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 and
that's how can I sing with Distortion or how can I sing with Grit well I want
to first off start by saying that this is an extreme sport.
This isn't something you just go off and do. So imagine if you're in a motocross or BMX biking and
you're gonna just all of a sudden start at the top of the mountain and go down
the mountain with your bike, well this kind of singing is an extreme sport so
you're doing that with your vocal folds. Are you gonna jump off a cliff as a hang
glider and go and hope for the best. Well plan on you're destroying your
voice if you don't understand the stages of what it takes to get there.
Now I cover all of this in my singing course called How to Sing Better Than
Anyone Else, if you're interested go to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com
and you can check out what I do but let's get back to this.
First you're not gonna like to hear this but I'm gonna say it anyway, we have to train strength in the voice
clean first. If we don't do this we're gonna destroy our voice okay. So we have
to start with really good habits on how to sing correctly first and then little
by little, we lean into a sound and let me explain what I mean by that. So we
start out with this good, strong, powerful clean voice and if I go (sings) nice and
clean (sings) and I want to lean into that sound a little bit (sings) kind of a little bit of
distortion coming in (sings). Right I'm kind of leaning into the
sound now how do I do that. Okay well I use something called glottal
compression it's an old Bel Canto term which means that what we're doing is
we're bringing air up to the vocal folds the cords themselves and we're
compressing air at the glottis okay your cords now what's happening is I actually
compress it in in the low in the neck also but as we're doing this so
you're going (sings) so now let's do something else.
As we go up higher, in fact it's easier to do it higher than lower because the
nature of what we're doing. I want to be really clear about something
what we are doing is distressing the cord okay get your brain around that.
We're distressing the cord this isn't Disneyland cakewalk for the vocal folds.
This is something where we're actually applying pressure.
Okay so (sings) here's clean (sings), here's distorted more distorted (sings), here's more distorted (sings)
here's more distorted (sings) And you can have different stages of this as you do it. Now
the biggest caveat to this and the biggest point to this is that if you
notice I'm not doing it like I'm shouting at someone at a football game,
I'm compressed , I'm holding my breath and I'm compressing the air (sings)
Now I have an assistant his name is Bob. Bob if you could be so good I want you
to edit into this we have a video called vocal distortion Bob if you could just
play that video here now that would be great.
if you go from a clean sound straight to a hyper glottal, compressed, distorted
sound, chances are you'll either hurt your voice or lose your voice altogether.
That's not how we grow compression or distortion. Here's how we grow
compression. First we start with a powerful, clean sound.
And then we go to varying degrees of distortion where we turn up the volume
or lean into the sound a little bit more for more and more distorted sounds. So
I'm gonna play a couple clips back to back of myself singing and then a female
student singing so you can hear both male and female versions of first a
clean powerful sound then turning up the volume with a little bit more distortion
then a little bit more vocal distortion and then finally a lot of vocal
distortion.
Okay as you saw from the video, you saw that all of a sudden I could just kill
it with this crazy note and really distort my voice. Now by the way that's
different than scream and growl because those.. that's even using more false vocal
folds and some other things but I want to Bob if you could be so good to
entertain me too and add the Chris Cornell tribute that I have you know (sings)
when I'm hitting that one note I want you to insert that one note here so they can hear this kind
of scream. Here we go check it out.
Okay so as you've seen you can tell there was different degrees of that
distortion so what we do is we lean into the sound starting with (sings) and then
we kind of push into the sound with a compression using our diaphragm and I
can't cover diaphragmatic support here I have this in my singing course I cover
all of this in my singing course How to Sing Better Than Anyone Else so we start
out with a clean sound (sings). Then we can lean into this sound a little bit more (sings).
Right or (sings).
And we can kind of push into that sound just a little bit more or (sings) you know but we can
hit it really hard but we have to start out with a clean
sound and then go through levels and stages of distorted sounds.
Okay speaking
of Chris Cornell I actually did another song of his with the movie soundtrack
James Bond movie soundtrack "You Know My Name" and at the very end of that movie
soundtrack I also kill it with another one of those kinds of
screams Bob if you can insert that that'd be great check this out.
Okay like I said this is an extreme sport, this isn't something we just go
out and you know jump off a cliff and think we're gonna be okay.
We build this in stages and we do this responsibly over time so it's not the
the Zen of singing anything. It's understanding how to sing well first so
you don't lose your voice and then you move into this in stages if you want to
keep your voice. If you want to just go out and it's just a party and you're
gonna you know, you're a karaoke guy or a weekender or just you know want to do
scream/growl my course is probably not for you because I build singers, I don't
just build screamers. Not that my singers can't scream but that I build it
healthfully in stages so that we can do this. So again so as we do is we lean
into the sound (sings). Right and I do this in stages so that when I come back I have good
vocal health and I can come back and sing in a clean sound. Now I'm gonna
close with this and that's that whenever we sing in a distorted tone, we never
warm up, we don't do our warm-ups with distortion ever. There's no reason for
that. The reason for the warm-up is exactly that, to warm up the voice not to
distress it beyond belief and then be forever sentenced that you know. So let
me make a point here when we sing with Distortion and sometimes the only way to
get to a note (sings). Right it's the only way to get to a note instead of (sings) instead of nice and clean
right. We forever sentence ourselves to
always have to sing in a distorted tone. What we want to do, is we want to have a
way that we sing in a clean tone first and then we can sing in a distorted tone
and then once we're done with that, the very next day we come back and we clean
up the voice with a nice clean tone so that we don't forever sentence ourselves
to always having to sing in a distorted tone to get to a certain note alright.
Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy proof is in the singing.
God bless you guys, peace out.
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Peace out.