Hey guys, welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is in the singing.
I wanted to do a vocal coach reacts to Nightwish.
The song is Ghost Love Score and the vocalist is Floor Jansen.
Now, before we do this.
I have seen other vocal coaches already do this and, you know, they’ll go throughout
“Oh, she is very operatic”, you know, whatever.
I want to discuss what that actually means because I’ve studied opera which is Appoggio
and Bel canto for a lot of years.
To throw a term out there and not explain it to you I don’t think is really going
to help you that much.
Hopefully I can give you some information that will make sense.
Let’s go ahead and do the song first and we'll talk about is as we go.
Let’s rock.
All right, cool.
Let’s get some things out of the way here.
First thing is what a beautiful melody this has, really going
and then they go into a minor key.
Really beautiful.
Really creative.
Like I said, this band at least the instrumentation reminds me a lot of Trans-Siberian Orchestra
which is really cool.
I love that band.
Very progressive and metal gothish, almost metal sort of sound.
Very progressive.
Now, this term goth comes up a lot.
It's usually also in conjunction with opera and/or darker, melodic or metallic melodic
goth bands like this.
One of the things that I want to mention is when you say someone sounds oh, that is very
operatic.
Okay, let's talk about opera for a second.
Now, if you notice she is singing very gentle on the bottom.
For you singers out there, stay in there with me on this.
This is going to be a really cool history lesson for you so I think you'll appreciate
this.
She is really gentle on the bottom.
She is not like a metal singer.
She is not Lzzy Hale or something like that.
She is not just killing it on the low end, just belting it out.
She is real gentle.
She uses great mix voice as she goes up to the Passaggio and then she is a nice big,
round vowel sounds.
Now, let's talk about those vowel sounds.
First, in true Italian opera we get five vowels.
That's it.
We get Ah,eh, EE, O, and ooh.
Just those five vowels.
Now, she is obviously singing more than that so it's not true opera but here is where it's
kind of interesting.
If you were to hold to the true tenets of Bel canto or opera, appoggio, you cannot get
outside those guidelines.
They have a very strict set of rules of what you're allowed to sing and what you’re not
allowed to sing so -
would be all she would be allowed to sing, okay?
Now, within the English language, and she is obviously singing in English though I know
they're not an English band.
We have up to 25 different vowels that we sing for modern music etc. Let me give you
an example of this.
In Italian opera there is no provision for A. okay, let's do this again.
Let’s go I love this, the way I think about this.
I go live, love, laugh, look like these are ways to remember all of the vowels that are
not in Italian so e.
There is no provision for ih like lid or live.
There is no provision for AA like laugh.
There is no provision for true ā like lay.
It’s different.
There is no true provision for ie like like and then oo like hook.
There’s quite a few more.
In fact if you use diphthongs within vowels like joy oi, or something like that.
They’re actually compounded so there's actually even more than 25 different vowels.
I don’t want to get into all that, but my point is that there is a lot more vowels in
English language than there are in Italian.
anyway so she is certainly implementing that, but what I want to say is it's really important
to understand that conductors and maestros back in early days, especially for sopranos
did not want the sopranos to sing the bottom heavy.
They didn’t want Lzzy Hale.
They didn’t want Pat Benatar.
They didn’t want Susan Tedeschi or Bonnie Raitt or any belter, wailers in the mid voice,
Kelly Clarkson, whatever, Christina Aguilera right?
What they wanted was to save all of that and be real ginger and gentle on it so you could
save it for the big money note, okay?
So what they did was they sacrificed the belting call register on the altar of this high note.
It’s exactly the opposite for what they did for tenors.
In the case of tenors they built their chest register, their call register like Nessun
dorma, one note in Nessun dorma that is a B, B flat.
Excuse me, yes B. It used to be the C and they took it down a notch.
but anyway, in Nessun dorma all they cared about for the tenors was to build up a big
chest resonant sound for the big money note at the end.
They sacrificed their falsetto or true high end, reinforced falsetto head voice and didn’t
care about that.
All they cared about was the big money note.
As you go through this, we're going to do this.
I know that was kind of long-winded, but I think it might have been worth your time.
I want you to pay special attention to how gentle she is on the vowels and then I want
to talk about how she darkens and covers those vowels in true "operatic" fashion.
