Melissa Cross Tear Sheet PDF

Transcription

T H E H I G H LY A C C L A I M E D G U I D E T O E X T R E M E V O C A L S
VOCAL INS TRUCTION FOR A NEW BREED
Melissa Cross Vocal Studio ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522 251 west 30th St. Suite 11RE • New York, NY 10001 [email protected] visit www.melissacross.com for more infoo
“THE BIBLE FOR ANY EXTREME VOCALIST.
DON’T OPEN YOUR MOUTH ‘TIL YOU’VE SEEN THIS DVD.”
Tom Beaujour, Revolver Magazine
“I’M TELLING EVERYONE ABOUT IT...”
Corey Taylor, SliPKnoT
“DON’T YOU WANT TO BE SCREAMING
LIKE EVERYBODY’S DEMON?”
Andrew W.K.
“Turn your vocal cords into power chords!
Raise your voice without shredding your throat.”
Mike Gitter, Director of A&R, Roadrunner Records
“She totally knows what’s up.”
Brian Fair, Shadows Fall
“At the core of her lesson is a fistful of breathing
and vocal exercises that definitely
aren’t on the Julliard curriculum.”
Entertainment Weekly
View the “Zen of Screaming” video shorts on MTV2!
www.melissacross.com/html/cross_mtv2Spots.php
REVOLVER
#36 June, 2005
Entertainment
Weekly
#830 July 22, 2005
Melissa Cross Vocal Studio
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
251 west 30th St. Suite 11RE • New York, NY 10001
[email protected]
visit www.melissacross.com for more infoo
KERRANG
Issue #1033, 2005
RHYTHM
BULGARIA
October, 2005
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected]
PENTHOUSE
April, 2006
The Zen of Screaming
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected]
AMERICAN WAY
November 1st, 2006
MAGAZINE
BEST JOB EVER:
‘EXTREME VOCALS INSTRUCTOR’
HELPS SCREAMERS PRESERVE
THEIR PIPES
02.15.2006
Melissa Cross’ clients include singers for Slipknot,
Thursday, Lamb of God, Shadows Fall.
Melissa Cross
Photo: Ilian Penev
Name: Melissa Cross
Age: 49
Job: Extreme vocals instructor
Location: The Melissa Cross Vocal Studio in New York
Her Story: During the late 1980s, Melissa Cross was onstage at New York
club CBGB with her punk band Bibi Wa Moto ("woman of fire” in
Swahili). With one bloodcurdling scream, she nearly destroyed her
voice. Doctors told Cross the damage to her cords wasn’t permanent, but they prescribed six months of vocal rest.
Cross, who’d received classical voice training at Michigan’s
Interlochen Arts Academy and the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in
“I am the only teacher I know of who makes a concerted effort to
deal with extreme vocals," she said. “Once one of these artists is on
my roster, they can call me whenever they need me. They don’t show
up for lessons each week, but they’re in my circle, and we communicate about any problems they have. A lot of these guys are very
busy, so I only get them when they’re in between tours and albums."
Cross works side by side with her screaming students inside her
Manhattan studio space, and together — with a little ProTools help
— they record a CD of each lesson that the singer can bring on tour.
That CD serves as a pre-gig primer. “They’ll practice with it wherever they go," she said, adding that she’s never taught any of her bigname students how to scream. “Most of the guys I work with already
knew how to scream. I needed to teach them how to do it without
throwing out their vocal cords, so they don’t mess up their throats
when they do what they do."
How She Got Here: Fed up after brief stints working 9-to-5 jobs
at record labels and in entertainment lawyers’ offices, Cross decided to give teaching a whirl. Despite being a fan of the genre, she
“MOST OF THE GUYS I WORK WITH ALREADY KNEW HOW TO
SCREAM. I NEEDED TO TEACH THEM HOW TO DO IT WITHOUT
THROWING OUT THEIR VOCAL CORDS.” — MELISSA CROSS
England, couldn’t believe she’d taken the techniques she had
learned and tossed them in the trash with one passionate act of
aggression.
The mother of one and lover of all things metal spent those six
months away from the stage hitting the books. She learned all she
could about the mechanics of screaming, eventually discovering the
unique technique she’s been teaching to her students for more than
a decade now.
That technique, Cross said, has helped prolong the vocal cords —
and thus the careers — of some of heavy metal’s loudest men and
women. Her students include Slipknot’s Corey Taylor, Shadows Fall
frontman Brian Fair, Cradle of Filth’s Dani Filth, the Bravery’s Sam
Endicott, Thursday’s Geoff Rickly, Arch Enemy’s Angela Gossow,
Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe and Underoath’s Spencer
Chamberlain. Over the years, she’s repaired the pipes behind Every
Time I Die, God Forbid, Candiria, the Agony Scene, A Static Lullaby,
Madball, It Dies Today, H20, Bloodsimple, Ill Niño, All That
Remains, A Life Once Lost, Sick of It All and Unearth. She helped
former Killswitch Engage frontman Jesse Leach perfect his clean
vocals, and Andrew W.K.'s got her on speed dial.
said she didn’t set out on a mission to revolutionize extreme-vocal
instruction — the extreme vocalists came to her.
“It started in the mid-1990s, when the genre was smaller," she
recalled. “It started with [Hatebreed frontman] Jamey Jasta. He
never showed up for his lesson. He’d keep booking and then would
get too busy and cancel. But somehow it got out that Jamey intended to come." That word-of-mouth alone led a metal producer to call
on her.
“He brought me Jesse Leach, Ian [Keeler] from Dismay," she said.
“He tells me about a guy named Brian [Fair] from a band named
Overcast," who, these days, sings for Shadows Fall. “I was able to
help these people not lose their voices in the studio. They only
played shows on the weekends, so that wasn’t an issue. The problem was they were in the studio and couldn’t get through one song
without trashing their voices."
Word spread fast about Cross within the metal community, and she
started taking on more and more clients. “Everybody knows everybody," she said. “It’s tight-knit and I just love that.”
BEST JOB EVER:
‘EXTREME VOCALS INSTRUCTOR’
HELPS SCREAMERS PRESERVE
THEIR PIPES
You Either Have It Or You Don’t: Cross said that she’s had several students come to her wanting to master the art of screaming.
But before she can do anything, there must be talent. The majority
of her clients were born with it: Like Fair, they’re vocalists with wellestablished careers who’ve been screaming since the age of 15 but
would like to stop spitting up blood after every performance. None
of the novices, she says, have gone on to make an impact on the
scene.
continued
Others “have come to me with really clean voices and wanted to
add that heat but couldn’t because they were afraid or overly
trained," Cross said. She’s also helped artists who had been
screaming but stopped because of a vocal injury or out of fear that
they’d cause permanent damage.
“For instance, Geoff [Rickly] from Thursday had relegated all the
screaming to [keyboardist] Andrew [Everding]," she said. “He was
really pulling back. But he isn’t anymore — he’s singing, he’s
screaming, he’s out there. It’s a huge difference, because he’s completely confident knowing that he can turn, on a dime, from the
singing to the screaming."
Cross has a list of dream clients she’d love to work with — not
because they need help improving their vocal skills, but because
she’s a fan and would like to help them conserve their voices: Life
of Agony’s Keith Caputo and Mikael Åkerfeldt, frontman for Opeth.
What’s Next: Cross is putting the finishing touches on “The Zen of
Screaming 2," the sequel to “The Zen of Screaming," a DVD that
covers the fundamentals of vocal maintenance.
The second “Zen” will feature guest appearances by Rickly, Gossow,
Blythe, Chamberlain, Unearth’s Trevor Phipps, Phil Labonte from All
That Remains, God Forbid’s Byron Davis, Lou Koller of Sick of It All
and T.J. Miller, who fronts Still Remains.
“ ‘The Zen of Screaming 2’ is what everyone wanted from the first
DVD — it’s all screaming," said Cross. “Everyone needed the first
one for the basics. This second DVD will teach my technique as it
applies to screaming. Without the first DVD, we would have had all
these kids hurting themselves."
al cords."
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected]
visit www.melissacross.com for more infooo
FHM
Wednesday February 1, 2006
Circulation: 821,834
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected]
Associated
Press
featured in
MSNBC
ABC News
The Washington TImes
Jam Showbiz
Recorder & Times
Palmbeach Post
Beaufort Gazette
The Victoria Advocate
Montana Standard
The Salt Lake Gazette
The Hub
Coach Teaches
Screaming to
