Vocalist Journey

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”

– Chinese Proverb

So it has been said. But a step in which direction? Perhaps we can only feel we are being pulled in a certain direction in the present moment, only to look back and see that our steps have formed a trail which we soon refer to as a path.

I remember in 8th grade around 2007, my first taste of Rock music, a fellow student who’s a year younger than me plays me Numb / In The End by Linkin Park via his phone, I asked him right then and there to send me the tracks via Bluetooth on my Nokia phone.

A friend of mine back then would then recommend me Three Days Grace. And I think that the hours I spent watching Naruto AMVs on Youtube have led me to the discovery of Breaking Benjamin and more Linkin Park songs.

I cannot exactly pinpoint the moment when I fell in love with Rock music, the course of the years would then lead me to Bullet For My Valentine and later heavier bands.
Towards the final year of school I’d be mainly listening to Asking Alexandria, Suicide Silence, Whitechapel and Parkway Drive.

At a certain point in these years around 2010-2011 I decided to start practicing heavy vocals. Due to the fact I believed I had 0 talent singing clean vocals:

• I listened to myself back then

• I believed it to be 100% dependent on talent).
  

In 2010 was heavily watching vocal covers of heavy vocals, notably:

• Ian Bearer (before his Rings Of Saturn days) when he was making how to scream like Mitch Lucker tutorials and competing for the Carnifex contest, the godly screams where the camcorder would cut off every single time, the absolutely crisp and cleanest highs in the industry.
• Chris Breetzi, the man who made growling like Phil Bozeman seem like an achievable feat. Hell of a guy, extremely nice person (I once had him as a friend on my facebook account that has been long since deleted) down to earth and fun to talk to. Insane gutturals, his rendition of This Is Exile to this day with the 16-17 seconds growl remains one of my favorite things.
  He also had the best Parkway drive covers and introduced me to “Make them suffer”.

I found myself practicing false cord screams and growls, over and over, then after a few years giving up.
The overly raspy screams of false cords and my overly pushed low growls took their toll.
I then switched to clean singing around 2014.

Inspired by Linkin Park heavily, I have been doing my best to learn online from YouTube, courses, etc…
I’ve discovered new influences and experimented with new approaches, some which worked partially and some made things worse.

Fast forward to today I am nowhere where I want to be, my tone has improved, significantly I’d say, however, it’s still insufficient to wow anyone out of their chair into a standing ovation, nor is it enough to convey the emotions behind the scenes.

The ever elusive expressiveness, I can hear its laughter whilst evading me, 20 steps ahead.
Many times I’d think of it as a lost cause, maybe my anatomy is faulty, maybe I just don’t have the capacity or knack to learn this, so many approaches online, so many different singing methods.

Years and years and years, until in 2022 I found something special, a guiding seemingly sane approach, but that’s for another post to discuss courses online whatever and my impressions of them.

For those who stuck around and read this far. I leave you here with a link of my Soundcloud to which I have uploaded over the years recordings of me with dates to keep track of my slow and seemingly unsteady progress.

I always wondered whether it can be done, to truly learn how to sing and improve, many years ago I thought to myself, I never heard a technically proficient singer who had a bad voice, it just never occurred, that thought alone made me realize that maybe I’m onto something here.

Without further ado: