Hey everybody welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is in the singing.
I am having a blast doing these isolated vocal tracks, it's incredible there's
so many things I never knew about these artists, so many different little nuances and approaches
and just getting to break all this stuff down and hear exactly the original vocals, isolated
all by itself. It's just pretty incredible if you ask me. Before we get started if you wouldn't
mind, please like and subscribe to my channel that would be awesome. I have a singing course it is
called How to Sing Better Than Anyone Else, you can find it right here at Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com
and I also have a free singing forum over there so if you guys are interested in learning how to sing,
zip on over there, it's free you can check it out. There's over 20,000 people in there and
some really good moderators to help you guys with your singing voice okay. Now I'm getting ready to
do Morton Harket, the song is called "Take On Me" and the band is A-Ha and I did a version of
this myself so I will put that in the description so you can see how I did, but it was one of those
songs where the video was just so good the song couldn't possibly fail right, and everybody
loved the storybook going you know, or being in the story looking at the book and then being
sucked in by a lover and you know, we've kind of all been there, kind of dream off into that wow what
happened to, the cartoon and just the whole thing was very, very, very creative. So I want to go ahead
and just dive right into it. Now I want to say something about this, a lot of people rate this as
being a really, really difficult song to sing and they're parts that aren't parts that aren't and
I want to discuss the vocal aspects of it along the way. So I'm going to do a vocal analysis and
a little bit of a vocal tutorial so we can talk about how Morten got to some of these places
with his voice alright. Let's dive right in. Here we go.
By the way I never knew that was a dude ,
so he's just kind of getting warmed up right. Let's hear that again. Check it out.
So he's real easy on the sound (sings)
right. So he's not pulling up really much chest in any of the sound at all he's, he's you know
using a lot of lower chest voice and not a lot of falsetto, a lot of head voice stuff
so, kind of start out there right so he's really easy on it. He's very snappy and real you know
poppy and peppy on his voice, vocals which is cool. We just came off of doing Michael Jackson
and so I'm not sure when these will release, but there's like a similarity kind of in the phrase (sings)
in the phrasing right which is interesting.
(sings) I didn't really know all that stuff was in there but,
so let's back this up. This is actually pretty easy to sing. Check it out.
(sings) Just do this (sings)
(sings) Now what's also interesting, kind of talked a lot about Michael Jackson in the same way,
Michael kind of doesn't have a lot of consistency, and I don't mean this in a
bad way but he deliberately doesn't hold notes and have the volume be identical (sings)
There's a lot of ebb and flow (sings)
right. Kind of like crooners hey you know, it's kind of funny (sings)
right so there's kind of like, like some crooner stuff in there,
but anyways so it's got that vibe, vibe about it. Let's back up.
Now do that with me (sings) right.
So that's kind of the extent of his, of his, his
belting stuff. Now I don't, I know he does another note later, we'll talk more about that in a second.
So (sings), he's real soft on that guys (sings)
right. So it's not as hard as you might think. Now some people say oh man I could never get to the
end note, well don't sing the part before it so hard and you can free yourself up in the throat
to be able to get to that. So let's do that, let's do a takedown of this one more time.
Check it out. By the way let me back up more.
Here we go.
Right. So now he's back real gentle (sings) and you gotta get his, I think he's from Norway
or Sweden I forgot, I know he's Norwegian. You gotta have that kind of accent. I don't have it but
he's got the (sounds), things are kind of closed down a little bit when he sings so (sings)
So it's almost kind of like a Swedish or Norwegian guy with a British accent you know they're kind
of combining the two together. I'm telling you straight up it's kind of what it's like.
Okay so it's a really (sings)
right okay. You kind of hear kind of a little bit of a British accent with a Norwegian
guy sing it. So I think that's kind of interesting. Let's go to the next chorus.
So do this with me guys (sings) right. He doesn't even use much vibrato at all there right.
and he's real easy (sings). He's real (sings).
He's not using a lot of strength in this sound right.
Now on (sings) right he's in full on falsetto so do it with me (sings), is in chest (sings)
and then this is all falsetto still (sings) so do it with me (sings)
right. It's kind of like a foghorn (sings)
right, and it's not that hard to get to that note. I don't know what that note
is. Here let's check it out real quick. I forget now. In fact in my version,
it's an E. So in my version I go higher at the end and he does do one belted chest voice note
coming up and I'll show it to you as we do this but so let's continue to play here we go.
Now one of the things that gives this so much
power and it sounds like he's got so much power in the sound, is he's got all those background vocals (sings)
that are really loud in the track so it holds up his falsetto voice to make the
falsetto sound a lot bigger, and he also uses a ton of reverb and delay
in the original version, when you go back and really listen to it. It's back in the mix
and there's a gob of reverb on it so it makes it sound really big and robust. I'm
not again taking away from his how cool the song is, but don't be deceived it's not like (sings)
you he's not like killing it, it's just you know, it's got a lot of reverb on it, it's well placed
and it's just soaking and just rumbling in all this reverb. So anyway let's continue.
Oh i think this is.
So (sings) right. You're kind of like you know, this real ebb and flow, almost like you know,
again I don't think of it like early crooner but if you listen to Harry Connick Jr or something
or Frank Sinatra (sings) right so there's some crooner aspect
to it. You can almost, this is going to be a weird comment, you ready guys I always make these weird
comments and then you kind of see hey maybe, maybe Ken's right it kind of works that way,
but there's kind of like a little bit of David Bowie in there a little bit right. You know (sings)
right. So you get (sings) you know, you
can really hear kind of some, almost David Bowie influence in some of the crooner aspects of the
way he's treating his voice and then with a lot of falsetto.
(sings) right. Very British.
Now on this one.
(sings) so he's kind of in a mixed voice, he doesn't go (sings), he's not like killing it on gone he's (sings).
He's got a mixed voice in there. Listen really closely. I thought it was actually,
full chest. I've never heard this, you guys, we're hearing this for the first time together.
So I thought he had he belted that note but he doesn't, he's mixing it. Listen close.
On gone.
Cause you (sings) you can hear him trail off with some mixed voice in the background right.
Now at (sings) I do that in my version, I go, and I even go higher than that at the end. You can
check out my version, you might like it. Again he has a very special
character voice that I, I wouldn't try to match exactly because it's just not the way I
sing, so I tried to get as much of the nuance of his sound as best as I could. I still wanted
to sound like me and like I always try to do, is I try to take someone's original version and
instead of singing it exactly the same way, at the end I always kind of ratchet it up a notch or two
to give the audience a little bit something more to go home with rather than sounding just
exactly like it so. Hopefully guys like what you heard and definitely check out my next video.