Could anyone explain me, without going into a too much detail what's the difference between head and chest voice? I've always thought chest was used for people who can't really sing and focus on high notes, while a good head voice singer can actually sing notes and not just scream them. Correct?

As far as I understand, and my understanding is that of a non-trained would-be vocalist, the question of head voice and chest voice is a matter of dispute. Anyhow, as I take it that rather than aiming to enlighten yourself with the secrets of music theory you're instead in need of advice as an aspiring singer, I will try to answer.

I layman's terms, head voice and chest voice refer to areas in your body where voice resonates, both head and chest having their distinctive characteristics. Head voice is used for higher pitches, whereas in chest voiuce the resonance is more powerful and therefore preferable when it can be used, that is, in lower pitches. I think, for example, that when singers like Rob Halford slide from what could be chest voice register, that is, their normal singing pitch, to high-pitched wails, they use head voice. Use falsetto and you will sound pathetic compared to the way head voice can maintain the fullness of chest voice. By screaming the notes balance will be lost and vocal cords hurt.

I'm wondering what kind of voice I have, in terms of bass, baritone or tenor. I'm definitely not a bass, lol. My speaking voice is light, but of course that could also be how I use it, I don't know.

The lowest note I can hit is F, and the highest I can hit without falsetto is the G which is a little over 2 octaves over the F, if that makes sense. I have to warm up my voice in order to hit those notes though, I don't have any vocal training, this is just my voice. So do you think I am a tenor or baritone?

Yeah I also gave up on harsh vocals... well on vocals in general. I took some singing lessons and I think I wasn't that bad but I lack the confidence to sing, even while I'm alone. Without confidence to even sing normally, I have even less on harsh vocals. Could someone tell me how they got confidence for singing, if they didn't have it before?

When I started out singing I never had enough confidence to sing at all. The main thing that really gave me the confidence to sing by myself was countless years of choral experience. After my voice started sounding a lot better and I was building my confidence up, I was offered to sing a number of solo parts. Ever since then I have been able to sing in front of heaps of people without much trouble at all, except I do remember once I had to sing a solo in front of a packed out audience and I quite literally nearly shat myself.

I think the best way to build your vocal confidence is to start by singing with groups of people. If you are willing to give it a serious go you should see if there are any local vocal ensembles that could use some extra singers, as they tend to take pretty much any singing enthusiast in as long as you are willing to commit to it. If there are none of these within your desired area, you could simply just find someone else who enjoys singing and possibly have a go at singing with them.

I hope these suggestions help you to build a bit more confidence with your singing abilities.

I'm still quite low on the confidence side of singing. It's such an intimate, personal thing that you have to have great ego to be able to sing confidently in front of people. I build up confidence by singing with my band. None of us are good enough to really criticise others, and they give positive feedback. I'm self-conscious enough to know when I have fucked up and therefore don't really need constructive criticism from my bandmates.

Anyhow, it helps if you can get accustomed to singing in an environment where everyone else is concentrating on their peformance and not yours. Even better if you, like me, also play an instrument and can use the excuse of being mainly a guitarist or a bassist when criticised for poor vocals.

Possibly the best excuse when accused of having poor singing in a band.

Like Dave Mustaine? Lol, he's kind of my inspiration to try to start a random thrash metal band. If confronted about "holy shit your vocals are terrible," I can just say, "It's thrash metal; vocals were never important. It's just about THE MUSIC, MANNNNN."

I'm not a singer at all, but my one man project is vocal-less, and I want to give it a try just to complete the songs. I'm going for both high pitched black metal screams, and low clear singing (such as like Borknagar). I don't have a microphone of any sort, and don't want to spend much at all on one. I remember reading about Varg Vikernes recording his one album with a headset microphone that was terrible quality? I don't think that's quite what I want, but I think I'm going to set up the mic in a huge room in my house, and sing really loud from the other side so that in the songs it sounds like I'm singing from a distance; not too clear. Can I find a decent mic at Radio Shack, or Walmart or anything? lol

You're going to have to be more specific. Which F are we talking about here?

Hmmm, well, if you are a guy, you should probably know which F I'm talking about? If you try to go as deep as possible key by key. I mean, I don't think anyone can have so light a voice that they can't hit the F one octave above the one I'm talking about, or such deep a voice that they can hit the one octave below it.

Well, it sounds like you are a baritone to me. Don't take my word for it though, I'm not exactly a vocal expert.

Thanks. I'm thinking too that I maybe am a baritone.. My voice is light when I speak, but I guess that's probably just how I use it. It's much much deeper in the middle of the night for example.

The lowest F of standard guitar tuning, then? For reference, the lowest basses in opera singing are around the low E of standard guitar tuning. Orthodox monks (who are not professional singers, mind you) may sing as low as the B below the aforementioned E (imagine the lowest open string of a very downtuned guitar, for example).

But then, with training, a tenor can sing those notes. The quality of the note will be shit of course, and vocal fry might be used, but it's a low note which is sung. I'd rather classify voice based on the comfort area and not the highest high and lowest low. Even if you can doesn't mean you are. You see, those orthodox monks hardly possess some superb gifts that are peculiar to them. It's just that Opera singers rarely sing notes so low, since the quality of voice suffers when you sing that low. Very few are able to sing so low with consistent voice quality.

I'm not an expert either, but it might just aswell be a tenor. Whether you're able to sing more than two octaves doesn't really tell whether you're tenor or baritone; it's a matter of proper training.

