Hey everybody welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is in the singing.
I am having an absolute blast doing these isolated vocal tracks of taking the most epic,
legendary songs of all time and getting to listen to the intimate details of a soloed, raw, naked
vocal track from some of the songs we all grew up on and it just you know, the most iconic, legendary
songs of all time. So next up is Motley Crew. The song is called Dr. Feelgood. Now you guys probably
all know this one. I've done a version of this. Now I'll put that in the description,
you can see how I did it, the version of this song. I also did "Kickstart My Heart"
and I'm gonna put that in here. In fact it released today just on YouTube so you can tell
when this video was made, but anyway I'll put that in the description also and you can see how I did. Now
I sing it quite a bit differently than Vince Neil because I have a very different voice, though
I did try to capture some of his nuance but still sound like myself okay. With that said guys
if you wouldn't mind, please like and subscribe to my channel, that would be really cool
and I have a singing course. The course is called How to Sing Better Than Anyone Else and you can
find it right here at Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com. I also have a singers forum over there with over
20,000 singers all discussing all these amazing artists, Sebastian Bach, you name it, Freddie Mercury,
and, and, and, all the all the greats on how they got great in hopes to help make you great at singing
okay. So I just want to dive right in. I've not listened to this but I'm assuming it's pretty cool
and like I said it's just amazing that we can have the original track to this stuff
to scrutinize and put under a microscope or a magnifying glass and then discuss it
and see how we got to all these different cool vocal places. So with said let's rock. Here we go.
First off I didn't even know that was there so I guess that's at the very beginning
of the song maybe I should have known that. All you Motley Crew fans are going to go shame on you
you should have known that was the very first, first line but this is my first line. Here we go.
Okay so I want to start there. Okay now a few things is, Vince notoriously sings like from here. I
mean you know (sings) right.
So he's really well known for not enunciating his vocals that much so you can hardly tell what
he's saying ,and he's just really way up in here in the head. He's got a real compressed sound.
Also if you listen closely they at least double tracked if not triple tracked the vocal
to try to make it sound a little bit bigger because he has a really small voice
and they use a lot of effect on his voice but most of the stuff like the, especially the later Motley
Crew stuff was produced amazingly well right, and so a lot of the energy in what for is made
from you know Nikki Sixx Mick Mars, you know I mean you got some, it's a really, it's kind of funny
when I think of Motley Crue, I think of how underrated Nikki Sixx's songwriting is because
he's actually, not actually I shouldn't even say that. Nikki Sixx is a really good songwriter and so
some of the songwriting is really underrated but maybe not because it's, it has had a lot of success
but I don't think a lot of the 80s metal guys took it as seriously in its day
and yet it's withstood the test of time. In fact one of my clients is, is Kat Von D and she
was engaged to Nikki for quite a while and Nikki's one hard working dude and he's come a long way and
I believe he's still sober and he's out there mentoring kids in LA, he gets in his van and he
drives to LA and picks up these kids and you know, has this really cool mentorship program so
they've come a long way in their craft and I just want to give him kudos and a shout out for that
and then you know of course Tommy Lee is just a phenomenal drummer and so you know you've got this this,
this you know triage of musicians really holding down the line and making big sounds for Nikki
to be able to kind of still say, stay small in his sound and have the whole band still sound big okay.
Let's listen to this one more time. I want you to listen to all the effect, the triple tracking
of the vocals and so forth. Check it out.
Now let me, let me show you something. So if I go (sings)
right. That's kind of about how he sings. It',s it's looks like that, sounds like
that. It's about you know about that much power and authority into the sound, but I want to show you
something. I don't want to turn my back to you guys a bunch of times but I want to show you something.
I want to add some effect and sing it exactly the same way for a second, to show you how much, and
I'm not even going to double track it or do all my magic like I've done in some of these other videos.
I want to show you how much difference that makes so, check this out. Hold on. Okay I'm
just going to put a little a bit of everything on here. Bear with me, hang in there. So check this out.
Now I suspect, suspect, suspect, suspect, that he had more
reverb on the original so but let me just do this. Here we go. (sings) right.
One, two, three okay so (sings)
You hear the difference. There's a
big difference and sorry to turn my back on you like that but, I think I'm gonna buy
a, a camera and like have it focused on the front so when I do that at least you'll get
to see what I'm doing but with that said, so I wanted to, let me make sure that everything's off, hold on.
As all the delays, sorry about that I had a feeling because I kept going (sounds). Let's do this again so (sings)
right so if you notice with no effect, it sounds quite a bit different than when I had a fact right.
Now the reason II bring this up is because a lot of times we listen to a track in its original,
in our minds we blow things up way bigger than they really are. So we think of something as just
being, big or monstrous or crazy and sometimes it is, but a lot of times if you really listen
to the track, it doesn't have quite the ah that you think it does and so when we're trying to
replicate this or duplicate this as a singer, we find that we over sing or overdo things, in the
name of thinking that we're matching an original artist okay, very important. Now that's kind of not
true for growl and scream, some of those guys are like you know practically see them spitting up blood
but anyway so let's continue. So I'm gonna go from here.
Now did you hear the cut (sings). You can
clearly hear an edit right and one track goes underneath and the other track comes on top. So
I never knew that in the original ,that that wasn't a contiguous line. I just thought he just sang it,
but I also remembered thinking to myself when I went to do this song, because I've never heard the
solo vocal, so I did the song first, the one that's in the description you guys can check, out and I
just did these long lines going wow the guy's got a lot of lung capacity to be able to sing these
really long lines and it not be edited but bingo, all of a sudden, check it out. Listen to it again.
Hear that.
