Hey everybody welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is in the singing.
I'm continuing a really fun series and that's taking isolated vocal stems and doing an analysis,
a tutorial and discussing the recording process of some of the most epic, legendary pieces of music of
all time right. Next up is Stevie Nicks, the band is obviously Fleetwood Mac, and the song is called
"Rhiannon". Now I've done a version of "Rhiannon" with my student Sara Loera as many, as well as many
other Stevie songs. I'm going to put those in the description because I want you guys to scrutinize,
I talk about the proof is in the singing, the proof is in the singing, the proof is in the singing. Why
do I always say that, I say it because I want you guys to go and verify what we're capable of doing
at Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy so you guys can see that it's not just some random guy on YouTube just
talking about something, we actually deliver okay. Now I say that because, first thing I
have a singing course. It's called How to Sing Better Than Anyone Else. You can find it right
here at Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com. I also have a free singing forum over there with over
20,000 people talking about all this stuff and if you guys wouldn't mind, please like and subscribe
to my channel so I could keep new cool videos coming your way, but I want to talk a lot about
Stevie's love/hate camps that have gone on with her over the years. Let me explain. So arguably,
come on guys let's be realistic about this, Fleetwood Mac is one of the greatest
rock bands of all time. Now people reclassify what rock means but in the 70s rock band okay.Now there
are people that say ah she sings wimpy or I don't like her you know goats wiggle vibrato and we'll
talk a little bit about that or, she doesn't have much range or you know she's very monotone and all
this stuff fine but let's be realistic and honest with ourselves guys. In this era and at this time,
let's talk about how many singers, rock, female rock vocalists there were at this time. Okay of course
there's Janis Joplin right, she's sort of the queen of rock or kind of blues rock but queen of
rock okay I give her that, that's fine and then you know you had Suzi Quatro maybe not as popular
well known now but she was also big news back then. Of course you had Ann Wilson from Heart okay,
Nancy but Ann Wilson predominantly. You had the band The Runaways so you know I give it to Lita Ford,
and Cherry Currie and Joan Jett but you know you have those guys. Then you had Linda Ronstadt okay
there's that but for the most part, Pat Benatar I think I mentioned her, if I didn't I should have
sorry, but anyway so what is that like less than ten singers. Ann Wilson, Suzi Quatro,
Runaways, Linda Ronstadt, yeah like nine singers or I'm sure there's, I missed a couple and some would
say Bonnie Rait but I would think of her more of a country artist and that was later and you know we
could talk about things that happened later but, so and then of course Stevie Nicks. So at this time,
there are less than a dozen women ruling planet earth with their voices.
Think about that. So when you have someone that's that influential and that's that prolific in her
songwriting and is that you know, that people related to her in such ways and, and of course
you know if you look at anything that the band has done, almost every single song they've done has
dominated the radio charts for 30 some odd, 40 years. I don't care about the hate camp and I
don't even care so much if I personally like her that much, she's a force to be reckoned with and
we're going to learn that here now and we're going to go through this process. So I just wanted
to kind of give a you know a preamble to this or you know a pre warm-up to listen to Stevie so as
we go through this ,we could talk about Stevie and appreciate Stevie for Stevie and guys please don't
send me my, my heavy metal rock guys how much you hate Stevie. I think Stevie's amazing, I think
the band is amazing. I think the songwriting is amazing so you know live with it. Anyway, here we go.
Okay now,
right out of the gate. She's got a really sexy voice, bedroom voice (sings)
She's got that little (sounds) kind of bedroomy voice thing going
on. So she's a very sexy singer man let's face it right. Now I know too that the band did a
lot of drugs back in the day so even when you're here doing this stuff live on some of these tv
shows and stuff you're like I don't know how she and the band was able to hold it together
with the amount of drugs that they'd admittedly done and the incestuous relationships they had
with the band you know and so forth. You know it was a pretty crazy time, let's just say that
and I also want to say something else is there's some plosives and some recording comments I
want to make along the way so we hear (sings). We can hear the (sounds) those things we talk about in recording so.
I'm surprised because they spent so long recording this album at the Village Recorder in Santa Monica
California. I've recorded there many times and I'm surprised they let that slide but maybe
that was the best take they had and decided to use it alright. Let's do it again. Here we go.
You know it goes bird and bees right. Now you probably would have never noticed that in the track but her pitch is really spot on.
It's very ethereal and very dreamy and very mystical and I think she was going after that it's a
song about a witch. So I think she was going after that vibe and she's kind of like going like this
to you the whole (sings). Like come with me, check this out, come over here. Let me whisper in your ear and
that's sort of the sensation that you get out of this and she's got this really sweet, little girl,
unassuming velvety tone but it's kind of like the hot librarian you know what I mean. You know you're
looking at a librarian she's got her glasses on she's over in the corner and you hear her talking and she's
like, wow she's pretty hot you know what I mean and so it's this very unassuming, very sexy kind of
thing, without being overt about it. I think that's really interesting and you know all this stuff
plays in into everything together guys so you have to like look at the whole package of what's
really going on here. Here we go.
Now let's talk about her caprino, yes (sounds) you dirty wabbit (sounds) right. Yeah she's got a caprino or a goat's
wiggle vibrato, but it's also kind of her vibe and there's a lot of people that have this. So
as much as I talk about vocal technique and, and we'll go through some of this a little bit but
(sings) right. She's got a very low
vocal range. She's kind of more in the high bari range. Not even in the low tenor range, like a high
baritone range with a sweet little girl's voice but back to the caprino, she doesn't support that
much, but she's not really singing in a way that kind of requires it so she's not really
out there trying to belt anything out like a Suzi Quatro or Joan Jett or you know, a Pat
Benatar, Ann Wilson. That's not her style it's even, even we talked about Linda Ronstadt, you know she's
a belter, whaler. That's not where she's coming from as a singer, more of a songwriter, more of
a storyteller and, and she's got this mystical, sexy vibe going on which is what sells the songs. Now
her pitch is spot on and if you really listen to it you go wow I, I you know I really didn't
realize how how well she sang in pitch so that's pretty cool man. Alright let's continue.
