Hey everybody welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is in the singing.
I'm continuing my series on taking these incredible isolated vocal tracks. I'm doing
a tutorial. a vocal analysis, talking about the recording process, writing, backstories about the
band etc. Next up Sammy Hagar in Van Halen and it's called "Why Can't This Be Love". Now many of you know
Sammy and I are cousins though I've really not had much interaction with him at all over the years so
I don't claim to have some real close relationship we just happen to be cousins and I want to do a
tutorial take down on on how he sings but before we get started if you wouldn't mind, please
like and subscribe to my channel that would be really cool. I'm coming really close to a million
subs. I'd love to hit that million mark soon and 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 where I
also have a free singing forum over there for you guys interested in wanting to learn how to sing.
I'm going to dive right in "Why Can't This Be Love" let's hit it. Here we go.
Okay he (sings). He just bam. What is that a C.
I don't even know probably. Yeah it's a C. A high C bam right out of the gate. A high tenor C just to show,
show David Lee Roth what Sammy was made of because there was obviously some serious competition
in Sammy excelling in his strengths rather than trying to step into David Lee Roth's footsteps, he
went ahead and just did Sammy right and it worked really well. In fact there's two camps of Van
Halen as you know. There's the David Lee Roth camp and the Sammy Hagar camp and I kind of like both
camps myself personally but it's true though that when Sam was in the band they had a lot more
suc, musical success or commercial success than they did with David Lee Roth but I want to
poin, to point out some interesting things. Now I did a tutorial on some Montrose stuff so
if you guys get a chance I want you to check out the Montrose stuff. Sammy didn't have
anywhere near that range in Montrose and even through some of the Sammy Hagar solo era as he
did here in Van Halen and I know he was trying to show off, I know he was trying to impress the
David Lee Roth fans and show that he was worthy to take over the band and so he's certainly won
over the majority of people's hearts so to speak you know stepping into that very difficult role
because you have to be on an amazing front man to beat out David Lee Roth and he he stepped into that role
in his own way and just really pulled it off, did a great job. Now with that said I think it's ironic
that when you think of Van Halen and you think, I remember an interview with Eddie saying you know
what, what does it feel like to be considered, talked about, and it was in Guitar World I think,
be talked about as the greatest guitar player in the world and his answer was so humble he goes
I don't know I'm just some punk kid that liked to play his guitar you know what I mean and I thought
that was really cool. Now I'm sure he has an ego too but that was a great response back. So, so what
we think of early Van Halen with in the David Lee Roth era, we think of, or at least I think of as
a party band right, it was a party (sounds) you know. It was just you know (sounds) right all those (sounds)
you know. So I think of just this party band out of Pasadena and I grew up in LA and there was a lot
of party bands and that's, you know with some great musicianship. David Lee Roth (sings) you know right.
So he had that you know that, that thing going on and so ironically Sam too "I Can't Drive 55" and you
know "Mas Tequila" and all these different songs, even his set after he left Van Halen, you know his
set was his restaurant, waitress you know bring it over right and so you have this party vibe.
His was more tailgate party and maybe you know in the early Van Halen days with David Lee Roth it was a
little bit more LA party or you know that kind of you know woohoo you know kind of party but anyway
so but they both came from party band backgrounds and I think it's really interesting and when Sam
joined the band, the band kind of lost, I don't wanna say lost but it no longer was prevalent as the
party-esque vibe, it was more about writing corporate songs and that's precisely what we
have here, is a lot of corporate songwriting and you know really just big anthemic choruses and
stuff. So I wanted to kind of say this so you guys could catch, cast a vision for you as we're
going through this so. Anyway Sam you know sporting a high C right out of the gate bam. Here we go.
Okay now I want to go back and I want
to talk about this kind of compression in the throat. I will be honest and I don't care if
anyone gets mad at me for saying this. I am shocked that Sam's voice lasted this long
because there are a lot of guys that compress this way in their throat and I don't want to name
names but you all know who they are that came out of this era and before and Sam has just
been able to do this for 40 plus years and almost all the guys that with this sound have lost their
voices okay. So it's a really squeezed pinch that (sings).
You know so it's a really pinched, squeezed sound and it's like,
it's kind of like an American muscle car where everything has to be muscled up to a sound. Now
at Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy I don't teach you that. I teach distortion I like (sings).
I love a big distorted sound but I'm more on the Dio side or a big rounder sound you know like I, and
I love Lou Gramm and of course you guys know this I've said it a million times Paul Rodgers
all these guys, love Sam too but as far as the the roundness and the safety on the sound, it's a
very dangerous sound. It's not easy to do and it's dangerous to, to try to go after over the long haul
and I'm not saying you can't emu, emulate it but so let's, let's do this again so.
