Find your voice.
How do we do that?
Hey guys, Ken Tamplin from Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.
Thank you for joining me.
I have made it a life study to try to learn as many styles as I possibly can, both on
guitar, and in voice.
And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: there’s usually two camps,
two categories, right?
Of people that are looking to try to find their own unique voice.
On the one camp, it’s either someone that is in a cover band or singing cover songs
and they always sound like the artist, or they’re trying to emulate the artist that
there singing, right?
And/or the other side, where the person feels like their voice is really bland and monotone,
and they have no uniqueness, or no character, no personality to their voice.
So.
Two different camps.
That’s not saying that it doesn’t branch beyond that.
But I want to address each one of them.
But I want to talk about this one over here first, because it’s really important.
The more influences that we have, the more that we can internalize those influences,
and re-present those influences with our own spin or our own unique signature, the bigger
our palette is for our ability to sing in different styles, and the more unique we can
be because we can do a lot more things with it.
Well, I see a lot of people say “Aw, man, I don’t want to sound like anybody, I want
to sound like ME!”
Well, I hate to break the news to you, but if you didn’t have an influence, you really
wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, because you don’t really have any roots that’s
going to give you any other cool places to go.
In fact, if you go to the Rock Hall of Fame, there’s this really cool kiosk there, and
you can walk up to it and you can press, you know, who is Mariah Carey, or who is Christina
Aguilera’s greatest vocal influences, and you click it on Christina, and it goes, you
know, Etta James!
You know, and then, who is Etta James’ big influence, and it goes Mahalia Jackson, or
whomever it is.
And you get to see this food chain of what their influences are.
So we ALL have influences.
ALL of us.
And it’s not that were trying to copy Anyone, in fact, it’s the total sum of those influences
that’s what makes us great.
So, let’s take this from a guitarist's perspective.
So, I play guitar, and I’ve been playing since I was six years old.
And, you know I used to love Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton, and Al DiMeola, and John McGlaughlin,
and Carlos Santana, and Aerosmith, and Zeppelin, and all these bands, and I would, you know,
Dixie Dregs, Steve Morris, you know, and then later on other great players like Lukather,
Paul Gilbert, like fabulous guitar player…
And I would try to learn their stuff note for note, and I’d try to sound just like
them, right?
But when I found myself going to play my own guitar solos, initially, yes.
I sounded like them, and I was kind of a copycat, and that was true for vocals too.
As you may know, my cousin is Sammy Hagar.
When I was young, when I found that out, I’m like, cool!
“I can’t drive 55!”
You know, I wanted to, like, sound like Sammy, right?
It was an idol and I looked up to him!
Or, you know, David Coverdale or Lou Gramm or Paul Rodgers or Mickey Thomas or other
influences or Aretha Franklin on the soul side, some of those guys!
So, what I found was that I could take these influences and put them in my toolbox, and
the more things I had in my toolbox, the bigger my pallet was, and the more I could re-present,
you know internalize it, and re-present this art in different ways that I could never have
done if I just wanted to “Sound just like ME!!!”
And no one else.
Now, I’m not looking to sound like anybody else, but it’s these influences that makes
us great.
Without them, you know, think about soccer.
If you are a soccer player, “I’m going to play just like ME!!!”
But you didn’t get to Saviola, and the this and the that, and Messi, and all these different
guys moves that you see them do.
Well, you take a little from this, and you take a little from that, and then eventually
it becomes your own identity, and then you re-present this identity in your own way, and tell your
own story of who you are…
And the coolest thing is the collage of all those things and how they come together and
how you re-present that.
So I wanted to give you a couple of samples here, so I’m going to do a little video
clip of me singing in different styles, so you can see the influence.
I still sound like me, but I also take on the persona of the artists themselves, and
then but I don’t forfeit or sacrifice my personality or identity, but I feel like I captured
the spirit and the nature of their music.
So check this out.
Okay cool.
So now you see, well, gee, Ken that’s great, you have all this experience in this and that and blah
blah blah, but you know, I don’t have that kind of experience, and can you give me another
example?
Let’s say I’m a girl, and I got your guy thing or whatever.
Okay.
Cool!
Let’s take one of my students.
Were going to talk about Gabriela Gunčíková, who came to me, and we, I pushed her to sing
a lot of different styles.
So we’re just going to do a quick montage of a few clips of one of my students singing
in different styles.
Check this out…
Okay.
I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s not one-dimensional, and when you see or hear
Gabriela, or you see or hear me, or some of my other students, they still sound like themselves,
of course.
But again, their toolbox, or their arsenal of licks in things that they have now for
increasing their palette with different styles, and yes, emulating those styles to the point
where you nail it and at least get to the bar where that artist was, and then you again
bring it into your own, internalize it, and re-present it.
To me, this is how YOU find YOUR voice.
Thank you for joining me.