(sings) or whatever the next line is right.
I should have the lyrics pasted there so I'm not destroying the song sorry about that for you
Stevie fans out there. My, my singer, my singer Sara would probably kill me right now.
She also has (sings) right she's real soft on the sound.
Okay now those plosives happen a lot because an engineer is trying to get the sound to be really
close and personal and really up front sounding,
and so she sings so light and if she has any distance off the mic at all (sings) right.
If she's that close it's kind of different you put a little wind screen in there and you won't hear
quite the plosives. Do you know this mic can really handle a lot without getting those, sometimes you
have to go (sounds) you know even just to get it to do that, whereas a lot of the mics man they, they
can't handle the air and what I love about this mic too, yes I'm talking about microphones, is
people go oh you couldn't be singing that song because you're so far off the mic really (sings).
See how much I can go off this mic and the mic just picks up everything
and there's settings to do that. So whenever I'm doing my vocal demonstrations, I could set it
for like really wide angles so no matter what I'm shucking and jiving, I can even look down like this,
look up like, this look down and up and up and down like this with my mouth,
and you don't hear much variation. So there's a difference in this and the way I'm recording, but
in this case so you hear these plosives and some of these mistakes in the recording process,
probably because they had to really bring up the volume, compress it really hard to get it really
in your face up close and personal. I just want to mention all that so you guys know what's going on,
how mics work and and why we're hearing these mistakes so here we go. This next line right here.
Okay they do this a couple more times and they do the same thing. Now the, what's also interesting
about this song is it's kind of a lot like Led Zeppelin, where there's no real chorus. Like it's
kind of weird, there's a verse and there's kind of you know a couple vamps here and there. Now some
people would call this the chorus, that's fine it's the name of the song but there's not much hook to
sing to, it's more a vibe right. So as you're listening to this there's no like okay oh and
here comes the chorus, unless you're calling this the chorus. No these are just you know big, long, you
know legato, vocal stabs of or not stabs but vocal lines of just you know saying the name of the song
with some harmony on it. So I think that's kind of interesting but anyway let's continue, here we go.
And you hear they change the key to match the instrumentation.
Okay so they can reset up the verse.
Now if I were personally recording this
with those background vocals, not the harmonies, not the oohs just before this, I probably would
have redone them myself because they're just not that spot on, they're not lined up that great
the pitch isn't that great or whatever. There are some singers that can get away with being pitchy
like this and it doesn't bother you that much, and that could be David Bowie, that could be Mick
Jagger, it doesn't matter there's, there are these singers where they could just kind of (sounds)
right and, and for whatever reason if a more exacting singer were to come in and do it you'd go (sounds)
you know it gives you shivers up your, chills up and down your spine. It's like scratching a
chalkboard or something because the pitch is funky, but for whatever reason in this case it's not that
bad, I personally would have redone them but they still work and they've worked, who is Ken Tamplin.
I mean look at 40 years of success, what do I know but I did have to point that out too I,
I probably would have redone these.
See (sings) like it's flat sharp and stuff all over the place.
Days was sharp.
Heaven
See it's (sings) like if you really, really dissect it they're not, now they're pretty far back and some reverb
and stuff on it so we, it's again, it's very forgivable. Here's a chorus.
Okay I'm gonna fast forward this so we don't have to listen to that three times, three more times. Here we go.
One more.
And then there's a big, long instrumental break and she does some more
ad-libs at the end okay. Now it's interesting too because there's not that much to the song
other than it's pretty hooky you know (sings)
It's very, it's almost like a, like a, a musical or something the way the melodies
are kind of arranged. They're, they're so catchy with such limited range in the way that the
things are written. It's almost like a jingle or something, the way that it's kind of orchestrated
at least in my mind it is. So I wanted to go back and I want to just add the band so we can listen to
how this sits with the group itself. So I've got the original here. Check it out.
Now I want to point something out, the genius to this kind of recording is that you could be so
subtle in the reverbs that you use and they're so short and they're so, again they're used so
judiciously, that you don't even really notice that they're there when the tracks together,
but let me take this back out again. Listen to her vocal without the track for a second. Listen.
You hear all that really warm, transparent room, wood room kind of sound that she's
using. Notice how it completely disappears when the band comes in
it, but it brings about the voice sounding like it's trailing off longer,
it sounds fatter and rounder and it fills up more dimensional space, facial dimension but listen
how it disappears so. In fact let me do it one more time without the band so you, I can do it
you know without the band real quick so without the talking in the middle like I'm doing right now
I just want to explain it, and then I'll put the band in while she's singing and you can see all
the reverbs disappear but they're there behind the scenes gluing it all together. Check it out.
Right. So, so because it was so well placed and so well recorded that you just don't feel like it's
soaking in any kind of reverb it sounds really dry really intimate and really in your face. So not all
mixing is created equal and this is the genius of this kind of mixing, this is the genius of this
kind of recording. This is the genius of mixing for the song, singing for the song and the band
playing for the song as you hear it go by so. Now, now enjoy the vibe of the song and go yeah wow all
these things make crazy sense. I had no idea all this stuff you know went into making music but it does.
So anyway gang hopefully you enjoyed this and definitely check out my next video.