As long as the singer is singing in a way that isn’t damaging to their vocal tract, I see no issue.
Brian Johnson sounds like he’s gargling with gravel - but he clearly knows how to take care of his voice. He’s been a Rock singer for over 60 years, y’know?
“Correct” singing has as much to do with genre as anything else. As long at the underlying mechanics are sound…have at it.
My only point with “correct” in singing is that there are things that kill natural resonance. It’s that natural resonance where each individual’s unique tone is going to shine. Definitely from a frequency response perspective, there’s going to be more richness and color when that happens. That also may not be what certain rock singers are going for though, so at the end of the day maybe it doesn’t matter. Plenty of my favorite singers probably aren’t that great “technically”.
You owe it to yourself to familiarise yourself with Richie Kotzen’s music. Seriously.
You’re right, I should! I’ve heard a few tunes, IMO not *quite *as good as Chris but pretty close and definitely a similar vocal style. I liked what I heard, I just didn’t dig deeper. Definitely WAY better guitar player than Chris though lol. A similar recent find is Ian Thornley. He’s a really good guitar player and his vocals are somewhere between Scott Weiland and Chris Cornell. Great writer too (and bonus points because a record or 2 of his was mixed by Randy Staub).
But yes, I will look into Richie more deeply.
Yeah, I can’t be too hard on those guys either. They were perfectly open about the fact they were selling out which I respect - I’ve seen them in interviews saying, paraphrased, they could play more metal, but then they woudn’t be selling out arenas and would be sleeping in the back of a broken down band rather than a multi-million dollar tour bus.
And, the thing is, I kinda believe them - poke around youtube a bit for some of their “Metallica Minute” live covers. They sound better than Metallica does these days.
I keep hoping they’ll get bored and release a less poppy hard rock or metal album for the hell of it, but… for now, they’re a very commercially successful band, aren’t unpleasant to listen to, and yeah, their mixes are unbelievable. Everything sounds incredible.
Great call here too. Great singer, great songwriter, great guitarist. Only, he brickwalls the shit out of his mixes, and I can’t listen to them very long. I’d almost pay out of pocket to master his catalogue just so I could stand to listen to it. 
But, his “Come Again” album is stellar. Haven’t listened in a while, maybe I’ll give it another go and see if it’s less crushed on Spotify by any chance.
In a similar vein, I’d suggest the self-tited (and I think only) release from Manmade God, and the Brother Cane/Queensryche project Slave to the System. Found both on an old Pandora station I created that was a fertile ground for great bands I;d never heard of I called “Bands That Sound Like Soundgarden But Aren’t” back when their algo really was driven by their “music genome project” and not “oh, people who like Nirvana probably also like Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots and Bush and Green Day.”
I haven’t actually listened to much of his solo stuff, more Big Wreck. What did you think of “Grace Street”? That’s a Randy Staub mix. All is know when @carranoj25 told me I should stop everything I’m doing and listen to Digging In, the first thing I thought “My GAWD that snare sounds good!”
Still my favorite Big Wreck tune 
Then trying to find out who mixed it, I found out it was Randy Staub. It all made sense then lol! Similar to one of my other favorite snare sounds, the Nickelback tune “Animals”. Probably not pitched up quite as high but just a nice thick cutting snare sound. Mmm mmmm.
Honestly I always forget about Big Wreck. I might be conflating the two, though? I don’t think his solo stuff ever sounded that different from Big Wreck, and maybe it’s their albums that have the dynamics crushed within an inch of/maybe a little beyond their life. I haven’t listened to any of his music for at least a year, so mostly I’m just stoked for the reminder of a great artist.
I’ll report back. :yesway:
My god, Big Wreck is a great freaking band!! I still remember hearing The Oaf for the first time. There’s a live thing they did with Suhr guitars and the mix is phenomenal.
Well I’ve derailed this thread lol! It’s gone from “Tremonti right hand” to “Bands Everyone Hates But are Awesome…‘Proper’ Rock Vocal Technique…and Ian Thornley Rocks!!”
Here’s some cool playing from Mark
Similar to what @tommo said about not necessarily stellar hand sync in places. I think he tenses up some and we get some elbow at the high speeds, but honestly that’s normal (Andy Wood etc) at plenty of wrist players upper threshold. Some additional RDT down picking in there too.
To be fair (to be faaaiiiirr) this is the first Ian Thornley rocks thread I’ve ever seen…
You mean you don’t spend your sleepless nights perusing old forum threads like me??? lol!
Lol! Is that your Scott Stapp pronunciation? Ha!
Letterkenny. If you know, you know lol
And if Ian was the singer in Dream Theater, they be my favorite band is the history of bands!!
As @tommo points out, Mark is a textbook reverse dart player and worth paying attention to for anyone who wants to learn that technique because he gets great results.
We see this commonly in TC. Lots of people use Mark’s form and can do fast downstrokes but not fast alternate. The tremolo is still wrist but simply a different axis, low speed, no power, and often garage spikes. For this type of player, understanding why their downstrokes go “away”, and simply using the same wrist motion for alternate is a powerful way around the mental block. Mark’s pure alternate speed in the clip @joebegly posted is a great example of what a reverse dart player should be able to do all day long with no fatigue when the technique is done correctly.
Mark is also a riff lord who has only gotten better over time. I haven’t followed what he did after the Alter Bridge ABIII album, but there’s some really clever heavy riff writing on that album, and also Blackbird which came before it:
Dang I’ve been missing out. Blackbird was the last thing of there’s I followed. Not sure why because I really dug that record. The mix on that AB III sounds amazing though. If you “A/B” it (cornball pun intended) against Blackbird (which also sounds great)…Blackbird almost sounds like there’s a blanket over the speakers. Same mixing engineer on both records too 
AB III is still not quite as good sounding as All The Right Reasons though lol
jk maybe it is…It’s possible I’ve put that recording on a pedestal.
Ok, THIS is interesting. To me, ABIII is another example of an album that sounds over-compressed; the opening track, “Slip To The Void” is a great example, where there’s a sparse whispered vocal and clean/acoustic guitar intro, and then the band kicks in… and there’s no perceived change in volume. It’s already so loud that there’s not really any “room” for the volume to increase.
I need to check it out on Spotify on a good set of speakers some time, to see if there’s a different master between the CD and streaming, but the master was, to me, hard to listen to because of its incredibly narrow dynamic range.
Meanwhile, I loved the mix on Blackbird - something like “Coming Home” was absolutely huge, in part because the dynamics could still breathe a bit.
It’s wild how subjective this is (unless there really is a different streaming master and that’s the one you know better) - I’ve always enjoyed mixes with a bit of rawness and looseness to them, but the dynamics i figured would be less subjective. Crazy.
I’m definitely weird in that I don’t really care about dynamics that much and focus more on tones/EQ. BUT I only listened to like the first 30 seconds of the AB III thing, so maybe it would get fatiguing if I went further lol
That’s great!
Blockquote “But I still think this is not done in a super exact way, more in a “rock’n’roll swagger / just go for it” kinda way
.”
Yeah I definitely agree, that’s one of the things that you think it’s very precise at fast speed, but in reality it might not be as clean or precise, it still sounds good tho, even tho it is supposed to have some string changes aswell.
Great clip! Thanks for sharing
Oh I love those songs, they are killer! And great insights on Tremonti picking technique.