Hey guys welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is
in the singing. I'm continuing my series on How To Sing
Like. Next up Steve Perry from Journey. If you wouldn't mind please like and
subscribe to my channel that would be awesome. Don't forget to ring that Bell
so I can keep new cool videos coming your way and I have a singing course and
the course is called How to Sing Better Than Anyone Else. You could find it right
here at Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com where we negotiate and discuss how to
get into all these really cool places of these great singers in hopes to help
make you a great singer. So with that said I am just gonna dive right into Steve, I've
got a lot to say about him and I've got a lot of examples I want to cover. So I'm
gonna start with myself and then I'm gonna go through a few of my students so
you can see it's not just me singing or singing in the style of Steve. Now when I
sing something I don't try to emulate the singer exactly that's not where I
come from as a singer, I can. I've done all kinds of you know sound-alikes and
you know how to sing exactly like someone. I've done a lot of that for film
and television over the years but I like to bring my own influence and who I like
as singers and put that in the cauldron and it's my recipe to stir up you know
who it is that I want to represent or spit out as a singer. So I'm gonna go ahead and
do my version here. This is a Journey "Separate Ways". I'll talk about it and
then I'm gonna go through a systematically through some of my other
singers as well but let's just dive right in. I'll tell you where I'm coming
from in this song here.
Cool now Steve Perry if you listen. this is the the beginning when he started to
kind of sing heavier right. Some of the earlier Journey stuff,
Journey stuff was a lot lighter and this is when he kind of stepped up his game
to bring in some more heavy vocal tones you know (sings) you know that solo
album stuff and then this stuff earlier on. So now for me it's actually easier
because that's the background that I have as a singer is singing heavier so
Steve Perry was more in the R&B camp as a vocalist, trying to sing heavy, I'm more
of a heavy guy stepping into more of an R&B camp and the Steve Perry camp. Now in
the rock world, most rock singing is very staccato you know (sings) right and a lot
of broken up phrases. Now you've heard me say over and over and over again and
this is the the biggest example of this I want to I want to use is contiguous
phrase singing. In other words connecting your words and your phrases, your
sentences so that you're not breaking up the words so that you can keep your
throat open for good open throat technique. Now I cover all of this in my
singing course, this is so important guys this this one concept of good open
throat technique is just worth its weight in gold.
I tell you straight up. Now in this tune if you notice I'm abiding by that though
I'm bringing in a little bit of heavier tones to my own voice and a little more
girth in the bottom so it's a little bit more like Lou Gramm, Paul Rodgers, David
Coverdale, Glenn Hughes those kinds of singers singing a song like this in the
style of Steve Perry. Now you're going to see in some of my female examples I hold
them a little truer to Steve's sound so that they themselves they may not, they
wouldn't necessarily have their own style they want to bring along to you
know make it a little more identifiable to their own personal sound because
they're kind of more in training in in learning Steve sound rather than
bringing their own personal style into Steve's sound. I hope that makes sense to
you but anyway so let's continue here we go.
Now even so (sings) like I got kind of a more Dio sort of approach to it right
and I like that sound and I lighten it up a lot so if you notice I'm not a
one-dimensional singer where I have to sing heavy, in fact I recommend to all of
my students that you learn to sing something light or clear, not light but
clear first with a lot of control and then if you want to lean into it as you
feel that you can safely, then you can do that as well so let's continue.
Now you've heard me say all vowel sounds stem from it's the la ah where
the throat is wide (sings) right. Everything's (sings). If you notice the
whole song is like that right. Listen really closely to the vocal tract
shaping in my throat. They're all variations of the ah vowel and just very
slight variations to get to ah a e oh and ooh okay and even in the cases of ooh
I'm really singing oh with ooh in it, I'm not really going (sings) I'm going (sings) you know instead of (sings)
it's ooh. It's oh with ooh in it okay here we go. Whoops.
You hear that. I'm keeping my vowels nice and open so. Okay that's that's me um and I could, I could
have done it a lot more legato, a lot more portamento, real you know I and and
really not done real stabby kind of vocals. It's just I kind of like that
sound cause it brings more energy to the song for me but let's kind of dive into
something completely different. I want to dive into Kati. Now Kati is, was you
know very, very again a very punchy, rock singer and the smoothness in her voice
has come a long way. You can see that in a lot of the videos we've done with her. I
chose "Lights" or we chose "Lights" together because I thought they'd be a fun video
just for us to do. Listen to her approach on this here we go.
