Hey everybody welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is in the singing.
I'm continuing my series on taking isolated vocal tracks, I'm doing an analysis,
a vocal tutorial and talking about the recording process as well.
Next up is Sting. That's right Sting from The Police. We're going to do "Roxanne" which is
really cool. If you guys don't mind please like and subscribe to my channel, that would be really cool.
I also have a singing course, the course is called How to Sing Better Than Anyone Else, you can find
it right here at Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com where I also have over 20,000 people in my free singing
forums for any of you guys out there interested in learning how to sing, already a decent singer
or even an advanced singer. There's a lot of great talent in there along with my course so. I just
want to get it started right away and just dive right in. So this is Sting "Roxanne", let's do this.
I've noticed, he is one of the most difficult
guys to try to reproduce when you're going to do like you know how to sing like, how to
sing like Sting or whomever. There are character voices that are just kind of better left alone
so if i were to do a Police song or a Sting song, I'd probably just sing it like me and not try
to imitate or emulate or you know whatever ,clone his sound because he's so unique in his sound. Now
I have put him in my all-time greatest bass players that can sing, my top 10 greatest bass
players that can sing. I'll put that video in the description because you guys, you bass players out
there might be interested in that, but I want to go ahead and talk about how he tapers off every you (sings)
like as he comes off of all of his phrases, he tapers them off. So he comes in with a hit, by the
way he doesn't support a lot with his singing until he goes up pretty high like in the chorus,
but if you notice, listen really closely, he tapers off the back end of his vocals so we always
think of him as being this really authoritative singer, he's really not actually, he's pretty, pretty
gentle on the sound until he needs to lean into it so. Listen to it again. Check it out.
So did you (sings)
right. Check it out one more time. Sorry to do this, beat you
up with this but it's, I'm going to make a point about this later about support and about holding notes
about one of the reasons he doesn't use any vibrato per se and things like that, because of
the way he supports his notes. Okay that's really important so one more time. Check it out.
See (sings)
right. He's got a caprino, a goat's wiggle vibrato. Let's keep going.
By the way his note choices are really like (sings).
They're very jazz influenced if you really think about it like they're not really normal kind of
vocals and he's a phenomenal lyricist you know just think about all the great lyrics that he's
written, but as you guys know or may not know, he got his name because he used to wear this
bumblebee jacket around town when he playing some of these jazz clubs and they said hey there's the
Sting, that's bumblebee guy. We nicknamed him Sting that's how he got his name. Now this song was also
an interesting story and I did this in one of my tutorials I think What Makes This Singer Great I
think, where I talked about this particular song where they had had some gig and I want to
say it was in the red light district in Amsterdam if I'm not mistaken and the gig got cancelled
because the main act, they were only warming up and the main act pulled out, they got stiffed. They'd
driven for hours in I think the drummer's car or something you know, I don't remember one
of the players cars and ended up in a really nasty seedy area in the red light district in Amsterdam,
had to get a motel where they all three had to cramp in a room together, he was walking
around town and he says as called them these young birds that he could actually see himself with,
it broke his heart and so he went on to write the song "Roxanne" which became one of their first
greatest hits. Don't you think that's interesting. So an inspiration of something on the road and
something that tugged at his heartstring, became the very thing that the band kind of initially
became known for. So I'm going to continue on and I want you, again we're going to talk more about his
support, we talked about his goats wiggle vibrato. Check it out. Listen. Here we go.
So (sings)
right. So though it's pentatonic and kind of you know minor key
in a pentatonic kind of way, a lot of the stabs and stuff are like, I could hear like a jazz player
playing that rather, more than a singer. You know what I mean. So let's get contin, and he almost kind of
reggae too because this song's kind of reggae right. So we'll continue here, here we go.
By the way (sings) right. You kind of hear that, he's, he's not really he's not (sings) right. He's not doing that.
By the way (sings) (sounds). You hear
that listen, listen. Listen to this. Whoops. Sorry let's get back to this. Here we go.
Now he's got a (sings). He brings the sound really far into the front of the face right,
and this stuff's pretty high to sing I mean you might not think about it but try to do some of
this stuff especially some of his earlier stuff "Message In A Bottle", some of these other things, maybe not
so much you know, some of his more commercial stuff but this stuff was certainly a lot higher
and harder to sing but let's continue. Here we go.
