Hey everybody welcome to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is in the
singing. I'm doing a series on What Makes This
Singer Great and next up to the plate is Chris Stapleton. Before I get started if
you guys wouldn't mind liking and subscribing to my channel, that would be
awesome and don't forget to ring that bell so I can have more cool videos
coming your way of a similar ilk. I also have a singing course and the course is
called How To Sing Better Than Anyone Else and you can check it out here at
Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com where we discuss all the little nuances
that it takes to make great singing like Chris okay. Now what comes to mind to me
you know what this makes a singer greater what kind of first comes to mind
is his tone. He has great tone and it's very unique.
It's not like just because he's got a cool distortion or this or that. You know
(sounds). He's got a real nice spread wide sort of sound which is cool and his
blues licks you know. I actually..I did a take down of "Tennessee Whiskey".
I'll put that in the description on the blues lick in it and I teach you guys
how to sing that exact blues lick so and I have a lot of stuff like that in my
singing course you know so if you're wondering if that, those kinds of things
are in the course as well yes they are but anyways songs that come to mind of
course is "Tennessee Whiskey," "Fire Away" there's "Say Something" the tune he did
with Justin Timberlake. You know "What Are You Listening To". I mean he's got a lot
of really cool, tunes he does a lot of covers too. He's got a really cool
country flavor about him too so it's interesting because early on most
country artists weren't preoccupied with soul and blues. I'm not saying that they
didn't have soul but it wasn't sort of like soul licks and Chris is
incorporated kind of rock and soul and blues and he's a great guitar player so
he's an instrumentalist and a singer and I think that probably contributed to his
being a better singer, was being able to be a great instrumentalist. So there's
definitely that he's got kind of interesting stabby kind of phrasing you
know where he it's his own person, it's not like it follows any real meter per
se which is very unusual most singers you know (sings)
that's the little ball that goes
along the lyrics. Chris is definitely the opposite, the quintessential example of
being the antithesis or opposite of that. Big word., Anyway the other thing is he's
relatable and everyone kind of looks like Chris and just goes yeah man what a
cool guy you know I totally relate to this guy. So he's really down-to-earth. So I
put together this montage and I just want to do a takedown of
his vocals along the way. Let's do this, here we go.
Just love that tone.
See what I mean, stabby vocals, very personalized.
Okay now one thing or a couple things.
First thing is is (sings). He's really open and spread in the throat. That's one
thing when he goes for a distorted sound it's not gratuitous. He's not going (sings)
all the time. He brings in some distortion, he takes it
out and has a smooth clean tone, brings in distortion again. So he's very
judicious on the way he uses it so and he uses it very appropriately and that's
a big lesson especially to a lot of rock guys or guys that want to just sing with
a lot of hyper compression or glottal compression. You know we don't want to
sing in a compressed sound all the time. In fact I train in my course how when we
want to do something that's distorted or compressed or gritty or whatever, we
always want to come back and clean up the voice with the clean vocal sound so
we have access to both first a clean sound to build resiliency and
flexibility in the vocal folds and then we can distort it and you know kind of
stress out the chords to get the tone that we like so and percentages of that
distortion.. distortion also so.
See what I mean on any given day he'll sing a song differently every time
right.
There's the signature lick.
See what I mean, he changes it up all
the time, every time.
All the improvisation of that
with the licks right.
Now one other thing so too.
He's either in a small zone (sings) kind of sound (sings) right.
He's either kind of in a closed position when he's being intimate and then when
he opens up the sound he spreads it really wide and gives you know kinda
lets you have it with like a roaring lion kind of growling, grizzly bear or
something and then he brings it back down into his little puppy-dog thing
that he's got going on too. So like I said he's really relatable.
Now one other cool thing about him too is he's really even
on his amount of compression in the amount of air that he uses in his
stomach. So he has a real good consistency to his breath control, it's not like one
minute he's you know over singing the high end. You know you see how judicious
he is. He's not like killing it when he goes up,
he's compressing the sound so you can hear him really governing the sound. He's
not over bloating or blowing out the sound as he goes up and when he's down
low. So it's just real even breath of air and it's a lot of a lot of abdominal
strength in the sound. I cover that in my course as well about good
diaphragmatic support and he certainly is using quite a bit of it. Not a hundred
percent but he's using quite a bit of that so that's great.
Little nasality there.
Now notice too guys for you the singing enthusiasts out there, he's not
moving his mouth that much (sings)
and then until.. until he opens and spreads open the sound. So keep an
eye out now that kinda this video has his beard kind of shaven a bit and you
can see his mouth movements a little bit more. They're fairly closed most of the
time. That doesn't mean the back of his throat is closed, it just means that he
closes down the front of his face to get some of his vowel sounds and work out
some of his consonants so.
It's his style.
Lot of nasal (sings
I like this song.
Okay
one last thing I'm gonna point ou,t maybe not last thing but is that when he
goes in and out of the vocal tract and he spreads the.. his pharynx you know that's
facing your mouth and he spreads it out wide and he comes back
into smaller sounds. It's really difficult to maintain good intonation
and pitch when you do that and he's a master at going, compressing a sound,
making it small, opening up the sound, cool blues lick, coming back, adding
distortion, coming back to a smooth velvety sound and maintaining great
intonation. That's very difficult to do because you have to have a constant mind
and when you cover or darken a sound, that is a tendency to want to make this
sound sound flat and then when you spread the out or bring it into
nasality like he's doing into the veil of nasal port, that also then shoots the
sound and makes it really bright and really shows ,showcases whether or not
you're in pitch or not and he's masterfully able to negotiate and get in
and out all ..in and out of all of that intonation like that which is awesome.
Okay so anyway like I said I'm doing a series on these guys and I've got
another video coming your way. We're just gonna keep knocking these out.
So if you've got a recommendation of someone that you would like to hear of
What Makes This Singer Great, I'm totally down for taking that on and if you want
to contribute to what you think makes Chris Stapleton great, please feel free
to write into the comments section so we have a well-rounded approach on all the
things that come to mind when you think of Chris Stapleton. Alright let's check
out this next video.