So in other words, let's say I’m going to do even legitimate Italian vowels.
If I were to sing them in succession.
If I were to go
right.
They’re very dark and covered.
If I go
right?
I’ve opened up those sounds and I can add a lot more vowels to them.
It gives me more range as I go.
It’s not as pretty and as round as true Bel canto.
You can actually have a percentage of Bel canto and a percentage of pop or pop rock
in her case which is what she is doing, which is really cool.
All right.
Shut up Ken.
Let’s get on with the song.
All right, let's go.
Just a good history lesson if it was worth it to you.
Let’s rock.
Sorry to keep doing this but this is also important.
Now, you've heard me talk about something called contiguous phrase singing.
What does that mean Ken?
Well, contiguous phrase singing means that you hold on to a vowel.
You set up the AH vowel.
Now, for those of you who have my singing course, I have a singing course called How
to Sing Better Than Anyone Else and I walk you through all of this step by step by step
so it leaves very little room for error or interpretation.
Okay but anyway if you know she hung.
It’s called "hung" those notes for a really long time.
Now, in true opera again, they didn’t really care so much about you understanding the words
as much as they cared about you getting the emotion and the passion of what the singer
was singing.
They had these contiguous phrases so.
Notice how she is contiguously singing a phrase.
She is not going.
She is not breaking up the phrases.
The reason for that is, when you understand good, open throat technique you want to keep
that vowel open as long as you can, so that the back of the throat doesn’t close down
and then you have to reseat the A vowel itself so that each time you sing a phrase you have
to reseat the vowel, find the place in your voice.
Now, this is going to help you singers out a lot because you're going to say yes, gosh,
that makes sense.
Does that mean sometimes I could sing something really good and other times I’m not so good
at singing it?
Why do I not have that consistency?
We build consistency through muscle memory by taking these open throat phrases so that
we can always rely and always depend on them, so that as we go through things even if we
do do staccato singing or non-contiguous phrase singing.
We can actually quickly open up that vowel very quickly with a quick breath.
Also notice her breath control.
She’s got a really great breath control and she can hang these notes for a long time
without getting winded.
Okay, let's continue.
Beautiful melody.
She is in her chest voice then she immediately pops the clutch, puts it into gear, and goes
right into head voice into exactly what I was talking to you guys about about rolling
into those notes.
Now, they’re big and round and beautiful but she's able with finesse to get into those
very "operatic" tones and textures, and a vocal timbre up that high.
Big audience.
See what I mean about Trans-Siberian Orchestra, they have a lot of flavor to that which is
really cool.
Chest voice.
See how gentle she is on it.
Mix voice.
In and out of mix.
More chest in it, up high.
Nice.
Chest.
She’s real easy on it.
Listen to it closely.
Nice, beautiful tone.
Good pitch too.
Okay, I want to point something else out.
It is what it is.
Within Bel canto and I’ve talked about this before.
I’m going to glaze over this really quickly.
Bel canto is awesome for the foundation of singing and it's awesome for opera and it's
awesome to implement some of that operatic stuff within pop or rock or metal or whatever
right?
Or goth or goth metal.
There are a couple of things that I have had to completely rework in my course, loving
the foundation of Bel canto, of opera but not appreciating some of the effects that
it does.
Let me explain what I mean.
If you notice she is very pitch perfect.
I don’t know what her soul and blues is like because if you want to point out something
to me where she sings a couple of blues licks where it doesn’t sound really stiff I’d
be interested.
Most people that learn opera, they learn their scales like stair steps.
Right and it's very rigid.
The reason for that is they want absolute pitch.
They want
right?
They want a very specific, they don’t want any sway in the pitch at all. Okay?
That is really problematic if you want to sing the blues.
If you notch in your vocal folds or your chords these rigid stair steps it's really
hard to get out of that and sing a blues lick.
Let me explain to you what I mean.
If an opera person where to sing a blues lick like
that is about what it would sound like if they're singing a blues lick.
There is not swag to that.
Someone that understands warming up their voice instead of singing it in stair steps
and having some swag to it and being able to kind of sway in and out of a minor third
and so forth, that blues lick would sound like.
There would be a lot more sway and a lot more swag and a lot more forgiveness.
