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[–]gpm479 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The way to get the most air in is to pull about 95% into your stomach area with your diaphragm. You want to do this relatively quickly (depending on how soon you have to sing again) but as smoothly as you can. The next 2-4% will fill up your upper chest, making that region expand, and the last bit of air you get in will bring your shoulders up a bit and expand your neck. This is the technique described by a famous trumpet player for Compression Breathing.

The next step of that technique is the compression piece. It's mostly helpful for forcing air quickly enough to get crazy high notes on the trumpet, but it can be useful for adding power to the front end of vocals without putting too much emphasis on straining your vocal chords. You want to push your belly button into your spine and flex your pectorals in a way that in pushes your upper chest back in. Without even pushing air out intentionally, if you just just relax the muscles keeping the air from escaping, it will pretty much just shoot out of you. That explanation was mostly just for continuity of the technique, but could be useful for forceful growls.

Back to your question. One part of the answer could be getting more air in, the way I explained, but it could also be the way you are expelling the air. When you are screaming (or singing, but to a little lesser extent as far as I know) you shouldn't be expelling air at a super high rate. If you put your finger in front of your mouth, it should feel just a bit stronger than a regular exhaled breath.

If you can use compression to push the air, and practice the ability to control how slowly the air leaves, even when compressed, it will help with getting more aggressive sounds to last longer.

If you give some detail on the technique you use for inhaling, and the way you exhale/scream it could give some better insight into how to fix it.

For now, some a really good exercise for breath control is this:

  • For each of the steps, "inhale" means as much air as you can using the technique I described, "exhale" means completely void yourself of air.

  • Inhale at the most comfortable rate, determines how many counts (you can count by whatever you want, as long as it's consistent, heartbeats usually works).

  • Exhale at the most comfortable rate, determine how many counts.

  • Lets suppose you inhale and exhale for 8 beats naturally. Inhale for 8, and exhale for 10

  • Keep inhaling for 8 beats, but keep exhaling over a longer amount of beats. You can go up by any intervals, but 2 is probably the best. Towards the highest end, going by 1 beat at a time is alright.

  • Do this until you are inhaling for 8 and exhaling for the longest amount of time you can.

  • Now inhale over 6 beats, and repeat the process of lengthening the exhale time, starting at 10 beats.

  • Continue this process until you are inhaling fully over 1 beat, and exhaling fully over the longest amount of time you can.

Make sure you inhale and exhale as smoothly as possible, and don't lengthen the exhale until you have the length you're at really smooth.

For more powerful barks, you can try the opposite of this, exhaling quicker and quicker while keeping it smooth. That is where the compression I explained comes into play.

Good luck!

EDIT: I'm pretty far from a Whitechapel fan, but this dude seems pretty down to earth and cool about his methods, here's some vids he's made himself: Gutteral Demo, some vocal tips.