7 ms·

Ask a real musician: opera singer dissects top 5 metal singers

186 points by hernan7 16y ago

jacquesm 16y ago
The site seems to be overloaded though, a HN induced meltdown?
ufomuffin 16y ago
Hm, yeah in music there aren't any rules, putting a 'real' musician to give her opinion should be considered a just for fun thing.
- evo_9 16y ago
  Yes and anyone can write poetry too. There are always 'rules' to any real discipline. If you aren't skilled in something then of course we say 'he is a natural'. But if you go up to talk to a 'natural' you always find that they worked at it an incredible amount. Fun read either way though. Her comments on Ozzie were the most surprising to me.
  - ufomuffin 16y ago
    That's the thing, anyone can create poetry. But only a group of people of the same taste will appreciate it. There aren't any rules, if you suck at singing, your cd will probably be dead in sales, but that doesn't make it "not music". I've seen there's people for everything in the world, and when people start saying he is not singing right it's usually about the context. If you're gonna sing opera of course you need to sing opera-like, but in general you should be able to experiment in any sense. That's how new styles are born.
    - regularfry 16y ago
      If you suck at singing, you'll wreck your throat and need surgery to fix it. That's a large part of what vocal coaching is for. In that sense, there's definitely a "wrong way" to do it.
      - _delirium 16y ago
        Empirically that doesn't seem to be true for many areas of rock--- there are singers singing "wrong" with no surgery for 30+ years. Note that she incorrectly predicted that Ozzy Osbourne would have a short career based on the way he was singing, when in fact he had an exceptionally long and successful one. From an artistic perspective, in some areas an operatic-style voice is just inappropriate. Operatic vocals on a punk band might be an interesting novelty, for example, but it's not usually what you want; you usually want something more like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGjk1Y_j8QE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGjk1Y_j8QE (From that perspective, metal was a fairly good choice for this interview, because operatic vocals are often appropriate in metal.)
        gaius 16y ago
        You have to be really careful when extrapolating like that. For example, you could train as hard as Michael Phelps but you'll never swim like him; you weren't born with his flipper-like feet and extraordinarily long arms. What will probably happen is that you'll just burn out. The people at the top of any field you will find combine hard work with genetic predisposition. They can be an inspiration sure, but imitating them is unlikely to yield the same results.
        fghfgh 16y ago
        Ozzy's a bit of an exception though, isn't he? He's literally being studied for his ability to survive quantities of drugs that kill most people.
        regularfry 16y ago
        You're right in that there are clearly people who have been successful this way, but it's a self-selecting group. We don't hear about the ones who are too hard on their larynxes and have to give up early. There's clearly a safety margin in what vocal coaches teach, and I think it's safe to say that Ozzy must be over the margin, but the right side of critical.
        algorias 16y ago
    - regularfry 16y ago
      I'm going to come back to this because I think it's an interesting point. Without "rules," how do you identify an example as belonging to a set? Rules for inclusion and/or exclusion must exist for the set to be defined. "I know it when I see it" is only really acceptable if you're a supreme court judge :-) Specifically, we're talking not just about "music" here - which has an absurdly broad definition - but "metal," which falls under the category of western vocal-led performance. There are rules to this, and while breaking them might leave you with something that is ostensibly "music," it may well not leave you with "metal," "singing," a "song," or a "performance."
  - fletchowns 16y ago
    I feel that technique and skill are secondary to passion though with the arts. Music or poetry, I don't want to subject myself to it if it lacks passion. Passionate musicians and poets just happen to frequently also have the technique and skill down as well, but that's not always the case. Some of the more interesting artists are often the ones that break the "rules" of their discipline.
