton)
This is a ridiculous discussion.
/thread
Yax
Ancient Mariner
BBE is closed?
Diesel 11
As you scream into the web of silence...
Really just personal experience tbh. Of course truly great operatic-esque singers like Bruce and Halford are harder to come by than the multitude of “okay” growlers out there, and a singer who can combine both even harder, but just purely singing in your clean voice — discounting the vocal range — is fairly easy to do. Mastering it is another thing. Meanwhile, basic growling I’ve always found to be more difficult. If you aren’t doing it right, you can destroy your voice completely.
But Knick’s post I think sums my thoughts up completely. At the end of the day, truly mastering a style is hard no matter what kind you choose to master.
The Flash
Dennis Wilcock did 9/11
Most of us who supported growls as nothing more than a different vocal technique have already rejected this line of thinking, so this is a straw man.
One of the more ridiculous things ever said on the forum. This means nearly all percussive instruments aren't instruments.
The description of music that you quoted refers to the entire product of music, not one aspect of it. It also states in the very quote that different styles and types of music may omit some of the elements.
It also has pitch. Whether it is a monotone pitch or not is irrelevant. Many good growlers do manipulate the pitch of their growls, anyway.
No, they aren't. Okay/decent growlers are in abundance. People who dismiss growls outright can't tell growls apart because they don't have enough experience and attention to detail. That's on them.
Last edited:
JudasMyGuide
Ancient Mariner
Now, I mostly agree with everything Zare wrote here, in spirit anyway, if not the particular statements (sure, you have percussive instruments, but a vocalist who can't use pitch is just fucking limited, that's all). And yeah, it's much more conceivable to me that a singer would learn to growl than that a growler would learn to sing.
And how do you assess growlers anyway? Is Lord Worm a good growler? He's definitely unique. Was Mikael in his heyday? Well, he was obviously a bad growler, 'cause he blew his voice and his growls sound like shit nowaday. How do you compare John Tardy to Chris Barnes? They both helped build that style.
But let me add here another thing that's quite important (and sure, many of you will probably disagree) - what makes a vocalist a true singer to me is that special something that he adds to the song. Like, the music is written in the notes, the lyrics are there, that's the whole song... and yet you tell something more than what's already there.
That's why - despite not liking him personally all that much - I seriously respect Dickinson. Cause he can do that. So does Freddie, whom I also don't like, but respect anyway.
Dio ... not that much.
And it's downright impossible for the growlers, really. Truth be told, a lot of metal musicians have trouble achieving that.
But seriously, dudes, growling is a novelty. Don't overpraise it. Don't overanalyse it. I like me a good growler, actually, and I still listen to death metal. But this whole debate is kinda ridiculous, kinda among the lines of the Edge or Emppu being compared to actual versatile, virtuoso guitarists.
And how do you assess growlers anyway? Is Lord Worm a good growler? He's definitely unique. Was Mikael in his heyday? Well, he was obviously a bad growler, 'cause he blew his voice and his growls sound like shit nowaday. How do you compare John Tardy to Chris Barnes? They both helped build that style.
But let me add here another thing that's quite important (and sure, many of you will probably disagree) - what makes a vocalist a true singer to me is that special something that he adds to the song. Like, the music is written in the notes, the lyrics are there, that's the whole song... and yet you tell something more than what's already there.
That's why - despite not liking him personally all that much - I seriously respect Dickinson. Cause he can do that. So does Freddie, whom I also don't like, but respect anyway.
Dio ... not that much.
And it's downright impossible for the growlers, really. Truth be told, a lot of metal musicians have trouble achieving that.
But seriously, dudes, growling is a novelty. Don't overpraise it. Don't overanalyse it. I like me a good growler, actually, and I still listen to death metal. But this whole debate is kinda ridiculous, kinda among the lines of the Edge or Emppu being compared to actual versatile, virtuoso guitarists.
Last edited:
The Flash
Dennis Wilcock did 9/11
Nope. Mikael didn't blow out his voice due to bad technique, he did because he smokes and drinks too much. Mikael in his heyday is a textbook example of a great growler. Chris Barnes from Cannibal Corpse is an example of a bad growler.
Limited vocalist is still a vocalist, what he does is still musical. You're making the mistake of confusing terms of taste with terms of definition.
