Whats up people,
This is my first time posting here, I have been practicing Jaime's RYV techniques for about a year now and have increased my range by more than an octave. I have a couple of questions for Jaime pertaining to grit and break areas in my range.

1)Firstly, is it possible to have more than one break point in the voice...when I first started with the raise your voice program I thought my break was where my chest voice ended and the vocal chord adduction started. Now that I have overcome that obstacle, I feel that I clearly have a break at C5 when singing in full voice. Which is my break point?

2)My absolute dream is to be able to add grit whenever I want, to whatever note I want in my range. I have been getting a lot better at this. Before I read RYV, I would push my chest voice up to G4 to get grit and then lose my voice quickly thereafter. Now I'm able to hit G4 easy, A5, B5 gets harder and is not always reliable, C5 and D5 forget about it cuz thats around my weak break point, then D5 E5 and up, well I'll talk about those in the paragraph below.
What can I do to get pure contol and power of these last 5 notes around the break?

And also, I use the power push get my gritty sound on lower notes but on notes above my break like D5 E5 F5 G5, I can no longer push extra to get grit, it just won't come...it feels like I flip to a re-enforced falsetto and sounds like brian johnson (and sometimes, sounds really weak). Is it possible to get grit on these high notes using a LOUD Full voice, or can you only get them with a reinforced falsetto?

3)And finally, (sorry about the length), during the day, and I dont know why, at any given moment, my voice may be really resonant and loud without pushing and somedays it just feels that the notes simply won't sound properly and requires more breath pressure(especially around the C5 break area) Why is this?

Thanks so much

My .02

If you search questions from me, you'll see a BUNCH of stuff about adding grit. I missed one of Jaime's sentences and only recently rediscovered it. I know for me personally, and this is what Jaime was saying, can't get grit or what I call, the "Bon Jovi" tone unless I am really warmed up. When I gig out, it's about song 3 that it comes and I can just dial it in as I choose. For me, I don't even really have to power push either.

I get it by squeezing "something" above my throat but not quite in my mouth. I know that sounds odd, but I just focus on shooting the sound into the soft palate, and then squeeze there. It is NO neck or throat tension though, you can't see me doing it. I practice this by putting my hand to my throat and "Gritting it out" when I'm warmed up. I don't feel my throat move or clench when I do it.

I spent so much time worrying about why I don't sound like Spike from the Choirboys 1st thing in the morning that I missed important stuff; I can do stuff he can't. We all want to be able to sing high and have that rasp/grit/dirt or whatever. I just know that with a nice long warm up and humming for a bit, it comes right out every time. I figure that the more I practice with correct technique, the smaller that window will be.

Hope this helps you on our journey.

Thanks for the advice. Yeah man, I notice the same thing. The grit comes a lot easier when I'm warmed up. I wake up in the morning, do some warm ups, then attempt some gritty singing and it just doesn't work. I tense up too much (i guess) and the note just breaks apart and flips into a nasty falsetto. But when I am warmed up, and everything is easy and things are sounding gritty, I find singing like this for an extended period of time really compromises the break area and the head voice...for me anyway. Perhaps im just pushing too hard...sometimes I feel I may push way too hard in a jam room setting, where everything is pumping super loud, you got 5150 amps pumped up to 5, the drummer and a little crap P/A in the corner. I try to tell myself I'm singing too hard, but the natural drive to want to hear yourself takes over. But I'm gonna keep workin on it.

Hey altered,

Lemme first off welcome you to the board.

I actually read your post last night and intended to reply, but my hectic schedule caught up with me.

To answer your first question...YES! You could technically have an infinite number of breaks. Your break will change based on how much power you apply. The reason Jaime didn't mention that in RYV is b/c he didn't want to scare you by making you think that there's a MILLION breaks to your voice, or that you'd have to "measure" the amount of power you use to find out precisely where your break will be when exerting that exact amount of power. The truth is...there's no absolute science to finding the break. Now Jaime's techniques are all scientifically based, but what I mean is...for example, let's say that you sing at exactly 50 decibels. This does NOT mean that your break point will always be at G4. Now those numbers I just used were chosen arbitrarily off the top of my head, but I think you get the picture.