Rock Stars
Cross: The genre is up and coming, but I'm
not interested in the money. I'm interested in
helping these kids to not hurt themselves,
because I see that they're doing a lot of damage.
By JOHN CARUCCI
Associated Press Writer
AP: How does what you do differ from a dialogue coach?
Cross: I don't just focus on vowels and
speech production, I focus on the whole
NEW YORK (AP) -- Do rock stars really need
to learn how to scream? It's doubtful Robert
Plant needed coaching to shriek "baaaaaybeeeeey," or that Zack de la Rocha ever
needed a lesson. But regardless of natural
talent, Melissa Cross, the self-proclaimed
"Queen of Scream," has developed a training program that teaches proper technique to
a new breed of unrestrained rock singers.
Cross has a new DVD titled "The Art of the
Scream" and a client list that includes Keith
Buckley from Every Time I Die, Randy Blythe
of Lamb of God and Slipknot's Corey Taylor.
She spoke to The Associated Press about the
makings of a good screamer.
AP: Why do people have to learn how to
scream? Doesn't it come naturally?
Cross: So they don't injure their voices.
Basically, screaming is a part of a new upand-coming generation of real-life rock 'n'
rollers where passion and sincerity and reality is absolutely necessary and required. I
don't want to see them damage their vocal
cords.
Indystar.com
and over 140 publications
worldwide.
October, 2005
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected]
AP: What makes a good scream?
Cross: A good scream is when you can order
dinner afterwards, or call your mom. A good
scream is one that has a lot of overtone,
meaning that it has a lot of highs and lows in
it. It has a spectrum of frequencies that is actually pleasant to listen to. Well, that's all relative
AP: Do expletives enhance the body of a
good scream?
Cross: Expletives, if they have vowels in them,
can make a big difference. Expletives that
are full of consonants and emotion that is ill
placed (does not). In other words, a scream
should never feel like it sounds. It should
never feel angry. It should never feel aggressive.
AP: Is there much competition for the job of
Scream Teacher?
Cross: I don't know anybody else that has a
specialty. There may be somebody in the acting world that has concentrated on this. But in
terms of the musical thing, I have yet to find
someone.
AP: Is scream training lucrative?
Self-proclaimed "Queen of Scream," Melissa Cross, is photographed in New York on Oct. 11, 2005. Cross' recently released
double DVD is titled "The Art of the Scream." (AP Photo/Jim Cooper)
machine. The breath support. The vocal cord
support. You know, how it works.
AP: Who has mastered this new technique?
Cross: Corey Taylor from Slipknot is a master.
Keith Buckley from Every Time I Die.
AP: What about the classic rockers like
Robert Plant?
Cross: Robert Plant. That's a little bit different
because there was never fire in Led Zeppelin.
It always had a note to it. He never
screamed. With Robert Plant it was like, we
still have to do music, we have to do notes.
So, Robert Plant: Amazing vocalist, but he
never did fire. He did heat and he did it really well. As well as Ozzy Osbourne and
AC/DC and Bonn Scott. This kinda heat thing
has gone on for 20, 30 years.
AP: So over time, screaming has become part
of the vocalists' repertoire?
Cross: Absolutely. Like a lot of music, there's a
movement that occurs in the underground
and it's a bunch of kids uniting under the idealism that music spawns. In the '80s there
was this aggressive music because kids were
pent up, and they needed to get it out. So the
ultimate expression is to scream your guts
out.
AP: Have you ever applied your technique in
an argument?
Cross: Someone took my parking space and
I just lost it. And I started screaming, not at
her but in the car. And my throat was like
(makes a burning gesture). I stopped and
regrouped and then I got out of the car and
screamed at her the right way.
Singer&Musician
Sunday, June 12, 2005
AMNY
Monday September 12th, 2005
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected]
New York
Daily News
Thursday, October 27, 2005
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected]
When screaming hurts
Rockers risk vocal cord damage with bad form
JOEY IVANSCO/AJC STAFF
Dr. Michael Johns, director of the Emory Voice Center at Crawford Long Hospital,
treats patients with damaged vocal cords, such as the ones in the image behind
him.
By NICK MARINO
Human beings are born screamers — before we can
walk, talk or recognize our names, we can wail.
We continue screaming as we get older. We scream
when we’re frightened (like Janet Leigh in
“Psycho”) or when we really want to make a point
(like Howard Dean in the 2004 presidential
campaign). When roller coasters drop, when dreams
turn to nightmares, when hammers smash our
thumbs, we all know what to do. The sound we
make ain't pretty, but it's over in a flash — for most
of us anyway.
For hard rock singers, screaming is a way of life and
a meal ticket. It’s what crowds want and expect. On
a practical level, screaming helps vocalists rise
above blaring guitars and crashing drums. On an
expressive level, playing screamable music can help
unleash extreme emotion.
“Singing something just to please other people is
just not interesting to me,” says Corin Tucker, who
sings and screams for the post-punk trio SleaterKinney. “If it doesn't terrify them a little bit and
scare them and challenge them, then I don’t think
I’m getting the meaning across, I guess, and it’s not
as exciting to me. I could easily be a folk singer —
my voice is really like that more than anything —
but that just doesn't describe what I need to say to
the world.”
As you might expect, however, screaming can cause
problems — polyps, cysts and nodules. They’re
what develop on your vocal cords after long-term
vocal overuse. Polyps look like red blisters or soft
masses. Cysts are bags of fluid within the cords.
And nodules are like calluses. Sometimes, a single
killer scream gone awry can cause a person's cords
to bleed. That’s called a vocal hemorrhage, an
emergency that looks like someone poured ketchup
on dental floss.
Because screaming places extreme demand on a
person’s vocal cords, screamers have a much greater
risk of cord damage than singers or talkers. And so
a professional screamer — whose job is to sound
untamed — may require as much vocal training as a
sweet songbird or a polished speechmaker. Without
it, screamers risk a lack of vocal control and range,
diminished vocal power, and permanent hoarseness
as their vocal cords develop scarring.
There’s a correct way?
Enter New York voice instructor Melissa Cross and
Atlanta doctor Michael Johns, who work at
opposite ends of the vocal damage spectrum. On the
preventive end is Cross, who has spent the past
several years establishing herself as a specialist in
screaming technique.
On the rehabilitative end is Johns, who in 2003
became the first director of the Emory Voice Center,
a sleek new facility at Crawford Long Hospital.
While Cross tries to teach rock stars how to
scream correctly, Johns tries to diagnose and
rehabilitate the unfortunate folks who’ve already
damaged their voices.
Atlanta
JournalConstitution
Sunday, June 12, 2005
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected]
how to stay warmed up for a show — nothing too
insane, but, like, a bottle of cold water about a halfhour before the show. But that’s about it. That’s all I
do. I’m probably doing a lot of things wrong, but cool
people dig it.”
If he went to Cross, he would pay $150 an hour to
learn her screaming technique, which entails such
vocal training staples as breath support and placement. Although she advocates controlling vibrato (a
tremble in the voice), she essentially teaches rockers
how to use their voices the way an opera singer does
— but without sounding Wagnerian.
JOHN CLARK/SUB POP RECORDS
‘I could easily be a folk singer — my voice
is really like that more than anything —
but that just doesn’t describe what I need
to say to the world,’ says Corin Tucker
(left), who sings and screams for postpunk Sleater-Kinney with Janet Weiss
(center) and Carrie Brownstein.
“As a voice teacher,” she says today, “to me the good
scream is the one that doesn’t scrape the throat. It’s
the one with the least amount of raised larynx, offset
by movement in the diaphragm that takes away
velocity of attack on the vocal cords.”
If, however, a screamer’s poor technique attacks the
vocal cords to the point of damage, the battered
