Post Mid-Season
After my ‘Guitar Gods’ mid-season show Nat asked me my thoughts on the performance. I remember mentioning that I wasn’t happy with how pitchy I was on War Pigs and how nerve-wracking the whole thing was. But I had a good takeaway from it – on Manic Depression we stumbled for a moment and I could tell the band wasn’t ready for me to come in where I normally would and I was able to pause and then start singing at an area that covered the mistake and let us continue. That kind of quick thinking was normally not like me at all.
Patrick had caught that too and mentioned this was a great thing to learn. Crowds aren’t always as discerning as other musicians are, so a quick cover-up can go unnoticed if done well.
Nat said I did great for my first show and not to be too judgmental. But I’m a professional self-critic so the comment didn’t really land and I still got stuck on the mistakes and ways I could improve for next time.
Continuing the Journey
The mid-season show was over, but there was more work to be done. We were told more songs would be added to the show. From now on we’d continue working with our old setlist along with our new songs each week until the end season show.
Two new songs were added for me – I’d be singing on Ted Nugent’s Stranglehold and playing bass on Ozzy’s Osbourne’s Mr. Crowley. I didn’t mind the latter, but I hated Ted Nugent and was sick of that song. According to bandmate Nadi this was a song he didn’t hear frequently, but back in southern Mississippi (where I was born & raised) I had my fair dose of Stranglehold and Cat Scratch Fever.
This would be another great lesson for me. One, working with a song I hated, and two, as Nat and I discussed the song, it turned out to be the perfect song to work on transitioning between my chest voice to my mix without a jarring cutover between the two. I could start in mix and sing higher, or start in chest and stay in chest, but starting in chest and trying to sing slowly up to mix still had the habit of trying to sing a note outside my chest range with my chest voice (“chest-pulling” is what I’ve found it’s called, and this video was helpful).
The transition wasn’t smooth, and was something I cheated with on War Pigs. I could sing “Generals gathered in their masses…” and the rest of the intro in chest voice. But when I sang the verse “Politicians hide themselves away”, if I started in chest voice then I’d hit a vocal break when I tried to hit the high note for the word ‘them’, which I needed mix to hit with power.
My cheat was to start the whole phrase already in mix, preventing the jarring transition from chest to mix. It worked, but I lost a bit of the chesty power leading up to it.
I mentioned last time that F#2 to F#4 was my range (by my old definition of ‘notes I can sing with power’). In my new understanding, F#4 was simply the end of my chest range. From there I could either transition to head voice or mix voice. And that’s right where I had problems – between F#4 and G4 I would keep running into bumps as I sang up scales, every time. You could hear a half yodel from a vocal break as I sang and swapped between these notes. Once I was past the G4 and in mix I was golden and there were no more issues, but that transition gave me problems.
This is where Stranglehold was the perfect song to give me in that moment. The vocal melody for Stranglehold starts on A3 and goes to A4:
The A3 is comfortable in my chest voice range all the way up the scale until right before my break at F#4, and Nat wouldn’t let me cheat by trying to start from mix voice at A3 to avoid the transition from chest voice. The melody was a great exercise to attempt over and over until the transition was smoothed out.
I practiced the song ad nauseam in my makeshift studio, and eventually gained an appreciation for it (though I’m still not a fan of Ted Nugent and his lack of respect for animals, among other issues).
End Season
The End Season show was scheduled to be on April 26, 2025 at 100 Nickel, a bowling alley in Broomfield, Colorado. As we got closer to the date the nerves came back again. Days before the show I started to panic at how little time was left before I would have to get in front of people again.
During rehearsals I found it hard to let go of copies of the lyrics of the songs I had to sing. My biggest fear was forgetting the lyrics while on stage. Having them in front of me was a safety blanket.
I remember one of the last rehearsals before the show I felt sick from anxiety and almost asked if I could leave and go home rather than have to sing the closing ‘War Pigs’ in front of the rest of the group. I was convinced I would forget the lyrics and everybody would be wondering if I would choke during the upcoming show. I stayed, and as usual the fears were unwarranted and everything went fine. But it still didn’t shake the fear, for whatever reason.
I had this constant series of intrusive thoughts where I’d freeze on stage, forget lyrics, and just stare blankly and uncomfortably until the rest of the band finished. The thought replayed in my mind constantly.
The date for the end season show finally arrived. I got to the event early since pacing around the house wasn’t doing anything. Part of me wanted to keep practicing the songs but the other half of me told me to rest my voice and not over-practice.
The show went off without a hitch. There were a few mistakes here and there but nothing glaring, and yet again the reality of muscle memory and practice proved to be reliable:
This show felt better. I was still terrified, but very slightly less terrified than the mid-season show. This was exposure therapy of sorts, and the familiarity of having recently been on stage helped a bit with nerves this time.