Another uncertain piece of information from a definite non-expert: whether you're tenor or baritone is also defined by how your voice sounds like. There are bass singers with range little lower than that of lowest baritones, yet they are classified as bass for the qualities of their voice. Baritone is such a very vast area from what I understand. There are baritones with very diverse vocal ranges and voice types.

I am a retarded baritone. I use retard vox and it is not easy. Check out my vocal covers here: http://www.youtube.com/user/TickleMeTersh?feature=mhsn

Thanks for the insightful answer. Yes, it's like the F on the first fret on the low E-string, that I can hit. Actually, you can hear me singing it very briefly, at 0:38 in this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk-wimPw4go

I don't need to do use vocal fry to hit it, but I have to warm up my voice to get so low, and I haven't had any training to expand my range, so that's my natural voice I guess.

And I've heard others say the same thing as you, that voice type is not in the range, but in the comfort zone. It sounds logical. But it makes it much more complicated, lol... Like I said, I have a bit light speaking voice, so some people have thought I'm a tenor because of that, but maybe that's just because of how I use my voice too... Perhaps it doesn't matter so much either, what type of voice one has, but I'm just curious, hehe.

If i remember correct, baritone is the term for mens' vocals, so tennor and bass is considered barritone section. However, you are a Bass 1. Bass 2 is lowest you can go and soprano 1 is the highest. I am (was in hs anyway when i was still singin choral music0 a bass 2. My lowest note on average was a C and every once in a while when i was particularly groggy in the morning i could hit a B, but that was only a few time.s I used to be able to hit most soprano 2 notes, but not in full voice and not in a lot of quality either lol. BUT now I wanna scream and growl but know not how

you dont have to do that. there's effects you can do to make yourself sound distant. the main two are reverb (not to be confused with delay) and the equalizer board. just remove all highs and lows until your left with very small tone like someone talking through a telephone. as for the microphone, i make music with just a regular computer mic thats of much better quality than burzum or other shit quality bm bands. just follow my link in my sig.

Bit hard to hear if you don't have any songs online, heh

what you talking about? I have 4 songs up

I have the very same kind of vocal that either Hetfield, Dio or Ozzy has (I am talking old school Hetfield from Master OF Puppets era.) When I sing I can sound like Ozzy if he's fronting a Goth Metal band.

Just a quick thrown-together cover of Largactyle, if anyone wants to comment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN96HC4NWXE

dude, you sound like your hurting yourself. i commented your video. you might wanna reconsider your technique.

It's a deliberate rasp, more akin to that used in some BM and Crust than DM vocals (and it is rougher than the vocals used on the original, admittedly) and no, it's not actually painful. I can do standard growls but they didn't seem appropriate for the entirety of that track.

It's a bit uneven in places but that's mostly from my memory of the timing being off.

My newest vocal attempt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lNDYIhIuyQ

Solid enough, but you may want to look at dropping your vocal lines down in the mix a bit (at least, I assume they've got some gain/volume boost applied) - it's distorting somewhat, aside from it running completely over the top of everything else.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3SwhLuz4VQ

A vocal cover I did for Take Me Home by Anubis Gate.

I'm still learning the art of clean vox, been practicing since about August or so. I took up a chorus class last year, but I hadn't sung in like...months. From January to about July.

Hoping to improve (quite a bit, I think I suck), any tips would be appreciated.

I also have one from Flowing Tears, and Redemption up if anyone wants to listen to those as well.

The sound quality is kind of weak, but here's a vocal cover I did for "Angel of Death."

Yes, I know the scream at the start is shaky, but the rest are, IMO, better and fine.

Gonna bump this and point out I forgot the link, wow.

http://www.mediafire.com/?2qsbg22rur64xfd

Heh, yeah joining a vocal ensemble is a great idea which I thought of before. I'm most likely to join one soon since I'm almost obliged to sing cause I don't have any band and will end up singing everything I do myself xD However I recently started studing music at university, and there is a class where I HAVE TO sing, sometimes in front of the whole class, so this is helping me a lot to gain a better ear, a better singing and of course more confidence.

Much thanks for your reply dude your suggestions indeed helped me

Oh wow.

Been singing a bit today, hopefully going to stick with it this time and actually get better. My problem is I often get discouraged and stop. Plus I don't have a full-time band I sing in, so I'm not forced to practice as much as I am with my bass. Anyway...

I was just mucking about, taking a break to play with my dog and started making some sort of snarl/snort noises via a kinda nasaly inhail I guess. Thought it would be kinda cool. Then it made me almost vomit. Taking a bit of a longer break now, haha...

Just thought I'd share!

hey, I am trying to form a brutal death metal band, and I'd like to know how to make my vocals even more unintelligible, like Suffocation, Effigy of the Forgotten era. obviously my age with affect this I think since I'm 15

I'm trying to work on volume with my vocals. My pitch is right on, but singing loudly is important, and also with power, and not just yelling. So, how do I work on that?

I've read somewhere that it's unwise to try extreme vocals at a young age, unless you really want to risk damaging your throat. I'd wait till 16 or 17.

. . . . . I guess that's why I've been coughing up spewtem lately? meh

What the hell is spewtem?

Sounds kinda like spew and phlegm... Not sure.

I would like to see some suggestions on microphones for lead vocals.

* Singing style : Mid to low raspy shrieks (example : David Vincent on Altars Of Madness)
* Looking for a full bodied, saturated, yet natural sound.
* Main application - recording.
* Price range, up to 200 $.

I, actually, asked about this earlier in a different topic. A good multi-purpose (so, not specifically for your case, but it should work) mic is the Shure SM-57. Just slap on a different windscreen, and you're good to go!