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 is legendary Janis Joplin. Before we
get started if you wouldn't mind, please like and subscribe to my channel, that'd be super cool.
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and I have a singing course man. it's called How to Sing Better Than Anyone Else and I cover all these
different styles and techniques and range and tone and distortion and pitch and all this stuff. I
cover it in my singing course. You can find it right here at Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com where the proof
is in the singing. Speaking of proof in the singing, we're going to take on Janis and Janis is
maybe one of the greatest you know most legendary female rock vocalists of all time and I did two,
I used two of my students to do some of the demonstrations Alyona and, and Kati
but before we do this I want to say that they have two very different voices. Alyona and Kati
are very different kinds of singers and I want to point out how we were able to get to Janice's sound
with two very unique voices. So without further ado I'm just gonna dive right in, we'll talk about it
along the way and discuss some of the technique and soul involved in doing this. Here we go.
Okay now right out of the gate we have (sings) right.
That is more true to the Janis Joplin sound. It's not a safe sound it's just more true to
Janice's sound so we opted to go that direction in this version. In Kati's version, we opted
to open up the sound to keep it a little safer because actually at this point Alyona had more
experience under her belt and could manipulate and shift and close down or narrow down a sound
safely and then reopen up the sound. Now Janis at the time, there were very few singers that were
singing with a belting, wailing distorted sound so Janis got the benefit of sort of being the
flagship person to you know be, get the credit for that sound but let's remember
Etta James was doing that and there were other you know people back in the day that also
introduced this sound not just Janis. Etta was a little more on the soul, r and b side, Janis
moored on the on the you know aryan side not so much so r & b but more on the rock sound.
So I bring that up because Janis got credit. Now I have to say this because it needs to be said.
I know Janis was awesome, I'm not trying to take away anything from Janis. Do I think Janis was
the quintessential epitome of being the greatest female rock vocalist that's ever lived, no I don't
believe that. I don't know how many people would actually really believe that. It's a lot like Jimi
hendrix you know was Jimi Hendrix the greatest guitar player that ever lived, no but he, he
pioneered a sound, a lot of other people came along later and did his sound maybe even better than him,
but he was the first to do it so we give them credit for that. So in the wake of this, we're
not looking to sound exactly like Janis, we're going to pick off some of the cool things she did,
we're gonna talk about her soul and and we're gonna reminisce on that and enjoy it and, and
and I'm bringing this up because again I get so many people there's nobody better than Janis,
I don't know I actually like Susan Tedeschi whose voice a little better, Bonnie Rait or some
other people that have a lot so, a lot of soul and blues to their sound with a lot of distortion too.
Check out you know, check out Susan Tedeschi or Tedeschi however you want to see her name,
songs like "Rock Me Right" or you know I think she's got a lot of great stuff but
you know as a blues soul rock singer, she's got a lot of Janis but has taken that to
another level just like other people did with Jimi Hendrix. So I'm going to continue here and
I didn't mean to babble on that but so I want to point this out, and then also her distortion you know (sings),
you know she's real throaty and real pinch and squeeze throaty on the sound. So that sound
doesn't last very long so we have to again learn to build good open throat technique and you're
going to see a difference between Alyona and Kati as we go through this I'll talk more
about it as we go. Here we go.
All right so if you notice Alyona's using a lot of (sings)
she's bringing a lot into the (sings)
right. So she's bringing a lot of nasality into the sound. Now on some songs like
what's another Janis tune, you know, in fact before I go there I want to talk about
some more technique stuff on on this first. When she's done singing heavy, she comes kind of like
storyline and she goes you know (sings)
you know she's very storyline, she's again telling the story right and so she comes back and
she kind of only has two gears for her voice, all on or her you know one gear one and gear two right.
A low gear and a high gear. So she goes back and there's this ebb and flow back and
forth between the gears. Now again if you take a song like Bobby Mcgee you know (sings)
you know right. She's kind of just full throttle all the time. So there's kind of
two dimensions to her voice and there's not a lot in between. Whereas Etta at the same time Etta (sings) right.
She had kind of more of a soul, jazzy side to her sound where she would incorporate the
kind of that same real pinched, nasally, frontal distorted sound as Janis did. They were very,
very similar co-contemporaries in that same kind of sound. It's a lot of reason that you know I
think people like um Christina Aguilera claim that you know that that Etta was, was
a big influence for her and her sound and her distorted sound. So two different
walks of life but kind of coming to the same conclusions with their sound. So let's continue.
See all the air (sings). Lot of air.
Now Alyona is more true, Alyona did a better job matching her sound, Janis's sound so kudos
to Aly for doing that like I said, but again that sound was, Aly was a little more mature
in knowing how to get in and out and sing in a lot of different styles then when I
did it with Kati. Kati was pretty new in doing this so we just kind of
stayed safer in the sound and I'll talk about that when I get to Kati's part.
One other thing she did really fast stabbing phrasing (sings) right.
She had a real fast phrase thing so it was,
I mean it could have been kind of drug induced a little bit maybe you know because some of
it seemed really hyper and really spazzy and again we see that with a lot, whether it's you
(sings) you know where you see how people go the opposite direction with you know the drug,
that whole psychedelic drug movement, she had kind of more the, the hyper, spazzy kind of side
and unfortunately we lost her early as a result of that as everyone knows so.
All right so you get it right (sings)
you know with that same kind of distorted sound. I also did a version of this with my student
Xiomara Cystal. I'm not going to put that up here because I'm going to just dive into
Kati's version. I'll try to dig around and find that see if i can put them in the description, or
the link in the description so you can check out how she did too. She was even less far along in
this kind of sound than Kati was but let's dive into Kati's version. Now check this out.
Okay so right off the gate Kati's version is more like a rock chick (sings) right.
So she's got much more of the open throat thing but it's not as authentic in the sound. It's cool,
it's really cool and she did an awesome job. It's not as close to the sound as we did with Alyona
and we worked quite a bit Alyona and I went back and forth quite a bit on matching all
the different vocal tones and and also she's Russian too so we had to work out a lot of
language things to get it to sound like more like in English which is a challenge because
Kati's also German or you know Austrian- German so we have to work out a lot of
stuff like Gabriela from the Czech Republic. There's a lot of things we have to clean
up the language to make it, to legitimize it to sound like the original artists so.
You going (sings) you can hear that you know the German coming out of there. Again I shouldn't make fun of that because
she did such a great job but before you probably wouldn't even detected it had I not said that,
but Kati is learning and has learned and is getting really good at good distorted open
throat technique. So a lot like Alyona, a lot like Sara, a lot like Gabriela, a lot like
all my, you know Xiomara these different female, especially female vocalists since we're
talking about females right now, they have learned what I show in my course how to get
good big open throat distortion first but then always come back and clean up the sound
so that they don't forever sentence themselves to singing in a distorted tone
and they can sing Whitney Houston one minute and sing Janis the next. So if you like what you heard
again please like and subscribe I'm doing most of this by request and check out my next video.