    - sharpn 16y ago
      Alexander Pope disagreed: "True ease of writing comes through art, not chance, As he moves best who learns the steps of dance, 'Tis not enough no harshness cause offence, The sound must seem an echo of the sense" Learn the rules, then maybe break them.
      - Locke1689 16y ago
        Another famous example is Picasso. Sometimes considered the greatest painter to have ever lived, he was incredibly inventive and broke basically every "rule" in the book. However, if you look at his really early pieces -- he was a fantastic classical painter. He didn't start by breaking the rules, he started by mastering them.
        hartror 16y ago
        The same can be said for many professions, certainly my own (programming) you should learn the basics and best practices before you can know when it is okay to break them. And like singing or painting it can come down to personal preference whether the rule breaking works or not. Did I just equate my work to Picasso? . . . I think I did!
        fletchowns 16y ago
        I don't think you need to master the rules before you can break them, you certainly need to be aware of the rules though! How else would you even know you are breaking them?
        16y ago
- studer 16y ago
  She's a voice teacher. I'm sure you can find, say, some opera connoisseur who hates all other music as a principle, but she's talking about how these singers are using their "instruments", not about what kind of music they're performing. (the choice of vocalists was a bit pedestrian, though :-)
  - jarin 16y ago
    It probably wouldn't be as interesting to as many people if it was vocalists that only true metalheads had heard of.
    - patio11 16y ago
      I see one guy who had a reality TV show and four people I have never heard of. Pop culture, you foil me again...
      - CWuestefeld 16y ago
        * Pop culture, you foil me again...* Because Dio and Iron Maiden were top of the pop charts?
      - kscaldef 16y ago
        I don't know the names of the people in most bands I listen to, but have you honestly never heard of Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest? I'll give you that Mercyful Fate is a little obscure. (I suppose I should also ask how old you are, given that you label Ozzy as "a guy with a reality TV show".)
        patio11 16y ago
        If you had said "Heavy metal band, comic book superhero, or TV show" for those three bands I think I might have gotten Iron Maiden right, but if this were Who Wants To Be A Millionaire I'd be asking the audience anyhow.
        CFriedlander 16y ago
icarus_drowning 16y ago
I teach music for a living (theory/voice), and I have to say, I feel like this validates a lot of my techniques when working with students. Virtually all of my students want to sing pop/rock/etc. music when they first come in. My usual approach is to agree to work primarily in the genre of their choice, but to have some "classical" training as well. I largely due this in order to promote healthy singing, whatever the genre, so that no matter what kind of music they want to sing, they are at least not harming their voices. Notice that almost all of Friedlander's comments focus on the relaxation of the vocal mechanism ("Like the first singer, he performs with perfect legato, clear diction, and a consistent, organic vibrancy. He arranges his resonance space to create a shallow snarl without setting up any resistance for his breath", etc). I've found that, above all, some classical training seems to reinforce this, allowing students to create resonance rather than merely screaming, to avoid straining at the edge of their ranges, and to approach all genres with a strong grasp of basic music skills. Of course, all of this also improves their basic technique immensely-- pitch, diction, and aural skills are usually highly improved as well.
mhd 16y ago