singer could end up visiting Johns at the Emory
Voice Center.
Earlier this year, in response to the growing number
of high-risk screamers in the music business, Cross
released a DVD called “The Zen of Screaming: Vocal
Instruction for a New Breed,” which she believes is
the first guide to extreme vocals. The video, which is
available online and at the screamtastic Sounds of the
Underground Tour (which comes July 12 to Atlanta),
features a crash course in screaming plus copious
testimonial from rockers like Andrew W.K., whose
promotional blurb asks prospective viewers, “Don’t
you want to be screaming like everybody’s demon?”
Even with severely damaged vocal cords, a rock ‘n’
roll screamer may only feel hoarseness, not pain —
which is part of the problem.
“People have a tendency to sort of blow off hoarseness,” he says. “They tend to think, ‘Well, maybe I
overdid it last night. If I just let it rest, it’ll be
OK.’And the reality is, it may not.”
Distinctive sound
Another reality is that hardworking bands may not get
an opportunity to rest. It’s not uncommon for bands to
tour relentlessly, all the while conducting interviews
and chatting with fans. Pipes says 3 Inches of Blood
recently did a U.S. tour with 30 dates in a row and no
days off. The vocal strain is exacerbated if the singer
smokes or drinks, which Pipes says he does.
Johns considers alcohol a no-no because it can
dehydrate the cords, and he notes that throat-numbing
lozenges and sprays can actually hurt singers because
numbed artists won't necessarily feel themselves
doing further damage.
For screaming vocalists looking for nonsurgical
means of recovery, he recommends hydration, vocal
rest and therapy or training. Of course, taking time off
for serious vocal rest might mean canceling shows —
something bands are loath to do.
The silver lining is that screaming rockers could end
up benefiting from their vocal cord abuse. Certain
artists — think Janis Joplin — have made a raspy
sound their vocal signature.
Johns says he once saw a professional singer in
Nashville who elected to surgically remove a cyst that
had developed on her cords and to keep a polyp that
they believed accounted for her career-making rasp.
The video has some surreal moments, like when the
bubbly, 40-something instructor hugs a tattooed
metalhead from behind to monitor his air intake.
Later, she requests that someone lie flat on the
ground and pretend to blow just enough air to keep
an imaginary feather afloat — an exercise it’s
hard to imagine screaming vocalists doing on
the backstage floor.
In those cases, Johns concedes, a seemingly
unwelcome growth on the vocal cords could amount
to a “million-dollar bump.”
No one ever said the music business was pretty.
A rock evolution
While it's true that pop stars have been screaming for
a half-century or more, dating back at least to
the moment Little Richard unleashed his first
lusty “wooooo,” the rock ‘n’ roll scream has
gradually evolved to piercing shrieks and guttural
death-metal growls.
Classic rock singers like Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant,
Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Judas Priest’s Rob
Halford (and Sleater-Kinney’s Tucker) are known for
relatively melodic screams, a style Cross calls
“heat.”Cross’ so-called New Breed vocalists are apt to
scream so intensely that notes sound distorted, a style
she calls "fire."
Of course, super-intense hard rock vocalists might
think screaming lessons sound oxymoronic — that is,
until they wake up one morning so hoarse that they
can't order room service.
Untrained screamers are easy to find. Take, for example, the falsetto banshee Cam Pipes, who leads the
theatrical Vancouver metal band 3 Inches of Blood.
“I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to teach
someone how to do this,” Pipes says. “I’ve never
taken any voice lessons. I’ve taken a few tips about
LESLIE KEE/SPECIAL
Voice instructor Melissa Cross has
released a DVD guide to extreme vocals.
A few tidbits about your vocal cords, courtesy of the
doctor: Healthy vocal cords are supposed to look
white and stringy. They are shaped like a V and have
straight edges. They vibrate 260 times per second
singing middle C and 1,000 times per second at a
high C. They are covered with blood vessels and a
delicate mucus membrane.
“When you scream,” he says, “it’s very traumatic
on the vocal cords because they slam together
very violently.”
On damaged vocal cords, the edges of the V start to
look misshapen or infolamed. If the damage is so bad
that a vocal hemorrhage occurs, the cords barely
vibrate. Johns says that about 25 percent of his
patients have problems with voice overuse
and misuse.
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected]
THE QUEEN OF THE
PRIMAL SCREAMS
Chicago
Sun-Times
BY THOMAS CONNER Staff Reporter
March 2nd, 2006
The black-clad, tattooed viking of a singer stomps around the stage with a
microphone clenched against his spittle-spewing lips. Calling this guy a
“singer," you realize, is generous, a job title not quite accurate to the duty he
performs, which is more shrieking, roaring, growling and screaming. And
whether you respect the catharsis of these “death metal” bands or shake your
graying locks at these kids today, you ask the same question: How does that
guy do that night after night and not completely shred his vocal chords?
One woman has the answer -- a short, cheery red-headed PTA mom in suburban New York. Her name is Melissa Cross, but you can call her the Scream
Queen.
“I am not your mother," she says by way of introduction on her new DVD “The
Zen of Screaming: Vocal Instruction for a New Breed," though she is parent to
a 5-year-old boy. “He certainly knows how to scream," she added during a
recent phone interview from her home. “He’s imitating me all the time."
Cross, 48, is not a physician, but she’s the Dr. Feelgood for the latest wave of
hard-core bands tagged with such descriptors as “death metal," “death grunt,"
“grindcore” or “doom rock." She coaches these young men -- they’re almost
always male, though she just picked up a girl from the band Arch Enemy -on how to communicate their passion without destroying their voices.
“They were getting hurt," she says of the bands she saw screaming their lungs
out onstage, “and as the genre became more popular and these kids were
getting picked up by major labels, I was suddenly the only voice teacher that
tolerated them."
High-profile clients
Those major labels sought to protect their investments, so they put Cross on
speed-dial. She now has a client roster that looks like the soundtrack to the
latest big-budget horror franchise, performers such as Andrew W.K. and former Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur, and bands such as Lamb of God,
Shadows Fall, Thursday, Killswitch Engage, the Agony Scene and Sick of It All.
Many of these singers give testimonials in “The Zen of Screaming” (now in
stores from, appropriately, Loud Mouth). One confesses, “We’re no
Pavarottis."
Corey Taylor isn’t, either. But his band, Slipknot, just won the Grammy for best
metal performance. Taylor trained with Cross last year.
Learns to warm up
“It was such a revelation," he said of Cross’ vocal techniques. “It’s all about
movement, warming up the muscles as well as the voice. A lot of times you go
out onstage and you haven’t done anything with your body, so even if you
have a voice that night it just feels dead. Practicing all this stuff all together
before I go out lets me hit the stage with everything, ready to go."
Taylor told of an earlier vocal injury, which he suffered after screaming too
hard onstage. One of his vocal chords swelled; the injury looked more serious
than it was, and for a time Taylor feared his meteoric rock career would end
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected]
prematurely.
“I would just scream and get the craziest sound I could to vent the
emotion. It was destroying my voice," he said. “I’ve lost a lot of
range from doing that, actually. It kind of bums me out."
A second “Zen of Screaming” instructional video is already in the
works. This first installment, oddly enough, contains little actual
screaming; Cross promises the sequel will have more. After that, it’s
“The Zen of Speaking” -- tips for “stock traders, aerobic leaders,
tour guides, anyone who has to speak loudly for a living."
Cross led her own punk band while training in Shakespearean theater and opera at school in England; she even opened for Black
