Hey gang welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is
in the singing. I'm doing a series called What Makes
This Singer Great and next up is Geoff Tate from Queensryche. You guys if you
wouldn't mind, please like and subscribe to my channel, that'd be great.
Don't forget to ring that Bell so I can keep more videos coming your way and I
have a singing course it's called How to Sing Better Than Anyone Else, you can
find right here at Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com for you guys interested in
learning how to sing. So with that said Geoff Tate, what do I think of. Like I said
there's a lot of things that go into a singer and it's not just you know range
and power and this and that blah blah blah, it's like it could be personality,
it could be their ingenuity, it could be their innovations which is what I'm
going to talk about here with Geoff. Queensryche was an amazing band because
kind of like Dream Theater and some of the other progressive bands, they were
extremely innovative and I think of course, I think of Geoff Tate's range,
everyone thinks of Geoff Tate's range and I think of Queensryche being very
progressive of course you know everyone, I think every, most people think of that
and Queensryche pretty much for the most part only wrote in all minor keys.
Really think about the kind of darker, minor key stuff right. You think about
his vibrato (sings) kind of right that is his big, wobbly vibrato, big, thick um you know
deep, thick vibrato. You think of some of his, his, the tone that (sounds) on the bottom (sings)
you know there's, there was that whole thing. You know you have "Eyes Of A Stranger", you
have to "Take Hold Of The Flame", we're gonna go through a couple of these
things first but so that's what I think of, I think of very innovative,
I think of Operation Mindcrime just being an absolutely phenomenal record
when it came out I was like oh my gosh where did these guys come up with this.
It reminded me a lot of like a rock, a good rock opera album done very well but
in their own unique kind of way and very few bands could pull that off so. I think
of them being very, very theatrical and very emotional and very kind of almost
over-the-top melodramatic (sings) with his voice just really driving home you know
some of the lyrics and concepts and in the mood
of the records. I think of the, the band itself because of it being a
progressive band, it was very hard to, to emulate it's like a lot of other bands I've
heard try to do Queensryche and they just didn't do Queensryche all that great.
It's kind of like doing Dream Theater right like I said you know, it's pretty hard to
reduplicate a band like that so. Let's dive into a couple things here. I pulled
up a few pieces. The first one I'd like to do is "Take Hold Of The Flame". I'll
explain why for a minute and then in a minute as we go long and take a couple
of these things apart here.
See all minor key right.
Very emotional.
Pretty low vocals for a guy that sings that high.
I like how he could sing light and heavy and in between too, good mixed voice too.
There's that vibrato. Holding long notes, I think of that
right.
Good guitar tone.
Okay now I think of Geoff as using a lot of head voice (sings) so he didn't bring up a
lot of chest voice into his sound per se, he relied a lot on his head voice to do
a lot of his high range of you know vocal work for him so that's another
thing I think of when I think of Geoff Tate.
And he, you know he had some higher notes coming up here too so um and I'm not gonna make this
all about range cause we know that he has a lot of range. I want to go ahead and do Queensryche
I'm gonna do "Eyes Of A Stranger" next.
I just want to kind of get the
flavor of some different stuff for us here.
Very unique chords man, nothing typical about that or about the band.
Here the theatric..(sings) like Phantom of the Opera (sings) right, it's cool.
Very dramatic.
It looks like he's living out, he's living out his music in his eyes. You can see that, it's cool.
So that's another thing I think of when I think of Queensryche, I think of
going from kind of soft to (sounds), to soft to (sounds) right, kind of back and forth and this you know,
play back and forth between you know light and heavy, light and heavy right,
it's kind of interesting.
Of course you know double harmony leads and stuff like that and their sound to me was
always very European, I don't know if you guys feel the same way but they had a
very, very heavy European sort of influence. Now there's one other thing
I wanted to do because um let's see where do that go, I got to get my glasses
guys sorry about this. I'm actually going blind these days so I gotta (laughs). See there's
one more in here I wanted to do if I can find it, yeah here it is.
Queen of The Reich live, this is I think the same, might even be the same show yeah
I think it is so.
Now I personally have, hear like an Iron Maiden influence (sounds)
and, and kind of a kind of a Dickinson sort of (sings)
that really wide vibrato. So there was kind of some influence right of some Iron
Maiden in there too so. Anyway gang tell me what you think of when you think of Geoff
Tate, what made him great, what you love about him, if you've ever seen him live,
what kind of show you saw them at, where you saw them, how they performed, how the band
performed. The band was always excellent. I've never seen them live, shame on me,
though I have seen a lot of TV performances and a lot, and heard a lot
of you know live performances from them through audio means as well
but tell me, put in the comments section what you think of Geoff Tate when you
think of his greatness and definitely, I'm doing this by request so if you can
think of a singer you want me to cover, hopefully I can get the I don't wanna say
the rights but the ability to do it because YouTube restricts a lot of stuff
so I have to pick certain things that make sense so it has to all work
together where I can find a cool video, a good song, something that represents them
well, not a bad night or something like that, I try to avoid that because we're
looking for what made these singers great so definitely check out my next
video.