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.