Let me just do that (sings)right. That's kind of basically what he did
and it's just really throaty and just heaving up so to speak kind of our vowel sound just,
you know to bringing up a lot of muscle mass into the throat. Very hard to do that and
it takes a lot of diaphragmatic support and you can really hear him using a lot of
upper, upper diaphragmatic support, not necessarily full body. Check it out. Listen again.
(sings)
right and he's got that uh, uh, uh, real squeeze sound. All right let's continue.
(sings) right and he loves the (sounds) he does that a lot at the
end of his phrases. Here we go.
(sings) right, Now it's really also really
interesting to me is that the verse comes in bam in this song but the chorus is really low right
but it's kind of cool because it really fits the motif and the vibe of everything going on.
So he didn't just try to keep hitting us and banging us over the head with just a bunch of high
notes for the sake of high notes, he's choosing the songwriter route and actually writing a very
catchy thing that fit the key of the song and the motif of what was going on in the instrumentation
which is really cool.
See hear that (sings). He's really, really pinch,
(sounds) really squeezed in the throat to get that sucker out right.
Now another thing that happens when you compress a lot of air in the throat like that, as you, there's
a tendency for everyone, almost everyone to have a caprino vibrato which is a, is a goats wiggle (sounds)
and it's, to me it's a little nervous feeling but in his case it works great because it's
his style and it's just so Sammy but if you listen closely, let me play it again.
(sings) you know he's got that (sings). You know he's got a real where if it were a more relaxed (sings) right.
(sings) instead of (sings)
like real fast vibrato and it's really pinched. Now if you want to get away from this sound (sings).
You can have a bigger, rounder sound, rather than again everything just being so forced in the
throat which again is really hard to maintain. Now we do see guys like Brian Johnson doing it
in AC/DC and he's able to pull it off for a while but Sam somehow is able to pull it out
and relax the throat enough and there's big long instrumental breaks in these songs too
that relax the throat, but is to where he's able to get back up and stay up in range whereas
guys like Brian Johnson and others that use his sound can't. Now I gotta say David Coverdale
did a good job of this too where he was able to pinch and squeeze going up top like this
and was able to kind of find his way you know through, navigate through some of this
stuff to keep the range but it is very, very, very hard to do. All right, let's continue.
See, you know (sings)
instead of (sings) it's (sings)
real fast vibrato.
Now another thing is there's an illusion (sings) you know it's, it like he's really killing it but it's (sings).
He's really not singing as heavy as it appears because the way glottal compression works in
this case is he's actually constricting the air like a good boy, we've talked a lot about that
so that he doesn't let so much air pass across the chords as to dry them out.
Now if you were to over sing and overuse the air you would dry out the chords so bad
you'd get three songs and you're done. So a lot of you guys out there you go
yeah it's true like I go out there and I get like my three songs done and after that you
know it's all downhill from there and he's able to pull off a 90-minute set or a two-hour set
because he's compressing his air. He probably doesn't even know he, he did that or is doing that
but that is what's saving him from drying out the chord so much that he gets dysphonia or loses sound okay.
Now when I used to play the chorus of this without
knowing what's going on, I remember hearing this section I'm going to put the band in
and I want to show you something. Check this out with abandoned.
Now if you notice when it gets to this section there's a lot of doubler in the sound to make it
bigger, whether it was double tracked or using doubler or both and then there's harmonies and
stuff, but I never noticed that I always just thought it was a single line of Sammy out front
because all the other stuff is but this part gets really fat and you don't really notice it
until you isolate the vocal and listen to it by itself.
Hear that.
Do you hear that.
(sings) that's way up, what is that a D. I think so. Let's see. Yeah it's a (sings) it's way up there. That's an interesting line too by the way. It's
kind of a jazzy you know, kind of bebop, jazzy kind of thing (sounds)
you know. Very interesting choice, it's not his normal thing to do something like that.
You hear all that doubling in there.
(sings) he's got that real ah (sings) right. Anyway I want to go back to the top and I want to talk one more thing talk, show you
the difference between what you just heard in the doubler effect and when he's just singing
alone. Check it out.
Now even there, even though it's a solo vocal, there is a doubler effect,
probably an old AMS reverb that you could have, has a little setting on it that was
a doubler effect. I think Andy Johns did this record. I'd have to, go back and look and I
worked with Andy on a record on two records actually and I know that he likes to use that
a lot. It's a beautiful doubler effect it can't, you can't really hear the doubling as much it's just kind
of present and it's not, you don't hear so much slap to the sound because there's not a lot of millisecond
delay to it but if you listen to it in the track it doesn't sound doubled at all. Check it out.
Okay you hear that. So you really don't notice all the nuance of all this stuff
until you peel everything back, peel all the instrumentation back and really get to the
core of the isolated vocal tracts all right. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this as much as
I did, I've got a lot more of these coming your way and please check out my next video.