Hey everybody welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is in
the singing, that's right you got it. Anyway I'm continuing my series on taking these incredible
isolated vocal tracks and I'm doing an analysis, a tutorial, talking about the recording process,
little history on the band. Next up is Triumph and of course you guys know the vocalist Rik Emmett
also guitar and not to say that Gilmore isn't also an amazing vocalist on drums too
but I'm gonna focus on Rik today. Now if you wouldn't mind, please like and subscribe to
my channel. Don't forget to ring the bell so I can keep new cool videos coming your way.
I want to dedicate this video to Edward Yonz or Yonz. Edward however you say your last name.
He is actually in charge of Rik Emmett's fan club and has also been a really big fan of one
of my students Gabriella Guncikova so Edward god bless you, this is a shout out to you and I'm
actually doing this for you because you asked me to. Anyway so Rik just an amazingly talented
guy, of course you know the band is Canadian and back then you know there weren't a ton of
Canadian bands of course you know you had Bryan Adams and you know all these great bands but you
also had Rush of course, Saga was actually big at this time and I remember when I first
saw Triumph they were actually warming up for my cousin Sammy Hagar, he kind of gave him a little bit
of, I think a three-month tour I forget exactly what it was I just remember there being a big
car I think it was the "I Can't Drive 55" tour or something and they were warming up and
they just did a killer job. I want to talk a little bit about how Rik uses head voice. Now
we just came off and I'm not sure when these videos are going to be released but we just did a
couple Def Leppard videos, we've, I've talked a little bit about Jeff Tate's vocals, I've talked a
little bit about Sebastian Bach's vocals. The reason I'm bringing them up is because they use a lot of
head voice or reinforced falsetto they bring down in their chest voice, Rik does the same thing so
I bring that up to say that you know if you can master this sound a lot of people think (sings)
right that I'm, I'm you know just got all this range, no actually it's that that I've, I've got
some range in my chest register but I've learned how to mix my chest register and have a percentage
of that mixed voice on up into head voice, reinforce my head voice falsetto to sound
like my (sings), to sound like my belting register which is exactly what Rik does also, like I
said Sebastian Bach, you know all these different different singers and Jeff Tate. So I,
I want to point this out as we're listening to this and I'm going to be really careful
and I did point out too that when you're using a lot of this kind of head voice register there can
be some pitch issues because it's over bloating the head voice and really putting a lot of pressure
of that kind of phonation in, in the way that the head voice cords are pulled together to, to
get this kind of volume and and brightness in the sound, and if you notice too you can't pull
the head voice down that far because you lose power, you have to go back into your
chest voice to get that belted register power and there's a balancing act to all this stuff
too and there's also a balancing act to not losing your head voice when you do this. So let's dive
right in. Oh by the way I do, I have a singing course, the course is called How to Sing Better
Than Anyone Else you can find it right here at KenTamplinVocalAcademy.com if you're interested.
I've got a huge free singing forum over there guys go check it out, a lot of cool people in there
all talking about how to do this stuff all right, here we go. Rik Emmett.
Now (sings)
right so you know again there's a little bit of slip slidiness in the pitch
because it's a hard thing to control. Now by the way Rik is awesome so I'm not here to talk bad
smack about Rik that's not the point, I'm here to do an analysis, a fair analysis so we can learn to
grow from some of this stuff so he masterfully was able to connect his chest and his head voice
to give you a lot of range in what it is that he's about to do. Now if you put in the track
and I'm going to right now, you don't notice it as much and that's true for a lot of singers
by the way it's just most, we think of them as being you know perfect all the time even Freddie
Mercury we were listening to a lot of his stuff I just did a Queen-a-thon and you know it wasn't
about perfection it was about the soul and the spirit and the passion the energy, the intention,
the song, the lyric you know how it fits with it with the music, the melodies, the hauntingness of
them or catchiness of them. Right so check it out with the track.
Right so you hear (sings) right we think we're hearing that
kind of precision but it's really this.
(sings) right. There's a little bit of swag to it.
See instead of (sings) it's (sings)
right it's, it's pitchy. Let's be honest but in the track it doesn't matter and it was more
about the vibe for him I don't think he was going to absolute perfection in this it was,
it was about and also being able to do this live and replicate this, like I said I saw them live and
man they gave Sammy a run for his money I, I'll be honest I don't know who was better that night
as a three-piece coming out like Rush crushing it like this it was like
Sam, maybe Sam wouldn't invite them back for the next tour I don't know.
See now you can hear it with the track it doesn't sound quite you know as,
the intonation is, seems better in the track ,with a track than without.
