- This is Sound Field.
- We all scream, maybe
from happiness, anger,
fear, shock, pain, but why
so much screaming in metal?
And how do we do it without
destroying our voice?
Nahre and I are gonna find out.
(dramatic music)
- We'll likely never know
when screaming and
music first intersected,
but the best guess is that it occurred
in tribal music from around the world.
After hearing a common
Viking vocalization,
a 10th century Arab traveler
in Denmark said this,
never before have I heard uglier songs
than those of the Vikings.
The growling sound
coming from their throats
reminds me of dogs
howling, only more untamed.
- Sounds pretty metal, right?
Screaming has appeared in operas
and avant garde compositions
going back to the 1800s.
♪ Ah ♪
- But for its first
appearance in pop music,
many people point to blues
musicians who often had to yell
over the crowds in the clubs they played.
One example is a song
deemed too scary for radio,
Screamin' Jay Hawkins' 1956
classic, I Put a Spell on You.
♪ Because you're mine ♪
♪ Oh yeah ♪
- But the real groundwork for metal
came with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.
Both bands took the blues
and made it heavier,
adding theatrics, and of course,
the howling of Ozzy
Osbourne and Robert Plant.
♪ Ah ah ah ah ♪
- That's when metal
screaming really took off,
whether it was the barroom mania of AC/DC,
the leather-clad
intimidation of Judas Priest,
or the black metal bands of Europe.
I don't have that much
knowledge about metal, hardcore,
what is it, metalcore?
- Metal
- Hardcore?
Metal.
- or hardcore music.
Metal, yeah, I don't know
that much about metal.
("Deceiver" by Judas Priest)
♪ Oh, let me tell you ♪
- This is, I like this head voice.
♪ Eh eh eh ♪
- That first bit was
quite, maybe not beautiful,
but it was quite refined.
- He had vibrato going real high.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- I thought that was tight.
♪ I was shaking at the knees ♪
- It's so recognizable too, that--
- Yeah.
- It's specific tone of screaming.
- [LA] Yep.
- I don't think I've ever
screamed like that ever, even.
Just in life.
- I can see how.
(Corey screaming)
- Whoa.
The areas that I did notice in metal
were the virtuosity of the players,
the guitarists, the drummers.
- Metal drumming, double
bass pedal, and like,
how fast you have to be.
- Super intense.
- Yeah, how fast you have to be.
- But I never really
thought about the screaming.
And I just thought, okay
that's just part of the genre,
but now that I think about it,
I'm sure it takes a lot of
energy, a lot of technique.
There seems to be more to it
than I previously thought maybe.
I think it'd be hard to sing
and scream and growl that way
while, you know, banging your head though.
Kind of up and down?
- They do it though, they do it, like.
(Natalie screaming)
- So, that's kind of how you do it.
- Keep it.
(Natalie chuckles)
That was cold.
- That was cool.
- Cool, I'm glad you all,
glad you all liked that.
When you're playing aggressive music,
you have to give an
aggressive performance.
For me, it's like this is
a very emotional experience
playing this sort of music.
- So, how do these metal vocalists scream?
Well, they basically
do it just like babies.
(baby crying)
Dr. Krzysztof Izdebski
of the Pacific Voice and Speech Foundation
told Inside Science, a little
baby has all the sounds,
it has the sounds of scream and growl,
and inhalation and high pitch,
and whistle and low pitch.
- I'm not really a metal kid,
I'm just kind of a den mother.
(Melissa screams)
What I just did is I made
my true vocal folds flutter.
When you speak, your vocal folds,
which are at the top of your windpipe,
they come together like this, right?
They're actually horizontal in your body,
but I'm gonna do it like
this so you can see better.
When we talk, they do this.
When we sing, they do waves,
cycles per second, they're pitches, right?
In other words, this is like a 440, right?
If you're singing A, that is
440 sound waves per second.
When I sing that note,
my vocal folds vibrate
440 times per second, right?
But in screaming, it's not
a repeating periodic wave,
it's chaos, it's a
flutter, it's like a fart,
it's like (blows raspberry) like that.
- What's the maintenance, or
like, what are the exercises
you do so you don't--
- Oh, I just do normal vocal
warm-ups, like, entirely just your basic
run of the mill vocal warm-ups.
- Okay.
- First two shows that I ever
did doing vocals like this,
I like, destroyed my voice.
- Word.
- And you know,
I haven't blown out my voice since then
'cause I figured out, like okay,
well this is just how you do it, and--
- You take care of your voice.
- Yeah.
Just like, not like you're
just gonna go for a run
and like, be like okay,
I can run a marathon now,
and I'm just gonna do
this and I'm gonna be fine
the next time, no you have to like,
warm up, you have to stretch,
you have to practice.