I was a bit scared about what she'd consider the "top 5", but that's actually pretty okay, although I wonder how King Diamond got in there. Not the one known for his singing, and I don't think he's in the best-selling or longest-running band. But it was a different style, and one that at least contains a bit more than sheer endurance (c.f. most growlers). I was surprised at the high marks Dickenson got. Not that I don't hold him in high esteem personally, but he's the only one where I know of a direct connection to opera singing. It must've been a Freddy Mercury tribute, where he sang Bohemian Rhapsody with Montserrat Cabbalé. And as opposed to her previous duet with Freddy ("Barcelona"), those voices didn't mesh at all. Really nice article, I always thought that trained opera singers tend to look down upon those doing less "serious" work. Just shows you that there's more than one way to skin a cat, which is why this actually fits nicely into HN.
- frossie 16y ago
  I was a bit scared about what she'd consider the "top 5" She didn't rate them as "top 5". She got sent 5 unlabeled samples by the OP and was asked to assess their quality.
  - mhd 16y ago
    Well, I couldn't know that before I clicked. The headline here just said "top 5".
    - Deestan 16y ago
      Can anyone please let me know their reasons for downvoting this comment? Lately I've seen a lot of what appears to be mindless pile-on downvoting of perfectly on-topic, polite, informative comments. It is making me wonder if there's some bot behaviour going on, or if something in the site's comment system is broken.
      - Robin_Message 16y ago
        I didn't vote on the comment, but I can imagine it was downvoted for slightly rude tone "Well, I couldn't know that" and claiming not to read the article but only "the headline".
CWuestefeld 16y ago
Page seems dead; here's the Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.invisibleoranges.com%2F2010%2F07%2Fask-a-real-musician-5-classic-male-metal-singers%2F http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A... This was interesting. I wonder how much she was reaching to find something positive to say, because I would have though that, but for Dickinson, they all are rough. But then, I don't have any formal training or expertise myself. I'd like to hear a real expert's comments on modern metal virtuosos, like Warrell Dane or Roy Khan. Anybody with real knowledge care to venture an opinion?
invisoranges 16y ago
Hi guys - I run the site, and indeed HN caused a temporary meltdown (thanks for the link!) As of 9pm EST Aug. 23, it's back up, so feel free to visit, comment, etc. Again, thanks for the flattering mention!
- ph0rque 16y ago
  Will the sound files be back? I'm getting a 'file not found'.
  - invisoranges 16y ago
    Yes, I just tested them (9:20AM EST 8/24) and they work fine. What's probably happening is that the site is shutting down processes (including audio streaming) as it gets overloaded (wow, there are lots of you guys!). But the site is also resetting itself in response to overloading, so if the site or any of its processes are down, just wait a few minutes to see if they're back online. Thanks for the link and the interesting discussion here! Due to popular demand, there will be a sequel at some point featuring other metal singers, including possibly ones mentioned here.
    - bpyne 16y ago
      If you liked Rob Halford, then Geoff Tate from Queensryche should be a real treat. Anything from Operation Mindcrime would be worth a listen.
      - mindcrime 16y ago
        Yeah, I wish Geoff Tate had been one of the singers reviewed in that article. It would have been interesting to see what she had to say about him. Tate has - from this layperson's perspective - an amazing voice.
        bpyne 16y ago
        "Suite Sister Mary" still gives me goosebumps when I listen to it.
treeface 16y ago
Great stuff. I can't get over her reaction to Black Sabbath's 1970 song "War Pigs"... Initial reaction: “Fourth guy is just bad throaty singing… Made my throat tight to listen to him. How long did his career last?”
- pkulak 16y ago
  haha, yeah. It was the only song I could even stand to listen to.
noahth 16y ago
interesting article, would love to see more like this! for example, i'd be curious to hear her take on phil anselmo.
technomancy 16y ago
Wonder what she'd say about Falconer.
- endgame 16y ago
  Seconded. On the other extreme, I wonder what she'd say about Manowar.
wazoox 16y ago
I don't know much about Heavy Metal, but this gave me a strong urge to buy a couple of these albums :)
jksmith 16y ago
Jack Black should be in the conversation somewhere. The dude doesn't even need a microphone.
acon 16y ago
This is really great. I just had to fill my Spotify queue with Iron Maiden and try to sing along. Singing is one of those skills I really regret not having, but I sing anyway.

