hey chris liepe here with the isolated vocals for californication anthony keatis
the red hot chili peppers lots of you have been asking for an anthony keatus breakdown
and it's interesting because you talk to a lot of non-singers about the chili peppers and one
of the first things they say is oh yeah that guy can't sing and i think even some vocalists will
say that oh you know he didn't have a great voice but you know he's rhythmic and and expressive and
stuff and it really i think i disagree i've been listening to the chili peppers a long time and
i think some of their main hits uh don't display the greatest you know technical vocal performances
but some of the things that he does uh and some of the ways that he approaches notes
it's really interesting and i think that there's a lot we can learn by listening to these isolated
tracks and trying some things with our own voice so like all the other isolated tracks
analyses that i do i'm going to be honing in on not only the singing but the production
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psychic spies from china try to steal your mind's elation and little girls from sweden
dream of silver screen quotation and if you want these kind of dreams it's california
okay two things right off the bat that are very anthony-esque and little girls
and little girls and little girls he also ten so there's that slide up thing that he does where
he'll be in his lower chest and then i'll sing and then i'll sing but i'm also doing something
else i want to hone in on listen to this part again psychic spies from china try to steal
your mind's elation listen to how he says spies listen again psychic spies from china psychic spy
i'm exaggerating what he's doing but this is not psychic spies there's this teetery it's it's in
between a full chest and a full-on head voice he's using a subtle mix whether he knows he's
doing it or not but you can hear it on words like spies psychic spies from china try to steal your
mind's elation he's the elation elation he's very much in chess there listen to this one
little girls from sweden dream of sylves little girls from sweden there's that obvious push up
he sirens into some of his notes but i really wanted to hone in on the fact that there are times
throughout this song and throughout lots of his performances where he's on that
as opposed to it being or
it's teetering it's like a quiet mix
lots of times you can access this by singing quietly in the car
along to your favorite songs or singing humming in the shower
where you don't break and you can kind of go higher but it's not quite
like intentional head voice this is a really good place to rest and experiment with with your voice
he does it all the time in little bits then right here californication
it's another thing i notice about this track they fade out his notes all the time it's that's not a
it's not that they're taking an audio they're using an audio fade in in the daw like like this
of course it's already done on these tracks so we don't need to do that but and when you
listen in the original or the eventual mix the full production i don't really notice that but i
definitely notice it multiple times here it's the edge of the world in all of western civilization
the sun may rise in the east at least it's settled in a final location now i was talking about him
being rhythmic and the way he writes his lyrics and the way it bounces over the beautiful drumming
of chad smith there's not a lot of uh great band the sun may rise in the east at least in the east
at least in the east at least listen to how light his voice is though the sun may rise the sun may
rise it's not chromatic sort of thing happening there and there's pitch correction on this track
you can tell but they've they've done it loosely enough and been strategic about how they do it to
capture some of that that neat quirky chromaticism that he uses the sun may rise the east at
least it's settled in a final location it's understood that hollywood sells californication
again that fade out listen here dude that hollywood listen it's understood heavier
understand that hollywood again i'm exaggerating a lot but we should when we're figuring out how
to work this into our own voices understood that hollywood it's understood that hollywood
it's understood that hollywood if we can get that kind of thing down and finish out
the line exaggerate it there's a lot we can do expressive wise in our voice between those slides
and that pulling back into that that uh ether thin quiet mix telephonication
it's understood that let's really exaggerate it it's understood that hollywood
pay a sergeant very well to break the spell of aging i also like this right here
he does a good job of that that's another anthonyism
he'll it's almost like he's like in the middle of a phrase listen again
we've got the very well pay your surgeon very well but the way he's he's putting extra energy
into that v bounces his voice pay your surgeon very well very well pay your surgeon very well
pay your surgeon very well it's a very different mindset than just pay your surgeon very well
pay your surgeon very well he's got that scoopy thing going on again
and he's adding a lot more air right before that to get that bounce
