Hey guys, welcome back again to Ken Tamplin
Vocal Academy, where the proof is in the singing! We got a lot of requests for this. It’s How To Do Vibrato. Well, before we discuss how to do vibrato,
I think it’s really important to understand what vibrato is, and what it isn’t. Now, even the medical community differs on
this a bit, because they are still not sure what by vibrato really is. But as a singer of 30 years, and 40 records
out, and close to 1,000 songs placed in film and TV, and touring the world for 30 years, I
want to share with you from a singer’s perspective what I know vibrato to be. Okay? The first thing is, is we need to have really
good diaphragmatic support. If you don’t know what that means, please
check out my video on diaphragmatic support. Because without it, it’s the cornerstone
for great vibrato. That’s the first thing. So it’s a firmly supported breath, a breath
that comes up into the throat, into a good open throat vowel, that is a well-placed vowel
relaxing into a state of oscillation. Fancy words. A state of vibrato. A state of oscillation, okay? Now we're going to get into some of this stuff
in a minute, but I want to clarify this, so let’s do this one more time. It’s a strongly-supported breath, that has
enough strength to sustain a relaxation response to a well-placed vowel that relaxes into a
state of oscillation. And this actually expands all the way into
resonance, by the way, we’re going to cover some of that here, and I’m going to do a
whole video on resonance, as well. But I just want to kind of clarify that. So that’s what by vibrato is. Let me tell you what by vibrato isn’t. Now, I’m going to break down some different
vibratos, and I want you to understand that not, just because vibrato is maybe,
contrived, or it’s something that’s used stylistically, doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just not a healthy by vibrato. It’s just contrived or it’s used for a
different purpose, okay? So, let me get into diaphragmatic vibrato
first. So, diaphragmatic vibrato, which, again, these
are all, let’s call them “no-no’s” but that they’re used maybe in a style or
something. Diaphragmatic vibrato is Hey-ey-ey-ey… You hear my, see my stomach Hey-ey! Moving? And I’ve got my diaphragm. So, it’s a pulsating diaphragmatic support
system that’s forcing this contrived vibrato. Now, in fairness, there’s a lot of people
that use this. I’m going to use this as an example: Aaron
Neville does this, right? You know he does this thing, right? But what happens is, is the whole tone is loud,
and then when it oscillates, you lose volume. Right? And it’s this huge mechanism moving. That's not creating a natural response for
vibrato, because it’s supposed to be going to a state of relaxation response, right? Well, so, but he’s made a career of this,
and I’m not dissing Aaron. I love Aaron’s voice. But he’s chosen that as a style. And I want to get into other people who have
chosen other vibratos as a style. I don’t know if they can do a natural vibrato and they’ve kind of maybe groomed themselves to end up with the vibrato that they have
and so they, their signature, by the way our vibrato is our signature, sort of our, you
know, our signing off on the end note, so to speak, right? So, let’skind of get our brain around that. But, anyway, next one is a vocal trill vibrato,
and that’s also important. Because, if we do this, it’s taught like
this. So, and I’ll even do this, too, I’ll teach
this kind of initially. You take a whole tone, take this whole tone
and go “Aye, aye..” And we take that and we speed it up. Right? And we try to get a natural response out of
that. Nothing wrong with learning it that way, so
long as you don’t stay and hover and stay and have that be your "natural" Vibrato. Now, that could develop into a vocal wobble. And to be very stiff on the vibrato itself. And there’ll be stiffness. You know, be real stiff on the sound? Well, we want a relaxation response. Again, a strongly-supported, diaphragmatic
fully supported breath. Right? Not a bad thing. Now this begs a pretty big question here. If you notice, I started on a whole tone,
and then I went down semi tone, and I toggled between the two. Well, there’s a big debate even on where
that toggle should happen. There’s a very, very famous vocal coach. He’s the leader of SLS in fact. And he claims that the vibrato should be above
the line. Well if that’s true, how could it possibly
be a relaxation response? In fairness, there are a lot of people that
use that vibrato. Let me give you some examples. Elton John. Freddie Mercury. They have a vibrato that's above the
line. Right? But a true, or a natural vibrato, I believe,
goes below the line. And you’re saying Ken, oh my gosh, you barely
started, there's all this information, I didn’t know it was this complicated! Well, I’m just trying to give you guys good
information so that you know how we can get to our end game, which is a good natural vibrato. So… And we’re going to get into some other vibratos
where some people do it too big… And they have a real big vibrato. We’re going to get into that in a second. So a laryngeal vibrato, or a larynx vibrato,
where the larynx is moving, which is your voice box, the larynx is moving, and you’re
shifting the larynx up and down, and you’re actually contriving, or fabricating a vibrato
using the larynx. Well, that is absolutely not a healthy vibrato. I wouldn’t recommend that, especially because
the larynx should stay pretty stable throughout our singing. Sometimes we'll lowered a little bit for a
low note. Sometimes (ehhh) we'll raise it to use, you know,
kind of a sexy, you know, girthy thing in the throat, whatever. But for the most part, we really want that
larynx to stay stable. That’s very, very important. The next thing is gospel jaw, or jaw vibrato. Now, gospel jaw is kind of funny because there’s
