Hey, guys! Welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy, where the PROOF is
in the SINGING! I'm doing a whole series on You Asked -
Ken Answers, and I'm here at this awesome place, YouTube Studios. They've invited us
to come down every month and, you know, utilize the studios to do some awesome
Q&A. Or also videos, and you're gonna see some of that with some
of my students. Tori Matthieu, Sara Loera, Miki Black. You know, we've got a whole
slew of people that are gonna come in and do some fun videos for you. So... but
I have a series called You Asked - Ken Answers, so I'm going through people from
all over the world, asking questions about singing. So I'm gonna continue
doing that. The next singer or person, her name is Kelly from the UK she says "I get
discouraged when I try to sing. Do you have any tips?" Yeah. That's a tough one, huh?
I can't tell you how discouraged I got when I was trying to learn to sing. In
fact, I can't tell you how many times I wanted to quit! I kid you not! You'd think
"Wait a minute!" You're like, you know, Ninja Sensei Ken Tamplin! No, really! There was
many times I wanted to quit! And here's the reason why:
I would try and I'd work on my voice, and I didn't seem to get any better, and it
seemed like no matter how hard I tried, I didn't get any better. And there were,
maybe, little moments where I could sing a little bit of, you know, some Robert
Plant, or Paul Rogers, or Lou Gramm, or some of my favorite singers, but it
didn't last long, there was no longevity to it,and I couldn't, there was
not much stamina, or even power, necessarily. All of it was really throaty,
and I just sang, and felt like I was just choking off my throat when I sang, and if I tried
to sing high notes I couldn't sustain them. And so I started to learn
about the voice and so I began a journey on studying the voice over the years. And
what happened was, little by little I started unlocking the mysteries of
singing. And it wasn't easy. And like I've said before, I've taken from a lot of
vocal coaches over the years, and I've studied the voice a lot, and what one guy
would say something... vocal coach would say something, another vocal coach would
say something contradictory. Who do you believe, you know?
And all I could do is beat it up. Night after night, day after day, and try and
true, and see what worked and what didn't work. So I actually have a singing course.
It's called How To Sing Better Than Anyone Else, and I cover this journey, you
know, 35, 40 years of singing. I cover this whole journey on all the components
that it took for me to understand how to trust information and how to do this. And
I got less and less discouraged, the more I saw my progress. Now let's talk about
that for a second, cuz a lot of people think "Wow! I should just, you know, be
Hercules and just keep going great, great, great!" I've said this before, I'll say it
again. Singing or learning how to sing is like a good stock in the stock market.
You kind of go up a little bit, and then you kind of come down, and you're "Oh, no! Did I lose
everything I made over here," and but then it goes up again a little bit more, and
over the course of six months, eight months, ten months, a year, you look at the
stock, and the stock has like, the stock grew! I grew! You might not even, at the
year level go "Gosh did I really grow that much?" but then you look
back and see how much you did grow you're like wow! Okay so if I keep doing
this, and I understand I get good information, will I continue to get
better exponentially like this, and the answer is Absolutely YES! Absolutely YES!
I can say that. I can put my hand up and say You will get better like this. But
you have to have quality information, you have to have consistency, even when you
don't feel like singing, or even when you're kind of bummed out, you got to
keep chippin' away at it. Chippin' away at it. Chippin' away at it.
I know this to be true, because I said this a billion times. I'll say it a
billion and one. As a guitar player... oh my gosh. I hope he doesn't kill me for
saying this. I'm gonna mention his name. His name's Lani Cordola. I used to go
over to my guitar teacher's house and I was, my lesson was on Saturdays, right? In
the morning, early. 9 o'clock, and he had a trailer park that he lived in, and not a
bad one. Like that sounds trashy, but like in a nice area: Santa Fe Springs
California, and he would always have played a show the night before and
sometimes like have to kick out the girls, and you know, and I mean not just
one, maybe two. Really weird. Sorry. It's tacky to say that, but the truth...
just to get my guitar lesson, right? Anyway, so I'd be learning, you
know, licks from this guy. And he was a phenomenal guitar player. And I would
just like, be so frustrated, because I'd try so hard and I couldn't get it. This is
guitar now, not singing. Guitar. Singing is even more temperamental. And I
would, you know, go in and get this lick. And this is way before YouTube, when you
could just sit there and watch the guy over and over again. You know I would
just go in, watch him once, make a tape of it, go home practice. Just like my
vocal workouts. I'd go to a coach. I didn't get the benefit of, like all of
this crazy great technology where you could see me doing it. I show you exactly
how to do it. I show you how my students do it, on and on and on. This is
way back in the day. So, but anyway, but I did see progress... little by little and
you know, I just kept doing it with repetition and doing it the right way
making sure my technique was good, and over time I became a really good guitar
player. I think I'm as a good of a guitar player as I am a singer, so for those
those you out there that don't know that, guitar was my first instrument, and then
singing came second to me. So anyway please try not to get discouraged...
excuse me. It's okay to get discouraged, but don't let that
overshadow your ambition and your desire and passion to be a good, strong singer
because if you do, you're gonna give up on everything in life, and everything's
gonna mow you over. Just steamroll you, right over. You've got to keep up.
Someone knocks you down, get back up again!
What's that Pat Benatar, you know, knock me down, it's all in vain, I get back up
on my feet again. Get back up on your feet and do it again, and do it again, and
after a while, (true story) you're gonna look around at your peers
that you thought were better than you... in fact here's a funny story for you about
that. I love how this always kind of reminds me of Slumdog Millionaire, for
those even have never seen it, where it reminds you of something that's happened
in your life. My student Sara Loera, who's awesome, who was a
bartender, and she wanted to become a singer. She was already a singer, singing
in punk bands and stuff, at whatever. Now I'm not belittling what she did before. I
just... talking about her own passion and her own strengths and success and you
know, desire to keep moving forward. I remember there was a specific
singer I don't want to mention names, but it was a girl at a well-known place that
Sara works at now, and she venerated this girl. Like "Oh she's so awesome! She's
so awesome!" She would do this with teachers and stuff, too.
And so I said "She's a little better than you but... or maybe she's not even better than you,
you might come as peers on the same plane" and she got "Oh, my
gosh! You;re kidding me!" I said no, seriously, I'm not kidding you, like I'm not, this isn't a pep talk.
It's not like "We can do it" you know, if no, it's like, seriously, like, and so
little by little, as she chipped away at it, she just like blew doors on this gal.
And now Sara can just sing effortlessly for hours and hours on end, whatever she
wants to sing, in the tonal qualities she wants to sing it in. But Sara put in the
time. Sarah did the work. Sarah took the technology. Sara did the Course.
Sara just really went out there on you know, she just went on ten, and she
just went for it. Well, it's sort of like life. Anything that we want to do
to be great at life, we're gonna get discouraged, but to give up means that we
forfeit our dreams and we forfeit the things that are gonna make us happy, and
whatever. So I just encourage you: Hold the line. Do the homework. Get out
there and bust some butt. If you want to get my course, it'll really help you. If
not, I have tons of free tutorials on YouTube, but get out there and do the work, and
I promise dividends will pay in the end, like a good stock. All right! Thank you
for joining me. Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy, where the PROOF is in the SINGING!
Peace. Out.
Hey guys! If you like what you heard, please LIKE and SUBSCRIBE to my
channel. And if you want to get notified when I have a new cool video come out,
you need to go to my channel and click on
little bell icon and it will actually notify you every time I have a video
come out. Thanks guys!