Hey guys welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is in the singing.
I'm continuing the coolest series ever and that is taking a vocal analysis and vocal tutorial,
from stems of original vocal tracks, totally naked, isolated vocals and
next up is Ozzy Osbourne and "Crazy Train" so before we get started, if you don't mind please
like and subscribe to my channel that'd be super awesome. I have a singing course, the course is
called How To Sing Better Than Anyone Else, you can find it right here at Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com
and I have a singing forum there as well, for you guys interested in wanting to learn how to sing,
for you guys are kind of medium grade singers or if you're an advanced singer. I have over 20,000
students in there or people all discussing and negotiating how to get to all these really
cool vocal places okay. So I want to dive right in and get started. None other than the Ozzy
"Madman" Osbourne and let's fire it up. Here we go.
Right out the gate. Yes he sounds like a madman (sings)
right. That's Ozzy. I don't have any bat head to eat, bats heads to eat right now
but so first thing is is you know Ozzy's been around a long time, way back in early Black Sabbath,
"War Pigs" and "Iron Man" and all those songs so some pretty amazing stuff. Now my understanding,
I don't remember if I have this correctly so you guys can correct me if I'm wrong in the comments
but that he was I think kind of like on the road crew or something. I know that was true for
let me see, Ace Of Spades Lemmy, was on a road crew for for a band also but I think Ozzy was like
either on the road crew or was invited early on and wasn't treated that well by Tony Iommi and the band
so it was kind of interesting that later he went on to be Ozzy and you know Black Sabbath is still
Black Sabbath but they certainly never had the long standing career and ongoing career that
Ozzy has certainly enjoyed. So anyway I wanted to start with that so he's definitely a madman.
Now one quick side note. I've noticed about all of Ozzy's recordings is, that it sounds like
everything is doubled right. Well it actually isn't double but what it sounds like they've done is
they've taken the main body vocal, they've panned it to the left quite a bit and then they have
created a double of that vocal, they've offset it by about five milliseconds, 10 milliseconds
and they've panned that to the right. So it's the same lead vocal, just with a little bit of delay
and panned right. So it's hard left, hard right and you'll probably hear that as we're going through
that or I'll make comments of this. I haven't listened to this yet but I know a lot about you know the
way stuff was recorded and he always has that kind of doubling sound in his voice to make it thicker
and bigger okay. So let's move on past this here. I'm gonna get past that and here we go.
Hear that.
Now. Right there it does sound like the vocal is double track. So it sounds
not only does it sound like most of the original vocal is coming from the left side
with a double of it pushed back or offset about 10 milliseconds, maybe 15 milliseconds to the right,
it also sounds like there's another vocal underneath it so you can hear the kind of unison (sounds)
kind of sound, as it's kind of meeting the tune or the pitch of the vocal. So there's that part of it.
Now the other thing too is, I remember a long time ago, I was in this band and we were backstage
at a Monsters Of Rock festival and there was all these great artists on there and Ozzy was
one of them. So Ozzy was like right in front of us in the band and he was like mumbling to himself (sounds) Crazy. Right he's going back and forth,
kind of a lot like he does on stage, where he kind of you just goes, you know meanders back and forth
on stage so, listen closely and you can hear him kind of mumbling or making mumbling sounds.
Now we all kind of do this to some degree but not quite like Ozzy so let's take another listen
to this here. Check this out. Hold on it is right here. Check it out.
Now I don't really think of Ozzy as a great singer and again I've just got to be brutally honest with
you guys. If I'm not just brutally honest, I think I'd do you a disservice and I'm very disingenuous
if all I do is praise you know all the artists that I'm doing. I praise what I can.
Now melodically from a lot of, a melodic standpoint, Ozzy's always come up with a really cool melody
and he's always had the most amazing bands. We can all agree on that. Now from a singing standpoint,
he's very monotone in his (sings) right,
he's real monotone on his sound so, there's no real singery part to him and it's very staccato. There's
no, there's no soul or swag in it, he's just a very straight, almost like singer songwriter singer if
there is such a thing but a metal guy doing it right. So imagine a singer songwriter guy who's
not really a singer's singer, singing metal tunes or something right. He's just very straight on the
sound so and that's Ozzy, we've come to know and love him for that. So let's continue, here we go.
