"We can learn a lot from babies," said the Iron Maiden frontman.
During an appearance on the British TV program BBC Breakfast, Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson spoke about how heavy metal vocalists and babies use the same instincts to protect their voices when making loud noises.
“There’s a chapter in my autobiography about how vocal technique, the voice, works—a mechanical basis for things ,” she said. “ And I talk about how we can learn a lot from babies. I mean, from the noise those little things make. And they never lose their voices, right? Babies aren’t afraid to use the full force of their diaphragms. And they have tiny lungs, despite the incredible noise they make. So when people say they can’t sing, they’re wrong. They’ve just forgotten how to do it.”
As pointed out by Blabbermouth, a 2017 study by Krzysztof Izdebski of the Pacific Voice and Speech Foundation found that when most people scream, their vocal cords collide, which can cause hypervascularization, bleeding, or swelling. However, according to Izdebski, the typical screams of metal singers do not cause vocal cord collision, meaning that no harmful nodules are formed from friction. It's the same technique used by children who scream and cry for hours and still suffer no permanent damage.
What Does This Button Do?, Dickinson's autobiography, was released on October 31, 2017 in the United States. The book reached the tenth position on the New York Times "Hardcover Nonfiction" bestseller list last November.
Watch the full interview, in English, below.