For instance, opera singers also like,
really push their voice.
I could guarantee you that we
sort of all use our diaphragms
in very similar ways.
I just learned how to use
it a little bit differently.
- Add your own texture.
- Exactly.
- Okay.
- You can't imitate this.
When you imitate, you're
in your left brain, right?
That's the brain that does math problems.
But like, when you were
a kid on the playground
and you were going (mimics
siren wailing) I'm a fireman,
(mimics siren wailing)
you're just like, straight up right brain.
So, I have to take all
the technical information
and put it in the right brain,
and that's how it gets super wacky
because I say okay, pretend you're a cat.
(mimics cat meowing)
Pretend you're a cat that has laryngitis.
(mimics raspy cat meowing)
Right?
You know, but you cannot
think about your diaphragm,
you can't think of air in your windpipe
because there's no neural steering wheels
to close your vocal folds
in the front or the back.
I just pretend there's
particles coming out of my eyes
and then I go (screams).
- The larger the larynx and lungs,
the greater your potential
is for a louder scream.
Some people are just built better for it,
like Jill Drake, a classroom
assistant from the UK.
(Jill screams)
That's 129 decibels, almost
as loud as a gunshot,
and definitely powerful
enough to damage your hearing.
Okay, so screaming is a
skill, but how do they compare
to the great singers like
Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey?
Take Faith No More's
Mike Patton for example.
(Mike screams)
His vocal range is
reportedly over six octaves,
going from E flat one to to E seven.
Compare that to Mariah Carey's range
of G sharp two to G seven.
- So, you don't scream
because you can't sing,
screaming is just an expression of rage.
And it's wonderful.
See, it's not a skill that you develop
because you can't do anything else.
Who cares if it's not music?
Okay, it's theater, okay,
whatever it is, it's cool.
Most importantly, it's a connection.
It is an opportunity to connect,
and that's what music really is,
no matter what the genre is, right?
- The early 2000s saw the
rise of a number of groups
that blended thrash and hardcore metal
with punk and alternative rock
for mixtures of harshness
and complex melodies.
The genres were known as
metalcore, screamo, post-hardcore,
and whatever else bands and
their fans decided to call them.
Bands like Underoath.
♪ I swear we need to find some ♪
- [Nahre] Bullet for My Valentine.
♪ There's always something
different going on ♪
- [Nahre] Bring Me the Horizon.
♪ Can you feel my heart ♪
- [Nahre] And dozens more cut their teeth
on the Warped Tour.
- All right, you wanna call it this time?
Rock Paper Scissors, shoot?
- Okay, one, two, three.
Go.
- Boom.
♪ Oh my God ♪
- [LA] Nahre and I are gonna listen
to the screaming vocal track
of a mystery song chosen by our producers,
and we're gonna try to
create our own music
that we think would fit under it.
(singer screaming)
♪ I wear them proudly ♪
- What are they saying?
♪ Whoa ♪
- Okay.
We got a key.
♪ Clock counting down ♪
- Okay, so it goes like.
(light piano music)
I'm so clueless, I don't
even know where to start.
- If we came from like,
an avant garde angle,
we don't know what the original,
I'm sure the original is just like.
♪ Da da da da da da da da da ♪
You know what I'm saying?
Like, if we came left field with it.
- Mm-hmm, let's try to just
find ways to use our resources.
- [LA] Yeah.
- And see if we can tap into
that kind of primal energy.
A lot of motives that I hear in metal
also are in Baroque music.
- Really?
- [Nahre] Like all the.
(frantic piano music)
- [LA] That!
That!
- That's Vivaldi!
- All of that!
That's what I'm talking
about, all of that.
- You know that's Baroque,
that's Baroque music.
- We gotta get, see, yeah,
we gotta get all that into the draft.
♪ Stand up and scream ♪
(Nahre laughs)
- Yeah, that's right.
(LA laughs)
(thunder crashes)
♪ Oh my God ♪
(singer screaming)
- [Nahre] And now that
you've heard our version,
let's listen to the original.
- Three, two, one.
- Oh.
- I knew it was gonna be a six, I knew it.
♪ Oh my God ♪
- Oh, interesting.
I totally hear it now.
♪ If only he knew ♪
♪ If only he knew ♪
♪ Just stand up and scream ♪
♪ The tainted clock is counting down ♪
♪ Da da da dum da da da dum ♪
- I mean, you have to be
very on top of your playing.
- Your rhythm has to be spot on.
- Hardcore players.
♪ Da da dum da da dum
da da dum da da dum ♪
(gentle music)
