Singing Guide: My Chemical Romance
Vocal technique, exercises, tips and relevant resources
Learning to sing like My Chemical Romance (MCR) requires practice and an understanding of the unique vocal and musical style of the band. MCR's lead singer, Gerard Way, has a distinctive voice with a strong sense of emotion and theatrics.
Gerard Way's vocal style relies heavily on screaming, wailing, and belting out high notes. To achieve such a technique, focus on voice training exercises that help in building a strong core and breath support, essential to singing sustainably and with intensity. Working on vowel modifications is also beneficial, as the ability to modify vowels and vowel transitions is crucial to MCR's unique sound.
MCR's songs are ideal for practicing belt, switch and mixed voice, and vibrato techniques. Several pieces that showcase Gerard's vocal range include "Welcome to the Black Parade," "Ghost of You," and "I'm Not Okay."
To nail MCR's vocal style, you can't transcribe rhythms by ear; you need to train your ear and musicianship. Singing Carrots offers a vocal range test and pitch accuracy test to help test your range, accuracy and skill level. This can be helpful to understand current capabilities and outline areas for improvement.
The education courses in Singing Carrots also cover topics related to vocal health and techniques necessary to achieve MCR's sound, including resonance, breathing, warmups, registers, and voice breaks. Some of the exercises to develop vocal agility, brevity, and the ability to rehearse better include humming, twang, growling, articulation, Sustain Vocal, and glottal onsets.
With the proper training and access to relevant resources available in Singing Carrots, you can learn the vocal style of Gerard Way and sing like My Chemical Romance.