Read the full article written by Tom Whipple about our vocal courses at BIMM Brighton :

The Times | Friday August 20 2010
10 arts &ents pop

The mosh pit is moshing. The
guitar riff is riffing. The drummer is
drumming. And the lead singer—me — is
frowning in concentration, trying to
remember the right place to scream
“woohoo”. Olly, on backing vocals, leans
over. “If you’re having trouble with
timings,” he mouths helpfully, “follow me.”
Olly is a very useful addition to the band—
even if he has problems sometimes when
his voice goes high-pitched without
warning. Olly is 13.

Can you learn to be a rock star? Olly and
I, as well as two dozen other students —
not all quite so young — are here to find
out. It’s 3pm in Brighton, our fourth day of
rock summer school and, after a morning
practising the quintessentially Britpop art
of jumping and singing at the same time,
the time has come for us to perform our
interpretations of Blur’s Song 2 for each
other.

Of course, we aren’t the only
audience. Later, our parents will come to
watch. This doesn’t necessarily feel — how
can one put it? — terribly rock and roll.
Is this how Guns N’ Roses started? Did
Metallica learn their art at a week-long
course by the sea, with a three-hour
session in the morning, an hour’s break
each day (packed lunch optional) and
another two hours in the afternoon? Do
Slipknot practise breathing exercises
before settling down to an evening’s
snarling? Surely rock music should grow
organically — preferably from a compost
of spliff butts and week-long hangovers?
Perhaps. But, as our tutors at the
Brighton Institute of Modern Music—
none of them, I strongly suspect, averse to
the occasional 48-hour bender — start
talking about arpeggios, key changes and
“the 7/8 vibe we love so much”, I start to
realise that rock might be as rigorous as
any other singing.

And somewhat
disappointingly, musical talent seems to be
at least as important as a strong history of
casual drug abuse and trashing hotel
rooms. There is at least one skill they will
teach us, however, that is rarely evident in
the Royal Academy: how to scream
without destroying your vocal cords.
Our main tutor is Kieron Pepper. For ten
years Kieron was the live drummer for the
Prodigy, and he still sometimes performs
as a session musician. He is here to
co-ordinate those of us on drums and
guitars with those of us — like me —
whose only instrument is their voice.
On our first morning, as we file into a
studio to hear that day’s guest band, he
stands at the door asking if people want
earplugs. It feels like a slightly awkward
joke, an attempt to bond, and I laugh off
the offer. And then some of my ultratrendy
classmates take the earplugs and I
realise he’s serious. Even the band is
wearing ear protectors. Suddenly, I feel
very old. In my day, we revelled in
temporary hearing loss: it is a topsy-turvy
world indeed where the cool thing is to
look after your health.

Our specialist voice tutor is Colin
Doran. Colin, satisfyingly, looks much like
a Colin should — but he is also lead singer
for the rock band Hundred Reasons, who
Wikipedia tell me are “post-grunge,
alternative metal”. Which is less Colin-ish.
Our guest tutor is Tommy Gleeson, the
lead singer of Slaves to Gravity — who
were named Kerrang’s Best British
Newcomer in 2008. Like a classic
comeback gig, he is here for one day only.
And so he wastes no time. After a brief
demonstration of breathing and
relaxation techniques, we start on his
latest track — an introspective number
about diving to the bottom of the sea. “It’s
about having confidence to go the extra
distance,” Tommy says of the lyrics. “Plus,
a lot of stuff is just there because it sounds
good.” Kieron, who also occasionally runs
a songwriting course, is impressed. “Look
at the use of prosody,” he says, admiringly,
of one of the trickier sections. Prosody is a
sort of musical onomatopoeia, when the
score emphasises the lyrics — so, at the
simplest level, you sing a deeper note for
the word “deeper”. Kieron is forcing me to
revise my view of what gets to be discussed
backstage at Prodigy gigs.

