hey chris liepe here with the isolated vocals for twist and shout the beatles john lennon
primarily and some neat background vocals really neat attitude and approach in this song
[ __ ] be fun to get into if you'd like more help with your own voice uh unlocking grit distortion
true emotive power click the link below and join my free course it's the best way to start
with me and then there's lots of ways we can work from there we're going to get into john lennon's
messy grit here and we're also going to get into a little bit of the background vocals
here we go we'll shake it up
so what's so great about john lennon's performance specifically on this is that it sounds like he's
just blurting and screaming his head off and trashing his voice and that's good news for us
because we can do this stuff and and sound fully a party and it's almost
desperately aggressive without being like real confidently aggressive there's a there's this like
laid-back aggressive thing which lots of singers do well but john lennon does that really really
well so let's talk about how to get there and i'm i'm thinking about this line here especially
it breaks up and falls apart that's a very different sound than this come on come on come
on baby now that's a very controlled grit right i'm still gritty up there baby now that's like
compression and it's just a different style of singing all together we want to be more
uh messy with it so we have to take a different approach let's let's get there come on on come
on come on come on no come on i'm going to i'm going to let my voice crack i'm going to be very
intimate with my vocal break here for a minute and i'm going to find the place where i can push into
my voice as it start to starts to crack and i'm not going out for a full on death metal
screen here as i've used my vocal break to talk about in the past okay maybe not death metal but
you know really aggressive stuff here we're gonna we're gonna find the edge of our voice
that's kind of how i like to think about it and that's really what he's singing on
here he's seeing on the edge of his voice he's not merely pushing harder and harder
merely pushing harder and harder does this come on come on come on come on it's like
shouting he's not really shouting come on come on come on come on come on
there come on come on come on baby now hear it as opposed to this come on come on baby now that's
butt rock this come on come on come on baby now it's broken but not broken as in a bad way it's
this it's this broken vulnerable sound that that we're getting and he he has this characteristic
throughout this song and it as you can hear even in my voice it's very teetery and so
things happen like right here where it just sounds like he's totally losing it but he's
he he's not losing his voice it's just this kind of singing is it's harder to harder to
control but that's almost a good thing hey come on and work it on out come on and work it on out
come on and work it on out yeah yeah it's like a it's it's rougher it's more intermittent
you might think he was going for that note but he's on on the edge of his voice
and it's okay that it just totally frayed there the only way that you're going to get this level
of coolness is if you let your voice fall apart like this and it really is by being intimate with
your vocal break and learning where the edge of your voice is and pushing into that well
the other way to look at this too is there's there's a bit of a sigh going on the whole time if
i can think about it like this ah there's always a little sigh working as opposed to working on it
that's different that's like a real confident like ah working on now no working on honey
there there that's way better way closer way more in the in the field of what he's
what's up doing there no that was another awesome one you know you look you know you know you look
so good you know you look so good it seems like well chris you're dialing this in and you're
singing the lines over and over again to try to get what he's getting he didn't do that he just
kind of sang and let his voice yes absolutely but there's a certain feel that i have to get in my
voice before i can kind of let myself cut loose like he is there's a certain posture that i have
to have and that's what i'm feeling out once i get that down and my voice is sort of in that mood
i could likely sing phrase after phrase in this character as long as i'm willing to accept that
my voice will sound different than john lennon i'm not trying to imitate john lennon and that things
are going to break up and do things differently because this is intermittent this is quirky
like you knew you were what i did is i i went from wood forward
to sighing it's like in between a full outside that posture
you're frustrated
but not quite there like you like you knew like you knew you would like you knew you would there
that's closer right and you might argue also well he was a smoker and that's just the way his voice
sound because he's a smoker well he might have felt his voice feels different because he smokes
but that doesn't mean we can't learn from it and experiment
shake it up baby twist and shout twist that child come on come on come on baby
isn't it interesting how we don't think about this recording as like
if you listen to just this listen how he sings baby oh come on come on baby
i mean it's a total crack right how many of us would would you know if we were tracking our
own voice we're like oh i totally correct i need to redo that but it's part of the attitude here
it's part of the we're singing we're in character we have this particular vibe we're going for and
leaving those there granted back then they didn't really do micro punches like that anyway but it
makes it better even though it's not perfect even though this is not technically good er right here
you know come on come on come on baby now that's what my voice does when i kind of abandoned into
it and in this same mindset i would leave that as long as it fit with the overall vibe
there's a lot to be said for his accent and the natural speech
the way he his speech works with how these words end like right here