Forostar
Ancient Mariner
I like Chris Barnes growls. Especially on the early Six Feet Under records.
My three favs:
Aaron Stainthorpe (My Dying Bride),
Tomi Koivusaari (he could not pull it off live but ruled on the early Amorphis records. And here on this demo!
Love that style). Yeah, yeah the current singer is good too, but I prefer Koivusaari's sound/style.
And last but not least Jan-Chris de Koeijer from Gorefest. This man was a master. To illustrate his qualities I'll use some sentences from a 2015 interview with Ed Warby (unfortunately it is offline now):
Jan-Chris was able to attain such a growling depth and to simultaneously deliver the lyrics with such an impeccable pronunciation of every single word. While a lot of death metal vocalists sound the same, Jan-Chris was always immediately recognizable and you could actually hear what he was growling. Apparently, he never ever lost his voice, even when Gorefest were touring heavily, which was quite amazing.
My three favs:
Aaron Stainthorpe (My Dying Bride),
Tomi Koivusaari (he could not pull it off live but ruled on the early Amorphis records. And here on this demo!
And last but not least Jan-Chris de Koeijer from Gorefest. This man was a master. To illustrate his qualities I'll use some sentences from a 2015 interview with Ed Warby (unfortunately it is offline now):
Jan-Chris was able to attain such a growling depth and to simultaneously deliver the lyrics with such an impeccable pronunciation of every single word. While a lot of death metal vocalists sound the same, Jan-Chris was always immediately recognizable and you could actually hear what he was growling. Apparently, he never ever lost his voice, even when Gorefest were touring heavily, which was quite amazing.
Last edited:
D
Deleted member 7164
Guest
What an irritating way to hold a conversation. You literally pick apart sentences to pull them partially or fully out of context.
The pitch changes growlers do, do not need to be precise because of the nature of human ear's perception of the bottom end of the frequency spectrum. Percussive instruments come in sets covering a lot of the spectrum both high and low. A single percussive element can change pitch with a simple stab technique where you change the tension of the skin by applying force thus modulating the sound. The pitch variance that a single drum is capable of is beyond anything ever pulled in a growl, regardless of your opinion.
And by the way. Every fucking thing in this universe has a pitch. Every.
The pitch changes growlers do, do not need to be precise because of the nature of human ear's perception of the bottom end of the frequency spectrum. Percussive instruments come in sets covering a lot of the spectrum both high and low. A single percussive element can change pitch with a simple stab technique where you change the tension of the skin by applying force thus modulating the sound. The pitch variance that a single drum is capable of is beyond anything ever pulled in a growl, regardless of your opinion.
And by the way. Every fucking thing in this universe has a pitch. Every.
The Flash
Dennis Wilcock did 9/11
You asserted that pitch wasn't a factor of the musicality of growls, now you're accepting that pitch is an aspect of growling, conceding that growlers can manipulate pitch. The argument you used to discredit the musicality of growls falls apart under the tiniest bit of scrutiny.
Percussive instruments coming in sets is irrelevant, each piece of that set is a musical instrument in its own right, regardless of the limitations of its range, which works the same way for growls - or any other vocal technique. You can implement growls, screams, shrieks or regular tonal singing, all part of the palette of vocal performance, all instruments of their own kind with their own timbres, pitches, rhythms and approaches for volume and attack.
MindRuler
Ancient Mariner
May I ask why you don't like Bruce personally or is that too personal?
D
Deleted member 7164
Guest
Here's a friendly advice, be less pretentious.
Resonance - Wikipedia
Every thing in this universe vibrates, everything has a pitch that is describable by its period in Hz and thus can be mapped to a musical system. There's pitch in the exhaust vent of the car, and is taken in account for when audio design of the car is done. There's a pitch in the atomic bonds, taken into account when designing ionizing radiation instuments. Notice what word I used.
What wikipedia article meant are pitch changes, belonging to 2-20kHz spectrum. Also for human ear to work there needs to be periodic variance in the pitch (the vibrato), a constant pitch sound is removed by the brain actually.
And I'm going to end this discussion with a phrase of yours :
the musicality of growls
Logoff.
Calm down, guys. Less arguing, more votes for Barlow.