186 points by hernan7 16y ago

The site seems to be overloaded though, a HN induced meltdown?

Hm, yeah in music there aren't any rules, putting a 'real' musician to give her opinion should be considered a just for fun thing.

evo_9 16y ago
Yes and anyone can write poetry too. There are always 'rules' to any real discipline. If you aren't skilled in something then of course we say 'he is a natural'. But if you go up to talk to a 'natural' you always find that they worked at it an incredible amount. Fun read either way though. Her comments on Ozzie were the most surprising to me.
- ufomuffin 16y ago
  That's the thing, anyone can create poetry. But only a group of people of the same taste will appreciate it. There aren't any rules, if you suck at singing, your cd will probably be dead in sales, but that doesn't make it "not music". I've seen there's people for everything in the world, and when people start saying he is not singing right it's usually about the context. If you're gonna sing opera of course you need to sing opera-like, but in general you should be able to experiment in any sense. That's how new styles are born.
  - regularfry 16y ago
    If you suck at singing, you'll wreck your throat and need surgery to fix it. That's a large part of what vocal coaching is for. In that sense, there's definitely a "wrong way" to do it.
    - _delirium 16y ago
      Empirically that doesn't seem to be true for many areas of rock--- there are singers singing "wrong" with no surgery for 30+ years. Note that she incorrectly predicted that Ozzy Osbourne would have a short career based on the way he was singing, when in fact he had an exceptionally long and successful one. From an artistic perspective, in some areas an operatic-style voice is just inappropriate. Operatic vocals on a punk band might be an interesting novelty, for example, but it's not usually what you want; you usually want something more like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGjk1Y_j8QE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGjk1Y_j8QE (From that perspective, metal was a fairly good choice for this interview, because operatic vocals are often appropriate in metal.)
      - gaius 16y ago
        You have to be really careful when extrapolating like that. For example, you could train as hard as Michael Phelps but you'll never swim like him; you weren't born with his flipper-like feet and extraordinarily long arms. What will probably happen is that you'll just burn out. The people at the top of any field you will find combine hard work with genetic predisposition. They can be an inspiration sure, but imitating them is unlikely to yield the same results.
      - fghfgh 16y ago
        Ozzy's a bit of an exception though, isn't he? He's literally being studied for his ability to survive quantities of drugs that kill most people.
      - regularfry 16y ago
        You're right in that there are clearly people who have been successful this way, but it's a self-selecting group. We don't hear about the ones who are too hard on their larynxes and have to give up early. There's clearly a safety margin in what vocal coaches teach, and I think it's safe to say that Ozzy must be over the margin, but the right side of critical.
        algorias 16y ago
  - regularfry 16y ago
    I'm going to come back to this because I think it's an interesting point. Without "rules," how do you identify an example as belonging to a set? Rules for inclusion and/or exclusion must exist for the set to be defined. "I know it when I see it" is only really acceptable if you're a supreme court judge :-) Specifically, we're talking not just about "music" here - which has an absurdly broad definition - but "metal," which falls under the category of western vocal-led performance. There are rules to this, and while breaking them might leave you with something that is ostensibly "music," it may well not leave you with "metal," "singing," a "song," or a "performance."
- fletchowns 16y ago
  I feel that technique and skill are secondary to passion though with the arts. Music or poetry, I don't want to subject myself to it if it lacks passion. Passionate musicians and poets just happen to frequently also have the technique and skill down as well, but that's not always the case. Some of the more interesting artists are often the ones that break the "rules" of their discipline.
  - sharpn 16y ago
    Alexander Pope disagreed: "True ease of writing comes through art, not chance, As he moves best who learns the steps of dance, 'Tis not enough no harshness cause offence, The sound must seem an echo of the sense" Learn the rules, then maybe break them.
    - Locke1689 16y ago
      Another famous example is Picasso. Sometimes considered the greatest painter to have ever lived, he was incredibly inventive and broke basically every "rule" in the book. However, if you look at his really early pieces -- he was a fantastic classical painter. He didn't start by breaking the rules, he started by mastering them.
      - hartror 16y ago
        The same can be said for many professions, certainly my own (programming) you should learn the basics and best practices before you can know when it is okay to break them. And like singing or painting it can come down to personal preference whether the rule breaking works or not. Did I just equate my work to Picasso? . . . I think I did!
      - fletchowns 16y ago
        I don't think you need to master the rules before you can break them, you certainly need to be aware of the rules though! How else would you even know you are breaking them?
        16y ago
studer 16y ago
She's a voice teacher. I'm sure you can find, say, some opera connoisseur who hates all other music as a principle, but she's talking about how these singers are using their "instruments", not about what kind of music they're performing. (the choice of vocalists was a bit pedestrian, though :-)
- jarin 16y ago
  It probably wouldn't be as interesting to as many people if it was vocalists that only true metalheads had heard of.
  - patio11 16y ago
    I see one guy who had a reality TV show and four people I have never heard of. Pop culture, you foil me again...
    - CWuestefeld 16y ago
      * Pop culture, you foil me again...* Because Dio and Iron Maiden were top of the pop charts?
    - kscaldef 16y ago
      I don't know the names of the people in most bands I listen to, but have you honestly never heard of Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest? I'll give you that Mercyful Fate is a little obscure. (I suppose I should also ask how old you are, given that you label Ozzy as "a guy with a reality TV show".)
      - patio11 16y ago
        If you had said "Heavy metal band, comic book superhero, or TV show" for those three bands I think I might have gotten Iron Maiden right, but if this were Who Wants To Be A Millionaire I'd be asking the audience anyhow.
      - CFriedlander 16y ago

icarus_drowning 16y ago

I teach music for a living (theory/voice), and I have to say, I feel like this validates a lot of my techniques when working with students. Virtually all of my students want to sing pop/rock/etc. music when they first come in. My usual approach is to agree to work primarily in the genre of their choice, but to have some "classical" training as well. I largely due this in order to promote healthy singing, whatever the genre, so that no matter what kind of music they want to sing, they are at least not harming their voices. Notice that almost all of Friedlander's comments focus on the relaxation of the vocal mechanism ("Like the first singer, he performs with perfect legato, clear diction, and a consistent, organic vibrancy. He arranges his resonance space to create a shallow snarl without setting up any resistance for his breath", etc). I've found that, above all, some classical training seems to reinforce this, allowing students to create resonance rather than merely screaming, to avoid straining at the edge of their ranges, and to approach all genres with a strong grasp of basic music skills. Of course, all of this also improves their basic technique immensely-- pitch, diction, and aural skills are usually highly improved as well.

