☰ Scribing Screams

There are two halves to this section, "scream" or harsh vocals, and the random noises often yelled during metal songs.

For the first half, there's not really a trick to understanding harsh vocals besides having an ear for it. It does get easier the more of it you listen to as your ears become accustomed, but you can also attempt to extract the vocal line if the mixing is particularly awful (a popular trend especially with black metal bands). Harsh vocals should not be denoted differently than clean vocals if vocalized by the same person and should not end every line with an exclamation mark.

The second half is the onomatopoeias. With these there's also no specific guidelines and they are often not included in official lyrics, however you should use your best judgement and make the spelling reasonable (Please don't write "Aaaaahhhhhhhh" just use "Ah"). Some common examples are "ah", "uh", "ugh", "blegh", "yeah", "oh", "ooh", "ree", and "bree" (the last two are more commonly found in grindcore). These exclamations are often not directly in a song section and can be tacked on whichever one is nearer or would look better. You can also choose to either leave these out of your scribe or use [Non-Lyrical Vocals] instead. Exclamation points on these interjections also isn't encouraged. This video has some great ideas for some spellings if you're stumped.

☰ How To Denote Choir Vocals

Choir vocals are often present in Power Metal, Symphonic Power Metal, and Symphonic Metal but can also be found in other genres. It can be speculated that their prevalence is because they make songs more melodic/symphonic. It is also not uncommon for the choir to be chanting in Latin.

Choir vocals should be denoted in italics, but not as an additional artist in the header unless assigned a name in the CD booklet. -> Click here for examples.

How To Denote Choir Vocals with Two Vocalists
If there are two main vocalists featured in the same song section you can denote Vocalist 1 in plaintext, Vocalist 2 in bold, and the Choir remains in italics. -> Click here for examples.

How To Denote When The Vocalist & Choir Sing Together
This section is being depreciated. Please return any instance of this found in scribes to plaintext.
Occasionally the choir will double the vocalist on the melody, or the vocalist will sing with the choir for dramatic effect. This should only be denoted when there is emphasis placed on the main vocalist and they are being supported by the choir, not blending with the choir. You have to be careful though as sometimes the choir is just the main vocalist recording several lines themselves and layering them. You can denote them singing together with bolded italics. -> Click here for examples.

How To Denote More Than Two Vocalists With A Choir
While this is quite uncommon, should you encounter this, use standard formatting starting with bold with the choir still being in italics. And if you run into any instances where there are too many vocalists and you run out of formatting, use musical formatting*. Musical formatting can also be used on songs that don't have a clear structure and are sung specifically by characters (ex. Planeswalker – "Oath of The Gatewatch")

☰ More On Musical Formatting

Musical formatting should, for the most part, be used on songs with characters, but it can also be used for songs with just an unclear structure. Songs that often fall into this category are album closers from power metal albums. Their long length and style of telling an epic or epic fantastical tale tends to mean they have various verses and interludes, none of which wind up being melodically repeated within the song. For instances like these it simply looks better to use musical formatting since it meets both of the preferred criteria. This also helps to reduce the number of [Spoken Interludes] that can be found in these often 10+ minute long songs. (Please also note when using musical formatting please do not continue to use italics to indicate the choir since they'll have to be denoted another way anyways.) Also note that you can still use [Instrumental Break] and [Guitar Solo] with your musical style transcription. You just don't see it too often in normal musical scribes because they're musicals not metal songs. -> Click here for examples.

☰ Transcribing Orchestral/Symphonic Versions

When scribing these versions of other songs there are often lyrics, but significantly less than the original so it raises the question of what headers to use. Please use the same headers as the normal version of the song. The only exception to this rule is if part of the lyrics are from a verse but it was say verse 3 but it's the only verse on the orchestral/symphonic version just drop the number or renumber if there is more than one verse included. The choir in orchestral/symphonic versions should not be denoted in italics unless there is another person's vocals in addition to the choir present. -> Click here for examples.

☰ Headers

Although the official song headers guide is a great resource there are instances where other headers not included there should be utilized.

[Instrumental Interlude] - It's an interlude, it's just instrumental. This is here because the guide doesn't specify to add the instrumental part and I just think it looks better. -> Click here for examples.

