Melissa Cross (@zenofscreaming)

Distortion means increasing volume until the sound clips. Not what you want to do with your voice. Want to add noise to your singing? Learn fry screaming. Live on Zoom Nov 14, 3 PM ET: melissacross.com/fry #fryscream #howtoscream #screaming #metalvocals #distortion

I named fry screaming in 2004. Most people still think it's a sound. It isn't. It's something your vocal folds do, and you can learn to do it on purpose. Fry Screaming, From the Source: live on Zoom, Saturday Nov 14, 3 PM ET. Every ticket includes the recording. melissacross.com/fry #fryscream…

How does Corey Taylor from @slipknotscream? Not with one scream. Hybrid, false cord and fry, sometimes in one line. Understand your instrument and come up with your own recipe. Fry screaming, live on Zoom Nov 14: melissacross.com/fry #howtoscream #fryscream #screaming

This is a story I hear all the time. While in high school @wschamberlain could scream at band practice, but doing it night after night on a tour was a different story. When we started working together, I showed him it’s an actual skill. There’s a proper way to do it, so your voice holds up every…

You can’t learn to scream by copying records. A record gives you somebody else’s result, not the experience of making it. I teach what a scream feels like from the inside when you sound it, not what it sounds like after it comes out of your mouth, so you find your own voice. So I took 2 exercises…

Before the show. Right after the show. Do you hear a difference? Thank you, @Daughtry, for letting us hear what a voice sounds like when it’s doing its job. Most singers expect their voice after a show to sound “shot,” a little raspy, a little lower, and they wear that like a badge, proof they…

Spee lost his voice twice before we met. That was 2006, when he brought me the demos for Define the Great Line. Twenty years of @Underoath later, it has never happened again. He still runs the warm-up I gave him back then before every show, practice and recording session. I call him my poster…

David Draiman of @disturbed might be the best singer in the world, depending on who you ask. He was trained in the classical tradition and the words “Sing from your diaphragm!” was repeated ad nauseum. Even non-singers still hear this advice as the gold standard. The universe has since sent…

The thing that I wish I did not have to keep repeating over? 👉 “Fry screaming” is my original term referring to a VERY specific true vocal fold (TVF) “source” maneuver. The way I saved Garrett from vocal an annihilation is teaching him fry screaming - but he doesn't exclusively do fry screaming…

The pathway to claiming your truth as a vocalist is acquiring solid technique. Solid means spontaneous, unconscious and reflexive; where confidence replaces every limitation. The vocal that we hear on Bad Omens' third record is undeniably a perfect example of how better technique allows genius to…

On June 17, 2014, a very expensive high-speed Pentax Medical camera recorded (in slow motion) the true vocal fold (TVF) maneuver that I named “fry screaming” in my 2005 DVD “The Zen of Screaming”. This was a special day indeed, because this laryngoscopy substantiated what had been a merely…

The most amazing feeling in the world is when the voice bolts like a lightning laser across a venue of fans. Voice is a powerful and healing gift. Self-consciousness greatly diminishes that power. Eddie Hermida of Suicide Silence has rock solid technique that never fails him, even on those days…

David Draiman was born with a gorgeous instrument. The majesty of that instrument had been somewhat intentionally subdued when we met. That’s because in 2000, that was a time when it seemed safer to hide that beauty than to show it. It was a time where “singing” or more specifically “singing…

A great vocalist never finishes finding “their own sound”. Because “own sound” is NOT something for which to “go looking”. It can only be achieved with the liberation from the need to be loved by a million strangers in the way that you loved your own idols. You know the ones, those legendary…

Garrett of Silent Planet is absolutely killing it at the moment. If you haven’t yet heard “Superbloom”, do yourself a favor. I believe that, now with fry screaming in the toolbox, he has been spared the torment that nearly ended his career in Europe in 2018 and everything is just plain easier…

The best answer is: “I don’t know” ‼️ I say it until I am blue in the face and hardly anyone GETS IT. I promise you, if you ask any screamer/singer that’s worth their salt, “What kind of scream do you do?”, they will ALL tell you “I don’t know.” Because you are not supposed to know!   ‘Fry…

Fry screaming is a pulse register in Mode 2. If you are a voice scientist, you would know what that means 🧠🧐 However, knowing how it’s made doesn’t guarantee an ability to do it well. Knowing how the watch works doesn’t guarantee you will spend the time well. KNOWING about something helps to…

I am the luckiest girl alive to have been able to hear the voice of David Draiman of @disturbed as many times as I’ve been privileged to enjoy since October 2, 2010. Whether practicing geeyah-geeyah-gee or standing in front of a curtain of pyro in the loving embrace of ten thousand strangers, the…

You may not hear any difference between the before and after examples Garrett of Silent Planet demonstrates here, but it is insanely different. It’s all about the onset! This difference, along with the relief from years of suffering, has remarkably changed Garrett’s after show experience.   The…

I call her the “accident” genie. Spontaneously, she presents a borderline outrageous joke that would ultimately become an iconic sound bite that unmistakably represents a brand. A rare PR gift this genie. But even more precious is the courage to take that risk of being ridiculed regardless of the…

There is something lethal uncut pure about the voice of Noah. It’s raw, desperate, angelic, explosive and vulnerable 🤯 Listening to @badomensofficial “The Death of Peace of Mind” is like staring at a breathtaking stained-glass window. Despite the stunning precision in which each chard of colored…

To walk around thinking that you can't reach high notes is like carrying around an iron dome ceiling over your head in order to build the strength so you bust through it someday. There is nothing "up there", folks! What humans call high notes do not live atop buildings, neither do low notes live…

Students often ask, “So what kind of music is right for my voice?” That’s the wrong way to look at it! ✋🛑 Write and sing songs that you love to sing! Then collaborate with decent musicians to decorate that vocal ambiance with sounds that clarify the vibe of the lyric.   So proud of how Noah found…

There is a tendency for vocalists to saturate their presentation with qualities they feel will qualify them as “genre eligible”. In other words, a metal singer has to sound “metal” and a hardcore singer has to sound hardcore, etc.   A true artist earns their “wings” when they have courage to be…

The studio (commercial or home) is a hang where all a band’s live magic mojo and venue ambiance must funnel like a wormhole through a headphone jack. 🪄It is indeed a VERY surreal biome that is only navigable with experience. The name of this game along this journey is learning the elements that…

I remember doing a perfect take after staying up for 2 days in a row. So, I decided that I would sleep deprive myself every night before vocal tracking day in order to secure a better shot at the perfect take once again. It never happened.   The reason that it worked the first time is because I…

Why are some people drawn to getting on a stage and doing something while people watch? Just exactly WHAT IS this ceremonious act of communication older than humanity itself? Several animals engage in fantastic mating rituals that seem closer to cabaret than the birds and the bees.    Think about…

The techniques that I teach are for the purposes of preservation of your vocal instrument, so that you can express WHATEVER the lyric says without the unnecessary effort inferred by the intensity of the emotion.     Back in the early 2000s, it was interesting to note that sub-genres of metal were…

Wuuut? ‘Monkey hee-hee’? ‘Over the pencil’? That sounds completely insane! 🤯 No wonder, because the operating system of the voice manifests in a every single intent to communicate something. How frustrating it can be to hear the words and instructions of a voice teacher. How is it that a voice…

‼️ Attention: Parents of young screamers! ‼️ Please do not leave voice training to unqualified singers moonlighting at commercial after school programs. These voice lessons are predominantly taught by amateurs who have no idea about how children's voices must be addressed differently than adults…