An Opera with… Screaming? – Adrienne Cowan
Death growls, gutterals, frys, oh my. For some of us, it’s a very zen thing, and a lot of technique goes into creating the sounds we make. But to me, these extreme vocals come from a very primal place—like an animal growling to convey anger and inspire intimidation, or a berserker on the battlefield before slaughtering everyone in its path. It is very raw, but there is something beautiful and cathartic about it.
“How can you have an opera with screaming?”
The music in the opera ranges from folky, symphonic, and acoustic to balls-out death and progressive metal. In peaceful or more thoughtful moments, we sing. In brutal moments, we scream, because we are warriors and soldiers. There is much bloodshed in the story – we literally throw severed heads into the audience every night—so of course it only makes sense that we would use our voices to match this!
“But doesn’t that hurt your voice??”
No, it does not hurt. It can be tiring after some time, like all singing, but it does not hurt. Babies can cry and scream for the whole day without losing their voice!
The trouble is, as we grow up, we learn strange habits from society—frying while talking (think valley girl, “like, ohhhhhhmygodddd”), sucking our stomachs in constantly so that we don’t look “fat” when we take a breath, slouching or misaligning our spinal cords from sitting in chairs all day, not opening our mouths too wide for fear of a double chin, etc. Because of this, people approach extreme vocals with poor breath support and posture. This is where the damage happens. But, it can be avoided with proper technique!
Ironically, my extreme vocals developed significantly after I spent one and a half years studying with an amazing and brutally operatic voice coach. I would spend the weekend playing metal shows with my band, and then come in on Monday morning and sing Italian arias without problem. It’s completely safe!
“Isn’t that screamo stuff for Satanists?”
Nope. There are metal bands of every religion, or of no religion, or anti-religion!
“What is the difference between gutterals, fry screams, false chord screams, etc?”
Cameron, who plays Suetonius, says this:
“Lots of them can be classified, in my relatively educated opinion, under the two overarching categories of false and fry. Terms like guttural tend to be typically referring to lows, and often are (produced with one’s) false (vocal) folds. In essence, to properly categorize a scream within the two main categories is to determine how the sound is produced, i.e. false or gry. Anything after that is like a subcategory and is achieved via modifying one of those two main types.”
Hopefully that answers some of your questions ☺
Hails X,
Adrienne (Asceawa)