How to sing on pitch.
Hi guys, my name is Ken Tamplin, welcome to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy, and it turns out
this is a pretty expansive subject, because whether you’re a professional at the highest
level, or you’re just someone having fun singing in the shower, everyone deals with
pitch issues.
Now, they may vary in the degrees of pitch, but everyone has to concentrate on their pitch.
So if you’re out there and you feel like you suck, don’t be so hard on yourself,
we all work on this stuff, it’s not, we weren’t born one day just singing in perfect pitch,
okay?
But I want to cover a couple of things.
The first thing is: We have to build this from the ground up.
So, as I’ve said in many of my videos, if you haven’t seen my video on diaphragmatic
support, please go back and watch that first, and get an understanding of the basic building
blocks, the rudimentary and fundamentals of the "engine that drives your car", because it’s
this "rudder" of the ship that’s going to steer that ship, which is the engine, your
abdomen, your diaphragmatic support, and the sails that are going to be anchored to this
engine that’s going to determine our destination and how off we’re going to be in certain
areas.
So we might blame pitch on something else when it actually started at the core, which
was the engine that drives our car, which is diaphragmatic support.
So, now that I’ve got that out of the way, I want to discuss different timbral sounds,
or different color that people sing in.
So, now not everyone is expected to sound the same, of course not.
That’s where were all diverse and we love variety.
However, a person that colors or darkens their sound, they're going to sound more flat,
or below the flatline of a specific note.
They’re going to sound under-pitch, compared to someone that has a brighter timbral sound,
right?
Now, the brighter timbral sound, remember I said this over and over, "Ping is King".
You really want that bright “It’s the LAH!!!
AHHH!
AHHHH!
Bright sound.
Because that bright sound, if we develop it correctly, is the most transparent sound that
we could have, in leaving us "naked in December snow" and seeing the transparency of the pitch.
So if the sound is colored, or covered, or darkened, it’s easier to kind of muddle your way through
and you can’t quite hear rrrrrrrrrr.
You can’t really tell the exactness or preciseness of the pitch, whereas if it’s a bright timbral
sound, you can.
Now, I’ve also said this from day one of way back when I first started teaching, guys,
record yourself.
And listen to yourself back, so you can hear what your mean average of pitch is, relative
to a chord or an instrument that you’re playing, a piano, a guitar, or whatever.
Now, I want to discuss this idea of the coloring of the sound, and then I’m going to get into
helpful hints on how to get to the pitch correctly.
But if there’s a guy that comes in and he’s: “Woahhhhhhhh” and he’s real colored…
Ohhh, Ohhhh, Ohh, Ohh, Ohhhhh… Right?
There’s a big difference in that guy compared to AHH, AHH, AHH, AHH, AHHH!
Right?
The guy that’s bright is going to actually be kind of right smack dab in the square of
pitch, should be, or maybe even a little sharp.
Now, I like to start there, because you can develop a lot of bad habits by coloring a
sound.
Now, does that mean we always sing with a bright timbral sound?
No, of course not.
We can use color, and we can darken sounds for color all the time.
But once we’ve developed that transparency of being able to see, and crystal-clear, be
able to hear that pitch, we can add all the color that we want to the sound.
So I recommend starting with a brighter tone.
Now, when we go into these scales.
I’m just going to do a simple triad.
There’s a tendency to have a diphthong, or to scoop up into the notes.
Lahh, Ahh, Ahh, Ahh, Ahh, Ahh, Ahhh.
And that’s just fish-tailing, creating a really bad habit.
We really want to get the exactness of the pitch, so we want to go: LAH, AH, AH, AH,
AH, AH AH.
And how I do it is by raising the soft palate in the back of the throat: AH!
AH!
And creating as much space as I can, I come in from behind the note, and I drop down on
the note instead of pushing up to the note, which has a tendency, psychologically to hurt
confidence, and to think of always pushing, always arduously going up to a note.
No!
I want to come in from behind the note.
So, it’s kind of funny, when I think of coming down off of a scale…
Have you ever taken a slinky, and you take the slinky, if you don’t know what a slinky
is, it’s kind of like a coil that the children played with it goes: Shhh, Shhh, Shhhh!
Right?
I think of taking a slinky and letting it kind of go Chhk!
Chhk!
Down the stairs, as I’m letting this thing roll down the stairs, I psychologically think
of myself coming down off the notes like that.
In the same way, with the slinky when you have weighted the slinky and you have the
slinky going upstairs, the slinky goes up the one stairs, and it kind of whips around
and then it pops to the next stairs and it whips around again and it pops up to the next one.
Well, I want you to think of that in the context of how we’re about to do these scales of
instead of pushing up to the note, we’re going to come in from
behind the note and drop down on it, so…
Lahhh, Ahhh, ahhh, ahhh, ahhh, ahhh, ahhh!
Did you hear I’m not going Lah, ah, ah, uh, uh, uhh and straining in the sound?
I’m coming in from behind and dropping down.
Lah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah…
Lah, Ah, Ah, AH, AH, AH, Ahhh…
Okay?
Now!
One more thing.
It’s really good to identify the notes that you're singing, right out of the gate.
So if I’m going to go: Lah…
Lah…
Right?
So again, get your recorder out and listen.
Am I below the pitch?
Lahhhh.
Lahhh.
Or above it?
Lah…
Or am I right in the center, right spot on at the ping of the pitch?
Lah…
Lah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ahhh…
Lah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ahhhhh…
And play some games with yourself to see how many times you can hit that instead of going
ah, uh, eh, uh, oo, uh…
And see how many times you can successfully ping that note, ping that note, ping that
note, over and over again to get that pitch.
Now I know too, that singing an a cappella does help us attain good pitch if we can stay
in the mean average of pitch through a two-minute song or one minute song, or at least a verse
and a chorus of something…
However we have to develop good pitch habits first with the music bed or an instrument,
to get the muscle-memory first, and develop good quality pitch with consistency, then
we can move on and develop even farther by doing a cappella exercises, or, and/or singing
songs and a cappella.
So, hopefully you guys appreciate this.
If you liked what you heard, please like and subscribe to my channel, and we have more
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