Hey everybody welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is in the singing.
I'm having a blast taking these amazing, legendary, isolated vocal tracks. I'm doing a vocal analysis,
a vocal tutorial and I'm also talking about the recording process. Next up is Tony Lewis, the band
is The Outfield and the song is called "Your Love". Now Tony's no longer with us, he passed a couple
of months ago so this is sort of a eulogy to him and I'm gonna, I'm gonna also talk about other
voice types and similar voice types but before we get started, if you wouldn't mind, please like and
subscribe to my channel that'd be really cool. I have a singing course and the course is called
How to Sing Better Than Anyone Else, you guys can find it right here at Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com
where I also have a free singing forums with over 20,000 people discussing how to get great
at singing and talking about all these other great singers. So now I want to talk about Tony and this
is going to be a pleasure for me because I've been wanting to do this for a while. Tony has a very
unique voice. Now some people would just call him you know a tenor you know what I mean it's just
kind of a little name to kind of slap on, hey he's a tenor because he sings really high but that's
actually not the case, he actually is kind of more of what's called a countertenor or contratenor.
It matches the female contralto or like a mezzo soprano okay so it's in that vocal range,
and usually somewhere about an F sharp to a G, well it's kind of a G3 and some people talk
about G4 but a G3 is their lowest range but they hover their, their tessitura or the sweet spot so
to speak of their voice is right around about an F sharp 4, G4 here, up to about a D5 so (sings) or (sings),
like right in that range is where they sort of you know excel in their in their tessitura or
the sweet spot of their vocal range. Now this is important because not only that there's a lot of
characteristics and qualities about this kind of voice type that are very unique. Let me start off
with what those are. Now when you hear him sing, and I'm going to AB him next to some other singers,
I'll discuss who they are in a minute, you're going to find that it's kind of like a little
boy's voice okay and you listen to him go, yeah I can see that. Almost as though when he went through
puberty, his voice never maturated into adulthood okay. That sounds kind of weird but stay there
with me for a minute. Usually voice types like this because female vocal folds are about half to
three quarters the size of men's so they usually resonate and their voices sing in a higher pitch
or a higher timbre in a pitch. Now this is true for counter tenors or you know count, contra
tenors which is you know like I said they reside in the female register of like a contralto or a
mesosoprano etc. Now this becomes very interesting because there aren't a lot of voice types like
this. Now we know from the Vienna boys choir they used to do something horrible back in the day and
they used to go, you won't be needing this anymore to a lot of the castrati back in the day. Now some
people think that Dimash is a castrati and all this stuff, that's not, I don't believe that because
there's too much girth and too much manliness to his sound in his lower register and also when he
goes up. Whereas guys like Tony have a smaller sound. Now the sound is what's called sobre,
in, in belcanto or in opera sort of language right and in vocal fauchs and what sobre means is light, bright,
young, agile and kind of small and like I said young. Young is the key word here where like he's
kind of sounds, kind of like a little like Michael Jackson where he kind of you know he went through
puberty but he still sounds like a boy okay, but there's still a little bit of manly qualities to
his voice. Now I'm going to fire him up here in a minute, but I don't want this to be confused with
some other voice types we're going to talk about in a second. So let's just fire up, you know
Tony's, the song "Your Love", Tony's, premiere song what, most famous for and here we go.
Now before I go on, if you notice there are some other qualities to his voice that are also very
specific and, and particular to this voice type. Usually because the sound is so small, whereas a
bigger voice is a lot more forgivable in pitch, a smaller voice like this you know a contratenor,
or countertenor, has to be very spot on on their pitch. They can't waver at all because you really,
it's very noticeable that their pitch is getting off okay, and so if, they also, most of them don't
have vibratos or they don't use vibrato. I'm not saying there aren't exceptions to that, but for
the most part, they're very flat-lined (sings)
(sings) right. It's very, I don't want to use the word plain but just very,
you know like i said, there's not a lot of range, there's not a lot of volume to their voice
either. It's, it's either kind of on. So there's like two, two dynamic ranges. It's on or kind
of really quiet, but there's no real big you know dramatic range to, to the volume in which they sing.