Sweet, smooth.
Now not to gross anybody out but I want you and by the way guys I don't
mean this is like a sexual comment so please refrain from that. I want you to
look down the back of her throat and I want you to see how open that throat is.
Now I encourage all my students to get handheld mirrors out there and watch how
the vocal tract shaping is happening in the throat and Kati is no exception to
that. So as we're going along on the tune, look and see how open her vowels
are in the throat and how they stay open pretty much through the whole thing unless
it's an E or a high a e8 sound okay. So take a quick look at this as we're going along.
Keeping the tongue, to the base of the jaw.
See with mornings.
Without you.
Now another thing about Steve is, Steve is very fluid and uses a fair amount of
mixed air in the sound (sings) you know (sings)
right. He's very ah a e oh ooh (sings) and he brings a lot of nasality into the sound. Now his
nasality is cool it's not like overdone where it's real shrill and you know, you
don't want you're real brassy. You don't want to hear it anymore. He combines
enough air in this sound, it's almost like the French uh you know (sounds) (sings) right (sounds) right.
Very bright tones in the face, nice, long vowels, really long in the vowel but some, a
lot of nasality in the sound too. So that's Kati and you know we could play, we'll
put all these in the description so you can see, check out the full versions of
these songs but I want to do, I want to take a little departure in a minute.
Before I do that I'm gonna bring Sara Loera into this. Now all these singers we
worked up these songs to be enough like the original singer but still maintain
the integrity of them as singers too okay because no one wants to be a carbon copy
or a clone but notice the similarities using the Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy
method, how all of these singers got to the similar tonality but maintaining
their own their own style and texture. Check it out.
Watch this.
Pretty close man but it's still Sara.
Alright. Now you can really, really hear those open, warm, velvety tones. Now
another interesting thing is if you watch some other stuff from Sara, man
she can pull out a Stevie Nicks like you could not even tell the difference she's
so good at it and Stevie is a polar opposite singer, very, I don't want to say
one-dimensional that's kind of mean. She doesn't have a lot of range and uses a
lot of nasality in her sound with a very very, very caprino or goats wiggle
vibrato, whereas Steve Perry doesn't do that. So, so that's kind of interesting on
this front. Now I want to pull out one more stop that's really interesting and
this is my student Sonika from Grenada, Soni. Now we decided to do an R&B
version of this and she has a very beautiful round, warm, textured voice and
we changed up some of the melodies a little bit to accommodate the R&B style
but I want you to listen too, to using the same kind of technique in an R&B
sort of style which is a little more like Steve Perry but even more extreme,
more like a Christina Aguilera or you know even farther than that, more, more on
the soul side. So check it out.
Maybe Mariah Carey a little bit right.
Now I want to do this chorus again. She brings a lot more into the front, in the
again into the viola nasal port in the front center of the nose but hers is
was a little more on the Donna Summer side in the way she's doing it and she's,
her vowels are really thick in the, in the bottom, warm and thick in the bottom
but she's using a lot of agility in the chords themselves to get some of her
runs and whatnot out, much more stylistically for herself,
then trying to stay true to Steve Perry right. So she's very Sonika on the
song and yet she uses the open throat technique in the vowel. So let me back
this up just a skosh. Check out the chorus.
Cool alright so that's yet another example of this. Now I wanna, I want to
show Sara. I'm gonna showcase her one more time because she also did "Don't
Stop Believin'" so I want to check this out.
Very similar to Steve in this approach.
See very, very similar (sings) right. Very, very similar approach to that.
Now we also did a version of "Separate Ways". I'm not sure if I have that one up
here or not. Yeah here we go. Right here check this out.
She uses a little more power in the sound right.
(sings) Good open throat.
Now notice it says (sings) again so now we're hitting the
chords a little harder, a little snappier and get a little more energy, a little
more thrust out of it as we're going through it. So anyway I cover all of this
stuff in my singing course guys so if you're interested, you can find it at Ken
Tamplin Vocal Academy.com. I do most all of this by request guys so I'm getting
requests, how do I sing like this. Next we've got, we're gonna do
Freddie Mercury, we're gonna do all kinds of crazy stuff in this case it was Steve
Perry. So if you like what you heard please like and subscribe
and definitely stick around for my next video.