a couple of people out there I’m going to give a couple of examples right now. Whitney Houston is one. Where you know… And they have this jaw movement. Steve Perry from Journey does the same thing. And he moves his jaw, right? To create this response. That’s also a contrived response. But in Whitney’s case, and in Steve’s
case, too, if you really listen closely, it’s almost like they’ve got a pretty cool natural
vibrato already working for them, and they are kind of doing that more for an effect. It’s not something they have to do to get
the vibrato to work. So be a little careful. I’ve done that too, kind of for showmanship
and just for fun. You know, I’ll do that, again, as an effect. I’ll do it to sound like someone else or
to look for another style within a different vibrato. So, but that’s still not a healthy vibrato. We don’t want to go… With our jaw. Because that’s not gonna help us with
consistency and ending up to a relaxation response with a natural by vibrato, okay? The next one is caprino vibrato. Now, Caprino, it’s like an Italian word
for goat. Goat like. Or Goat’s wiggle, or little goat in Italian. Now that’s “eh-eh-eh-eh-eh…” Right? Let me put this back here. Again, people have made entire careers on
this. I’m not dissing other people’s styles. Stevie Nicks. Right? She’s got that real fast goat’s wiggle. Well, a lot of people have that. And that’s actually a very unhealthy vibrato. It’s very nervous, and it’s just real
tight, and there’s nothing of, there’s no real relaxation response to that. By the way, too. There’s a lot of people that have this and
I’m going to use another example of someone. You guys might know of a band called Manhattan
Transfer. They’re a phenomenal, like jazz, especially
a cappella, jazz band. They do a vocal stab caprino, which is:
and they’ll do like these kinda cool like horns stabs, like a horn. Well, that’s an effect. You know, you listen to them, and then you
listen to their regular vibratos, so they know how to, they have total command of their
vibrato like I do here. And I can emulate different vibratos to give
you an example, but then I also can rest or relax into a natural state of vibrato. Now, vocal wobble. Now we talked about a little bit of vocal
trills. Vocal trills can actually become a vocal wobble. Where the whole body kind of shakes. Right? Well, in fairness, you know, if you think of
someone like Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden… You know, he’s got this really wide vibrato. That’s his style, and it’s cool, you know. Bruce is Bruce. Man, he’s awesome! So, again, it’s a style, but it’s not
a natural vibrato. And it’s very important to differentiate
this. The tremolo vibrato, which is similar to
a trill vibrato, is also like a trill but it’s a little faster. So you’re kind of having to do the toggling
back and forth between notes. That is actually a faster version of that,
which is also unhealthy. So, but what then is natural vibrato, and how
do we get it? This is really important. And, by the way, natural vibrato converts
into a state of resonance, where we can actually lean into a sound, and we get a lot of volume
out of something, without forcing, or pushing too much air. So I just show you if I go… I’m taking a nice, strongly supported sound,
and because I have strength in my abdomen, I can relax my chest, my neck, and my throat,
and I can start to roll into this. Now again. I can’t in this one video, tell everybody
how they can all do by vibrato because people’s voices are different, and their oscillation
rate is different. And the width of their oscillation rate is
different. So, I cover all of this in my singing course
called How to Sing Better Than Anyone Else, but I just want to give you guys an overview,
a Reader’s Digest version so to speak of how we get to this. So, we can start with something: and we can
gently kind of work our way and relax our way into the sound. Now, you’re going to start with this in
a minute and then you’re going to go gosh this is so frustrating. I can get one or two trills, or I can get
a couple of them, and then it stops working! Reset. Get your breath together. Come back again. And you can relax into a state of oscillation. Okay? Now let’s remember. This is a relaxation response. It’s not meant to be forced. It’s not meant to, you know, plow through. Now again. I want to cover this one more time. People say you should be able to have natural
vibrato. You shouldn’t have to work at it. Okay. Like I said, I came out of my mom’s womb
just with natural vibrato. Well, I haven’t found that to be true. I found that once I understand the mechanism,
how it’s all supposed to work together, that I can relax into a state of vibrato. Now, we might like a singer's vibrato, a
certain singer’s vibrato that we love and we want to emulate that. There’s nothing wrong with that. But let’s learn a true natural by vibrato
first. Now, I promised one more thing which was about
resonance, and I want to sing a high note like on an EE vowel or something for second. When we can get to that place where we have
a real strong supported breath. Relaxing the chest, relaxing the neck, relaxing
the throat, we can actually have a ping, a brightness, a resonance into the sound. Now you probably watched a bunch of YouTube
videos, and you probably hear "resonators" and "resonance", and all this Resonance! Resonance! Resonance! Well, it’s kind of funny because the vibrato
is perfect! You go: EEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Right? I can relax into a state of oscillation, and
because that resonance takes over, I’ve got really good cord closure, and good support,
I can relax into a sound without having to force or oversing the sound, keeping the throat
open. Remember that good vowel placement of open
throat technique so I can relax into, like hitting an amphitheater of sound, where it
pushes that sound and vibrates and resonates. Everywhere. Okay? Thank you guys for joining me. Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy, where the proof
is in the singing! And until next time. Peace. Out.