Cool.
By the way you can hear the (sings) right you can kind of hear that mixed voice coming in.
Instead of (sings) it's (sings). Listen closely you can hear the mix voice.
Hear that.
(sings) right there's a little, there's some swag, there's some, some give in the intonation, let's call it that way.
Now I could be crazy and I know I am (laughs)
That should have been my head spinning around by the way is that
a lot of these like three-piece bands and whatnot even Saga to some degree,
seem to go after that Geddy Lee kind of sound. So you probably never put two and two together, maybe
you did. If you're Canadian of course you probably did but there's a lot of Geddy in his upper
register and Geddy Lee's another one of those guys that uses a lot of head voice. Listen to it.
Think a little Getty and tell me what you think.
You know (sings) right.
See it's and the cool thing about it is as I'm pointing out these imperfections, that's also kind of what's
cool about it it's just real you know what I mean. It's like raw and real like, wouldn't surprise me
if most of this was just kind of a take where he just sang it and it maybe did three or four
tries. I like that one and that one sounds good and that one works with the band, rather than
you know every little syllable of every vowel of everything is cut and sliced in place and
auto tuned and you know it's raw, it's real, it's, it's got carbuncles but that's also what's really
cool about it. So listen to it again even though I know these harmony's are a little off. Check it out.
See the word on (sings) instead of (sings) right
it's got a little chirp in there but in the track you don't notice it.
But you do notice it because we're isolating the vocals.
That one was better except the end on the line was a little flat.
Cool okay next coming up. Here we go.
I love (sings). I love that man it's great.
Now one of the things I think is also really interesting too because we talked about
how hard the pitch is to control when you're in head voice like that,
when you're in your upper register, when you're up this high it's easier to control and there's
more power, you get a little more grit and so forth. I want you guys to do me a favor okay and
again I, i'm not recommending people leave my channel to go to see other videos but
it's okay to do that like you know a lot of people know stay here on my channel, don't check
anything out. No I'm not like that. I want you to look at a band called Orion the Hunter okay and
this song is called "So You Ran" and I want you to listen to it especially all the way at the end
and of course there's other bands like TNT that have you know had this high range stuff too that
sounds similar but I to, I want to point out how awesome this upper register stuff is. Check this
out. Look at this.
(sings) right.
He's just like crushing it perfect and you're gonna hear (sings)
and you're gonna hear, I forget what that guy's name it was like
Fran, I think Fran something I forget but anyway it was basically members of the band Boston
put this you know, Goudreau and you know what not when Brad Delp sort of
I guess kind of quit the band and they brought Fran in and then they wound up doing this
other band called Orion the Hunter. So the, the members or some of the founding members or
or main members of Boston formed this band called Orion the Hunter and I think his name is Fran,
was the singer of this band and he's just killer, it's amazing that he just did not dominate planet
earth and there was a lot of really good guys, unsung heroes like that around that time and
I'm glad we're getting to sing Rik's praises right now because it's that awesome and I
just want to point out the similarities when you listen back to that that stuff, how close these
vowels are because we discussed these vowels in my singing course on how to (sings) right. How to get
to those sounds without killing yourself and being able to replicate this night after night.
Not to mention that Emmett's a killer guitar player.
I'll try not to.
Here we go.
(sings) those are some high notes folks. I don't know go back and try that.
Here we go. Sorry I had to do that.
Now I want to check this out too with the band,
we're kind of missing the energy of the song and and so we get the benefit of a band helping us out
a lot so we're not having to like, everything is all about us. I know I've used this analogy before but
it's a good one I think is if you ever see kind of like a honky-tonk piano player of a guy that's
alone in a bar or something and he's singing and he's playing all the parts and it's a one-man show
so to speak you see that honky-tonk piano player there they're over playing everything, they're
playing the bass notes, they're playing the, kind of the melodies in it, you know they're kind of doing
some fancy stuff over here but there's no like, they're creating all the energy as a, as one person.
Well you can do that as a singer but it's, it's a lot nicer if it, if it has this kind of class to
just do what it's supposed to do in the best kinds of ways and then let the band do this.
Okay and that's you know, I mean this kind of typifies this song but they just had some
absolutely incredible songs so if you guys don't know about Triumph you know I know
this is an older crowd that would recognize this stuff but maybe some millennials out
there, some people younger don't know the band, please go check out Triumph, they're
awesome, they have a lot of really really good songs, "Fight The Good Fight", I mean some really
great stuff I highly recommend that you check it out and check out my next video.