Alissa White-Gluz Breaks Down Her Vocal Technique and Talks Blue Medusa

Summary

Alissa White-Gluz discusses how her musical upbringing and early bands shaped her vocal style. Raised on a wide range of rock, punk, alternative, and metal, she first began screaming while writing long, progressive songs with her high-school band. She experimented with different vocal approaches—including whispers, operatic singing, and screams—and kept screaming after her bandmates encouraged her to do it again.

She describes screaming as a sound that can create texture and vibration without necessarily producing a clear note. In a vocal study involving metal singers, she says an MRI captured her vocal tract moving during screams. She observed that her pharynx expanded substantially, especially on some lower sounds. She also explains that changing formants can alter a scream’s perceived resonance or brightness without changing its pitch.

Techniques and Creative Concepts

• Warm up with clean singing first. Alissa usually warms up her clean voice before screaming.
• Build gradually. She typically starts with lower, gentler screams and works upward rather than beginning with the most demanding sounds.
• Treat screaming as a range of textures. She describes a spectrum between clean singing and distortion, with different ways to blend tone, rasp, and scream.
• Distinguish pitch from formants. A sound can become brighter or more resonant through a formant shift without its actual pitch changing.
• Use pitch and texture expressively. In Blue Medusa’s “Flying Monkey,” she combines low, heavy vocals with higher black-metal-style layers, then uses a pitched scream near the end.
• Treat vocals as rhythmic instrumentation. Alissa often plans screams like percussion, considering how vocal rhythms interact with drum parts.
• Shape individual words. She values small expressive details—such as a breath, squeak, or change of delivery on one syllable—as ways to make a performance feel human and communicate the lyrics.
• Let a song’s story and attitude guide delivery. The anger in “Flying Monkey” informs her phrasing, and fast vocal passages can work almost like rap.
• Take care with high notes. She advises against forcing high screams before the voice is ready, noting that high notes can be particularly risky. She also points out that a pitchless or staccato scream may sound higher than it is.

The interviewers try out screams themselves, and Alissa gives one of them feedback on blending a scream with a speaking or singing tone. She suggests practicing vocal pitches like scales, including with piano keys, while emphasizing that more demanding notes should be approached gradually.

Confidence and Online Criticism

Alissa advises artists not to base their self-belief on either praise or hate comments. Instead, she encourages them to use their own sense of satisfaction with their work as a guide. She compares performing with the voice to making one’s whole physical self vulnerable to an audience.

Creators and Contributors

• Alissa White-Gluz — vocalist and interview guest; discusses her work with Blue Medusa.
• The Scream Dudes interview team — including host Eric and a second host who is not named in the subtitles.
• People mentioned in connection with the vocal study: Mark Garrett, Andy Cizek, and Lauren.
• Other artists and contributors mentioned: Alissa’s sister Jasmine, guitarist Tara, Joe from Fit for an Autopsy, and Travis from Cattle Decapitation.