Now one more thing, because of the fact that the vocal is doubled and there's a lot of under,
underlying you know unison, maybe double track going on, plus the harmonies and whatnot. If you
noticed especially in his mixes, the vocals are pushed really far back in a mix. So they're not
really up front and present so real bright and present in the sound. Now I just came off
of doing another video and I'm not sure when I'll release these so don't hold me to the order
these are going in but I just i just did Steven Tyler and Aerosmith and we did
"Don't Want To Miss A Thing" and Steven's vocals are very present, they're right in your face you
know kind of vocals, where these aren't, these are really pushed back because of the doubling effect
and all of the effects they have on his vocals, to make it sound really big in the track. Now but the
other thing too though is, he doesn't use a lot of big, long reverbs all the time in his stuff,
maybe like a Steven Tyler would in a, in a ballad or whatever. His sound is pretty consistent, all the
time he has kind of a very similar doubling effect sound you know. It'd be like the equivalent of a
guitar player once he's found his tone. You know he's kind of, Carlos Santana once he's got his tone
he sticks with the tone and everybody knows it. It's the same thing in a recording process here
where you're, it's a signature sound of his voice. So you really can hear that. Now he uses very
little, almost no vibrato. Again like Steven Tyler like we talked about in the last video we did
and so it's very, very straight sounding right (sings)
right. There's nothing about that (sings)
right. There's, there's not a lot of swag or not a lot of soul in that, but I just wanted
to point that out because it really makes it, almost robotic sounding in some ways.
Ok. Here that.
Now I wanna (sings). It's pretty high. It's not, it's not like this stuff is that easy to sing so when I said singer
songwriter, maybe that was an injustice to, how difficult some of this stuff is to sing. Now I did
a version of this song so I'm gonna put that in the description, you can see how I did. I don't
think I've done any other Ozzy stuff so yeah. So I think it's the only, I can remember doing.
I'll put that in the description, you can see I did but I sing it more like me because I just wanna,
when I do character voices and I sing people that have such a character voice, and it could be
Ozzy, could be Steven Tyler, I could be Mick Jagger. I'm not so foolish as to try to sound just
like them, like David Lee Roth. I'm not, you know (sings) you know I'm not gonna do
diamond Dave like Dave. I'm gonna sing it like me because I'd kind of sound ridiculous. So whether
I do Axl Rose which I did "Paradise City", I've got all these other songs I've done with other artists.
I tend to sound a little like them so I do it in the spirit and the nature of them,
and then I sing, I want to sound like me. So a good rule of thumb for you guys and I cover
this in my singing course, you know how do I find my own unique voice, my own identity for myself,
is we want to be inspired and we want influence of these singers and whatever
turns us on about it, could be a melody, it could be a distortion, it could be how hard
they sing, it could be all kinds of different things but we want to put that in our toolbox
so that we have access to a lot of different styles and inflections in the voice or whatever
but incorporate that into our own sound, our own unique sounds. We're not looking to sound
just like Ozzy but in this case I bring Ozzy up because he's such a signature sound, it's so him,
you know I try not to sound just like him but I want to annotate again going back to saying, but
I remember singing this and going this is harder than I remembered because it is kind of high. So
not that he's a singer songwriter and doesn't have range, it's just more of that monotone kind
of sound. Does that make sense. Alright let's continue. Here we go. I'm going to
fast forward this a little bit because I've got the, you know. Let's go. I've got a solo.
Now if you notice too, he slurs a lot of his words, like Axl Rose. I mean can you really tell me
"Paradise City", what he's actually saying. If you listen to my version you can kind of hear what
I'm saying and I'm an advocate as you guys well know of not over enunciating consonant sounds
but (sings) you know (sings) right. He's just real like (sings) right.
So he's very inarticulate when it comes to the way he pronounces and again, all
of the constants, especially kind of slurs right through them. So that's another signature to Ozzy
as we're going through it and you can really hear, you go okay I can almost hear what he's
saying with an isolated vocal stem, but in the track it's not so easy to identify so. Here we go.