I much prefer the second one, the bluesy one because then you can get in and out kind of
rolling into notes, diphthong coming off notes and whatever.
You get a lot more advantage to that as you release and relax to different phrases and
there’s a lot more soul in the sound.
If you notice she is very, very stiff on the sound.
Not stiff, she's very "perfect" on the sound, so to speak in Bel canto terms.
Anyway, let's continue to hear.
By the way killer tone, great pitch, great control, great breath control.
I’m not in any way dissing that.
I’m just pointing out the difference between a Bel canto singer and a blues singer.
Let’s rock.
I’ve got to get past this solo.
It goes on for a little bit here.
Here we go.
Before as this starts to come up again.
There’s one more thing about this is there is something called the Indian Caste System.
You guys probably know this.
In India there is a certain social class so to speak.
Within this social class you're not allowed to step out of it.
In other words once a pauper, always a pauper.
Once a king, always a king.
Once a middle class, always a middle class.
No matter how many lives you get to come back you're always in that same social status.
That is also very true for Bel canto in opera where they put you in a specific box or a
specific mold and you're never allowed to get out of that mold.
That is actually not true.
We can step out of different vocal fachs, which is the German term for types, vocal
types.
There’s 25 of them technically but actually there is a lot more than that because we can
actually enjoy different percentages of different vocal fachs if you understand how to work
those vocal fachs.
I cover all this in my singing course.
Let’s get back in tune here.
Here she comes.
Again, here is the TSO.
I love how the audience knows all the hits.
It’s awesome right?
She’s in more of a belt mode now.
She’s still in her call register, her belting register.
Nice.
So dramatic.
Head voice.
Nice.
She’s kind of going into that belt mode.
Now notice she does something really cool.
That is also another trick in Bel canto.
She is kind of pinching and squeezing.
She is getting some of the distortion out of her voice.
Remember how she sang really gentle on it and she's kind of ramping up and leaning into
the sound a little bit.
When you do that, try not to go
and squeeze and pinch.
Throw a quick H because if you do that you automatically open
up the throat first and then you can roll into that sound.
Lean into that sound with a good, round open throat distortion.
If you do,
it's going to lock you down and you're not going to be able to go back up.
Free up the voice, open up the throat and get more range or a cleaner tone.
By the way too, one other thing, as I say in my singing course if you just sing in a
distorted tone like this the very next day you have to come back and do your warm ups
and clean up the voice or you will forever sentence yourself to having to sing in a distorted
to get to certain notes if you don’t rehearse or warm up in a clean tone first.
Let’s rock.
Okay, there's a lot of instrumentation here.
She opens up again here in a minute but what I want to point out to you guys too is there
are other singers that have gone before her.
Singers like Pat Benatar for example who also had a Bel canto operatic background.
If you listen to Pat Benatar, it's the same thing.
She sings very careful.
She’s really round on her sounds and then when she belts out something like Hell Is
for Children, she kind of just goes into, takes the throttle down and goes into a different
mode.
She’s juxtaposing, not juxtaposing.
She is alternating a belting call register when she does that which is cool and then
when she does her operatic stuff she is real gentle on that to step into that role.
It’s kind of like having two singers on stage so to speak or two different styles
of singing on stage.
Let’s continue.
Here we go.
See, back to the gentle thing but a little bit of belt.
Cool, nice.
Great, great pitch.
Cool, wonderfully theatrical.
If you also notice Amy Lee from Evanescence also has a very similar approach though Amy
doesn’t really belt like Floor does.
Amy is kind of a little more clean toned so to speak but anyway two thumbs way up.
Awesome, definitely.
Floor, rock star.
Good stuff.
What an inspiration to see someone like this and continue.
It’s tough to find good talent these days and it's tough to find originality and these
guys have all of that.
Until next time Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is in the singing.
Peace, out.
Hey guys, if you like what you've heard please like and subscribe to my channel by clicking
on the subscribe button.
That will actually take you to another page where you want to click on the bell icon.
It opens up a menu and the menu has notifications on it where there's a little box you can check
where it says send me all notifications for this channel.
Check the box and click the save button.
You’ll get notifications from me every time I have a cool video come out.
Okay, thanks guys.
Peace, out.