The second thing I wanted to address was WHERE exactly your breaks tend to be, based on the information you gave us. I could be wrong about this, so I apologize if I am, but I think you might have described your break points slightly incorrectly. As far as notes are concerned, each numerical value starts at C. What this means is if Tenor C is C5, then the B directly beneath it is actually B4, NOT B5. Again, if I'm just spewing out info that you already know, I apologize. I'm not trying to come across as arrogant or derrogatory. I simply want to make sure I completely understand your question before I respond to it. If you HAVEN'T learned about the notes yet, that's okay too. I play guitar, so I was really messed up on the whole note thing when I first jumped on this board.

This MIGHT help you. If YOU play guitar, then the 7th fret on the high E string is a B4. The eighth fret will be the C5. Everything starts over again at C.

The reason why I'm telling you all this is b/c when you described the break in your voice, the break suddenly jumped an octave, and then came back down.

NOW, ABOUT THE GRITTY STUFF: I'm not nearly an expert on this subject, but I can definitely share my experiences with you.

One of the things you can do is look for my post entitled "I'm on Youtube...again." I believe that's the name of it. Anyways, one of the videos will be of me singing Alice in Chains' "Rooster." Even though it doesn't sound perfect, I apply plenty of grit during portions of that song, and I felt minimal strain while doing so.

Jaime also tells you exactly WHERE you should feel this sensation in RYV. Don't worry if it takes you a while to get used to it. I've been practicing from RYV for almost a year now, and STILL haven't truly mastered this ability.

Also, I can't stress how pivotal the Power Push is in performing the gritty stuff.

The last detail I'm gonna bore you with is...Even when singing cleanly, try to keep the resonance outa the throat whenever possible. The more you can sing cleanly with that buzzing sensation being maintained in your teeth, nose, cheeks, etc., the easier it'll be to grasp and apply the concept of "rasp."

I have a tendency to be long-winded, as anyone on this board can vouch for, but I hope I've been somewhat helpful or informative. Regardless, keep it up and I know you'll get it. Peace.

Hey man,
Thanks a lot, excuse me for the mix up with the notes. I just figured the notes started over at A. My bad. But now that you know that maybe my original post makes sense now!
Another cool thing is...I sing songs from The Alice in Chains Dirt album all the time to practice grit. I love singing Rooster, I guess the only part I'm a little sketchy adding grit Is the first time he says: "You know he ain't gonna dieeeee." Its up near my full voice break (at i guess at full intensity) also coupled with the fact its the eee vowel sound. I just watched your youtube clip...sounds good man...grit sounds good...and I like how you were creative with the lower verse melody.

Anyway, at the risk of being critisized for bad singing technique you can listen to a couple of my tracks at www.myspace.com/forsigma. (it's pure metal by the way...mostly screaming) All these songs were recorded before I knew about mixed voice, chest voice, vibrato, not pushing too hard...lol. Anyhow, I still sing in this band but after reading RYV, I dont push a quarter as hard. Now that Im starting to learn to sing properly ive just started a rock band as well...anyway got off topic a bit there
anyway thanks for the comment

its taken me over a year to figure out how to do grit....and it on clicked for me about 2 weeks ago. Like wylde342 said above....its like this odd squeezing sensation above the vocal chords. one day it will just click for you hopefully....it seemed so much more complicated before i knew.... im sorry i cant help about how to do it, because i cant describe the process.... but i know when i do it, i dont have to be warmed up and i dont even have to do the powerpush (i still do though :P)....and it doesnt affect my vocal health afterwards at all.....
welcome to the board by the way :)

haha I was always able to add that sound to my voice I dunno how I actually got it I thought everyone just knew how to do it. I think the grit comes from the tongue? Perhaps I'm thinking of something else what I'm reffering to a growl type of sound.

oops...i realised earlier than when im singing gritty, im automatically doing the power push.... it 'has' to be done then i guess....

Thanks for the advice and welcome everyone, just to clarify I can add grit to my voice, every note up to C5. The only thing that bothers me about it is the fact that 1) The higher up I get nearing that point the intensity of the grit gets far weaker...and 2) After the break, it feels like I can't do a power push to get grit anymore, it feels like I have to open up some space with my vocal chords for more air to get through. Like a reinforced falsetto...it ends up sounding like a weak brian johnson (not a good back in black brian johnson, but a flimsy razors edge one)Thats basically what I'm trying to perfect and accomplish these days vocally. I'd like to get a sound going the Avenged Sevnfold singer...grit on everynote right up to like E5-F5.
Thanks for listening to my blathering