See (sings). I think it's the present condition if I'm not mistaken, something like that.
To rule and control.
The media sells it.
And you live the role right.
Now, most of his sound is really from (sings).
He's right in the face (sings)
right. So everything is right here in the front of the face,
everything that you hear. So as you're going through his stuff, just notice and identify the way he's
presenting his vowels, it's how he's able to get up into the register that he does. However there's a
caveat to that, and that is when you are stuck and you're always in the face like that, it's really hard (sings),
it's really hard to go up a lot higher than that because you're locked down in the throat and
everything is resonating right here and there's a shelf or a ceiling or a zenith to that, you know
pinnacle that you you can't go any higher than that when you've sentenced or regulated yourself
to only singing frontally like that. So let's continue here we go. If I'm not mistaken yeah.
Now going back to the to the effects that he's using. Do you notice he's got a little bit of delay
right, just a little bit. A little bit of room sound, and a lot of doubler but there's not really a lot
of reverbs going on where a lot of people use a lot of reverbs and a lot of delay. I mean you know,
I love Steelheart for example but if you really listen to Steelheart, man there's a ton of effect
on Milie's voice. Or even in Whitesnake's case or you know in, in a lot of, now Dio doesn't, Ronnie James
Dio doesn't use a lot of effect, you can really hear it very present, very frontal. You know it
doesn't sound like there's this big wall of reverb going on behind and in this case there isn't a lot
of reverb going on either and that's his sound and it's also helps dry up the track to make
this, the track itself hit harder because it's not being sloshy in all this you know wake of reverb
going by, you know sloshing all over the place where the track is really wet in that, in that
sense. So I'm going to go a little farther forward here. Now right here, there's a chorus again.
Sorry bridge.
And I love that (sings) right. (sounds)
There's that you know frontal sound right. I didn't mean chorus by the way, this bridge
that's coming up. (sings) So listen to his (sings)
Now do you hear how many voices are there. I want to do this
one more time. It sounds like there's about four voices going on. Listen really close. It's not,
if I had one single voice and I did it, you'd see how myopic and narrow or
short, I don't want to say myopic it's not right word,but it sounds very narrow and very pointed and very
small compared to how big this sounds with this many voices. Check it out.
Now (sings)
right. So I, remember I said he was very staccato and he's
sang like right on the beat. If it were me I'd go (sings)
right. I would have some swag and push I'd pull on the rhythm a little bit,
but that's not his style, he doesn't do that. He's just very straight, right on the beat,
right on the groove, almost all the time and that again is his signature so. Let's get past, I don't know
if this is a solo. Yes here's the solo. Let's go to the next section here. Here we go.
The, probably the only line you made out of that was I'm mentally numb.
I think it, enter the cold war is what we've become right. So if you really listen to
lyrics, again they're really hard to understand because he's really slurry in the sound so.
I just cannot bear.
I'm living with something that just isn't fair right. I think if you did that yourself and you were
to play this demo, let's say you recorded a demo for your friend and you sang it, they'd be like
what did you just say right but it's Ozzy so it's I, I, I cool.
No one wants to blame.
Now on this section, on the other ones it sounded like the vocals were flown in from chorus to
chorus and they probably were. The vocal harmony is a little off on this very (sings)
just a little bit, which tips me off that either they used the main lead vocal and flew that in
and then added a harmony that wasn't as on as some of the previous versions.
Little off.
Better.
Okay here we go. And the end here.
Okay so I didn't know that was just guitar at the end. I hadn't actually listened to
this so that's proof of that right there but because I wanted to be kind of fresh on it to
make comments along the way and what, kind of how things hit me as they're going by so I can
explain them as they go but anyway so that's Ozzy guys. He's an amazingly talented guy
and sp.., you know he's spent 40 some years, 50 years of recording. I know that Sharon's
helped a lot with that along the way as far as managing him and getting a lot of great talent
in his band and if you guys wouldn't mind please like and subscribe to my channel. Don't forget I do
have a singing course that walks you through all this stuff and check out my next video.