Flag and X. But when she got back to the States, a friend began
introducing her to many of the new hard-core bands he was producing as the styles emerged in the mid-'80s. By 1990, she was
teaching classical voice full time.
But the rockers kept asking her questions about technique. She
decided to turn her infoormal lessons into something bigger.
Word of mouth
“I had the education to deal with it, so I took them on. They ultimately became well-known -- one called Overcast, one became
Shadows Fall, another one went to All That Remains. I had Killswitch
Engage back then. One client was from Hatebreed, and he never
showed up to his lesson. But he told a bunch of people he was coming, and word got around."
Cross has the definition of a sunny disposition. Rosy cheeks, fair
skin, and she has lots of tapestries and crafty things lying around.
Into her cozy studio walk these hulking tattooed guys.
“Ironically, most of the kids are very soft-spoken and, I would say,
repressed," she said. “That’s why they do what they do. They’re up
there screaming because they have to. Their lives are so messed up,
and they need the release. Most of them are very humble, polite
and idealistic -- not the monsters they play onstage."
They come to the Cross studio not so much for technical training but
for behavior modification. The key, she said, is to teach them how
to channel their emotion -- which is the key in these genres -through different physical processes.
“There’s always a light bulb moment," she said. “I see it every day.
It’s a change in the imagery, the ability to divorce the emotional
aspect out of the throat. It’s like an acting gig: You feel something,
but you have the control not to let it permeate the muscles you need
to do the work and make the sound. You dissociate somewhat. You
feel anger and passion, but you don’t make it feel like it sounds. So
you can still be in the moment but utterly in control of your instrument."
The passion is what draws her to this music, anyway.
Enjoys passion, power
“I like any music that has integrity. I’m not exclusively a fan of this
stuff. I like opera and Beethoven and the Bulgarian Women’s Choir.
What I really like is the honesty of a performance. This music is full
of it. It’s theatrical, Shakespearean. At Shakespeare plays they used
to throw blood and guts from the stage. It’s reality TV onstage. But
it can only move you if the performers have what they need to perform
-over
and
over
and
over.
No
artistic voice deserves to be silenced just because they felt things too
strongly."
Melissa Cross reveals her secrets for helping
singers who abuse their voices onstage in her new
DVD “The Zen of Screaming."
EARTHY TONES
In the video “The Zen of Screaming: Vocal
Instruction for a New Breed," voice coach Melissa
Cross knows how to speak to her young rock ‘n’
roll audience. A sample of some of her vocal techniques, which probably aren’t in the conservatory
curriculum:
THE STRAPLESS BRA
In explaining how to expand the rib cage for maximum air supply while singing, Cross tells a female
student about the “Strapless Bra” posture. “You
know, if you have one on that’s too big, and you
have to expand your diaphragm to hold it on while
you rush to the bathroom?" Strike that pose.
‘ABOVE THE PENCIL’
Cross places an ordinary pencil between the teeth
of her students, teaching them the difference
between projecting the voice seemingly over it and
under it. Over it is the goal, and the difference is
clarion.
THE DUMP
Or “the brown note," a colorful term for the flexing
of a certain group of muscles also employed during, er, gastric evacuation. Is that diplomatic
enough?
HHHH
MELISSA CROSS / ANDREW W.K
ZEN OF SCREAMING [DVD}
Label: LOUD MOUTH
Submitted: 12/12/2005
Reviewer: Alan Sargeant
www: http://www.melissacross.com
CRUD
MAGAZINE
December 12, 2005
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected]
‘Don’t open your mouth ‘till you’ve seen this DVD’ boasts the cover.
You might also want to add, ‘Don’t open the box until you’ve read
this review’.
Self-styled ‘Queen Of Scream’ Melissa Cross is a sincere enough
lady. Whether she’s talking about taking a dump or singing over the
pencil, this feisty, flame-haired rock siren really does have your best
interests at heart. You see; there’s a way to scream and a way not to
scream and this hansom DVD/CD combination pack offers a comprehensive and accessible 2 hours or so of instruction on HOW to
scream without shredding your vocal chords; handy if you’re trying to
order a take-out on the phone directly after a gig and want to get
exactly what you ordered and without being accused of making nuisance phone calls. The layout is simple enough; a series of easy to
follow lessons and step by step exercises. And the whole thing is ably
supported by a charismatic cast featuring Andrew W.K, Lamb of
God's D. Randall Blythe, Shadows Fall's Brian Fair, Every Time I Die's
Keith Buckley, God Forbid's Byron Davis and erudite pleasure-puss,
Melissa Auf der Maur; each offering candid interviews and moments
of true perspiration. Also included is an Audio CD & Booklet with a
clearly itemized vocal training program for each range covered by
Melissa.
For those hoping for a salacious and titillating rock documentary, this
may be something you wish to avoid. But for those looking for some
kind of pain relief, musical enlightenment, tool maintenance, something surreal and ever so slightly absurd, then grab one for yourself
and as well for your croaky old band mates.
Who needs Strepsils when you’ve got Melissa?
The Boston Globe
December 18th, 2005
THE SCREAM
OF THE CROP
In a new DVD, a voice coach teaches
heavy metal stars the art of roaring
By James Parker, Globe Correspondent
The origin of the ''tortured throat scream" or ''angry hell voice" is
as hotly contested as anything else in the history of heavy metal.
Does it derive from the ''death grunt" -- the subhuman ultra-lowfrequency belch developed by Florida bands such as Death and
Morbid Angel in the mid-'80s? Or is it an importation from
hardcore punk, whose unskilled ragings were funneled into
metal by Metallica, Slayer, and their brethren?
On these matters there will never be tribal accord.
What is beyond dispute is that the scream is now part of metal's
official language. For the modern metal vocalist, the ability to
scream like a fiend night after night is just part of the job. And
Wednesday
2006
so we come February
to ''The Zen 1,
of Screaming"
(Loudmouth), an instructional
DVD
for
''extreme
singers"
presented
by voice coach
Circulation: 821,834
Melissa Cross. Her clients are the cream of the scream scene:
Lamb of God, God Forbid, Shadows Fall, All That Remains . . .
Even the maverick Andrew W.K., whose thunderous party music
sounds like ''Bohemian Rhapsody" performed by British skinheads, is a devoted follower of Cross.
''Don't you want to be the best you can possibly be?!" he roars at
the camera. ''Wouldn't you do whatever you possibly could to
improve your voice, to improve your screaming?!"
Testimonials from satisfied customers are an important part of
this product: Intercut with the lessons are a series of gruff
encomiums (''She's a genius, man . . . a vocal genius") from
today's hardest-working screamers, worn out and wild-eyed
young men, greasy with road-funk, filmed backstage or on the
tour bus or -- in the case of Mike Ski from the A.K.A.'s -hunched in a small padded van. You can smell the sweat.
In 50 years, students of metal will be able to watch ''The Zen of
Screaming" for a precise understanding of the currently prevailing conditions.
''You have to have control of your pipes at all times," glowers
God Forbid vocalist Byron Davis, '''cause that's your livelihood,
and if you don't, it's gonna show. Doin' this [expletive] every day,
playin' shows every day, if your technique is wack, you're not
gonna have the endurance."
''For a long time," Ian Christe, author of ''Sound of the Beast: The
Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal," says via email, ''screams were a generational thing that split the newer
bands from the old-timers like Dio or Judas Priest who sounded
like opera singers."
Opera is not the word that would be invoked to describe today's
screamers. Indeed, on the DVD, Freddy Cricien of New York's
Madball declares, ''We're no Pavarottis," with a mix of defiance
and rue. (The meekness of the huge-armed Cricien before the
petite Cross is one of the DVD's highlights.) But contained within
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected]
