Hey everybody welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is in the singing.
I am continuing this series on taking isolated vocal tracks and I'm doing a singing tutorial,
an analysis, talking about the instrumentation, the production, you name it, backstories on the band etc
and I've been doing a Bon Jovi-athon so next up is "It's My Life" and the more I do his stuff, the
more I realize the genius of how much went into him doing this stuff not just the songwriting but the
production just everything the, the, the engineering you know all of this stuff was just absolutely
incredible and, but before we get started if you wouldn't mind, please like and subscribe to
my channel. I'm getting this close to a million subs so I'd really like to hit that mark soon and
I have a singing course for you guys interested in want to learn how to sing. You can find it right
here at KenTamplinVocalAcademy.com, the course is called How to Sing Better Than Anyone Else,
and I also have a free singing forum over there with about 25,000 people in there
all talking about stuff like Bon Jovi. All right. Anyway I want to dive in because, again he, this
is sort of later in his 80s metal career, not later in life but lady, later in the 80s metal stuff
and every single tune he wrote was great back then I mean it would have been "Livin' On A Prayer",
it could have been "Blaze Of Glory" which is a movie soundtrack tune. I'm talking fast today sorry about
that and it could be "It's My Life", it could be you know "Bad Medicine", like all those tunes were
anthemically awesome, no exception here, dive right in. Jon Bon Jovi, "It's My Life", check it out.
You can really hear his Jersey accent (sings)
right he's got the real small little boy voice but anyway I'm not making fun of him it's
just his style.
Oh before I forget, I did a version of this.
I'll put it in the description, you tell me how I did. Now in fairness I, I don't tru, like if there's
if there's an artist like Jon and we're very, very different stylistically,
I don't try to emulate them I try to get the spirit and the nature of what they're doing but I
still want it to sound like me and and me as more on the David Coverdale side of things so I went
(sings) you know (sings) you
know (sings) like I've got much more of a soul bluesy, girthy kind of sound. I could have gone
(sings) right. I could have done that, I chose not to and so
I find myself caught between two worlds when I'm doing these songs and I'm doing demonstrations, I'm
putting them in description for you guys to say oh well he, he said it could sound like Jon Bon Jovi
but it doesn't sound anything like him. I didn't try to, I can if I want to so I've got a lot of different,
I've got 1200 videos on YouTube so I don't go out of my way to to to to mime or mimic,
excuse me, mimic the artist that in that way. I really want to bring me into that with a spirit or
nature, nature of it and then I always kind of like to try to add a little something more to it
so I'm not just doing exactly the same thing. So anyway let's do this one more time,
Jon Bon Jovi, awesome tune "It's My Life".
Now I know Jon borrows influences as we all do in songwriting so for me I think of this song as Jon
Bon Jovi's answer to Frank Sinatra's "I Did It My Way". Okay. It's it's my life, I'll do what I want. I'm
not gonna be just a face in the crowd, I'm gonna stand above, I'm gonna you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna
achieve etc. So when you're thinking about this I really want you to think about Frank Sinatra
(sings) I went here, I did that, I did what I wanted, it's all about me you know in that sense, in
Frank's sense. So think of that as you're going through this because it's sort of his you know
his statement of how he made it so to speak.
Now I wanna add one more thing, most of the earlier stuff
in Bon Jovi and I've seen them a few times live and they're always great, this stuff was really high
and hard to sing, "Livin' On A Prayer" you know, those songs are hard and not so much you know
"Blaze Of Glory", not so much "Wanted Dead Or Alive", that kind of stuff but, but, but the big anthemic
rock album stuff was hard to do. This is kind of at a time when he, I probably just said you know
I'm killing myself doing all this high stuff and he might have even been struggling vocally
even way back then and I bring this up because we see what's happened to Jon's voice now and
so when you hear this stuff I'm kind of like oh okay he's a great, such a great songwriter, he can
turn the key down quite a bit and be able to write stuff like this and it's still come out and almost
sort of sound like him back in the heyday of "Livin' On A Prayer" and those kinds of songs so.
So I want you to sing this with me because it's pretty easy to sing so check it out.
(sings)
right. That's the Glenn Hughes version but you could sing along with this pretty easy
you know and then and then you get to the chorus right here.