Another Season
Before the end season show we were already getting folks ready for the next season – Hellfest – and collecting song ideas.
My primary song I wanted to sing was Outshined by Soundgarden. It’s a song I’ve loved ever since I heard it while playing Road Rash on Windows 95 when I was a kid. Chris Cornell, Soundgarden, and Audioslave were huge influences on me, and after discovering mix and practicing I found that I could sing much higher than I thought I could. This didn’t cover the highest notes in the Outshined, but it was close.
I’d actually been practicing it a few weeks before the end season show, but I kept hitting vocal breaks from strain and the highest notes just weren’t there:
Outshined clearly wasn’t ready, and I didn’t want to bomb it while performing live or hurt my voice – especially after just discovering I had a wider range than I realized.
So instead I picked a ‘safe’ song, or so I thought – Rusty Cage by Soundgarden.
I have no idea why I thought that would be easier.
Hellfest
For the ‘Hellfest’ season, we could submit song recommendations for covers that were songs by bands that played at Hellfest. Now this was what I wanted! This was closer to the kind of music I actually wanted to play – music that I was the furthest away from actually being able to play.
For those that don’t know me very well, I love metal. Particularly progressive metal (Opeth, Tool) and melodic death metal (Amon Amarth, In Flames). Double bass. Blast beats. Powerful screams. Shredding guitar.
Can’t get enough of it.
To cover the bands I wanted to cover, I needed to be able to false chord or fry scream (which I couldn’t and still can’t do), or I needed to be able to play guitar exceptionally fast, exceptionally precise, or both (which I couldn’t and still can’t do).
To my delight, two folks in the Hellfest group recommended two separate Tool songs. Lateralus was selected, and I’d be singing for it. My primary pick of Rusty Cage was selected as well. I was also picked to play rhythm guitar on Psychosocial by Slipknot.
I wasn’t a fan of Slipknot, but after hearing the song and realizing how much pinch harmonic practice was needed and how much rhythm practice was needed for the breakdown sections, I only saw this as a positive for helping me grow towards my eventual goal of ‘prog metal artist.’
Rhythm & Hubris
I’ve never been great at rhythm. And I’ve always wanted to sing powerful, dramatic songs that leave an impression, even if I don’t have the range for the song or the skill to sing it true to form.
For Hellfest, I held these conflicting emotions:
- Not wanting to ‘Icarus‘ it – I didn’t want to sing outside my range and end up ruining my voice with bad technique, especially just after finding a higher range was accessible.
- Doing justice for the Tool song that was just assigned to me. Tool fans will tear you apart if your cover is anything less than perfect.
- Having fun.
Additionally, there was feedback like this:
Rhythm and counting would be the hardest part of this season. I kept getting off beat during the breakdowns on Psychosocial. I couldn’t find where to come in on Rusty Cage without the backing track, and even still the pre-emptive “Ohhhhh” before the rest of the lyrics came in was confusing and misleading. For Lateralus, there was a 9/8, 8/8, & 7/8 section that played after the second verse and required keeping track of to understand when to come in with “Feed my will to feel this moment!”
Somehow the ‘safe’ pick of Rusty Cage would end up being the hardest song of any season for me. The entire band had trouble with it – guitar, drums, and bass, from the very intro to the breakdown towards the end. We struggled so much it was cut from the mid-season show. I was humbled by how complicated it was to play, especially given how much progress we made on Lateralus, which still felt difficult but was much easier in comparison.
Hellfest ended up being a trial by fire (no pun intended) and pushed everybody’s limits. The songs were complicated, but I was driven by a want to be able to play this kind of material. The music I tabbed out on Guitar Pro was too complicated for me to actually play on guitar. The vocal placeholders for screams were empty because I didn’t know how to scream yet. So I told myself I needed to keep at the complicated sections because it’s not like making it easier is going to help me grow towards the songwriter I want to be.
Rusty Cage
My first problem with Rusty Cage was that it was hard to consistently hit the highest notes without strain:
It seemed like some days I had access to those notes and other days it sounded strained like the video above.
But more worrisome was my poor understanding of the rhythm and format of the song. Week after week I kept missing when to start singing and we had to continue playing along to the backing track to actually get through the full song.
It wasn’t until two weeks before the end season show I finally found something to latch onto in Rusty Cage that helped me be mostly accurate for when to come in – more accurate than usual, at least. There was a predictable section for when to come in for the verse versus a slightly later part of it for the chorus. I still wasn’t good at counting, but latching on to these cues helped better than anything else:
Finally I had something that helped, as long as the drums and guitar were in sync. If the drums and guitar got out of sync, I could make sure that I was on time if I focused on just the drums. During the chorus a cymbal crashed right after I sang “But I’m gonna break…” *CRASH*, “I’m gonna break my!”.