the scream is an ideal of total expression, total authenticity, that
comes more from punk rock and hardcore than from metal.
Pantera's bazooka-throated Philip Anselmo, who in the '90s took
the scream out from the underground and into stadiums, was
more often compared with Black Flag-era Henry Rollins than he
was to the breast beaters of the old school. Heavy metal had
changed: The singer's job was no longer to raise the rippling
flag of his voice over a war-torn medieval landscape, like Iron
Maiden's Bruce Dickinson, but to tell you extremely urgent things
about himself, his mind, his pressing need to beat you up.
And yet the scream has its own virtuosity: Anselmo's remains the
gold standard, a flayed roar, almost chordal at moments, in
which words are somehow distinctly enunciated and melodies
carried. In the Anselmo-scream, the metalhead's urge to disappear into the textures of his music, to be consumed with heaviness until all he can do is belch pure noise, met the bark of
hardcore's self-affirmation cult.
All of this is present in Cross's pupils, and she -- a small, redhaired woman dressed in flower-patterned silks -- seems to
understand the tradition that she is working in. She has grasped
that the primary interest of the screamers is not technique but its
absence. So she bases her teaching method not on the application of lessons, but on the removal of barriers.
''I'm not your mother," she warns, ''and I don't have a bunch of
rules about singing and screaming. . . . What I've got for you is
a way to be in the moment with your voice."
Singing is singing, of course, and even the gruffest metalhead
must warm up his pipes with an exercise called French Doorbell.
Still, Cross's emphasis is on ''being who you are."
To this end, she has evolved her own jargon. Students are
encouraged to sing ''above the pencil," with an imaginary pencil
in the mouth, using the bones of the face and skull as a reverb
chamber. (Randall Blythe, of Lamb of God, complains that a
humming exercise is making his ears itch. ''That's good!" says
Cross.) She teaches them the ''by-the-way" breath, a quick sip of
air (as opposed to a huge, drawling gasp) to keep the lungs -those bellows of metal fire -- topped up.
She also distinguishes between ''heat," which is putting ''a bit of a
crunch" on a note, and ''fire," which is the shaggy, atonal blurt
much used by, say, Slipknot. And when necessary, she deploys
common sense: ''If you're hoarse, you need to shut up." For the
screamers, it seems to work like a charm. ''Ever since she told
me how to do it right," testifies Phil Labonte from All That
Remains, ''I haven't lost my voice ever."
So now they can do it night after night -- but how long will their
services be required? Might we soon tire of the scream? Albert
Mudrian, author of ''Choosing Death: The Improbable History of
Death Metal and Grindcore" and editor in chief of Decibel magazine, has detected the beginnings of scream-assimilation.
''Across the board," says Mudrian, ''there's a lot more screaming
than there used to be. The interesting thing is that you can now
hear it in pop songs. It's fairly common -- in half of the verse, or
the bridge, there'll be some dude just lettin' it rip! So the scream
has permeated the culture to that extent."
The wheel turns, and the vast natural cycle of heavy metal
throws up its phenomena. A return to more overtly ''technical"
singing may be overdue: Look for ''The Zen of Long, High Notes"
somewhere around 2008.
The Boston Herald
December 26th, 2006
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected]
VICE
Volume 12 #3, 2005
Punknews
December 2nd, 2005
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected]
Melissa Cross is a vocal coach, but she is not showing her students how to
crack glasses or generate endless vibrato. Instead, Melissa caters to the
crowd that wants to scream their lungs out. Over the course of The Zen of
Screaming, Melissa goes through plenty of simple exercises that seem less
about becoming a better vocalist, and more about controlling what you
already have. Melissa teaches how metal and hardcore singers can keep
from damaging their vocal cords or consistently losing their voices.
Her lessons are interspersed with first-hand commentary from singers such
as Brian Fair of Shadows Fall, Keith Buckley of Every Time I Die, Phil
Labonte of All That Remains, Andrew W.K. and Thursday keyboardist
Andrew Everding. You quickly learn why these guys keep coming back to
Melissa; she makes them comfortable, is not overly technical, and is not
attempting to make them into traditional singers.
If you are not looking to become a front-man anytime soon, this DVD will
probably bore you. There is not much infoo on Melissa herself, and only a
few seconds of live footage. The bonus features are merely medical
footage of vocal cords, and more commentary from clients labeled as
“bloopers” and “what they are saying.”
Still, if you would like some instruction, and a practice CD without having
to shell out a ton of dough for lessons, or you just want to see Freddy
from Madball doing vocal warm-ups, then I’d suggest checking this out.
THE HARVARD
INDEPENDENT
December 8th, 2005
By Ben RichardsonMedia Credit: Ilian Penev, Girlie Action
In her new DVD The Zen of Screaming: Vocal Instruction for a
New Breed, Melissa Cross, a classically trained actress and
opera singer turned voice coach, guides aspiring vocalists
through a series of exercises designed to increase the facemelting intensity of their onstage excoriations. Cross describes
and demonstrates - with the exuberance of your favorite
elementary-school art teacher - an extensive repertoire of
vocal techniques that seamlessly combine classical wisdom,
new-age philosophy, and her own personal innovations.
Breathing techniques are tagged with charming nicknames
that make it easy to remember their intended effect: "Strapless
Bra" breathing mimics the specific pulmonary manipulations
required to keep a too-large strapless bra from falling down,
and "Dump" breathing…well, I'll give you three guesses. Levity
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected]
reasonably be assumed, could not have existed
fifteen or even ten years ago?
What created the market for the DVD was actually the
damage that was done to the vocal cords by artists who were
making a living producing the screams. Once the
underground movement of metal became a commercial
venture, these artists were required to show up and scream on
a regular basis, and it was impossible to do it without some
help. Primarily because, to do it correctly, you have to disassociate the emotion from your body. If, to scream, you use the
tension that you ordinarily would feel if you were actually
angry, or feeling, shall we say, "murderous," you use tension
that causes too much velocity on the vocal folds, which will
lead to swelling and hoarseness. I tell my students, "You must
never throw the plate," and what that means is if your
A METHOD TO THE MADNESS OF
MUSICAL SCREAMING
Screaming expert teaches heavy metal to sing its heart out - without losing its voice.
notwithstanding, Cross's approach seems to do the trick: the
DVD abounds with testimonials from her better-known clients,
all of whom praise her effusively for enhancing the potency of
their bellows without destroying their ability to speak. Aspiring
screamers, vocal-cord fetishists, and anyone who would like to
see heavily pierced and tattooed metal singers doing jumping
jacks: this Zen's for you. What follows are excerpts from a
telephone conversation between the Independent and Cross in
her New York City studio.
Most of the readers of this interview will be Harvard
students, and therefore their musical taste will have
an extremely predictable (if not extremely limited)
scope. Could you describe the appeal of bands that
feature screaming in a way that would make these
narrow-minded Ivy Leaguers interested?
I think I would put it in a more aesthetic sort of sociological
context. In this age of reality TV and video games and kids
living the way that they live - these are kids younger than
Harvard students - it's no longer good enough to be sad in a
beautiful way or angry in a beautiful way. In other words,
there's no point in contriving anything anymore. If it's not real,
and not straight-to-the-bone reality, it doesn't fly. There's a
hardcore realism emerging in art in general and in
performing arts in particular that's the expression of some very
upset adolescents.
What do you make of the rapidly increasing success of