See (sings) you know you hear him back off right.
Now the reason I bring this up is in no way to diminish the amazing talent of Sting but I have
to put flesh and blood on this stuff guys, it's the only thing that makes sense for all of us
musicians going okay that's untouchable I could never achieve or attain that level of success,
he's very human in his approach. It's just, it's his bass playing, it's kind of like Geddy Lee you know,
he's, he sings really high and plays this crazy bass stuff. Well he sings these really amazing
staggered notes and stuff cause he's able to play bass in a very progressive three-piece
band and pull it off and make it sound good right. So you're hearing a lot of funk and kind
of little pitchy stuff here and there but that's not what's, that's not what The Police were about
and that's not what Sting became known for as like the ultimate singer. If anything he's kind of like
the ultimate singer-songwriter that got known as a singer-bass player because of what a great
songwriter and performer he was, rather than the other way around of being a great singer and then
good at songwriting okay. So let's kind of be clear on that as we're going through this. I don't care
if you have man love for Sting, I'm going to call a spade a spade, just talk about it like it is so
please bear with me when I do that because I'm doing this because he is awesome not because I
think he sucks and and I'm just trying to find fault with him. So please know that. Here we go.
Hear that.
See it's kind of (sings)
right. So it's pretty, it's pretty human if you ask me. So let's continue here we go.
Next line.
Now by the way (sings) right. It's kind of pitchy
right, but it's more just kind of about the vibe of it, kind of like Lenny Kravitz, like there's
a lot of people that do this where it's it's really about the vibe and you get the,
you, the melody is kind of implied or the precision of the melody is implied because of the authority
by which he sings it, it's not the other way around. It's not like Steve Perry where Steve Perry's all of
his notes are spot on and we expect that of Steve. We expect some swagger and some loose, this loosey
goosiness in the vocal. Check it out again. Listen to the beginning of this line. Here we go.
One, two, three tada.
Do you see how light he's singing, he's not (sings), he's not (sings)
right. He's really gentle on it, though he's got a naturally gifted
high voice, but he's able to kind of back it off, kind of reminds me too of, like The Outfield
or something like that with someone just a really high natural voice you know, you guys get the
point but someone that Ron or John Anderson from Yes you know and some of these people who have these
really gifted, the guy that sang for Guitar GTR. I don't know if you remember that, some
of those bands are just beautiful, pristine high voices so. He's got that.
Now I want to point out one more thing about smaller voices for you, you know singer audiophile
guys out there, there's combining two phrases. People that have smaller voices right. So if you
guys, like I mentioned a couple people, like I just mentioned The Outfield for example and I mentioned
the guitar, the guy that sing sang for the band, the guy that left Yes. What's his name. Steve
Howe had a a band when he left Yes and there was a band called GTR Guitar and you'll hear some
of their stuff. It's real old 80 stuff you don't know don't worry about it, but anyway some of these
bands with a smaller voice, the dynamic range of volume going back and forth is not as extreme
right. So you're gonna notice that there's not a lot of dynamic range, it's kind of like
one, middle and off. There's no like big velocity changes in the voice. So his subtleties in the way
he sings soft, he has to kind of make up for it a little bit with little chirps in his throat
and some other emotional things that he brings into it, and scooping and stuff like that, because
he doesn't have a big voice so he doesn't have a lot on his, you know in his toolbox so to speak
to create a lot of emotion, he finds other ways of doing it and we're hearing him do that here,
but just notice that the velocity of a smaller voice is either loud, kind of medium, or soft and
there's not a lot of nuance in between it, because it's very tubular and very pointed and smaller in
its, in its origination of its sound. Here we go.
See what I mean.
(sings)
Okay now another thing is, if you notice there's
some instability in his voice and I want to point it out again here,
because you don't really notice it because you got this band slamming with a cool, in this case
kind of a you know reggae sort of groove. You don't notice that it, voice it, sometimes his voice kind
of seems like a donkey on the edge right. In pitch. Bono's like that right. We know David Bowie was
like that, a lot of singers where their voice is just kind of struggling on the edge of trying to
get good pitch, hold on to notes, good intonation and you really hear that here. Listen, listen check it out.
(sings) right. It's not
very exacting, it's not, it's not very precision but that's again not what he's about, it's about
emotion and telling the story and and being a great singer-songwriter bass player.