Now when you hear like whether it's "Kick Start My Heart" or Dr.Feel...(sings)
You know it's real small but (sings). You know the word feel good,
there's this giant gang vocal, maybe like a Bon Jovi song or even a Whitesnake, well Whitesnake
didn't use so much background vocals but, you know like a Bon Jovi song or some real ant, anthemic, Def
Leppard song. There's this huge background thing. Now I've done, I'm doing a lot of these
and I did Def Leppard, I'm not sure when these are going to release, but you're going to hear
too, Joe Elliot is, is pretty small on the sound a lot of the time so is, Jon Bon Jovi is pretty
small except for when he does "Livin' On A Prayer" that's the one I did a vocal stem to,
when he sings the end chorus he's kicking major butt. He did an awesome job so I'm not diminishing
or taking away from from their talents, but they're not as big as you think they are. It's, a lot of this
production really helps it far along so. Anyway you hear all the double tracking, you hear all the
effect on the vocals and so forth, and when you take that away, it's a pretty small sound.
(sings). In my version you can actually make out the lyrics and I'm actually one for
under-enunciating stuff because it's easier to sing but this is so under-enunciated I can't
really make it out. Now I could probably go back and remember what the vocals are,
but I do want to say another thing in defense of Vince is, this stuff's pretty high
and it's not that easy to sing so you're kind of sitting in a, you know I don't know, supporting a's
and b's and kind of everything in between. So the stuff is pretty high, it's not that easy to sing.
So I don't want to you know make you guys think for a minute that oh gosh anyone can just
walk in and do this stuff. It's kind of tough and try it, you know give it, give it a try and see what
I'm saying but, but again I want you to really focus on how small his sound is, so you don't
think you have to drag up all of this big, round, girthy, sound to try to match the vocals okay.
Now again,
another thing that's difficult about a lot of the Motley Crue songs, especially these ones
when talk about run-on sentences. I want to back this up is, I want you to sit there
for a minute with me and I won't get all the lyrics right, I probably should have printed
them so I could read them and at least do it some justice and, and not shame myself for not
knowing the lyrics but, let me back this up and I want you to see how run on these sentences are
and how difficult this would be to do live, running around on a stage. Check this out.
That, that's fairly okay.
Now if you were just going (sings) you know if you had
to do the Dr. Feelgood parts, that would be pretty tough to do that and the other
vocals. Let me back this even farther back because I want you to see something else.
So (sings) right (sings)
you know right. You don't even get the breath in the middle you got to go (sings)
Okay now imagine doing that, what I just did, and running around the stage. You gotta kind of be
anaerobic in the sound right, which means in the absence of oxygen ,oxygen. You got to be able to
not have to need a lot of oxygen, when you're doing this stuff. So let me fast forward again so.
Now one more thing. If you notice too, there's a harmonic resonance underneath the lead vocal at an
octave that makes the, the top vocal sound a lot bigger than it really is.
Listen really close. Not only is there a double track, but there's kind of a harmonic rumbling
of like someone sang the octave lower and just kind of used only the reverb of it and brought
it in. Now I did that in my track too, so if you listen to my track I sang the octave underneath,
to kind of give it this effect because without it, it just sounds kind of weird.
Now listen to it really close, of the rumbling underneath the bottom. Check it out.
You hear that. (sings) So there's like a rumble of like a lower octave underneath that's, that's
kind of gluing a lot of this stuff together which I thought was interesting.
Now one other thing too is, we've talked a lot about you know Joe Elliott not using much
vibrato, like a lot of these different artists that we were going through these vocal stems,
Vince used almost no vibrato at all (sings)
you know right. He uses almost no vibrato so it's
very flat-lined, kind of everything he does, which, which tends to make things sound a little
monotone. So I don't think of this as like singer- singer stuff, I think of this as like really well
produced thought out lines, with really good melodic structures, harmonic melodic structures,
with a great, you know great band, kicking major butt with a lot of good
production and very, very catchy songs with anthemic choruses that really help out
the song a lot. So let me see, I think there's a big solo coming up here so.
So I don't want to like do all this.
Cool. Now you hear all the production in the vocals themselves, there's like
four or five voices, there's harmonies, there's lower octave stuff, there's doubling in the vocals.
There's a lot of effect on the lead vocals so there's a lot that went into this production to
make it what it is so I want you guys to recognize that as you're trying to do this on your own and
you're kind of down on yourself and you're saying gosh you know, I don't really feel like I can do,
you know this because it just doesn't sound like it. Well we're hearing what it really sounded like
and how much production went into it, to make it sound like the song we remember, so that you
wouldn't be too discouraged to go, you know a lot of production went into this and even today, in
today's world of processing and autotune and stuff, they even do more processing than this
so, so don't feel so bad as we're going through this and we're trying to learn this stuff together.
Be encouraged to the fact that if you can get through some of this stuff and get your single
lines together, you're doing pretty good.
So anyway gang so this is this is definitely you know
an interesting thing for me to pick apart, not only the vocal parts to teach you how
to do it, now if you want to do this with me just for a second (sings)
right. I want you to kind of think of yourself and put that sound right in the front (sings)
right. Now believe it or not Axl Rose kind of brings a lot of this sound into the front of
his face too but he has a lot of girth and a lot of warmth and thick fatness on the bottom,
that helps make his sound bigger, even though his sound isn't a big sound, it's a lot bigger than
this sound, and he uses some similar stabs in the way he sings, you know think about
you know (sings)
right. Now imagine Vince Neil doing (sings)
right. You can almost hear you know how that could be interchangeable.
Now I'm not saying Axl is Vince or Vince is Axl, that's not my point but there's a similarity into
the compression into singing really nasal, a lot of nasality and bring this sound into the
front of the face okay. Hope you guys like what you heard and definitely check out my next video.