Hey guys welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the Proof is
in the Singing. we got a lot of requests for this one
it's how to sing with compression and vocal fry. Now it's kind of an
interesting subject for me because I've been discussing compression for like
over 25 years now and it's interesting to see that it's finally come around on
the internet now I don't know if it's people that have seen stuff that I've,
you know, talked about over the last at least a decade, and they're regurgitating
that, or whatnot, but I think the most important thing we can start with is
that no matter where you get your information, and especially on such a
sensitive subject like compression or distortion or vocal fry, make absolutely
certain that that vocal coach themselves can do it, and do it well, and that they
demonstrate other students that do it, and do it well. And I'm not talking about
just one little line, or you know, a ditty or 10 seconds here
I mean full-blown, three, four minute songs, and preferably, I mean, that you've
seen that they've toured and that they can do this in sustainable 10 songs, 11
songs, twelve songs, four, five, six nights a week for years on end. Now why I
say this is because we have a lot of people that have lost their voice in
fact most people, especially in the 80s and the 90s that used a lot of
compression have lost their voices completely for lack of knowledge of how
to, how to do this correctly. So let's start there. But so how to sing with
compression. Let's identify first what compression is, okay? It's the concept of
compressing air in the glottis. It's called glottal compression, or hyper-glottal
compression. Now there's lots of ways that people go at compressing a sound
and we're gonna get into vocal fry in a minute, because there's some do's and
don'ts with that. But the very first thing I want you guys to identify is, is
that it's not just that you can compress air and squeeze off a note and sound
like you're singing through a straw or something like that
you actually want to be able to take this idea of holding back the air and
compressing that air, because the overuse of air is the kiss of death to your
vocal folds. It's like taking a flame thrower of air your vocal folds.
It dries them out pretty quickly. Then they become swollen. Then you lose good cord
closure, and when that happens then all of a sudden you start ramming more air
just to get phonation or sound, and it becomes
vicious cycle that repeats itself, where you find yourself going hoarse after
three, four, maybe five songs, especially you know depending on how heavy you sing
this becomes exponential, depending again on how much distortion or how much
compression you want to use. So! But let's discuss what compression is so
compression is the idea that we hold our breath like I'm doing right now now you
probably don't realize I'm doing this but I'm holding my breath and I'm
talking to you at the same time now if you're really acute and keen you can
really hear that it's not like when I'm talking to you like this and expunging a
bunch of air. I'm actually holding my breath back and doing this. So! You start
on that premise, but it's far from the only thing we do, and let me explain why.
By the way, I have a singing course. It's called How To Sing Better Than Anyone
Else, and I cover all of this thoroughly in my singing course. It's not something
I can cover all right here in one quick tutorial, but at least you'll get a
flavor for what I'm talking about, so that if you do decide to take your
studies further, it will really help you understand why this is important. Now so
we have this this concept of cutting back the air, and it's not just that we
can control or stop the air itself. It's that we worked in good open throat
technique, or the idea of keeping the throat open, the tongue dropped, the
throat open, that we don't literally gag on our vowels, or, you know, start sound
like we're heaving up our vowels, or like I said singing through some tiny little
straw, or was pinching and squeezing and choking off the notes. See, that's what
most people do when they sing, especially if they start to sing loud or belt or
want to sing heavy with Distortion. Cause they ehhhhh... and they just kind of pinch and squeeze and
that. And that is a form of compression. Not good compression, but it's a form of
compression. What you want to do is you want to work in a daily regimen of
scales that allow you different vocal techniques or open throat
techniques for vowel placement of getting your vowels placed well first,
with strong diaphragmatic support, and then once those vowels are placed, you
can gently start to lean into a sound or kind of pushing into it a little bit to
start develop, start to develop this compression. Well this is also
important too, because we don't want to go straight from a clean sound to a
distorted sound. We're gonna really hurt ourselves. And this is this is kind of
crazy guys, because, like I said, I can't express this enough. Be
careful where you get your information from on the subject. People can parrot
things, they can read something on the internet, they can see someone else's
video and try to regurgitate that. If they can't really do it effectively
themselves and don't have other students doing it, run like your hair's on fire,
because this subject, it's an extreme sport, especially if you take it to it's
distorted components of it, and if you do this extreme sport, and you light your
hair on fire, and no one can tell you how to put it out you could you
could really seriously damage your voice. Now, even in cases like Adele, she uses a
form of compression and she's going through two surgeries now. The first one
she's had a while ago and now she's going through a second. Of course I know
she smokes a lot, I know she drinks, and some other things like that to
contribute to that, but also, though, it's just from singing incorrectly. And we've
seen a lot of surgeries lately as a result of this. So, let's get back to
compression. So we want to have really strong diaphragmatic support. Again, I
can't stress this enough. If you haven't seen my video on that, check it out. Again,
it's in my singing course in its hugely expanded version of that. But what we
want to do, is like I said, we want to learn to hold back the air. Kind of like
we're talking underwater. Hey, man! How's it going? Blooop! Pretty good. What are you doin'? Not bad! All right! Cool!
right? But we don't want to end it there because we don't, like as in the case of vocal fry' where people go ehhhhh!
