AC/DC, Foreigner and Guns N' Roses

[jonpall]

Hi guys,

Here's me a few months back playing with my high rasp. These are poor recordings but I'm doing a capella, no post-editing versions of the songs You shook me all night long, Urgent, Rocket Queen and Amazing grace, all with constant rasp and high notes. In hindsight I can hear Robert Plant in there somewhere, when he screamed. I'm not trying to sound like the original singers or Robert Plant at all. I just want high notes with power, rasp and attitude. Let me know if you hear that guys, or if you're just not feeling it.

The interesting thing is that I was playing around with this type of sound for a few weeks and then I went on to experiment with Journey songs, which caused me to kind of forget how I did the high raspy thing. But I've forgotten it before and know pretty much how to re-learn it. This time, however, I'm going to keep practising it every day for a long, long time, if I possibly can, and make some music with it. Unless everyone here really think my tone sucks, lol.

I know it's not perfect and it's on the twangier side (and almost all the notes are extremely high pitched), but when I listen back to those old songs by Zeppelin, GNR and many other bands, I hear that the high notes were usually very, very twangy. It makes the distortion much easier. Here are the songs:

You shook me all night long (I did it accidentally a whole step higher than the original song):

https://www.box.net/shared/2cnfpx45v70xvtfhthnc

You shook me all night long (in the original key):

https://www.box.net/shared/gdcfjv5y5e5lkhhzh5hu

Amazing Grace, Urgent and Rocket Queen (no idea if they're in the right key because I just winged it on the spot. Also excuse me for not remembering the lyrics here and just making up some bullshit . Listening back to it, it's funny to hear Amazing grace SCREAMED. ):

https://www.box.net/shared/bpfcin4ad889ul8i9h3g

[Keith]

Holy crap.... How on earth do you do that?

[ronws]

Holy crap.... How on earth do you do that?

He has a deal with Satan. And the "throat spray of Destiny," analagous to the "Pick of Destiny."

Or it's a result of the volcanish ash he has had to endure on his continent.

Just trying to help ... :D

[Olem]

Amazing grace and amazing clips. Just awesome!

[Daug Poland]

I like the quality of rusp. It's great!

Can you tell me what is the "doo dooo doo" thing on begining? Does it help you to catch distortion better?

[jonpall]

Thanks, guys. I appreciate it . I'm doing my best to learn how to do this again - not all the time, but sometimes, in some songs. The rest of the time I'm just singing lower notes and usually not distorted. Depends on the song of course. Daug, I sometimes do that doo doo stuff to find my high rasp. It often helps me to find just the right amount of cry, twang and yawn sensations in order to get that sound. It doesn't always work, though, so I have tons of other exercises that can help. One of the best is a siren on the word "yay", where I touch on a rasp at the top of the siren.

[Snax]

Holy shit dude, that was SWEET!!!!!

[jonpall]

Thanks, Mike!

[Snax]

You're very welcome.

I have a really tough time trying to sing Shook Me All Night Long and it was very inspiring to hear you doing it so thanks for that my friend! The lower range of the Brian Johnson raspy tone is really tough. Much tougher than his high stuff actually which probably is the opposite of what people would think. Your tone remained constant through your entire range which is awesome! I'm really looking forward to hearing you post some songs using that tone with the backing tracks too.

[jonpall]

Wanna hear something funny? One of the things that helped me a lot with my high rasp was listening to a few of YOUR clips here . I heard something in the core of your sound, underneath the gritty sound, - a twangy base that I realized is very helpful for the rasp, so I started experimenting with that. That's one of several things that started to make this type of singing slightly easier for me, even though it's NOT easy . But the support effort isn't THAT high, even though it IS a bit tough. If it was TOO much, no one wouldn't be able to go on tour with these type of songs. The key is to be able to do this with your throat as relaxed as it can be, especially in songs like that AC/DC song, because the lines are coming at you fast and there's almost no time to breathe between them. If you have the SLIGHTEST throat tension, it starts to build up in a matter of 10 seconds or so and you can't finish the song.