these bands that feature almost no "clean" singing?
What created the market for your DVD, which, it can
grandmother passes down an heirloom, a very expensive
plate, and you put it on a shelf in your room, and then later
you trash the room, you throw everything except for that plate
- you just don't go there.
What implications does the popularity of screamdriven music have for the future of the rock vocalist?
Will the screaming grow inexorably more intense or
more pervasive, or are we to expect a dulcet-throated backlash sometime in the future?
I think there will be a backlash if there's too much of a glut of
the "scream thing." Like anything, if there's a glut, there's going
to be a backlash, but I think that ultimately the screaming thing
is going to evolve into melodic singing and the melodic
singing is going to evolve into screaming, so there's going
to a be a mixture, a kind of "anything goes" situation. The
operative thing is that you cannot be contrived, you cannot
make it sound like you are singing, because that immediately
dates it; as soon as you sound like you're making something
artful, or attractive, or self-conscious in any way, like, "Look at
me sing," "Look at me do this," that doesn't fly anymore. It
doesn't work. It's so against the ethics of this musical subculture to be parading around acting cool. You have to be real.
You have to be violently real.
Some bands feature singers who switch off between
singing and screaming, often in the same song or
even in the same line of a song. Do you approach
these students differently?
I try to teach all my students to be able to switch back and forth
- that's my desired goal: to teach them an alternative to the
kind of "good cop, bad cop" vocals which involve switching
very artificially between singing and screaming. I believe their
singing should have much more dynamic and much more
textured and much more interesting changes within a fiveminute period. I like to teach them that variety, and I think I did
a very good job of this with Keith Buckley of Every Time I Die.
Corey Taylor, from Slipknot, has always been very good at this.
He already had it down when he came to me.
Do you think the artifice that you enable singers to
employ somehow inevitably lessens the emotional
intensity of their screams, even if they avoid sounding
"contrived"? You've been quoted as saying that you try
to "bridge the gap between 'good' technique and 'real'
technique," but don't you think the appeal of the
original screamers was that their approach required
no "technique" at all?
The sound of that lack of control is not pleasant. It was a novelty when it got going in the early '80s, because no one else
was doing it, but now the genre has had to move up. If there's
too much tension going on in the throat, it doesn't sound
good, and it doesn't translate well to recordings. You simply
cannot survive a tour screaming without any technique.
Before, when it was an underground thing, these kids were
doing it once or twice a week. Now we have Ozzfest and
Warped Tour, and these vocalists have to scream night after
night. They can't do it without some kind of understanding of
technique. Regardless of whether it takes the "reality" out of the
screams, it's a necessary evil.
I was surprised when watching your DVD by how
many of the techniques on it could apply to any kind
of singing, in any kind of musical genre, or really any
context in which the use of the voice is involved.
The only way that I could have any credibility with these
vocalists was to couch the teaching I provide in terms of
"screaming" instruction, even though the lessons could help
anyone. These guys weren't going to show up for a vocal lesson from someone who is teaching her other students how to
sing Tosca, or even how to sing a Kelly Clarkson song. These
guys are very purist. But I have all kinds of students. I have
clients who work the trading floor on Wall Street. I've had people with lisps, I've had stutterers, and I'm not a licensed speech
pathologist, but I am an imaginative teacher, so often people
will bring me clients who don't respond to more conservative
kinds of speech therapy; I'm such a wack-job that I make it fun.
I've even taught kids how to prepare for their bar mitzvah. This
kid's voice is just [makes surprisingly accurate adolescent-boy
voice-cracking noises], and he was just terrorized by his voice
changing. We worked with the Torah, and I'm not even Jewish!
I don't even speak Hebrew, but we did it, and his bar mitzvah
was rockin'!
former voice clients, in this universe, are now your
actors. Which plays do you pick for the coming year,
and who among your actors do you cast in the title
roles?
Wow! That's the best question that anyone has ever asked me!
Well, let's see…I'm going to take Randy Blythe [from Lamb of
God] and put him as Macbeth. I'm going to put Bob Meadows
of A Life Once Lost as Hamlet, and Keith Buckley [from Every
Time I Die] as his understudy. Keith's an existential dude - he's
reluctant, and he's anxious. Corey Taylor [from Slipknot] would
be great in The Taming of the Shrew.
How about Andrew W.K. ?
Wow. Now that's a very interesting person. That guy's a genius.
Let's see…he is mighty…he is so righteous and so mighty, but
also very, very controlled, and moral. Andrew is so upstanding. I don't even know if Shakespeare wrote an Andrew W.K.
He's one of the most intelligent people I've ever met. I'll have
to call you back on this one. [She later does, after having
decided that Andrew would best be suited for the part of
Prometheus, in Greek tragedy.]
Moving from theology to thespianism: as a student of
Shakespearean acting, imagine this. Suddenly you
awake in an alternate universe. You are no longer a
successful voice coach but instead the head of a
renowned Shakespearean theater company; all your
Music Details
Who / What:
Melissa Cross
Music Genre:
Rock & Pop
“Rooowwwrrraaaarrrrrooowwwwrrrrr!” A guttural growl straight from
the deepest pits of Hell has just emanated from the throat of Melissa
Cross, who follows it up with a giggle.
"See, that didn't hurt at all," she says. "But you should see the looks I
just got!"
PHOENIX
NEWS TIMES
Februarry 2st, 2006
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected]
That's because the chipper, red-tressed, late-fortysomething voice
instructor is screaming — er, speaking — via cell phone from a train
between her native Manhattan and Long Island. She's trying to illustrate that there's a right way and a wrong way to howl, a lesson she
attempts to impart to the dozens of extreme metalcore, screamo, punk
and hard-rock singers who come to her studio looking for ways to
bellow bloody murder without shredding their vocal cords.
Trained in London as a classical singer, Cross was drawn to punk rock
in the late ‘70s and began fronting a string of bands, opening for the
likes of Black Flag and the Circle Jerks. In the mid-’90s, a friend in
Connecticut who was producing a number of underground metal acts
implored Cross to teach her pioneering techniques to some of the
singers he was working with who were destroying their larynxes.
Hatebreed's Jamey Jasta was slated to be her first student. He didn't
show up, but once word got out that Cross was the guru of growling,
members of Slipknot, Sick of It All, Thursday, Shadows Fall and even
Andrew W.K. and Melissa Auf der Maur eventually showed up at her
door.
Cross is one of a small handful of vocal coaches in America working
with this kind of clientele, and by far the most prominent and soughtafter. “In the beginning I was a little frightened," she admits with a
laugh. “I felt like a little old high school teacher around a bunch of
hoodlums, and I thought they were gonna make fun of me, but it was
never like that. They're absolutely the nicest guys I’ve ever met —
they're pussycats.”
Her myriad vocal and breathing techniques (which bear names like
“The Dump,” “Strapless Bra” and “Over the Pencil”) appear on her
new, self-produced DVD, The Zen of Screaming, which is entertaining
as hell, especially if you wanna see the burly dudes from the hardcore
band Madball doing “Eee-e-e-e-yah” warmups while seated alongside the piano, or Lamb of God singer Randy Blythe doing tongue
exercises that might make any potential groupie wriggle with excitement.
“Most of her clients are roughneck, tattooed metalcore dudes like
me," says Blythe, who began working with Cross two years ago to
expand his range and protect a scream he once figured was indestructible. "But she has this very nurturing thing that sets you at ease.”
