Hey everybody welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is in the singing.
I'm continuing a really fun series where I'm taking these isolated vocal tracks, I'm doing
a vocal tutorial, an analysis and I'm also talking about the recording process as well. Next up Geddy
Lee from Rush. The song is called "Tom Sawyer". If you guys wouldn'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 a
free singing forum over there with over 20,000 singers from all around the world, talking about
how to get great at singing okay. I'm gonna dive right into Geddy Lee. Now Geddy Lee, we just came
off of doing Tony Lewis, the song called "Your Love", The Outfield and we talked about
counter tenors or people with really high voices. I didn't list Geddy and I didn't list Steve Perry
and some others. Geddy certainly could have been put in that camp, but I did do kind of
a fun tutorial or I grabbed some kind of more unknown guys you could take a listen to, but I
want to talk more about Geddy too because he uses almost an entirely head voice sort of dynamic. Now
there are other people that are not naturally gifted with a counter tenor high voice like
Geddy. Let me give you an example of this. Rob Halford from Judas Priest, when he does songs
like "Painkiller" or whatever you find him going into a lot of reinforced falsetto head voice a lot.
Geddy's is different, Geddy has kind of more of a a chest mix head voice where he's using a lot of
chest resonance in the sound of his head voice. Now Ken I thought you said that head voice is like
you know when you grow your falsetto to match the tonal qualities of your chest voice you get
through the passaggio mix voice and boom you're you know you can go and translate it into head voice.
I do mean that except with smaller voices that are much more inclined to sound like
contra tenor or countertenors that fit more of an alto contralto, a female vocal sound.
That means that they're able to kind of resonate more into the female registrations
than guys that are baritones dragging the weight up, shedding the weight, getting through the passaggio
and then singing in head voice right. So in other words, he's approaching it more like a female would
approach their vocals because his vocal folds are smaller, therefore has a much higher range
because the folds vibrate faster because they're shorter. I hope that makes sense but anyway so
let's just kind of dive right into Geddy right now and let's do this. Here we go.
Now if you notice even (sings)
right. He's already placed, like that sounds low to him
and to a baritone like myself who hasn't warmed up yet today, I have to (sings) right.
I'm already kind of pushing my mid voice a little bit right, if I'm not warmed up and trying to get
in my really high upper register. So listen closely because you can hear him as as low
as it sounds for him, it's higher for someone like me.
Cool and by the way it kind of sounds like a little boy
(sings) right. He's got a really small sound. Here we go.
Now I want to point something out that you guys may or may not notice
as I just referenced this sound to be more like
a female alto contralto you know, low mezzo soprano kind of sound. It, the very end of this phrase (sings)
when he kind of trails off, I want you to notice how it sounds kind of like mixed
voice, like he's mixing the sound. Listen just to the very end trail of the sound.
(sings)
right. You can hear how he has grown a very powerful head voice,
within a voice that's more like a female contralto alto okay,
and that's important because it makes it sound like he's pulling up all this chest, with a really
high range and there is definitely some chest resonance into the sound, but it's not as chesty
as you might think. I want to go back to this phrase. I want you to take a listen to it again.
(sings) right (sings). You can start to hear him
go into more of a head voice.
(sings) You hear him kind of go into a head voice there a little bit.
I hope you guys can hear that because then it helps us understand, oh, and he's not singing that
hard, he's not singing that loud. So he's able to reside and get in and out of this chest, head mixed
voice resonance pretty easily, because he's got a real small voice so he doesn't have a lot of girth
to manage in the sound and he's able to control the sound very seamlessly. So let's
check it out, continue.
(sings) I'm kind of
overdoing it to be silly about it but, you can really hear the back and forth of the
mixed voice of this. Check it out. Listen closely gang. Listen.
(sings) right. He's definitely in a head
voice sound, he's not pulling a bunch of chest voice, weight up into the sound. Now he is an exception, we
talked about these kind of voices that use very little vibrato. He actually does use a fair amount
of very caprino, goats wiggle vibrato so, it's a little unstable and it's a little pitchy at times,
and we talked to about how these smaller sounding voices need to really have a real absolute pitch
because it's very unforgiving to have such a small sound, the minute you waver off the pitch a
little bit, it's really noticeable compared to a big voice it can kind of go sharp or flat a
little bit, you don't notice it as much because there's so much harmonic frequency to the voice,
that it can get away with more in the pitch department okay. Let's continue, here we go.
Tada.
Okay now if you notice like I said, how gentle he's singing on the band. Now let me kind of put
the band in here for a second so you can hear how much energy the band brings to this, to make it
sound like he's singing heavier than he really is. Check it out.
See and so it makes you think that since the band is creating all this energy that he's singing a lot harder
than he really is. Check it out. Even here.
Now I do want to say on "2112" and songs like "Temple Of Syrinx" and stuff like that,
he's screaming at you (sings) like
he's just (sounds). Now I'm bigger on the sound so I have a bigger voice, so I have to manage smaller sounds
and his sound is small so he's able to kind of belt at a lot harder and go out a little
harder than someone like me, who has to really watch how much weight he's dragging up to the
top, but I wanted to point that out that he does do that in this case he's not and on most of these songs he's not.
(sings) right. You hear that, he's kind of going out of head voice and
on the end of the trail of changes you hear the mixed voice start to trail into the into the sound.
Let's continue. Here we go.
Now it's almost kind of Mickey (sings).
He's kind of raising his larynx in this. He's not going (sings)
it's (sings). Listen closely how he's kind of bringing a lot of nasality with kind of
a little bit of a raised laryngeal position. Check it out.
You can almost see him singing that, can't you kind of like
(sings) everything's here in the front of the face (sings)
It's all really, really tight and in the front of the face.
(sings) right. You hear that head voice. He's going into it pretty seamlessly. Here we go.
Now I want you to hear the word you
in this and you can hear him pull chest a little bit and, it sound a little strainy,
like it's a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit of an effort for him to get to the word you.
Check it out.
(sings)
right. So you can hear, he's kind of pulling a little bit, which is also an indicator, that he
is, translating into head voice from those positions and not pulling a bunch of girth
up into the sound okay. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this video and definitely check out my next video.