(sings) right.
See (sings). Hear the kind of you know chirping and the instability
in his voice. Listen closely man because you would never pick this out I don't think in
a song right. Check it out. Listen. Here we go.
That's strong.
Now before we go too much further, I want to talk to you guys about technique so,
a lot of instrumentalists have a tough time rightfully so, because they have a tough time
just being the singer standing up and focusing on the diaphragm. Hey, hey, hey and having all this
strength do all of its work for you, instead they rely a lot on the throat and you hear
a lot of this. In fact I want to back this up one more time all the way back to here
so that you can hear a lot of instability as a direct result of not supporting really well.
Now the reason I say a lot of instrumentalists do this is because when you're a bass player, whether
you're right or left-handed, you're kind of turning this way you're kind of hunched over, instrument
might be heavy or not depends, and your lungs are kind of collapsed or your rib cage is kind of
collapsed so the intercostal muscles in the lung are kind of collapsed, and it inhibits the ability
for the diaphragm to breathe out and then to pull in you know hey, to have that strength to pull
in the sound. So you have to know how to work on that. I cover all of this in my singing course. How
you have to work on standing up straight, kind of pushing your instrument away from you a little bit,
and then getting that breath together and then learning how to sing and then incorporating the
two together so you can maintain good breath control, while you play your instrument. This is
also true for keyboard players, when keyboard players are sitting down, you lose up to 30 percent
of your support when you're sitting down so you know whether it's an Elton John or whomever it is,
even Freddie Mercury when he was sitting, you could hear the support drop and the support mechanism
not have the same strength as when they're standing up or really understanding how to, how
to, first learn to sing with good support and then include the instrument after. So we hear that here.
Check it out.
So he's in the chorus he's belting.
(sings) Hear the instability. One more time, check it out.
Hear that.
Now when he gets to the chorus he digs in and you know, he's real chesty in the sound so he's, he's using that, but the chest
voice only lasts so long for you singers out there you notice, you know if you use only your chest
voice in the sense of of using your chest as the, engine that drives your car for sound, you get
three, four, five songs and then it starts to go to the throat you start to lose it, as opposed to if
you use your diaphragm as the engine that drives your car, you can keep going and going and going
because this mechanism is a lot greater than this mechanism for supporting and sustaining sound okay.
By the way these are short stabs so (sings)
So they're not big long phrases so he's able to get more power out of them instead of having a
long phrase you have to sustain a lot of power to its end like a Whitney Houston (sings) right.
She's got a big long sustain, he could never do something like that the way he's supporting
the sound or, or a Dio. He can never support that kind of sound so.
Okay so now I want to show you how this sounds
when we come over here and we add this sound with the band and this is really important because
it's, it covers up a multitude of sin and because it covers up so much sound in the end,
and I'm going to have its vocals louder than it would be on the on on an album so you can
really hear the vocals too and by the way this is a karaoke version track. I had to match the track
to the vocals. So it's not the original track it doesn't hit as hard it's not as big, but it
gives you the idea of like how much it covers up the vocal. Check this out. Here we go.
See don't you feel or get the impression that because there's so much energy driving with
the band, that it makes his voice sound like it has a lot more energy, a lot more
authority and a lot more strength than it really does. That's important
folks. Check this out, let's continue.
Now one more thing if you notice this track is pretty bone dry so I think we got a track with
just very little reverb on it. So in fairness I want to add a couple of effects to this so.
What I'm gonna do is and I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna add a long haul, a little bit of a long haul.
I'm gonna add a room that I created that's pretty bright but it's a pretty short room that's bright,
then I'm gonna add another room that's a little longer, and then I'm going to add a tiny bit of
delay. Now just very little because the track is so sparse we don't want to hear a lot of delay,
but I want you to notice how big this track sounds now or big, gird the track sounds and
how much bigger his vocal sounds, with those in play okay. Check it out.
Maybe a little too much. I'll back some off.
Okay so I backed it off a little bit, it's like too much but let's try it again. Check it out, here we go.
And what also this does is it makes the track, his vocal track, a little more fluid and floaty and, and his phrases hang on longer
and make you think that his phrases are longer than they really are because of the reverbs
etc. Alright guys hopefully this was helpful and enjoyable and definitely check out my next video.