Hey everybody welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is in the singing.
I'm continuing my series on doing takedowns of isolated vocals where I'm doing an analysis,
a tutorial and I'm talking about the recording process.
Now for you audiophile guys out there, you mix engineers, or you singers that just want to make
your stuff sound better as a vocalist, I'm going to show you how to do that. Now next up is Lemmy
from Motorhead and we're going to do "Ace Of Spades". Now most of us think of Lemmy as the ultimate (sounds),
you know gnarly grinder guy and there's definitely a lot you know to that, he was
one of the original guys to do it, but a lot of growl came along later and became even gnarlier
but it may surprise you that some of the growl that you thought you were hearing, is actually
not as gnarly as you may have thought number one, number two you're going to find out that the band
does a lot of the energy for you. So the band is really driving and it makes you think it's
gnarlier than it really is and we're going to talk a lot about that and then I'm going to show you
how to make it even gnarlier like we've done in some of the other tutorials. We just came off of
doing Phil Anselmo, we did you know Pantera, we did, we got, I have quite a few of these to do so,
but anyway I'm going to get started. Don't forget okay, so I 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 have a free singing forum there as well with over, they're 20,000 singers over there
talking about this stuff, but I want to get into this and I'm just going to play it first so,
this is just the solo vocal by itself alright. So let's take a quick listen. Here we go.
Alright now it's not quite as gnarly as I remembered it but check it out.
Okay now so let's play it one more time
and take a real close listen to you know, it's it's, it's intense, there's no doubt about the
amount of energy going by, but the band, the energy of the band makes the vocal sound gnarlier I think
than it really is. Take another listen. Check it out.
So (sings)
right and you know there is some intensity and there's
some distortion there for sure. Now I could record this myself and you'd probably think I sounded
pretty doggone close just kind of randomly sitting here you know singing, talking to a microphone,
singing to a mic, so, but I'm gonna play it with the track in a minute but II want to add
a couple more comments along the way. Lemmy kind of always is at the peak of his range so he's like (sounds),
like you know razor blades to the throat. I've used that example a few times, where it's just
everything he's got, all the range he's got. Now he does step it up a little bit and he in the cho, when
it gets to the next chorus you can hear, this actually happen where he raises the pitch a little
bit but not very much. Check it out.
Okay. Now he's not using very much diaphragmatic supp..(sings)
right . It's kind of all he's got really. Here we go
Okay (sings) right. He does take it up and
pitch a little bit, because the intensity and the band, and he's in another verse
and it does that. Let's go, let's continue. Here we go.
See what I mean, it's always, always kind of monotone at the same pitch.
Now coming up here, he changes the tonality
of his voice where it's really kind of small, it sounds kind of Mickey Mousey small, though
it works really well in the track, and it cuts the track which is important. So check this out.
See (sings)
you know he's kind of like way up high here instead of (sings), instead of being really gnarly and
growly. Now I want to add the track to this, so I can prove to you guys to show you how much energy
the track adds to make his voice sound gnarlier. So here it is just with the track. Check it out.
Alright now. So what I want to do is, so what I've done is I've taken his vocal,
his lead vocal and we've talked a lot about about adding effects and like i said, sometimes
I add a lot of effect for you guys to hear it, you may not want to use that much but I'm just showing
you kind of what I did so you can see how big it gets and you can decide how much effect you want
to use, after I tell you what I'm doing, and then also remember a lot of the effect disappears when
the track comes in, so all you hear is this big growly, roary kind of sound with the effect in it,
and you want to be subtle, you don't want to be over obnoxious about how much effect you use,
because it sounds stupid to have too much effect , but, so I took the lead vocal, I, all I did was I,
I took it and I made a copy and I, I took it all the way down an octave, kind of like we did in the
Pantera tune, we just talked about this in another track. I'm not sure when these will release so, but
anyway so we took the vocal down an octave, and this time I lined it up exactly with the
lead vocal. I didn't offset it at all. It's exactly with the lead vocal. The second thing I did was,
I just used a doubler, just a decent doubler. I have a spx 2000 in my console, so I just have an
sps, spx yamaha, spx 2000, and I just pitched it up a little bit like five cents up on the left,
about seven cents down on the right, no pre-delays at all or very little, like you know maybe a
quarter of a frame, half a frame on either side, and I'm not panned hard and right, I'm kind of
panned like this, instead of panning it really far like we talked about on the last tune, and
I'm just adding a little bit of reverb and a little bit of delay. So check out my effect. So
the octave, a little bit of doubler and a little bit of delay and reverb and that's all
it is. So check it out without the track, without playing the instrumental track. Check it out.
Now I want to add a little bit more of the low end because I think if I add a little bit more
it might add a little more girth. Let's do it one more time. Check it out.
Okay. Here's without it.
if you like to gamble i tell you i'm your man
Here's with it.
Check it out.
See how much gnarlier it sounds
in the low end. Now when you put the track in, I'm going to do it without,
without effect with the track one time so you hear it like that first. Here we go.
Okay. Now here's with the effect. Check it out.
So to me, let's take it back now one more time so you hear it dry again.
And again there may be a little too much effect, I'm kind of over doing it a little
bit so you guys can hear it. You could back it off and decide how much effect you want to use,
and use the track as a reference because a lot of times if you hear something soloed,
it might sound like way too much effect, you put in the track you, gah I could barely hear it, maybe I
still hear it a little too much, and then you back it off to where it's very subtle, but it just
makes the track sound big alright. Alright gang hopefully this was helpful, check out my next video.