out out it's it's you really this is where imitation can be yucky
because if i try to sound like john lennon as opposed to just use or postulate on the
approach he's using and put that on my own voice like if i say if i say uh or sing this phrase
come on and work it on out but use it do it in my voice with an approach inspired by him
come on and work it on out come on and work it on out of baby now baby now there's all
sorts of cool things that are happening in my voice but the minute i start to go like this
like take guess as to how he's like in terms of how i can imitate him
come on and work it on out come on and work it on out i just start to sound stupid there might be
something i can work with here but it's it starts to sound pretentious now i might be able to use a
little bit more nasality i think that's a good thing i think nasality is a good thing in this
case but i want to experiment my voice and really really trust the process and trust that it's okay
that i sound different i can come up with a cooler version of myself thanks to john lennon
now i do think here on fine twists so fun fine fine i think opening up there is a really good
thing to do to get in this vibe twist twist so fine as opposed to twists so fine fine it's part
of the character that's really open-ended phra uh vowels as we approach the end of the phrase
two is so fine fine it also helps me place that grit in in kind of a cool way
i've always loved this line right here
even though we're breaking ma we're breaking it with an h strategically placed h's can be
really really neat they can be annoying sometimes too but not in this case at all
that's off pitch off pitch is good there's good off pitch and then there's awkward off pitch
good off pitch is they're selling the performance and the character
and they're they're confident bad off pitch is when you're trying to be on pitch
so much that you're not thinking enough about being a a authentic performer and then the
listener becomes all about pitch because you're all about pitch don't be all about pitch be about
character and vibe john lennon is off pitch sometimes those background vocals are off pitch
that's okay pitch is not the end-all-be-all performance uh an appropriate amount of aggression
and an understanding of when to push and when to hold back being vulnerable letting yourself
fall apart all these things these horrible sounds i'm making to dial in this type of
sound this is leading to a better voice for me focusing on being better at pitch will not
oh i've always loved that spot
there's no way i can sing that height that's that's most likely paul back there
that's about as high as i can get but the layers of things this is a dominant seventh chord
one three five seven layering that together and then
paul just yeah over it so what a wonderful scream
and i love the the whoa right there
maybe this thing one
other thing is i don't know what they're saying but it's cool
come on come on come on baby
let's talk about the background vocals for a minute this is a wonderful example of
call and response we got this guy
and i mean if you if you look at them perform this live there's there's this you know back and forth
kind of cool thing going on oftentimes this will happen in the context of a single melody without
background vocals and that's usually a sign of a well-written melody that you have this call and
answer sort of thing but part of what makes this arrangement so playful is that interplay between
background vocals and and lead we got this guy who's just like really going at it and then we got
this echo like yeah what he said really really fun
from an arranging perspective and it's also fun that you've got these these two different parts
come on baby oh baby come on baby come on baby come on baby you've got all those working together
you're building a cord behind the lead super fun twists so fine twist so fine it was so fine
come on and twist a little closer now just so close twist so fine it's just so fun come
these are fun too
there's some pitch discrepancy there on that other
one but it doesn't just doesn't really matter on the lower one get it all out
let your voice do what it does as you approach that sort of sigh flirting with your vocal break
let's shake it shake it shake it and then let yourself just sound like you're
i mean completely losing it just like this
baby also notice it's not shake it jake it shake it's almost shake it let's take it shake it let's
take it shake it shake it let's take it take it take your bacon he totally loses it on baby
let's take it take it shake it baby now let's take it take it shake it baby now no no
thank you baby
baby
super fun to experiment with a new tonality how it works in you in our own voices my own voice
i haven't really sung this way before and it kind of shows um i haven't sung this
way seriously in doing a lot of of performing or recording like this and so you can i mean
you can hear it and there's things that that i really need to work out in terms of placement
in order to to sell this style of singing but man is it fun to experiment with and working
through even how the background vocals work with with things it's just it's it's a neat way to
to learn about your own voice you have to wonder too you know right here where you hear me going
come on into sail closer i i i lost the pitch pretty badly here right here come on into a little
closer now as part of part of that teetering nature of of this type of singing you have to
wonder that if if i was being asked to sing this in without comping and all the digital
helps if we would have been like oh wow his attitude was good let's just leave
let's just leave that because they certainly did with a lot of what john lennon was doing
so it it's the it's the awkward factor right that you have to really listen to not the
perfection factor i hope this has been helpful and beneficial for you to go through this great
song one of my favorite beatles tunes uh if you'd like more help with your own vocals
click that link below join my free course i teach recording i teach vocal production
and most importantly i teach how to sing and how to find your voice we'll see you for more