Trying to scream in 30 days... then playing a show.

Angelo can't scream. I know. So I spent 30 days teaching him how and now he's about to play his first show. How are you feeling about tonight?

Very nervous. I don't know what happened. I just completely.

Sorry. But first, how did we get here? In 2019, I started teaching screaming and my first video got millions of views where I mentioned teaching a student to scream in a month. I was in heaven. Or so I thought. One of my old teachers made a post saying it was unreasonable to scream scream in 30 days and to not trust the advice of anyone who wasn't classically trained. And this was pointed at me. I felt really embarrassed. I looked up to this person and it sounds like they hated me. I wondered, was I a scam? Since I didn't go to school for the Voice, would this post ruin my reputation? I was so embarrassed I almost stopped teaching right there. But the results of my students didn't lie. I also just loved teaching. So I recently thought to myself, could I teach someone to scream in 30 days, document the entire process and get them to play a live show at the end of it to put their abilities to the true test? This seemed like a super cool and fun idea. But little did I know that I was in for an extremely wild ride. In order to make this work, I would need someone who is a complete beginner and someone who is local. I wanted to film this in person because honestly, I just thought it would make for a funer, better video. So I sent out a Facebook post asking for people local to San Francisco to see if they wanted to learn to scream. If they were interested, they would fill out a form. I sifted through the applications. Most of the people had some type of screaming experience. But I came across an applicant by the name of Angelo. He wrote that he wants to learn.

To scream because it's by far one of the coolest means of self expression. I've been trying to learn on and off for the past few years, but I've just been put off by how bad the sounds are that come out of my mouth.

The petty side of me was cackling with joy. I thought if I got him to scream, this would definitely prove my point that anybody could do it and prove my past coach wrong. Angelo lived in a small town called Paterson, which was only an hour away. It was also helpful that he played guitar in a band. So it seemed on paper like it would be pretty easy to book a gig for his band to get him to scream live. I wanted to confirm in one last way that he was the right fit. So I decided to pay him a visit and trek to his place in Patterson. Hey, what's going on? So we are in Patterson, California and I'm going to be meeting with Angelo, who's reached out about wanting to learn how to metal scream. He's been a struggling musician that's wanted to do this for a while. So I want to see what we can do and hopefully we can get him screaming asap. Oh, okay. Wrong house. What's going on, man? Hey, dude. Hey, man.

I think I might have told you the wrong number.

So I wanted.

You said you were coming to the.

Door, so I was like, oh, I better, I better. Yeah, dude. I was. I was literally about to be like, oh, Angelo, you look so different.

How's it going, man?

When I get to Angelo's place, I notice that his family seems oddly disconnected. I try to politely say hi and don't get a reaction and I think that's kind of strange. But then I move on. Dude, this is awesome.

Thank you. This is where I reside.

This is fantastic. When I get into Angelo's room, I see a 3D printer, many guitars, drums, and a bunch of anime posters all over the room. You're a man of culture. A little bit, yeah. Look at that. That's amazing. I wanted to get a baseline starting point for where his screams were. Now I asked him to do his best to cover one of his band's original songs. I need him. There is no reason. Wow.

I can't even like continue after that.

I need. I'm afraid I'm wet. The chains you put me. This is great. This is great. I've tried my best to fix this.

Sound like Mickey Mouse, bro. My heart rate slowed after knowing you.

Guys heard his screams. Were definitely starting from scratch. And he was someone who seems to have a self limiting mindset that he wouldn't be able to scream.

I think the biggest, maybe the biggest halt that I've had is just this habit of not doing things. Like, I totally recognize that, you know, I haven't put as much time in as I could have. And I. And I've seen what that can do if you actually sit down and do things, how it can affect progress and stuff. And I see that, but it's still is not enough to make. I don't. Yeah, it's.

Yeah.

Like you can, you can, you can actually see it with my YouTube channel. There's like year intervals between videos. Even though I have, you know, like 20 songs that I have lined up for covers.

