Hey everybody welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is
in the singing. I'm continuing my series called How to
Sing Like. Next up Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin.
So if you guys ready let's get started but before we do that if you wouldn't
mind, please like and subscribe to my channel, that'd be really cool and don't
forget to ring that Bell so that I can keep new cool videos coming your way and
I have a singing course and that course is called How to Sing Better Than Anyone
Else. You can find it right here at Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com. Again where
the proof is in the singing. I want to help you learn how these guys
got to be great in hopes to help make you great okay. Now before we get going
here I want to talk about Robert Plant's uniqueness. Robert set the bar so high
for difficult, high range singing that it's a pretty interesting or it will be
a pretty interesting thing to show you guys some of the different places that
he's sang that may not be quite what you think they are and I'm gonna show you
how you can get to those places too. Now I cover all this in my singing course
but I'm gonna give you some snapshots along the way. So I'm gonna start, by the
way I'm getting to be older so I have to use my spectacles but I want to start a
first on some of the more mellow kinds of acoustic things and then how he
applied some of the more acoustic folk side of what he did to also hard rock
singing. So first up is "Going To California" and I did some versions of
this myself just to showcase it here we go,
Now I'm actually singing even heavier than he did (sings).
If you notice I have
more girth to my voice, my fatness on the bottom and he doesn't, he's got a very
very small sound. So I have to work extra hard to not over sing the bottom and not
carry that girth and that weight up with me otherwise I'm gonna get caught in the
middle of the cord somewhere up the food chain and won't be able to hit the high
note so let's continue here we go.
Great song writing. What great songs these were.
Led Zeppelin was so great.
Now Robert did that a lot. He kind of whine (sings). He would be kind of whining into
some of his sounds but that's actually a technique, that technique is kind of
yawning, creating space (sings) right. To thin out the sound, make it nice and small and place
it really high up in the throat, using mass and and whining or yawning into that
space. So you hear I'm doing that a lot actually and I'm using the same
technique to sound like him, in order to be able to make that same vowel
placement that he's using.
Now (sings)
right. I'm actually using a lot, I'm kind of going into my head voice a little bit
and I'm mixing up top. So I'm not dragging so much girth again up to the
top to be too big on the sound because that's not Roberts thing he didn't do
that. Now I do do that sometimes for effect cause I like it. I like a big sound
up top but if you notice his sounds are really, really, small so he's not trying
to get a big sound up top, it's just the way he sings right but I have a bigger
voice. So I have to figure out how to make it smaller in order to be able to
get to this. Now I cover this in my singing course I call it little boy voice.
So I have to set my voice up really high to get into these places and be real
tubular and small on the sound.
Now I want you guys to practice something.
(sings)
right. So I want you guys to like kind of
find yourself like. You know (sings)
right. I want you to kind of sing like this just for a
little bit and humor yourself and you'll see how he stays real small instead of
(sings)
right I'm not using all the huh sound. I making my sound small cause I know
I got to go up in a minute right. Check this out.
Now this is what I mean by being (sings) right. I'm actually mixing my sound.
It sounds like I'm belting and pulling chest all the way up but I'm not, I'm
actually mixing and I'm about 50/50. I'm about 50% chest, 50% head. Now I cover
this very specifically in my singing course, how we have to first grow our
chest voice, then we have to grow our head voice, then we have to grow our
mixed voice in able to be able to match these tonal qualities so they're
interchangeable and you can't detect or you can't really tell when I'm doing
that but I'm definitely switching back and forth quite a bit. Now I've got a lot
of Zeppelin tunes I want to cover. So that's one of them.
Next up and I and I'm doing this at a very specific sequence so I can show you
some stuff here. I'm gonna do the "Immigrant Song" because some, there's some
similarities to this also so check this out.
Now if you notice I take some liberty. You know (sings)
right. I'm taking a little bit more of a David
Coverdale approach to this, on this section cause I like it to sound fatter on
the bottom. Robert Plant doesn't do that because he doesn't have that kind of
voice right. So I'm taking the liberty of sounding like Ken Tamplin cause I like it but
I have to thin out the sound again, bring it up in here and I'm mixing the sound
again. I'm not belting, I'm actually about a 50/50 % mix, listen really closely.
(sings) Right. I'm almost entirely in head voice at the
very top note and I'm using percentages of chest and head as I'm going through
this right. So that is the "Immigrant Song" and that's how Robert does it too, he
uses a lot a head voice, a lot of times it sounds like he's pulling chest when in
fact he's really using a lot of head voice in his sound. You can really hear
this too if you pull down some of Robert's live stuff you're gonna notice
that Robert actually is, he gets caught kind of like Brian Johnson when he's
singing AC/DC. He gets caught and he can't go up to get
those notes when he's locked down the larynx when he's been in a belting
position a chest belting position, he can't release and relax. If you
understand how to do this correctly and release through the passaggio and get
into head voice, you can control that and relax the passaggio, you relax, excuse me
the larynx, to not let that happen as you're going through the passaggio and
then be able to get both chest and head mixed and have a lot of range without
getting stuck and feel like you're hitting a ceiling and you can't unlock
your vocal folds. So anyway actually I pulled up another one of my tunes. I
wanted to show you how this applies to to women also so I did a version of
"Black Dog" with Kati and I'm gonna get to "Since I've Been
Loving You" in a minute but I want to check this out, watch this.