mhd 16y ago

I was a bit scared about what she'd consider the "top 5", but that's actually pretty okay, although I wonder how King Diamond got in there. Not the one known for his singing, and I don't think he's in the best-selling or longest-running band. But it was a different style, and one that at least contains a bit more than sheer endurance (c.f. most growlers). I was surprised at the high marks Dickenson got. Not that I don't hold him in high esteem personally, but he's the only one where I know of a direct connection to opera singing. It must've been a Freddy Mercury tribute, where he sang Bohemian Rhapsody with Montserrat Cabbalé. And as opposed to her previous duet with Freddy ("Barcelona"), those voices didn't mesh at all. Really nice article, I always thought that trained opera singers tend to look down upon those doing less "serious" work. Just shows you that there's more than one way to skin a cat, which is why this actually fits nicely into HN.

frossie 16y ago
I was a bit scared about what she'd consider the "top 5" She didn't rate them as "top 5". She got sent 5 unlabeled samples by the OP and was asked to assess their quality.
- mhd 16y ago
  Well, I couldn't know that before I clicked. The headline here just said "top 5".
  - Deestan 16y ago
    Can anyone please let me know their reasons for downvoting this comment? Lately I've seen a lot of what appears to be mindless pile-on downvoting of perfectly on-topic, polite, informative comments. It is making me wonder if there's some bot behaviour going on, or if something in the site's comment system is broken.
    - Robin_Message 16y ago
      I didn't vote on the comment, but I can imagine it was downvoted for slightly rude tone "Well, I couldn't know that" and claiming not to read the article but only "the headline".

CWuestefeld 16y ago

Page seems dead; here's the Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.invisibleoranges.com%2F2010%2F07%2Fask-a-real-musician-5-classic-male-metal-singers%2F http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A... This was interesting. I wonder how much she was reaching to find something positive to say, because I would have though that, but for Dickinson, they all are rough. But then, I don't have any formal training or expertise myself. I'd like to hear a real expert's comments on modern metal virtuosos, like Warrell Dane or Roy Khan. Anybody with real knowledge care to venture an opinion?

invisoranges 16y ago

Hi guys - I run the site, and indeed HN caused a temporary meltdown (thanks for the link!) As of 9pm EST Aug. 23, it's back up, so feel free to visit, comment, etc. Again, thanks for the flattering mention!

ph0rque 16y ago
Will the sound files be back? I'm getting a 'file not found'.
- invisoranges 16y ago
  Yes, I just tested them (9:20AM EST 8/24) and they work fine. What's probably happening is that the site is shutting down processes (including audio streaming) as it gets overloaded (wow, there are lots of you guys!). But the site is also resetting itself in response to overloading, so if the site or any of its processes are down, just wait a few minutes to see if they're back online. Thanks for the link and the interesting discussion here! Due to popular demand, there will be a sequel at some point featuring other metal singers, including possibly ones mentioned here.
  - bpyne 16y ago
    If you liked Rob Halford, then Geoff Tate from Queensryche should be a real treat. Anything from Operation Mindcrime would be worth a listen.
    - mindcrime 16y ago
      Yeah, I wish Geoff Tate had been one of the singers reviewed in that article. It would have been interesting to see what she had to say about him. Tate has - from this layperson's perspective - an amazing voice.
      - bpyne 16y ago
        "Suite Sister Mary" still gives me goosebumps when I listen to it.

treeface 16y ago

Great stuff. I can't get over her reaction to Black Sabbath's 1970 song "War Pigs"... Initial reaction: “Fourth guy is just bad throaty singing… Made my throat tight to listen to him. How long did his career last?”

pkulak 16y ago
haha, yeah. It was the only song I could even stand to listen to.

noahth 16y ago

interesting article, would love to see more like this! for example, i'd be curious to hear her take on phil anselmo.

technomancy 16y ago

Wonder what she'd say about Falconer.

endgame 16y ago
Seconded. On the other extreme, I wonder what she'd say about Manowar.

wazoox 16y ago

I don't know much about Heavy Metal, but this gave me a strong urge to buy a couple of these albums :)

jksmith 16y ago

Jack Black should be in the conversation somewhere. The dude doesn't even need a microphone.

acon 16y ago

This is really great. I just had to fill my Spotify queue with Iron Maiden and try to sing along. Singing is one of those skills I really regret not having, but I sing anyway.