[Spoken Interlude] - To be used for sections of spoken dialogue mixed into the lyrics that furthers the plot/story such as character dialogue and narration. -> Click here for examples.

[Spoken Intro] & [Spoken Outro] - Please only use these for narration and not for live performances. A normal song intro or outro that's a sample or just a voice clip should still be denoted as just [Intro] or [Outro]. -> Click here for examples.

[Solo] - This one is in the official guides but what they don't specify that you can add anything spoken over/during the solo under this header if need be like you do for any other header. -> Click here for examples.
[Non-Lyrical Vocals] - This one is also in the guides already but you just use it for any vocals that aren't distinct words or if you don't want to write out a ton of ohs or oohs.

☰ Scribing Live Performances

When scribing live performances often times the artist will add in all sorts of live adlibs as they're engaging with the audience. Most often this is seen as a spoken introduction to the song or as a spoken outro where the artist thanks the audience or segues into the next song. These should be tagged as [Intro] and [Outro] respectively. If the song already has an [Intro] and/or [Outro], do similar to what we do in musical formatting and include a line break in-between the spoken and sung sections leaving them under the same header, however do not differentiate with the [Person, spoken] found in musical scribes.
-> Click here for examples.

The other common things you'll find adlib wise in live performances is random adlibs to the crowd, often in-between structures. These can be tagged as [Spoken Interlude] (remember that [Spoken] is an outdated header and should not be used). -> Click here for examples.

You can also sometimes make out things audience members scream in the recording, if you so please, you can also include these in your lyrics, just make sure you indicate it's a different person than the artist with text formatting.
-> Click here for examples.

☰ Preserving the Story and the Full Story Page

Often times when a metal album tells a fantastical story, the entire story cannot be delivered through lyrics alone. The rest of the story is often found in the CD booklet, in music videos, on the band's Bandcamp, or on the band's website. The story can be continued via notes for individual songs, as a story told in-between tracks, as additional dialogue mixed into the lyrics, or as a story pasted on it's own page(s) in the CD booklet. While it's quite easy to incorporate individual track notes and story pages for the entire album (via track and album Q&As respectively) it's not as easy to include information that gets mixed into the lyrics or a story split between tracks. To amend this, you can make what is called a Full Story Page. -> Click here for examples.

Full Story Pages should be created as Non-Music pages with the primary artist being whoever released the album. Full Story Pages should not be added to any album, but can be linked to the album they belong to via a Q&A on the Album Page that reads "Where can I read the complete story of Album Name?".

Information that is included should be added in the order it appears from your source. Each section, whether it be source information or lyrics, should be separated from the previous one via a horizontal line. When adding song lyrics to the page include the track title before the lyrics. Headers like this are not needed for sections that aren't song lyrics as the nature of these pages assumes the information you're adding isn't track specific; however if the information is you can add titles in the same fashion, just please add "Notes" after the song title in the header.

If the information from the CD booklet is mixed into the lyrics it can be denoted a few ways. If it's stage directions or actions borrow from Musical Genius and put the it in square bracket bolded italics. If it's additional lyrics that aren't spoken include them as small sample text in order to distinguish them as separate without messing with Genius's pre-existing text formatting.

☰ Adding Genre Tags

An important part of Genius metadata is adding accurate genre tags to a song page in order to make it so your song can be found by people looking for content within those genres. Here is a list of tags that might be relevant to various metal songs.

Tags to always add:
- Rock
- Metal
- Language tags [ex: In English, Auf Deutsch, En español]
- Country tags [ex: USA, Deutschland, Suomi]
- Country Metal tags [ex: Israeli Metal, Русский метал (Russian Metal)]

Metal Tags Page

Song Types
(Legacy) Power Metal Tags

☰ Metal Resources

Encyclopedia Metallum: The Metal Archives – Lyrics, Metadata, Artwork
MusicBrainz – Metadata, Artwork
Bandcamp – Lyrics, Metadata, Artwork, Artist Quote
YouTube – Lyrics (Official Account), Metadata (Topic Page)
Artist/Band's Website – Lyrics, Metadata, Artwork, Artist Quote
Instagram/Facebook – Artwork, Artist Quote, Teasers