Congratulations! All you did was choke off the cord. Okay? Now I'm not dissing
vocal fry, but I want to emphasize this. Now, that might be okay to help
understand the process of starting or initiating wanting vocal distortion and
you start with fry to kind of get the feeling in the throat just hear how it
sounds or whatever, and then you get away from that sound, and you open up the
sound. I want to give you an example of this really quickly, because I think this
might help you. One of my students, Gabriela Guncikova,
came to me many years ago. She was in a band called Maryland, and she did a
Nazareth song. She was a wonderfully talented person on her own, however Gabby
will be the first to admit that when she came to me, she was losing her voice
every single night, and only able to sing about three or four songs. So I want to
play this Nazareth clip for you right now. Check this out.
Alistair Birch from SBS Radio in Austrailia.
Can you tell us a little about the influence of Ken Tamplin on your music and...
Half my range and my technique! It would just work! I would I would be losing my
voice, and that time I had a problem with that I was I would sing for an hour and
I would lose my voice. This is something that's not happening anymore, because I'm
trained, and for rock singers especially, it's very easy, very easy to lose the
voice when you scream and you use so much of distortion. Okay, if you see you'd
say the average person would say wow man that was cool Ken what are you talking
about? I love that Distortion! Well if you get a chance and you go through all the
videos that I've done with Gabby, and you see how much I've opened up her voice
to maintain wonderful distorted sounds, wonderful compressed sounds, but
the roaring lion of openness: Number one: the ability to control the air. Number
two, and the range that she was able to get from not closing or clamping or
crimping down, like I said "singing through a straw", you know, closing down
and choking off the cords. All of a sudden she has range that she never
imagined she could have:
that comes through a series of exercises that I have in my singing course where
you have to continually do on on all your vowels, too. Do these different open
throat techniques to first initiate open throat, and then gently start to lean
into this sound. Now. Back to compression. So, within this compressed sound, we start
out very light on the compression. I don't mean light as in singing, I mean not using that much.
So in other words if I go hey... Right? I'm holding my breath. Hey... You know, you kind of
hear me cutting back the air, right? Well, there's a there's a deception in this in
that, and I'm gonna talk about this when I do a video on belting, as well, that
there's an idea that it sounds like when people are using distortion or growl or
anything, that they're just... the blood is coming out of the throat! of it's like a
throat bleed! Aaaah! Kind of a sound! Right? It's actually the opposite! It's that we
built up such quality resonance with the voice. Quality resonance with the sound,
that the voice has gotten bigger with less volume and less air, okay? So, let's
do this again. So, you can do it with me. Hold back the breath and go heeeeey...
Haaaaa!
HOOOO!
Ooooh!
Right?
You can hear me compress the sound. Now, I could use a lot of air and not compress at all.
Hey....
Haaaa!
Oh!
You hear all that air that I'm using in this sound. like I said that's the kiss
of death it's like a taking a flamethrower of air
to your vocal folds and you only get four or five songs that way. So anyway so
as we start to compress this sound: Hey... Over time, when we sing and we maturate
the voice, and I don't want you guys doing this the first week, second week,
third week, stuff. Come on, guys! Think about this. It's like going to a gym and
working out. We're growing muscle structure here. You don't get to be The
Rock overnight. Right? You've got to go into the gym you've got to work
out, you've got to do this stuff correctly. So you go: Hey...
Then you kind of lean into it a little bit more...
Heeey!
Now! The genius of compression is, is that it
develops a beautiful tone, kind of that whiskey kkk kkkk kkk kind of sound that happens around
a voice of a singer that's been singing a long time. You say "man I love that guy's
tone! He just has that smoky, woodsy lightly gritty, distorted sound! I want
that sound!" It comes from doing this, this way
correctly. Right? Now you can end, up you know, like a Bruce Springsteen, you know
BORN In the U.S.A. I was...
You know, have this overly distorted, really unidentifiable, not, not sexy-beautiful, just kind of
powerful middle-America kind of sound. That's one way to approach it. Or you can
have a lot of versatility in the sound with different layers and shades of this
compression, like I've demonstrated over and over and over again in many of my
videos, where you can use certain amounts as much as you want. You could be clean
on the sound you could be a little dirty on the sound, you know: HEEEEY!
Or you could be, like, really dirty or
even like with the growl videos I have, check those out, where I'm just like, opening up
you know, some of the false vocal folds, relaxing those, and just really leaning
into his sound, you know, to kind of scream. Or do scream. So anyway, again you
guys, thank you for joining me! Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy, where the proof is
in the singing, and I want to touch one more thing of fry. i forgot to almost mention
this, is that you can start with fry to understand the concept of distortion.
That's okay. But! You don't want to stay in fry, because if you stay in fry, then
you're, again: squeezing or crimping or clamping up: ehhhh!
you got this really, instead of heeeey yeah yeah! You have a really nice open thing
that you can come alongside with a big open throat sound, in order to give you
what you're looking for with compression. Okay? Thanks again for joining me. Ken
Tamplin Vocal Academy. Stop by my singers forums, man, we got 11,000 people in there
now, it's growing like a weed! If you like and you want to check out my course How
To Sing Better Than Anyone Else. Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy dot com! Check me out
on Twitter, Facebook, I'm all over the place! So until next time, guys! Peace. Out.
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