Vocal Fry and 5 Ways to Use It In Your Voice

Master Your Voice Singing Course: ramseyvoice.com/special-offer

Find Your Range in 6 Seconds (Free App): http://rangefinder.ramseyvoice.com/

Full vocal fry article: https://ramseyvoice.com/vocal-fry/

Introduction 0:00
What is vocal fry? 0:40
How to find your vocal fry 3:40
Fry and emotion 5:20
Vocal fry to hit lowest notes 6:40
Metal growl 7:45
Easier head voice 8:44
Vocal fry to relieve vocal tension 10:09

Vocal fry is a very important but mostly underrated vocal technique.

Vocal fry is a fantastic at making a singer sound more emotional, intimate, sing lower and even relax their voice.

But what creates that lazy, froggy, vocal fry sound? Is it safe to use and how do you use it in your voice?

Vocal fry is the lowest vocal register. In order, the vocal registers go from vocal fry, chest voice, head voice and whistle register.

Since each vocal register has its own specific vibration pattern in the vocal cords, it's important to understand how vocal fry is created.

In vocal fry, the cords are very loose and thick. When air is passed through them, the cords are so loose that the air literally "bubbles" through the vocal cords creating that sizzle, throaty and almost hoarse feeling.

Many people wonder whether vocal fry is safe to use in their singing. The truth is that vocal fry is totally safe to use in your voice as long as you don't over compress or squeeze the vocal cords when you use it.

It is important that the vocal fry feel totally relaxed when you do it, so that you're not just pushing your voice.

How do you find vocal fry? Vocal fry is a singing technique that's very easy to find using imitation.

I like to have my students imagine that they're waking up in the morning and their voice is not feeling well. With your voice totally relaxed, just let out of a totally froggy-sounding "uh" vowel.

There should not be any tone or pitch in your voice. The sound should be totally relaxed and sound like a frog.

Now that you've found vocal fry in your voice, let's look at the 5 different ways that you can use vocal fry in your singing.

1) The first way to use vocal fry in your singing is to add emotion to your sound. From Britney Spears' first smash hit "Hit Me Baby One More Time", you can hear the vocal fry in the first word "oh" and before "baby".

Britney uses this sound in order to make her lyrics sound more intimate and emotional. Almost as if the words are so packed with meaning that singing them aren't as impactful.

So if you're looking to add more emotion to your songs quickly, try adding a bit of vocal fry to make them sound cooler.

2) You can also use vocal fry to hit very low notes in your voice. Since the vocal cords are thicker and looser than in chest voice (the lowest sung register), the notes of vocal fry are up to 4 octaves lower than the chest voice.

So many singers use vocal fry to hit lower notes in their voice that they can't reach with other methods. Vocal fry is very difficult to tune however, so spend some time at a piano matching the notes of your fry to the piano.

3) Vocal fry can also be used to find your metal growl. Since the vocal folds are so relaxed in fry, it can be a great way to find the intense metal sound without hurting your voice.

Simply start off by finding your vocal fry. Next, add a little bit of tone or pitch into the vocal fry. Finally, engage a bit more of your real voice but keep some of the same "croaky" feeling of the vocal fry.

4) Another way you can use vocal fry is to connect to a totally relaxed head voice. Simply said, many singers have a hard time singing up to the top part of their voice when they're singing from chest to head voice.

But since the vocal cords are so relaxed in vocal fry, you can simply transition from vocal fry up to the head voice very easily and without any strain. Simply do a vocal siren where you sing from a vocal fry and "disconnect" into your head voice.

5) Vocal fry is also very helpful vocal therapy for people who speak or sing with too much tension.

A good example of this is Dwight Schrute from the office. The character often speaks with a very pressed and tense sound.

Since the vocal cords are totally relaxed in vocal fry, you can use this sound in your speaking and singing voice on notes that are too tense.

Vocal fry is a tremendously helpful vocal technique that can be used as a vocal effect, a method for hitting lower notes and even a vocal therapy.

Use it whenever you like as long as long as you don't overpress the vocal cords.