In other words, Q is the perfect candidate to really blow minds if I were to get him to unlock his scream. He even looked the part. So far things were going smoothly, so he agreed to get started in the next week. How's it going? Not too bad, man. How's the drive? Pretty good, Pretty good. Angelo drives over to my place and I begin teaching in just a few short minutes, after explaining to him the general anatomy of screaming, I get him to do a few short exercises and he's already starting to make progress. He starts to make the beginnings of scream sounds. Okay, so that, ah, Mel might be a little trickier for you. Let's try that with a again. That was good. So it seems like that for you might be sort of like the. The approach that I want you to practice on specifically for chest voice FRY SCREAMS. So now let me introduce you to head voice FRY SCREAMS so what I want you to do is can you crack your voice like this when you're above that voice crack? That is a vocal range known as your head voice. So could you tell that that was like, you know, much higher than you're talking?

I can feel it transition for sure.

Now try and do this and use your hands because it makes for a better video.

Okay. Sounds good.

That was good. Try to hold. That's good.

You hear that? Yeah.

That feel comfortable?

Yeah. I think that really helped.

That's what I'm saying, dude. You gotta really get in character. Let's do that again. So far everything's going super smoothly. So I decided to speak with my connections from the local metal music scene and book a gig for Angelo's band, Haunted Mask. Let me know if we can confirm this as soon as possible. I do like the sound of that. Mark us down and I will make it happen. The countdown for Angelo's show now officially began. The day of the second lesson, Angelo texts me and said that he might be unable to come. I start to panic due to my busy schedule. If we don't see each other, then I won't be able to help him until next week. This would essentially put us a week behind schedule. So I offered that he could spend the night at my place if he can get to my place late. Fortunately, this allows everything to work out. Angelo gets to my place, but I notice that something's a little off. For food, he's brought a bunch of cheese and Wonder Bread. Also, he seems slightly lower energy than usual, and at first I don't think too much of it. And we begin our second lesson. He's picking up the screaming techniques and he's been practicing, so he's definitely been making progress. Now, don't get me wrong, I was confident in my teaching abilities, but at the same time, I kind of expected him to struggle more. I was conflicted. Yeah. I mean, I guess I was on my way to proving my point. But I also thought, wouldn't this be a boring video if he learned to scream too quickly? Also, didn't he say that he struggled with achieving his goals? Maybe if I dug deeper, I could find more places to help him. For the video, I was curious what was going on, but I didn't expect the next thing to happen. That night, while grabbing dinner and the cameras were off, he explained to me that he almost didn't come to the lesson today. And when I asked him about what was going on, I was never expecting it to be what I was about to hear. When Angelo told me he struggled with learned helplessness, I knew he said it was bad, but I never realized it was this bad. He told me that he suffers from Crohn's disease, which prevents him from many daily activities such as work. It also stops him from eating a lot of foods, which explains why he brought grilled cheese. He also revealed to me when he was younger, his father was abusive, and as a result, him and his family were taken away and put in a safe facility to escape. Since then, he's experienced bouts of derealization, meaning that he would shut down and black memories out. Last but not least, he felt as if he would never be good enough at anything, despite trying for long periods of time. And as a result, he developed a habit of giving up when faced with adversity. And as a result of that, he lacks passion and direction in life. To him, it feels like no matter what he tries to do, he felt as if he'd never be good enough. And suddenly, it all made sense. Why his family felt so distant, like they were holding things inside. Why he escaped into anime and music. They were his solace. And why he left so many projects behind. Those were all symbols of his learned helplessness. It was at this point when I realized something. Angelo wanted to learn to scream. But to be honest, he never seemed super interested in it. This had me a bit worried. I was like, did I pick the wrong student to teach at some point early in the day, Angelo also told me that he really needs help with his songwriting. He told me that he struggles to write songs for his band, and his other guitar player does all the writing. Hmm. I mean, I didn't need to teach him songwriting. To prove my point about screaming. But at the same time, it couldn't hurt to teach him that stuff. Also, songwriting was actually my first musical love, so what the hell, why not? I proposed to him that I would teach him to write a song and we'd perform it at the show. Given that he started to learn screaming a bit too quickly, I think it would actually make for a better video. Anyway, this was our third lesson. I wanted to do a quick test of his screaming abilities. Do you feel like you've gotten stable with that?

Maybe not super stable, but I've been able to, like, click into it pretty easily Rather than, like, needing to build up into that feeling. I can almost jump right into it.