So if you listen to that again as we go through here, I want you to take a particular notice
no vibrato, spot on pitch, very tubular, small, agile, bright, young right. All the different things that
sobre would bring to a voice like this, voice type. Listen up.
Hear how precise that is (sings),
it's so precise, everything is really precise and small and like I said young. Now I want to talk
about some other singers so I'm going to mute him for a second and I'm going to go down to my first
guy, which is a guy named John Anderson. Now John Anderson was in a band called Yes, in fact I liked
Yes so much I even tattooed it on my arm when I was seven years old. In fact I tried to do Yes
songs with a jail tattoo where I took a, a pencil, a pin, I shoved it into the eraser, wrapped it around
with thread, dipped it in Indian ink, drew it on my arm in a mirror and I sat there and I tried to,
imagine how big that looked to someone that was seven years old. My mom says you wash that off.
I can't, I'm gonna cut your arm off. Typical Italian mom as she starts throwing stuff at me,
but anyway so, so I, I like the band so much I tattooed it on my arm, but here's John Anderson. Now
before I do John, I just want a quick, a quick blast of Tony again. So here's Tony one more
time real quick.
Now here's John Anderson of Yes. Check it out.
Cool now let's go back quickly here, to,
Tony. Here we go.
Hear the similarities guys. Check it out.
Now I want to point out that, so John Anderson very much would be considered a countertenor or
a contratenor okay. Now I've heard other people say well Dimash is a contratenor and all these
other guys and maybe even Sting is a contratenor, because he also sings very flat line and his voice
is very high but, and Michael Jackson too, but they have too much girth to their voice. There's too
much girth to its sound. Remember it's young, light, bright, agile all those things, small and their
sounds wouldn't be considered, to maybe there might be elements of it, but it certainly isn't that. Now
let me play a couple more things here. These are going to be really interesting. Check this out.
Now that's Russell Hitchcock. You guys know the band Air Supply "Lost In Love".
Now let's quickly listen to that again and AB that again against Tony. Check it out.
Okay now I would say Russell Hitchcock may even be more on the contratenor, countertenor part
because he's even more of a little boy voice and a little higher in pitch, but it's a good example to
listen Tony as we're going through this. Now let's check out another one of these. Check this out.
Okay now what's interesting that's Max Bacon. Max was in a band called GTR.
Now ironically the guitar player, or the founding member of GTR was the founding
member of Yes, so maybe he was looking for a John Anderson sound alike so to speak but
let's listen to the three of these guys so it's kind of interesting. So here's Max Bacon of GTR,
John Anderson,
The Outfield, Tony Lewis.
See the similarities now, now The Outfield isn't singing as high and there are some parts in the song that he does and I'm
trying to get it close it's kind of hard to find them all at the same time, but now let's
let's kind of move on because I want to talk about other counter tenors that have a similar sound.
Okay now that was actually Fran Cosmo which wass in the band Orion and Orion was the founding
member, so you know there was, the guitar player actually that left the band Boston with a couple
other members and kind of a Boston part two so to speak to replace Brad Delp and start a new band
called Orion, Orion The Hunter, excuse me. That song's called "So You Ran". So you hear these really
high, now this is very different than, let's say a Millie Maticevic from a band Steelheart
who sings heavier. So let's check this out. I think this is it here. Check it out.
Now you know (sings). You know he's got this big, girthy, round heavy sound. He's definitely a high range tenor, maybe he has you
know some similarities to being a contra tenor but it's very different than what we
just heard from Tony and the other guys, there were more of a little boy voice. Now they sound
kind of like little boy voices too but there's a lot of girth to the sound. Now I want to keep
going down the food chain of some other guys here that I put up here and we'll get back to Tony I promise.
Okay now that is a band called Sheriff right and
the singer is called, his name is Freddy Kirchy. Now I want to play that again really quick
Here we go.
Right, you hear the similarities there right they're very, very, very similar.
So check this out again.
John Anderson
Here that.
So alright. So now I want to continue.