“Some of them walk in and they're kinda scared, because they’re
afraid I'm gonna be a stuffy voice teacher that's gonna tell them not to
do what they're doing or to get rid of their vices," Cross says. "But I'm
not a Nazi about their lifestyle. I don't care what they drink, eat,
smoke, whatever. I say, 'You wanna scream? Here's how you do it.'"
Opinion Journal
Wall Street Journal
February 2nd, 2006
The term is considered derogatory by some
metal fans, but it’s an apt description.
Issued like machine-gun fire, death-metal
vocals are low, guttural and aggressive,
with no subtlety, no melody and very little
modulation. But unlike the garbled sound
emanating from the lovable and occasionally frenetic Cookie Monster, death-metal
vocals seem to come from a dark spot in a
troubled soul, as if they were the narrator’s
voice on a tour of Dante’s seventh circle of
hell. Cute and funny they ain’t.
It’s not easy to determine where and how
Cookie Monster singing actually began.
Early death-metal bands such as Death
and Morbid Angel that emerged from
Florida in the mid-’80s helped create the musical template that characterized the blasting sound as well
as that of its Satan- and occultobsessed sibling, black metal: fast,
relentless drumming often featuring
two bass drums; grinding, rapid-fire
chording on guitars; squealing guitar solos; muted electric bass; unexpected sudden tempo changes; and
a sense of theatricality that’s
inevitably threatening--”a horror
film put to music” is how Monte
Conner, a vice president at
Roadrunner Records, sees it.
But while the vocals in early death metal
are low, raspy and aggressive, not unlike
the vocals by, say, Lemmy Kilmister of
Motörhead, that extreme degree of
Cookieness is missing.
To be a true Cookie Monster vocal, said Mr.
Conner, who signed some of the subgenre’s biggest bands, including Sepultura
and Fear Factory, “it’s got to be really, really guttural. It should sound like they’re gargling glass.”
Nic Bullen of Napalm Death can sound
remarkably like the Cookie Monster; his
performance on the band’s 1987 debut
“Scum” (Earache)--which contains 28
songs, 11 of which are under one minute
in length, including “You Suffer,” which
clocks in at less than two seconds--is a virtual Cookie Monster tribute. Frank Mullen
of Suffocation, whose 1991 album “Effigy
of the Forgotten” (Roadrunner) is considered a model of death-metal music,
sounds like an especially malevolent
Cookie Monster.
The term also signifies a level of incompre-
hensibility of the lyrics, which in most cases
is absolute. Given the subject matter, that’s
probably for the best. Carcass, a band featuring vocalist Jeff Walker, sings in graphic
detail of disembowelment and the
mechanics of the autopsy. Bloody annihilation is another popular theme among the
groups. For most death-metal bands, the
gorier the better, and few gruesome details
are spared.
“If you want to make music that’s terrifying,
you have to sing about ripping people’s
heads off,” Mr. Conner of Roadrunner
Records told me. “Singing about puppies
and kittens isn’t too cool.”
Death-metal singing takes a toll on vocalists, according to Ms. Gussow, who joined
Arch Enemy in 2001. She says that despite
the characteristic rock-salt-and-razors
growl, the sound doesn’t originate in the
throat. It gets pushed up from the
abdomen.
“If you use the right abdomen muscles, you
get a lot of power,” she says. “It’s a primal
form of vocalizing, but it’s also a very controlled style of singing. You can get weak if
you don’t have muscle power.”
She does vocal exercises to keep fit, some
of which she learned from Melissa Cross, a
New York-based voice teacher whose
instructional DVD “The Zen of Screaming”
is a favorite of extreme vocalists.
“We’re on tour, sometimes, for 2 1/2
months,” the German-born Ms. Gussow
said. “I can’t miss even a day.”
Mr. Oz agrees that making Cookie Monster
sounds is an arduous occupation. “I never
trained for it and I blew my pipes out,” he
told me. “It’s completely unnatural, an
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected]
explosion of force that comes from the
belly through the throat. I would do a day
of it and my normal voice would be a half
an octave lower.” (During our conversation, Mr. Oz demonstrated the Cookie
Monster voice. The sudden force was startling and the volume so loud, I had to pull
the phone from my ear.)
Alas, the Cookie Monster school of death
metal is dying, says Mr. Conner. In the late
‘80s, popular death-metal bands like
Sepultura, Obituary and Deicide sold
about 100,000 CDs, not a bad total for
bands on the musical fringe. Today’s
bands that play only old-school death
metal are lucky to sell 15% to
20% of that figure. “I stopped
signing death-metal bands in
‘93 or ‘94,” Mr. Conner told me.
“The glory days have long ago
passed.”
Part of the reason is a reaction to
a natural instinct among pop
musicians: a desire to expand
the audience. Death-metal pioneers Entombed now leapfrog
between the sound of their classic ‘89 album “Left Hand Path”
(Earache) and more traditional
heavy metal. Fear Factory’s
singer Burton C. Bell modified his Cookie
Monster vocals that were prominent on the
band’s early work in time for its ‘99 release
“Obsolete” (Roadrunner), which incorporates melodic or “clean” vocals, rap and
metal singing without the Cookie Monster
edge. The lyrics, clearly decipherable, tell
the story of the war between man and
machines. “Obsolete” sold more than
500,000 copies, significantly more than
any of the band’s previous albums.
Led by 20-year-old vocalist Matthew K.
Heafy, who counts Metallica and Pantera
as major infoluences, Trivium also blends
almost-Cookie Monster guttural singing
with melodic vocals. The music of the
Orlando, Fla.-based group echoes classic
death metal, but has elements of other
heavy-metal schools. Mr. Heafy says: “I
can’t even do Cookie Monster vocals. It’s
kind of a limited style. You can convey
much more emotion with other types of
singing.”
Mr. Fusilli, a novelist and critic, covers rock
and pop music for the Journal.
“
W
hen people ask me what style of singing I teach, I say,
‘Anything passionate’”.
Melissa Cross talks a lot about emotion and letting things happen naturally - about avoiding contrivance at all cost. So it
should come as no surprise that what brought NYC’s most forward - thinking voice teacher to her profession was not a conscious decision, but the same path that led to the development
of her innovative technique: personal experience.
The journey began when Melissa made a
move from years of traditional
them to speech - and then, again, apply them back to music.”
At first, Melissa kept the technique to herself. In fact, it inspired
her to quit her day job (working for major record companies
and entertainment law practices) and follow her heart, even if
it meant playing the street. Which is actually where her talent
was first appreciated - not only by those interested in recording
her as a performing musician, but by other artists
interested in learning from her. A singer was so impressed after
hearing Melissa in a club that she became her first client.
That she went on to become so ‘in-demand’ as a vocal
teacher for major label artists as well as on-therise stars requires little explanation. The simple
truth is Melissa's vocal technique is unique
and it works. “My frustration with having
MELISSA
CROSSthezenofscreaming
music study at the prestigious
Interlochen Arts Academy and the
Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in
England to a career as a performing
rock artist. All the years of perfecting her
voice through classical training suddenly
made little sense.“My voice lessons had absolutely no
context in rock,” she remembers. “They had no relevance to
anything I was doing. I was basically screaming and throwing
technique out the window to get a sound that felt real to me.”
It was only through a long process of figuring out how to really deliver those raw, heartfelt rock vocals without holding anything back - and without damaging her voice - that Melissa
Cross discovered the technique that she teaches her
students today. “I found the missing link between rock and
classical vocal training,” she reveals. “I was able to extract
the essential aspects of classical technique, apply
learned in a very ‘contrived’ way and not
finding this helpful to what I was doing
allowed me to build the bridge between good
technique and real technique,” she explains.