Can you say abc? AI B I C I D I I'd felt accomplished. Angela was screaming not in 30 days, but just around two weeks. And this was great. It looked like we were in great shape for the show. Angela also seemed stoked that he was able to scream in such a short amount of time. But our work from this video was far from over. Now I started helping him write his song. I took some guitar parts he wrote and showed him how to arrange them. Now this is when the whole vibe changed. I've never seen him like this before. Dude, you could tell something was off when we started writing vocals. It's like he shut down, walled off. I couldn't get to him. I felt him get blocked, and nothing was coming out. I didn't know how to respond, so I changed the subject. Hey, is your band show ready? He seemed to think so, but he also said that he spoke with his drummer, and his drummer said, absolutely not. I was starting to feel anxious. Was this video even gonna turn out? This seemed weird to me that Angelo and his drummer had completely different opinions. However, I know that a lot of times, musicians tend to be perfectionists. Angelo's drummer was probably being just too critical of himself. I suggested to Angelo, well, why don't I sit in on your band practice in two days? Hello. Hey, what's up, guys? Hey, what's up? Hey, what's up? Hey, David. Nice to meet you. Diesel. Good to meet you. Nice to meet you. Hi, David. David, nice to meet you. No, Gabe. Oh, Gabe. Okay. Hey, Dylan. Dylan, David. Nice to meet you. David, Nice to meet you. Yeah. The first thing I wanted to do was to surprise his band with Angelo's new screams. So have you guys heard of. Heard Angelo scream before? Never. Never. Okay, so this is. Keep in mind, Angela didn't know how to scream before this. This is with three weeks Gonna die, dude. Seeing their reactions was getting me hyped. I was like, whoa. This is shaping up to be quite the transformation. I couldn't wait until we can show this off at the upcoming show. Yo. In my mind, I was already imagining Angelo just taking the stage and letting out this brutal scream, and the audience just being like, whoa. And amash performing. I could just imagine every metalhead sharing this video with all their buddies. I pictured my old teacher finally acknowledging that I can teach. I can imagine people being like, oh, where did he learn that scream? You must have had a talented and handsome vocal coach. I was getting swept up into my fantasy until watch them play. When I clocked back into reality, it became very clear to me that these guys were not prepared. They didn't even remember how their own songs went there, like, 75% there. I say 60 because I still don't have theories for a lot of these songs yet. Oh, okay. Okay. Got it. One thing that helped our band a lot is, like, getting on a click. Like, have you guys experimented doing that? I put them on a metronome, and they struggled to stay on time with that as well. I felt a pit in my stomach. I assumed that everyone can play to a metronome. Is rhythm something that could be taught? I also asked, by the way, where's your main vocalist? They told me that since they don't have a bassist, Gabe, who's their vocalist, had to step down and assume bass duties temporarily. In other words, the band was missing members. Not to mention, the ability to pull off a good show was largely dependent on how much they trusted me. You see, Gabe and Dylan, the drummer, seemed extremely skeptical about the changes I was recommending. After all, I was an outsider coming in and making changes to their craft. Tell us about the video that you. Oh, yeah. So, absolutely so. I'm not sure how much Angelo's told you guys. Zero, Really. I started thinking, would they accept a song that Angelo and I wrote for them? Would we even be able to finish the song in time? Where would they find a bassist? Would Angelo be confident to scream these songs live? And would we be able to find fix all this by the show? That night, when I got home, I got the final blow. The promoter who had booked the show told me that the show was cancelled. What was I even doing all this for? The universe does not want this to happen. This band probably thinks I'm just trying to boss them around and this video might flop. On top of that, I thought, man, you know what? Let's just give up the next morning, I would message Angelo and tell him that I was calling the whole. Whole thing off. I felt like I was being selfish and using Angelo for my personal gain. I thought maybe my teacher was right. Maybe I'm just a scam who's unethical and all I care about is money. The next morning, I woke up and checked my phone and saw that Angelo sent me a message that. That really made me stop and think.

Hey, David, here's some weircs I wrote. I'm just angry. Nothing comes out right or never comes out at all. I say things I don't mean, or I say nothing at all. I don't mean anything. I don't mean any harm. I just want to be happy. I just want to feel positive. I don't enjoy anything. I don't like anything. Nothing's interesting to.