Hi there!

I have a question regarding Death Metal Vocals (Grunts). Do you guys have any tips/usefull exercises to do on a daily basis? Don't be a wiseguy and say Practice lol
I do have lessons but this guy is on vacation for a couple of months so that why I come to you guys

I posted this elsewhere about a year ago, but hopefully it helps ya:

What helped me the most when I was touring/recording:

A) taking breathing lessons.
B) watching singers I dug sing so I could emulate how they breathed and how their mouth and jaw shaped the tone
and
C) making sure I was relaxed - when I was uncomfortable or wound up or tense in any way it lead to a lot of vocal fatigue. When we were touring if I went on stage with my mind elsewhere (stressed at the booking agent, irritated by a douchebag club owner, mad at a girlfriend, whatevs) I could feel it in my throat the next day and if I did several gigs in a week like that after the third or fourth one I couldn't speak properly the following day. What helped the most was just fully buying in to the performance and shutting out everything else.

--

Proper breathing is proper breathing. Doesn't matter if you're doing Death Metal, Djent or Disco. This video is totally not metal at all, but the info is sound and applicable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BoAdlkLH_o

What my old teacher had me do was inhale completely in one breath, then exhale in one. Then inhale in two even breathes, exhale in one, etc until I went through inhaling in six breathes, exhaling in one. Then starting over by exhaling in one, two, etc. ending with inhaling in six and exhaling in six. Then, I would practice holding my breath (I could routinely hold it for 3.5 minutes inhaled, 1.5 exhaled). After that, stretch your mouth and tongue by sticking your tongue out all the way to the right, then up, then left, then down and repeat. Took about 30 minutes to do all that, but at the end, I had way more power, control and far less fatigue. An added benefit is all that fresh oxygen really gets the rest of your body fired up and ready to go, too.

Last off, don't worry about trying to sound like someone else. The metal world doesn't need more clones, it needs you to be unique.

Hi brother,

Thank you for your reply. I'm going to try the breath excercises. My breathing is Always a problem so this will surely help
When inhaling 6 times... is it like inhale, hold, inhalge, hold, inhale hold (etc) and then release at once?

Greetings

Den

Just no not make another thread on a similar topic I'm going to ask in this thread.

I never took any singing exercises nor anything, I'm pretty much a self-taught musician in almost all means, and not so long ago I used to sing in some bands, but I would usually use clean vocals or hard rock-style harsh vocals. It wasn't until earlier this year that I actually started to try guttural vocals and I found one kind of style that works for me and sounds fucked up enough.

So, I make this kind of gutturals by inhaling, they sound very similar to the goregrind ones so I guess this is the same style that those singers use. When I perform this kind of vocals the lower part of my throat (the trachea I think) contracts. I can hold it for like 1.5 minutes before having to breathe again. It's really fatiguing tho, and some times I need to take a break for around 15 seconds before my breathing returns back to normal, which is most probably because I never take breathing exercises. I can keep it going even without having to take that break to breathe, but it just gets more tiring, but it never made my throat hurt nor anything.

I wanted to know how can I improve that kind of guttural vocals so I can hold it for longer and not get as fatigued by it, and I'd also like to know if there's any other guttural voice that I can try, because I'm trying to achieve the classic death metal growl and I'm not able to :/