Hey everybody welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is
in the singing. I'm doing a series and it's called What
Makes This Singer Great and the next up to plate is Lou Gramm from Foreigner.
Now before we get started if you wouldn't mind, please like and subscribe
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can find it right here at Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com.
If you want to learn how to sing, if you're a medium range singer or if you're
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kick the tires or dip your toes in the water and get your feet wet, you can check that
out as well, it's free but I want to get. Now what makes me think of Lou Gramm from
Foreigner. Well the first thing for me straight up is Lou is probably one of my
greatest vocal influences. People ask me all the time, hey who influenced you,
how'd you learn to sing like that. Lou Gramm is probably my greatest or one of
my greatest vocal influences. Him, Paul Rogers, Coverdale, there's like a small group
of guys, I've said this a million times but Lou would be way at the top of the
heap. So the first thing I think of about Lou is Lou has just got golden, throat
tone. His tone kind of like John Waite from The Babys and I'll do a reaction
to John Waite too on what makes him great but you know Lou's just golden
throat, golden tone. I like his his bluesy approach to
singing but it's not over the top, there's not like you know all these
extra licks we don't need, gratuitous you know (sings) stuff but he uses it appropriately
which is really cool and I love his songwriting. His note choices are awesome.
I like his lyric writing, it's great. We're gonna talk more about that in a
minute but I also what I love about Lou is he had the ability to sing powerfully
whether it's you know songs like "It Feels Like The First Time" you know at
the end of "I Want To Know What Love Is", "Jukebox Hero", "Cold As Ice", um you know I
could just think of a bunch of Foreigner songs that I love but um "Hot Blooded"
you know is another one but the thing that Lou has got is he can do that
and then he can turn right around and sing a ballad like "Waiting For A Girl
Like You" or sing "I Want To Know What Love Is" and just kill it so. Now there's
a couple things I gotta get my glasses I'm sorry I'm getting old, in my old old
years here. Now Lou is actually been replaced in the band by Kelly Kiki and
Kelly's doing a great job too. I really appreciate what he's done but I just
think there's no really replacing Lou Gramm so that's one thing, the other
thing, no difference to you Kelly, it's just I you know I just Lou, I just you
know grew up on the guy but the other thing about Lou that is also super
awesome is um ,it's really tough to be a faceless guy and back then a lot of
these singers were pretty faceless. Now some of them went the glam route and
overdid it but then the the faceless guys Lou Gramm,
Paul Rodgers, David Coverdale not so faceless because he kind of got into the
eighties metal glam thing, Ian Gillan you know a lot of the the blue-eyed soul
singers, they were, you wouldn't, you couldn't necessarily pick them out in a
crowd because they didn't you know though, their soul identity was found
in their voice. So we've talked about What Makes This Singer Great so his range,
his power, his crazy, great tone, his intonation, his ability to sing like I
said a ballad and a rock song and just great melodies, timeless, timeless
melodies that we to this day are still hearing on the radio. So let's fire up
Lou and we'll check it out. Now again it's hard to find some footage on some
of the stuff that we're allowed to use or that's great performances from back
in the day so I did the best I could and picked out some stuff, let's check it out.
I think you guys remember this one right.
I did a version of this, I'll put it in the
description you can check out my version of it.
Very emotive, very emotional very emotive singer in a ballad especially.
Very sexy.
Like his use of air.
Excellent.
Head note on the piano there anyway so he gives us a lot of nasality but for some
reason I don't mind when he does it. It's like it's so part of his sound that when
he brings in mask into the face (sings), it's just Lou and and so I don't think
of it like you know when I think of an Axl Rose or somebody that uses a lot of
nasality, you know to me that can get annoying to me after a while when Stevie
Wonder does it, it doesn't for some reason I don't know why. When Donna
Summer does it, it doesn't. Actually though when Celine Dion does it, it does
bother me and grades on me a little bit. So there's certain times where it for
whatever reason you know who's Ken Tamplin to make these comments but um
you know sometimes it's it's okay and appropriate in his case, like all the
time it doesn't bug me at all and then like Klaus Meine, it doesn't bug me at all when
he sings with nasality but um other times other singers do it, it does bother
me to an extent. So anyway let's continue, shut up Ken, let's listen.
Don't you just love that.
Okay so I've done, I did this song, I'll put that in the description. I did
"Jukebox Hero", I'll put that in the description and I did "Long, Long Way
From Home", I'll put that in the description.
I don't remember if I've done any other Foreigner stuff but yeah certainly check
those out and see how I did cause you'll notice how much of an influence he's
been on me as a singer. Now I don't want to sound exactly like Lou Gramm, it's not,
that's not the point we don't learn things from musicians and then you know
try to emulate them exactly because then we just become carbon copies of them. We
want to take their sound and include it into our own sound, take a little from
this guy, a little from that guy, stir it up in the pot and out comes us right. So
let's continue, here we go.
Great song.
This is obviously not live but I wanted
to include it.
Now I use this often as vocal demonstrations for using good mask
technique. Now we've talked about Dennis DeYoung, he also sings with a lot of mask
and he doesn't bother me either. So this is really good placement for from (sings)
right. Brings it right to the front of face and it really helps
us pitch the sound right here so we can hear good pitch and intonation and then
we don't bring all that muscle mass and girth up in the throat, we can actually
place that sound higher up into the head and be able to sing higher with better
clarity, more ease and better intonation okay, here we go.
I love his tone man.
I like that phrasing.
See what I mean boom from that kind of sound or even a heavier song
like "Jukebox Hero" into a sexy ballad like this.
Isn't that sexy.
Mad love for Lou Gramm.
You guys know this one.
Ew, little pitchy there.
Cool so anyway guys. Now like I said I try to do most of this by request, that
was one of my own things that I wanted to bring in but if you've got someone
that you think I should do a reaction to of What Makes That Singer Great,
I am totally down for doing it, it's just a matter of can I get the publishing, can
I get a cool video for it. So if I didn't do yours that's a good chance that
that's the reason so and it's gonna be by like who requests this the most, just
not every request so I've got to get a few of them in there but if I missed
something about Lou that you think I should have contributed or you
can contribute to that, please put that in the comments sections, that would be
awesome. Like I said I'm gonna go ahead and put some of my versions of Foreigner
songs, I'll put that in the description for you to check out see how I did and
check out this new video.