Hey guys welcome to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy. I'm doing a series called What
Makes This Singer Great and next up in the series is Brad Delp from Boston.
Before we get started if you wouldn't mind please like and subscribe to my
channel and don't forget to ring that Bell so that I can keep cool videos
coming your way. I also have a singing course it's called How to Sing Better
Than Anyone Else. I'm gonna put that in the description here for you to check
out for those interested in learning how to sing or for those that want to expand
their vocal range as far as you want to take it. Now I've done a couple Boston
tunes myself I'll put that in the description. I've done "More Than A
Feeling". I don't know if this is gonna release first before that or not but be
looking out for it, I did do that and it's gonna be on YouTube soon if it's
not already when you see this video and I did "Smokin" too. I did that quite a
while back so you can check that out as well. Now when I think of Brad Delp from
Boston what comes to mind well what comes to mind is high range singing you
know absolutely, kind of a velvety, smooth, warm, texture to his voice. I think of
songs like "More Than A Feeling" or "Smokin" or I think of "Amanda" or I think
of you know "Don't Look Back" and you know there was like quite a few Boston songs
that we're really popular but I want to point out a couple things and we'll do
this as we go. Sometimes we think of a singer back when we think about them, we
think of you know they're really powerful or they're loud or they're this
or that but when in fact they're really not so he's really a gentle singer, very
gentle on the voice. So let's go ahead and and get into his velvety sound
as we go and I'll make some comments along the way so here we go, Check it out.
Ok so let's listen you know (sings)
sorry wrong lyric you know
and he goes close my eyes and he's like real gentle on it and a lot of times I
remember thinking about this when I was a kid because I remember this came out
like in the 70s I was really young. In fact my sister brought the album, she
brought it home and played it 24/7, I got super hooked on Boston way back in the
day and you know I picture him as singing really heavy and hard and
sometimes you know he belted in his upper registers up but not that much and I
know there's some videos floating around on YouTube of isolated vocals of Brad
Delp. I encourage you to check those out cause he's actually really, really gentle
on the sound. It's very velvety, flawless, intonation, really sensitive which is
really cool but you know for the most part it's really really gentle and he
does have an incredibly high range. Now also on on this song here too or
what else other things that I think of in just say this song, is I think of him
being kind of faceless. Like I said there are a few of these guys whether it was
Paul Rogers or you know we just did a couple takedowns of a few singers in
this era. Ian Gillan, Glenn Hughes, blah blah blah. They really didn't try to you
know put their face in front of everybody and you know glam out make and
sure that everyone had you know, they were ubiquitous means their face was
everywhere and you really knew who they were, you probably could stand behind him at
a grocery store and really not know that was Brad Delp right. Now I'm really
bummed that he took his own life here not that long ago because he was just an
amazingly talented guy and I see a lot of people dealing with depression so my
heart goes out to you for that but I think of that too with the travesty of
that of just taking your life so that's a bummer but anyway with that said let's
continue and then we'll talk a little bit more about.. oh by the way I got to
play with David Sykes, he played on my An Axe To Grind album, the bass player.. one
of the bass players from Boston, played on one of my records too so I had a little
bit of connection with them and I know Michael Sweet from Styper actually
also sang for the band there for a minute so cool.
He's trying to keep those vowels nice and (sings) open vowels right.
Remember this song.
Sorry there's some noise on this video but it's one of the few I could get approved so.
You know what's kind of interesting that one line (sings)
it reminds me of that Elton John song (sings)
right doesn't that kind of
remind you of that Elton John song. I just had that in as a side note. Anyway
shut up Ken, here we go.
I always tell myself to shut up because I like to bring
in all these different stories and stuff and I want to make sure I stay on point you know on task.
Right. Timeless, timeless band. So if I left anything out about Brad Delp and there's
something you guys would like to contribute, please put that in the
comments section. Again I've said this before I'll say it again. I do most of
this by request so if there's someone that you'd like to cover on what makes
that singer great, please put that in the comments section as well.
I'll put my songs in the description so you can check out how I did with Boston
and don't forget I've got another video coming your way check it out.