Hey guys welcome to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy. We're doing a series here on
What Makes This Singer Great and next up is Michael Matijevic from Steelheart.
Now if you guys wouldn't mind please like and subscribe to my channel and don't
forget to ring that Bell so I can have more of these videos coming your way if
you're interested. I also have a singing course it's called How to Sing Better
Than Anyone Else. You can find it here at Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com where we
negotiate all these different styles and techniques on how these great singers
can translate in hopefully making you a great singer by understanding
technically what was done. So now what comes to mind when I think of Michael
Matijevic from Steelheart. Well of course crazy, high range and stamina. I mean he's just
the quintessential example of an 80s hair band right so you got this, you know
he's a beautiful guy, handsome guy, beautiful hair, crazy high range, a lot of
endurance, great tone, great pitch, good round sounding vocals, just a beautiful
sound. I covered "She's Gone" and I'll put that in the description and then one of
my students Kati Cher also covered "Never Let You Go" and I'll put that in
the description so you can see how we did, stacked up next to Steelheart. Now,
now in addition to the crazy high range and whatnot, other things that come to
mind for me is that there are just a great live band, I mean he was spot-on
every time he sung live that I've seen including a couple these performances
we've got I'm gonna show here in a minute.
You know his performances were just off the charts great. Great guitar playing
that comes to mind for me too and I mean their an international band too so
great pitch you know other thing. So let's get started, we'll play it and
we'll talk about it as we go. Here we go.
Beautiful. Good vowel placement.
Now notice something guys, I've talked about this before but from a technical
aspect he's not over singing cause he knows he's gonna go in the stratosphere
in a minute. He's not pounding the low-end, he's just very careful and he's
really pacing himself on how he's putting out these vowels. He's not
slamming the vocal consonants as much, though he does a little bit of that
for accentuation and you know enunciation but for the most part he's just being
real careful about his low-end because he's saving it for the top.
Good stuff.
Pretty hard to sing this stuff.
Now I want you guys to notice something. I'm gonna back this up on the word "for all".
He also is one of those guys that was able to really have a great mixed voice
and go in and out of his chest and head but you can hear the split a little bit.
Listen really closely on the word "all" and you can tell he flips into his head
voic,e like a reinforced falsetto and he's not pulling chest up into this
sound. Now he has a great passagio connection so (sings) you know when he goes all the
way up, you don't hear the break right that's are, that's the holy grail of
learning how to sing with chest and head and mixed voice connection. I cover all
this in my singing course. Now listen closely for "All I've done to you" and
notice the switch of that little bit of a tone change when it gets into the
word all, you can hear he's not belting in chest, he's switched almost entirely
into head voice, check it out.
sings (right).
Kinda mixed there.
Total head voice.
Little sharp.
All head voice right.
Killer.
Now depending on your your vocal range you know (sings) you can go
straight to an uu vowel but safer to go (sings)
and using the o position to get you to uu rather than closing down those valves
pretty hard. He has a naturally high voice is gifted with a naturally high
register so he can get away without that a little bit more than someone like
me who has to really work at you know my technique a lot more to get into that
registration so that I don't over sing so I don't get caught in the throat on a
vowel and can't go up okay but I just want to point that out along the way too
cause it's a little deceiving because he does have a naturally high voice so
he can get away with some things that aren't technically ways that we would
use to get to higher ranges with more ease okay.
I like his pink microphone.
It's just the lights I think.
It's live man. Sounding this good.
Did you notice when he(sings) he defaulted to yeah go cause he just come off a really high
phrase and again now he realizes he could get stuck on the bottom if he goes (sings)
and he closes down the sound, closes down you know the larynx in the throat, the
esophagus kind of closes down the air and that compresses it and the throat
becomes smaller, he's got to figure out a way to get back up top. So now he's being
a little bit more careful with his vowel sounds and vocal tract. Vocal tract shaping.
One more.
Pretty good. Yeah so guys I'm doing this mostly by request so if you've got
someone that you want to hear What Makes That Singer Great, please put it in the
comments section and if I missed something about Michael you know that you think
should have been, what you think of when you think of Michael Matijevic,
please put that in the comment sections as well and we got another video
video coming your way check this out.