“They need to be the same.”
Melissa is more than thrilled at the way things have worked out.
“I love my job and I love teaching vocalists with a passion for
the cutting edge, for the rebelliousness of letting it all go.
But I respect the importance of control in getting across that
passion without sounding contrived. I know what it’s like t
o want to be the best that you can be, and I see
personal transformations. And pure joy when my
students are doing it well and doing it straight from the heart.
It’s a great thing.”
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
[email protected] visit www.melissacross.com for more infooo
Melissa Cross is vocal coach who holds the monopoly
on an odd niche. Singers from bands like Lamb of
God, H2O, and Every Time I Die come to her with their
voices in tatters, ready to learn the proper way to
scream without damaging their valuable vocal equipment. Though with her rosy, apple-shaped cheeks and
shock of curly red hair, she might sooner remind you
of a favorite quirky aunt than a healer of the hardcore
set, screaming coach to the stars.
I recently visited Cross in her studio to get a real-live
taste of her tricks. I had already encountered Cross’s
teaching onscreen, on her newly released DVD, The
Zen of Screaming: Vocal Instruction for a New Breed,
which brings her sanguine face into the home of any
would-be screamer. Part prolonged voice lesson, part
homage to Cross by her devoted students, the DVD is
comprised of lessons interspersed with the earnest testimonials of dozens of grateful, long-haired rockers —
confessions of their past vocal sins and florid expressions of thanks to Cross for helping them change their
(meant to evoke the feeling of expanding one's middle
to hold in air) and “the ‘T’" (we'll leave the origins of
this term to the imagination, but let's just say it involves
the activation of certain crucial muscles in the nether
regions). The alternate terms for boys are “rotunda”
and “the dump” (actually a term, Cross tells me, borrowed from the master Luciano Pavaratti himself, and
means exactly what you'd think).
Although much of Cross's teaching repertoire overlaps
with the basics of conventional vocal training — the
development of a strong breathing technique based on
exercises designed to strengthen the diaphragm —
there is something fundamentally intuitive, unscientific,
and inexplicable about screaming. This is why, I suspect, Cross uses so many images in her lessons. A
unity of image and action must take place; you think
rainbow and you produce an arching, colorful sound.
And like anything that is intuitive, it takes a lot of practice to be a really good screamer. Cross may be friendly, but she is tough. Her students must repeat her exer-
lives. For her followers, Cross may be as much of a
therapist and a life coach as she is a vocal coach. As
it turns out, the now Zen-like Cross was a punk/hardcore singer herself beginning in London in the '70s
right through the glittery New York '80s. Having been
through the grist-mill of extreme performing, Cross is
very familiar with the hardcore lifestyle and its unfortunate side-effects; she badly damaged her voice on the
performing circuit, and developed her vocal technique
as an attempt to heal her own injury.
During the course of my screaming lesson with Cross,
I began to understand why her work is so meaningful
to her students. She stops at nothing to communicate
an idea, gesticulating and metaphor-making wildly
until the screamer finally gets it. Like most seasoned
teachers, she has a routine that is tried-and-true, stock
phrases and images that encapsulate the meeting
point between an abstract concept and a concrete
series of actions.
cises over and over again so that the difficult task of
opening their throats, pushing out their diaphragms,
and singing from somewhere deep inside becomes a
second nature.
“I really believe in what these guys are trying to do,”
Cross says, explaining that today's hardcore scene
reminds her of when she was growing up in the '60s
when there was a lot of unity, a lot of common outrage. “This kind of music is passionate. These guys
have a disdain for artifice. It's all about being raw,
being real," she says. I wondered how her students
respond to learning vocal technique that involves rigidity, repetitiveness, and form. Cross is conscious that
many of her students approach her warily, afraid that
she will change their sound. What she is trying to do is
to help them scream with the most strength and the
least amount of damage to the voice as possible. The
hope is that in the end they'll sound more like themselves than less.
Healthy screaming happens at the intersection
between cold, hard technique and heartfelt passion,
inward control and outward release. Cross takes the
weakened screams of rockers, and perfects them so
that they are better able to communicate a deep sense
of soul and outrage. Under her tutelege, hardcore
music is elevated to a high, but very earthly, art.
Over the pencil” is the most basic of these coinages,
an image/technique designed to help the student project the voice from the cavernous, vibrating space in the
top of her head. She asks the student to hold a pencil
between her teeth and try to make the correct, vibrant
sound. There is also (for girls) the “strapless bra”
NYLON
meg,n20s06
Sprin
E
V
I
T
A
N
R
E
T
L
A
S
S
E
R
P
006
April, 2
YRB
6
61, 200
Issue #
GIANT
2006
March,
Febr
aur y
/Ma
rch,
2006
BUST
Marc
h, 20
06
BLEN
DER
Febr
uar y,
2006
SPIN
VENUS
March, 2006
Y
N
t
u
o
e
Tim
5
, 200
0
3
v, 24
0, No
3
5
Issue
Contact Information
ph. (212) 736-3789 fax. (212) 868-0522
email- [email protected]
visit www.melissacross.com for more info
THE ZEN OF SCREAMING
In the early ‘90s, a passionate and unrestrained new breed of rock singers began a journey to the extreme limits of the human voice. Heeding the call
of this army of screaming warriors, forward-thinking vocal coach MELISSA CROSS developed a training program for the pioneers of the genre to
preserve their vocal cords without compromising an ounce of their trademarked passion. Combining solid voice technique and a groundbreaking
vocal workout with tour-bus humor and backstage commentary, the Zen of Screaming is as entertaining as it is infoormative. This DVD is
the first of its kind and a must- have tool for the modern vocalist.
CREATOR OF THE ACCLAIMED “THE ZEN OF SCREAMING” INSTRUCTIONAL
DVD, MELISSA'S CLIENTS INCLUDE:
A Life Once Lost (Ferret)
A Static Lullaby (Columbia)
Adam Green (Rough Trade)
Aiden (Victory)
All That Re ma in s (Pros thetic)
Andrew W.K. ( Island)
Anterrabae (Triple Crown)
Arc h Enemy ( Cen tury Med ia )
Armor for Sleep (Equal Vision)
Ben Lee (Wind-Up)
Bloodsimple. (Warner Bros.)
Candiria (TypeA/Red/Sony)
Chimaria ( Ferret )
Cradle o f Filth (Ro adrunner)
D aryl Ha mmond (S atu rday Ni gh t Li ve/N BC )
Dead Poetic (Tooth ‘N Nail)
Diamond Nights (Kemado)
Early Man (Matador)
Emanuel (Vagrant)
Every Time I D ie ( Fe rret)
From Autumn to Ashes (Vagrant)
Full Blown Cha os (S tillborn )
God Fo rbid (Century M edia)
H20 (MCA)
Haste the Day (Solid State)
Ill Nino (Roadrunner)
It Dies Today (Trust kill)
Ki l ls wi tc h Enga ge (R oad ru n ner)
La mb of God (S ony / Ep ic)
Madball (Roadrunner)
Ma yl ene an d the So ns of Di sas ter (Fe rret )
Melissa Auf der Maur (Capitol)
My American Heart (Warcon)
N e c ro ( P syc ho L o g ic al -)
Nora (Ferret)
#12 Looks Like You (Eyeball)
Patent Pending (WPO)
Sanctity (Roadrunner)
Senses Fail ( Vagrant)
S ha do ws Fa ll (Atlan tic)
Shai Halud (Revelation)
Sick Of It All (Abacus/Century Media)
S liP Kno T ( Roadrunner)
St ill Remains (Roadrunne r)
Stone Sour (Roadrunner)
Strength In Numbers (Ironbound)
Stretch Armstrong (WPO)
The A.K.A.s (Fueled By Ramen)
The Agony Scene (Roadrunner)
The Audition (Victory)
The Bleeders (Universal/New Zealand)
The Bravery (Island)
The Showdown (Mono Versus Stereo)
The Waiting Hurt s (Virg in )
36 Crazyfists (Ferret)
T hro wd own (Trustkill)
Thursday (Island)
Trivium (Roadrunner)
U nd eroa th (To oth An d N ai l)
Unearth (Metal Blade)
Young Love (island)
www.melissacross.com toll free 888-900-DUMP
© MMV Loudmouth Inc. All rights reserved.

Melissa Cross Tear Sheet PDF

Transcription

Similar documents

Untitled

Registration/more information

melissa rick - Dana Markos Events

Classic wedding uses Pinterest ideas

Meet the Merchant Volume 17- November `12 Melissa

KITCHEN: dark magic

Now Announcing - Mora Surgical Clinic

Biography - Francodiff.org

Thuja occidentalis

Brief - Juwita Suwito