break the spell of aging celebrity skin is this your chin or is that why you're waging
the spawn unicorn hardcore that one sounded more like a mic proximity thing that phase first
love the interaction of those two the melody and the harmony there dream of californication it's
such an inevitable thing like if it didn't have that in the song it would be so missed it it just
had to though those harmonies had to be that way and they're simple too dream of californication
notice how the harmony
uh the harmony goes away and then the melody fades out there as well dream of californication
the other thing i like to really notice about this is how the different uh timbres of the parts help
expand the sound and we're gonna experiment with that a little bit here dream of californication
i'm gonna double that notice i'm keeping my voice a little bit darker dreama californ this one i'm
gonna be a little looser with it but i'm going to also create uh a bit of divergence and the
end i'm gonna mutter a little bit you'll see what i mean dream of californication
trailing out not paying attention too much to how i end we're going to bring this one down
dream of californication so we want the original behind we want that that little bit of chorusing
but not much now i'm going to lay the harmony down really pushing those consonants now
and brightening my voice up dream of californication dream of californication
now it's preferable that things don't end all at the same time there's a looseness to this
that makes it what it is if we were trying to be too tight and too exact to what he's doing
but also to exact with our own voices we lose that vibe this is the balance between groove and
stuff that really feels good and stuff that and only the chili peppers can really pull this off
right there's this loosey-goosey thing going on with the vocals at the same time there's
really groovy rhythm that has to be tight and knowing when to be tight and when to be loose
yeah certainly i didn't capture it as well as as anthony did but just practicing that
when we need to be on when we need to be loose how we need to modify ah versus
those things are going to make or break
your overall vocal performance and production of californication
cases goes beyond that that's another one of those things that you'd think ah
i don't know about that but it works marry miguel be my favorite to the world be my
very own constellation a teenage black la tata you know that he had the rhythm down
of what he was going to do in this song before he wrote these lyrics a teenage bad with the
baby inside getting high on information and buy me a star on a bullet ride it's californication
caller fornication this is not a forward sounding voice at least right here
he's got it he's got his resonance back but he is feeling it in his face no his nasal cavity is
open but what i mean by not as forward is that we're not doing california case californication
yeah it's much more like that we're still feeling it in our mask you don't have to have things
vomiting out of your mouth to have resonant placement in your face space may be the final
frontier but it's made in a hollywood basement and cobain can you hear the sphere singing songs
i'll station the station and alderaan's not far away it's californication oh yeah
listen to how the they you know they cut the file
there and edit the edited the headphone bleed out i like hearing stuff like that
the movement the slide movement is really intriguing there
vacation
i wonder if those were looped behind
this another anthonyism listen to hardcore soft porn
he very regularly falls off those notes
uh and it's not falling off to a note it's a like it's not a sigh either it's uh let it go
when i do it i have trouble not wanting not going to paw you know poor and not sighing afterward
there's a there's a balance that he does very well it's very subtle dream of californication
ah so everywhere else in this in this song and i touched on it earlier but dreama califor
there's so much spitting out of the words there and so much emphasis on the consonants but
nowhere else there's this there's this performance diversification that we have to hone in on here
it's subtle and you'll miss it if you're not really paying attention to these things
but these are the kind of things that make a vocal performance dream of californication
get some vibrato going in there at least on one of them
the other one falls off vacation and the other one goes kesha listen
dream of californica he actually says of most of the time he's just saying
uh dream of californication dream of californication dream of californication
yeah so those endings are intentionally not on together
every time you hear the guy the strong guy up front in those doubles that's not just
the harmonies it's what i demonstrated earlier where we have these variances that are planned
to create that intentional looseness coupled with the tightness thanks so much for watching and
suggesting i do a video on anthony keatis i'm glad i was able to find these isolated tracks
so we could dig in uh to an extra degree keep suggesting artists keep suggesting videos again if
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