Hey everybody welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is
in the singing. I'm doing a whole series on you ask and
I answer Q&A and you can send me messages on my youtube videos, my.. to my
facebook page, you can email us whatever but I'm gonna go ahead and get started here
and the next one is what are singers missing. Wow that's a big question.
What are singers missing. Kind of reminds me of what do you call a singer that
doesn't have a girlfriend. Homeless. That's one thing they're missing. No okay
seriously folks um you know this is gonna be kind of a tacky thing
to say but I really have to say it ok so bear with me but I'm just being
honest here and wearing my heart out on my sleeve. Most of the people that do
really well with my singing course believe it or not are actual
instrumentalists and and let me explain why. Yes of course singers do well. The
ones that want to work at it but instrumentalists really understand what
it takes to get good at an instrument and let's not forget that our voice is
an instrument. So I think what singers are missing is they don't treat their
voice like an instrument and they don't work out their voice like they should
like an instrument and spend the quality time and dedication and get good quality
information to take good care of their instrument. Whereas a lot of
instrumentalists understand gosh I have to practice
1 2 3 4 hours a day on guitar, or piano, or drums, or bass or whatever that is to
get really good. So most instrumentalists realize realize that man if I
want to get good at something, it's going to require quality information and a
dedicated practice time. So I'd say that's probably one of the first things
they're missing. The second thing I think they're missing is that the voice is
unique in in with result right just washed my tongue and I can't do a thing
with it. They're really unique in that the voice is very sensitive and fragile
and it's not like other instruments. So let's say you play bass or guitar for
example you know you get a callus on your finger and
that's a good thing because it means you can play longer, you get a callus on your
vocal folds and you know it's surgery or you're gonna have to go through a lot of
rehabilitation. So within the the fragile part of this or the being really
sensitive part, they need to know how to take good care of their vocal folds from
a nutrition standpoint, from a warming up or working out correctly standpoint and
I cover all of this in my singing course but that's another thing that they're
definitely missing. The other thing I think that singers are missing is being
realistic with themselves about you know where they're headed with their voice. A
lot of people you know will just go I want to be this other outrageous singer
over here and they don't recognize that there's a whole series and stages in
between. So let me give you an example of this. I get all the time you know I've
never sung before but I want to sound like Ariana Grande or I want to sound
like you know with some great singer, it could be a rock guy, it could be a pop
girl guy whatever and they've never sung and it's like well okay so let's be
realistic you know. If you think of this like being an athlete like we said and I
know this keeps centering around disciplines and working out correctly
but if you think about being a good athlete well these.. you're all talking
about athletes at the top of their field. Singers, athletes at the top of their
field. How long did it take them to get there and what steps did they take to do
that. So so there's some unrealistic expectations that's why I said
instrumentalists do really well. What else are singers missing. Okay seniors
are missing the fundamentals of great singing. So oftentimes they just want to
open up their mouth and they want greatness to come out. Well again as
we've covered before and I'm gonna cover this again and I'm gonna just keep
hammering this home as much as I need to piledrive it if I have to. Is we have to
understand that the voice requires an engine and the engine is your abdomen
basically okay. So you have to understand the strength that controls the ease in
the throat and the power and the range and the tone and the vibrato and all
those things we love melisma, the vocal riffs and licks and all that stuff. That
it comes from strength from the abdomen. Not just this huffing and puffing of air
from the lung and then once we understand that it's this strength from
the abdomen, it's this response this relaxation response of relaxing the
upper torso, the neck, the chest and the throat and then
building out good, open throat technique and I know I've said this before but
it's worth saying again is developing this good, open throat technique so that
the muscle memory in the throat can stay open so you don't feel like you're
choking or pinching on notes that you sing or gagging on your vowels so to
speak and then practicing correctly you know. It's not practice that makes
perfect I've said this before too, it's perfect practice that makes perfect. So
really understanding the mechanisms, mechanisms of that. The other thing too
that I think singers are missing is your voice has a biological clock and we've
discussed this before and it's kind of like waking up you know there's morning
people and there's night people right. I actually happen to be a morning person
though I'm a musician and I had to train myself to you know want to wake up at
night and perform at night and it's just the nature of the beast. So think of it
kind of like jetlag for the voice right. So we have to and want to condition our
voice to warm up at the same times that we plan on singing. So that's really
important too so that the voice gets used to singing. So you're gonna say gosh
sometimes you know in the mornings I can't sing anything but man come four or
five o'clock I sing great. Well because your voice is used to or wants to be
warmed up at that time and that's really important. So anyway there's there's a
lot of things again I have a singing course it's called How to Sing Better
Than Anyone Else but you can check that out or get a lot of the free tutorials I
already have on YouTube and those will really help you a lot but one more thing
is again guys I cannot stress this enough or emphasize this enough, the
voice is a very sensitive muscle or group of muscles actually and it can do
pretty much anything an athlete wants it to do okay within reason and within
reasonable expectations but it has to be done sequentially and correctly and
what do I mean by sequentially. Well what I mean is most singers and I'm gonna
close with this, think that oh I want to learn about vibrato can you teach me
vibrato. Well vibrato isn't just about going (sings) and
this sine wave of movement right. Vibrato is the final resting place
of a whole tone that relaxes into a state of oscillation. It's fancy words
right because it is strongly or well supported from the abdomen. So I can't
teach you how you do vibrato correctly if you haven't gone back to the building
blocks, the very foundation of great singing. So what a lot of singers want to
do is I want to learn about Distortion. I want to learn how to distort my voice
today. Okay let's break that down. Oh I want to I want to become you know at
this vocal athlete that does these crazy tricks. So you know you think of an
extreme sport could be mountain biking, it could be surfing, it could be
paragliding. I don't care what it is but I want to do this extreme sport. I
want to distort my voice and get grit and growl and this and that but I haven't developed
all of the tools up and till then and all of the balance and everything else I
need in order to do that. So what most singers want to do is pick and choose
the things that they want to do about their voice, forgetting that there's this
whole foundation that needs to be built in sequence or sequentially, to give them
what they want in the end. I like to think of it like I said as a house. We're
building a house so we have to build a foundation first and then we add on the
rooms of things that we like we blues licks or melisma, licks and runs,
vibrato, grit, distortion, holding long notes. If you feel like you can't hold a
long whole tone and all these different things. We can't just pick and choose
these things, they have to happen again sequentially okay.
Hopefully this information was helpful and until next time God bless and peace out
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