This is how a girl would approach it right. If she's doing it right.
Pretty rockin' huh.
Cool now you can see how she's actually belting through the whole thing. She's
not using any head voice at all which is cool cause girls voices are higher but
let's face it Robert Plant was also gifted with a really naturally, high
voice too so his voice is, the, his range is technically more in a female soprano
or definitely an alto kind of range like Kati and Kati's actually got a little
more fatness to her sound I think in some spots that even Robert does as a
girl. That's really unusual so I think that's awesome. I just wanted to
demonstrate that this doesn't just apply to guys, it also applies to girls and we
can see that with another one of my students. So now, now the other thing too
is that Ken you know but I don't want to sound just like Robert, I want to sound
like myself so can you give me an example of how that would apply, yeah I
absolutely can, in fact I want to go ahead and show you two things. One is,
first thing is "Since I've Been Loving You". I just did this a few weeks ago and
posted it but I sing it like Ken Tamplin. I don't sing it like Robert Plant but I
hit all of his notes and then some but I wanted to have like more of a roaring
lion sound, compared to "Since I've Been Loving You". His version is extremely
small and he uses a lot of head voice. Now most of what I'm using is head voice
brought down into the chest register but you can't really tell because I've grown
my head voice so much, it's very deceiving and it sounds like I'm pulling
chest and belting through this, when in fact a lot of this stuff is head voice.
Check it out. Now I'll put all these in the description so you can see the full
versions of these and kind of you know go through your microscope or you know
your magnifying glass and check them out on your own but here we go.
You can scrutinize them yourself.
This is on a minute version of the song.
Here that head voice to choice and back.
Seamless connection, head in to chest.
Chest to head.
So you get the point. You can hear me go from chest to head, to chest head and I'm
going back and forth seamlessly and you can't tell. Now if I were trying to pull
that much chest up top, I would be next to impossible. I mean I can do a lot of
it but your your, your, your dead lifting a hundred thousand pounds when you do
that. I actually did do that to a large extent in "Painkiller" by Rob Halford. I
don't know if you guys want to check it out because Rob does that whole entire
song almost entirely in head voice and I wanted to kind of man up to it just for
fun and do most of it in chest so it's a different kind of sound. It's like
pulling kind of the meat and potatoes up top and just really throwing down hard. So anyway
that's another example but like I said now before I get too, too into this. I
want to point out two more things, one is that and I did, I did a "Kashmir" version
let's see do I have that up. I did "Ramble On" too so you can hear.
You know again the acoustic side.
Real sensitive.
(sings) Staying small on the sound.
And you can listen to the rest of this tune, now all of that is a belt to chest sound, a
pulled chest sound cause Robert does that in his version, he's singing in a belted
chest sound. So this is an example where I'm not using head voice, I'm belting
through the whole song okay. So that's that's another example. Now here's
another tune. I know you guys know this, this is "Whole Lotta Love". I'm gonna show
this. I chose to keep a belted, Coverdale sound. I wanted to sound more like Ken
Tamplin in this tune. So check this check this out here.
I wanted Coverdale.
With more blues.
Ok so there's that. Again I'll put that in the description as well and then then
there's, I did another version. I did "Kashmir" also but I did "Kashmir" more
like if Dio, Coverdale, Paul Rogers and Glenn Hughes were to sing "Kashmir". So I
didn't sing "Kashmir" at all like Robert Plant. I sang it like Ken Tamplin. I was
gonna play that here and show it to you but I thought well that doesn't really
show you how to sing like Robert Plant, shows you how to sing like Ken Tamplin
singing Robert Plant. So if you guys want to check that out, I'll put that in the
description also but this is how we do it folks. You know I have a singing
course like I said called How to Sing Better Than Anyone Else and you have to
work and actually um set the voice up for singing in a really high tones and
get rid of all the weight. Now there's ways to do that, it's a very consistent,
consecutive way that we warm up in building blocks, very specific order of
building blocks, to get the voice to be seated really high to cruise at an
altitude that Robert sings at. Once you attain that, once you achieve that, it's
not as hard as you think to sing like Robert Plant,
you just have to set the voice up for it and know how to do it. So again I'm doing
most of this by request guys so if you have a request of a singer that you want me to
do, please put that in the description and I definitely check out my next video.