Now we know that is Geddy Lee right. Now Geddy would definitely fit into this camp of being
a contratenor, a countertenor. He is definitely got that really high, little boy voice, very small
sound. He does use some vibrato, the difference with Geddy, is he's singing more like a harder rock guy,
there's a lot of doubler on this sound so it makes it sound bigger than if you'd only heard
a single vocal line of his, but I thought it was a good example of a track in a range that he was
singing something similar to some of these other guys, that would really showcase kind of that sound.
So Geddy the difference is he leans into his sound a little harder with some distortion, he didn't do
that as much later on, and by the way too, a lot of these guys they're not using a lot of support so
even Geddy to this day now unfortunately is having some vocal trouble as, as were a lot of these guys,
but I want to point that out and I want to add one more to the pie here. Check this out.
Now when you hear this.
That's the difference between sobre and being light and bright, as opposed to a heavier sound like this.
Okay. So there were a lot of 80s metal guys that were very heavy on the sound and, were,
you know, could drag a lot of weight up from the bottom up to the top, but singers like Brad Delp
didn't. Now I wouldn't consider him so much a countertenor even though he was
light, bright and airy, his voice wasn't as young and agile sounding in the same kind of way,
that could be said of Mickey Thomas also from the band Starship. He has a big warm sound, though
he had a fantastic range, definitely sang in the you know in the mezzo soprano you know
range, all the way up into the soprano range. His sound was a lot bigger okay, a much bigger sound.
So let's get back to Tony. It's like Ken you were going to do this on Tony Lewis, I am. So let's,
here's Tony Lewis one more time.
I'm gonna put the band in now.
So do you guys see the precision of this sound. All of his stuff is
really precise, and if you listen to the Sheriff stuff or you listen to you know even John Anderson,
some of the other guys, they're, they, they are, they're as precise but not quite
as precise as Tony and that's one of the things I really loved about his voice
a lot. Now let's continue because I have some other comments I'd like to make along the way.
Did you hear how exact the background vocals were, they almost sounded like a melotron or
they almost sounded like auto-tune but this was before the age of auto-tune folks, so
those vocals are spot-on and they don't use vibrato so there's not a lot of waver in the sound,
they're just really, really, really tight in the way that they were song so listen.
Listen to these backgrounds. Check this out.
Hear how beautiful and spot-on those vocals are and they're really pristine.
Now a few more things about this is is that if you notice, there's a little bit
of more of an airy tone or tonal quality to a countertenor. So it's not like (sings), it's (sings)
right. There's a lot of air so that's why it's light, bright, kind of airy,
small, agile and young and therein comes the idea and the concept of being sobre.
So let's continue to listen to his vocal alone just to enjoy it here for a minute. Here we go
it's gonna come up.
(sings) right. Now if you notice, that's kind
of on the higher spectrum for me until I get warmed up and try to get into my
upper register as a high bari, but for him it sounds really low in his register. Check it out.
Now there's one more thing about this that I want to bring up, and
that is that there is a slurring through the consonants for these smaller sobre kinds of sounds
because they're so articulate already because they're a smaller sound and they're placed
so high, that they don't have to articulate the sound. Now this is precisely what I cover,
all of this stuff in my singing course, that when you're up this high, you don't really
want to over accentuate the vocal tract so we don't want vowels being too big going
from one vowel to another, and we actually slur through the consonant sounds themselves,
because we don't want to get caught with the throat closing. Opening and closing and opening closing,
trying to sing these words. So listen closely how he kind of slurs through these words.
(sings) Just because you're right don't mean I'm (sings) right.
Check it out. Listen closely man. Did you know that's what he was saying.
Did you not.. that (sings) right.
He doesn't veer off that much from that vowel sound so that o-i-a-e-o,
is very closely related all the way through the full spectrum of the range
that he's singing in so it's very important to note that when you're singing this high,
no matter if you're a bari like me, if you're a tenor, a contra tenor or, and even sopranos when
they go up in their range, they have to do the same thing okay.
So anyway. I just wanted to share all this stuff with you guys it was really exciting for me to
want to be able to do all this, this is a very particular vocal type I've been wanting to do
for a while now and I really appreciate you guys joining me and definitely check out my next video.