I have the craziest problem, and the most obvious solution but I'm hoping there's something someone can say to make me visualize something new and get a quicker fix to this problem.

I've practiced with The Zen of Screaming 1 and 2, and I've read Raise Your Voice about 3 times through (and it's been the greatest help ever, thanks for that)! I'm having trouble producing vocal fry with a tone, like Randy Blythe of Lamb of God. I can keep it up for a while, but then I tire out, and something in the voice causes my throat to totally cramp up. My voice doesn't go hoarse, it never has, and I've never, ever practiced so it hurts in any way. I'm kind of neurotic that way.. I've made LOTS of progress, but I seem to be at a slump now.

I added the power push to the vocal fry and it took off completely new again, but now I'm running into a wall at about a minute into a song. Take LOG's "Laid To Rest" for example. When the chorus hits, I have no energy to push out the tone under the fry anymore, it feels my throat is closing too much, and if I open it more the voice becomes really weak and hoarse-sounding, and I hit these "blips" that are kind of like choking sounds. "Pathetic" sounding would be the best way to describe it

I forgot who said it, but someone here said a thing as simple as this, and it helped me LOADS:

If anyone has any insight into this, I'd greatly appreciate it. I will keep reading this forum for pointers such as this.

BTW, a sidenote: Jaime, I love your visualization bits in RYV. Those are the money tips for every vocalist, I think. They're my go-to fix whenever I feel my singing is getting lazy or I'm losing edge.

EDIT: Oh yeah. And my solution would be to keep doing what I'm doing but concentrating on keeping the throat open... I am hoping someone has some cues to how to keep the throat open more easily.

No-one has any input on this? :(

Anything at all?

For example, on youtube, a member called Sanitybreaks (probably very popular among fry screamers) has tutorials in which his dry voice without a mic sounds badass! But for some reason I cannot mimic it without putting too much air into it = I cannot, for the life of me, feel it in my soft palate.

In fact, the less I think about the soft palate focus and the more I think about pushing the sound down into my diaphragm like was mentioned by some visiting artist in RYV, the better my sound is. So if I attempt to put the fry into the soft palate, it WILL be LOUD and it will be HIGH but it will not have the growling sound it would have if I didn't put it up there. So I guess my vocal cords are zipping up, and that places the sound into the soft palate, and that makes the high fry.

The trouble is I can't sustain any tone under the overtone of the fry. I "choke" and the sound "chokes." It sounds exactly like someone squeezing my throat to stop the sound, but it doesn't hurt. It just feels I'm pushing too hard.

The solution I mentioned above is simple: Just keep practicing with low volume. But if anyone has any input on visualizations or tips for practicing, I'd love em to bits.

Actually, I have this same exact issue.

Hope someone can respond with some clarity.

I got it now.

And I'm afraid it's just as simple as everyone's been saying, as Jaime's been saying, and Randy's been saying.

Quoting randy:

It's like trying to sing very loud, but at the same time trying to be really quiet. Today at our rehearsals I got it pat, and a friend of mine noticed it too. "Wow, that sounded brutal as hell!"

And I didn't exert myself in any way. So basically, keep the throat moist, don't push, use regular fry but add just a tad bit of tone into it and voila. Man. Now I understand why there are no tips to this. It's because there aren't any. There just aren't. If you master "do not push" you're set. The minute you start pushing you over-exert, and you will not be able to perform unless you back off for a couple of minutes. Another thing I noticed: If I found myself pushing, I had to take a 2min break or something. After that I was fine. If I kept going I'd suck and continue to suck worse during the whole set.