This only worked on the first “But I’m gonna break.” If I was off and missed the second one, if I finished the line “I’m gonna break my rusty cage…and run”, then the word “cage” on the final pass also aligned with a cymbal crash.
This kept me reasonably in line, and just in time. If I sang a karaoke version of the song I never got off track. It wasn’t super precise, but I was able to use it in our last two rehearsals before the show and it seemed to work.
Hellfest End Season Show
Our End Season show was scheduled to be at Top Golf in Thornton, Colorado on August 24, 2025. Just like before, nerves crept up again. I felt like all of the songs were sounding pretty good, even Lateralus, but I was still nervous about Rusty Cage, since we’d only barely gotten it scrapped together two weeks before the performance and still had some bumps here and there.
I arrived early again to watch all of the bands play. I couldn’t stop drinking water and felt my mouth dry out over and over again every time I realized our performance was getting closer. I actually felt a little excited for it, but was still mostly anxious.
I wrote an earlier post on stage fright and how Lateralus went and I go into detail there on what was going through my mind. But I forgot the lyrics briefly as I got caught up trying to count the 9/8, 8/8, and 7/8 sections, so much that I blanked for a moment and just made up random words. I was able to remember the next section and pick it back up, and we did a reasonable job finishing it.
Rusty Cage, however, did not have the same fortune. This was the first song that we played where the band completely got out of sync and almost fell apart. I couldn’t latch on to my guitar cues I’d practiced to, so I just kept singing and trying to figure out where I was by listening to the drums as backup. Luckily there is a breakdown section towards the end of the song where everything slows down and folks have a chance to hop back in and get re-coordinated. We synced there and got through the rest of the song.
We finished the set and celebrated getting through another performance. As people collected and shared videos I was again disappointed in myself. My throat was so dry during the performance that it affected my pitch and I could hear it in the recordings. My mistakes stood out pretty badly. I felt terrible.
But I realized two things. The first was that I forgot lyrics for the first time in front of everybody, and while that sucked, it wasn’t nearly as terrible as my compulsive catastrophizing made it out to be.
The second was similar for Rusty Cage – my other fear was freezing on stage and not knowing what to do. Everything got off rhythm and we fell apart, but I just kept going with it and we still finished it, as messy as it was. And while it was a bit embarrassing to me, it still wasn’t nearly as bad as my imagination made it.
After that I actually felt kind of happy. It was sort of a blessing in disguise – I could no longer “forget lyrics for the first time” or “bomb a song for the first time”, since it had already happened. It wasn’t the end of the world. Just keep moving on. This was a key moment for me, and just like Stranglehold, it was the perfect thing I needed to grow at that moment.
Post-Season
One of the band options for the fall season was Grunge, and I applied to that band immediately. I saw some of the same members from Hellfest there and I almost wanted to suggest Rusty Cage again to do it justice. But then I remembered Outshined. Some of the highest notes of Rusty Cage, especially towards the breakdown (“When the forest burns along the road – Like God’s eyes in my headlights“) gave me a ton of practice singing at the higher parts of my range (a B4 is the highest for this song).
In Outshined, a few sections like “I’m feeling like I’m sober”, “Who gets mystified”, “Oh I’m feeling, I’m feeling” all hit a C5, just one half-step above the B4 I was pushing for Rusty Cage. The note felt attainable but the vocal quality of Cornell didn’t. It wasn’t just a clean note. He had grit and passion on top of it that resulted in this amazing wail.
There was another problem with that song – there are two sections of Outshined, one at the bridge (two screamed “Ah!”, “Ah!” F5 notes) and one at the very end of the song (“Oh I’m feeling!” at an F5 on the “Oh”, just at the last chorus). I wasn’t able to hit those notes cleanly when I practiced Outshined earlier in the year.
However, one song assigned to me for Hellfest that I’d forgotten about was the song ‘Madhouse’ by Anthrax. There’s a super high pitched section where the singer shrieks, “I’m insane!” At the time, when the song was assigned to me, I assumed one of the directors was trolling me. This note was a G5, much higher than I was used to singing, but I found a way to squeeze it out:
I knew it was bad technique since I could only do it two or three times a day before my voice was hoarse, but the availability of that note made me wonder about those high notes in Outshined.
Excited at the possibility of having the range for it (and having been obsessively practicing parts of it throughout the year, as you’ll see in the next post), I submitted Outshined as my only song choice for the season, ran downstairs to the studio, and found advanced mix voice workouts to try.