When the song climaxes, there is a
sound none of us are really sure how to
recreate. “It’s sort of a pitchless gurgling
scream,” Tommy explains, helpfully. Dyo,
a 26 year-old from Belgium who has been
singing in his own band for two years, is
particularly interested. “I suppose it takes
a lot of time to learn?” he asks. “Yeah,”
Tommy replies. “You have to start
smoking, and drink a lot of whisky.” He’s
joking. It’s a lot harder than that. It is time
to divert the lesson towards screaming
methods.

The problem is not the noise — anyone
can scream — it’s making the noise in such
a way that you can still sing afterwards.
“There are techniques you can learn so
that you don’t shred your vocal cords,”
Tommy says. “The trick is to make weird
industrial noises, and get used to what
your voice can do, rather than do proper
singing.” He recommends a podcast called
The Zen of Screaming by a woman called
Melissa Cross, voice
trainer for Slipknot.
We try out one of her
exercises — “The
French Doorbell”. It
involves making noises
like a doorbell,
something I fervently
hope Slipknot do before
going on stage.
Another more
Slipknot-appropriate
exercise requires that we
laugh at each other, in a strange, staccato,
guttural way that makes us all sound like
victorious evil villains.

If day one is about screaming, then the
final day — when I will perform — is about
whooping. “What we want to hear are the
group woohoos,” Kieron says, introducing
proceedings. Blur’s Song 2 is a short song, of
few lyrics, most of which are “woohoo”.
Those that aren’t, are reliably mad. The
first recognisably English sentence is, “I
got my head checked/ By a jumbo jet.”
Kieron hears my run-through, and tells
me I need to drop a lot more consonants.
All of them, in fact. Colin, from Hundred
Reasons, demonstrates jumping and
singing at the same time.

Just as important for aspiring
Britpoppers as appropriating the right
Damon Albarn-style mockney tone, is
learning how to move on the stage — not
least so that you always have room to
bounce. “It’s about being chilled out,
making the space your own,” Colin says
before adding, in what I can only assure
you did not feel like a non sequitur at the
time, “Have you ever kicked a guitarist,
Kieron?” Kieron gives him a look as if that
is the most absurd question — of course he
has. Colin continues, approving: this
perfectly illustrates his point, “Don’t be
scared to move around and control the
stage.”

Colin also has some last-minute tips for
dealing with audiences. “You have to be
able to cope with distraction, and keep
going,” he says. “Through one whole
concert I had a man staring me out,
completely still, holding up his middle
finger. At another, half the audience
turned their backs on me.” Kieron is not to
be outdone. “I was supporting Metallica
once on a comeback gig. The whole crowd
screamed, ‘F*** you, die. Where are
Metallica?’ That was a tough crowd.”
The parents and siblings of the summer
school students will hopefully be less
exacting.

This is when I am meant to say that I am
nervous, that I am worried about my
singing, that — standing on stage before
my set — I feel a bit silly. The truth is,
woohoo-timing issues aside, I don’t. The
lights are on me, the stage is my own, I’ve
practiced twirling the microphone. I even
note that the guitarist is looking eminently
kickable. I am, in other words, a rock star.
There are certain vaguely troubling
moments during the performance that
follows. There’s the time when Colin
comes up to mouth the words frantically at
me — he must have got confused about
where I am in the song. There’s the time
when the photographer gives me a funny
look after I snarl into the camera. But,
mainly, I rock. And the crowd definitely
loves me.

Three minutes later, as the music
recedes and the band (not to mention the
adrenalin) disperses, the remorse begins.
Like the morning after a particularly
heavy night, I begin to piece together the
events — the jumping, the whooping, the
brutal disregard for timing and key. The
dancing. Dear God, the dancing.
Dyo comes up to congratulate me. “You
rocked man,” he says. Dyo is a very kind
man. But Dyo, in his performance, actually
did rock. He has put the video of the
afternoon on Facebook. I won’t be
watching.

The BIMM summer schools take place in
Brighton and Bristol every August, and
cost £299. More information at
bimm.co.uk, 0844 264666