(sings) right. That's way down lower than "Livin' On A Prayer" stuff so I suspect that he was going you know
I better start writing some stuff that's more in where my range is at now because I'm struggling,
maybe struggling or maybe just didn't want to you know sing high stuff or whatever or a little
bit of both but I point that out along the way because this was at a time he started writing a
lot of stuff like this alright.
Yeah see like Frankie said I did it my way.
Now I'm not dissing Jon so please don't think that. Again I'm here to be fair and put humanity on
stuff but you can hear that (sounds) kind of thing happening in his voice all the way back here,
that now he's struggling a lot with because I get so many people asking me what happened to
Jon Bon Jovi's voice and all kinds of things. I mean it, road, not taking care of it, not working
out before you know, before doing shows, you know over singing, long, long, four singing 40, you know 40,
50, 60 nights a month you know whatever fifty, fifty night, forty nights a month, a month excuse me yeah,
yeah, can't do that. I'd be singing more than one, whatever, a lot of days, 200 dates a year, 300
days a year whatever it was, misspoke sorry but anyway and so you know when you're going
through that and you're traveling your different time zones, smoking you know drinking whatever and
I know there was some of that going on too, it all plays a toll or it all plays in effect
on your voice so I want to point that out that you heard this (sounds) sound way back then I could point
it out again but you could hear it in the verses, you can hear it in the choruses.
You hear the (sings) he's got, it's not and you can really
hear the pinch and squeeze in the throat rather than (sings).
It's not an open sound and we need to get to an open sound, even if you want to distort like
this which you can if you understand how to get open throat technique first. I cover this in my
singing course, then you can actually compress the sound and sound you know more distorted,
not necessarily this throaty but more distorted so anyway.
Okay so here we go.
(sings) right. You hear that, in that sound.
So you can even hear it there (sings)
you can hear that kind of pinch, squeeze. It should be (sings) right we should have,
even if you distorted it make it smaller (sings) right we want to
make that open, more open and have more control of the throat rather than pinching and squeezing and
really wrecking your vocal cords to do that so. Anyway let's continue.
Okay let's move forward here.
(sings)
he's up there (sings) right and he kind of closes up a little bit.
So this is a little harder because he pitches it up you know a third or whatever it is a fourth
and so these parts are a little harder to sing than the rest of the verses.
You hear that (sings). You hear that (sounds) kind of sound
and by the way too, there's very little higher range vocal stuff
that doesn't have or isn't covered with harmonies okay. Now I'm sure there was a production call and
that was intentional but when you listen to "Livin' On A Prayer" and you listen to the end when it goes
up and stuff, that's a soul of vocal line with a little bit of harmony on it and yeah there's
big vocals for "Livin' On A Prayer" part but if you listen it's solo vocal. I did, in fact I have a,
maybe I'll put that in the description you can see I did an isolated vocal version takedown of that
and you listen to it it's like pretty hot man, it's pretty good stuff and so there's a very
big difference between his big fat round you know "Livin' On A Prayer" vocals sung that high more as
a single line than being covered up with a lot of production like this. I think it's really important
to note because I think Jon was thinking in terms of that as he was going through this
you know how do I, how do I rescue this, how do I you know keep moving forward and, and, and keep
doing Bon Jovi songs. In the spirit, in the nature what people think of when they think of Bon Jovi.
(sings) that's the only thing we get out of him right.
Cool and it just has it's my life at the end. Now I want to add some of the instrumentation
because the instrumentation really drives a lot of this so when I fire this sucker up
I want you to check out how much it pushes the track. Check it out.
And I want to go to the beginning too because even in the verses it does the same thing. Check it out.
Isn't it amazing how much the track plays such a huge role in selling that vocal, to me I think
that's phenomenal (sounds) you know Richie bringing back the talk box on this tune too
but anyway gang hopefully you're enjoying this as much as I am. I'm really enjoying just
hanging out with you guys, sharing my thoughts on some of this stuff,
hopefully you know some of it makes sense. I'm not saying I'm perfect or that I'm always right
but I am just trying to give you my opinion and hopefully it will shed,
shed some light on how some of this stuff is done. So definitely hang out for my next video.