How to sing on pitch. Hi guys, my name is Ken Tamplin, welcome to
Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy, and it turns out this is a pretty expansive subject, because
whether you’re a professional at the highest level, or you’re just someone having fun
singing in the shower, everyone deals with pitch issues. Now, they may vary in the degrees of pitch,
but everyone has to concentrate on their pitch. So if you’re out there and you feel like
you suck, don’t be so hard on yourself, we all work on this stuff, it’s not, we weren’t
born one day just singing in perfect pitch, okay? But I want to cover a couple of things. The first thing is: We have to build this
from the ground up. So, as I’ve said in many of my videos, if
you haven’t seen my video on diaphragmatic support, please go back and watch that first,
and get an understanding of the basic building blocks, the rudimentary and fundamentals of the
"engine that drives your car", because it’s this "rudder" of the ship that’s going to
steer that ship, which is the engine, your abdomen, your diaphragmatic support, and the
sails that are going to be anchored to this engine that’s going to determine our destination
and how off we’re going to be in certain areas. So we might blame pitch on something else
when it actually started at the core, which was the engine that drives our car, which
is diaphragmatic support. So, now that I’ve got that out of the way,
I want to discuss different timbral sounds, or different color that people sing in. So, now not everyone is expected to sound the
same, of course not. That’s where were all diverse and we love
variety. However, a person that colors or darkens their
sound, they're going to sound more flat, or below the flatline of a specific note. They’re going to sound under-pitch, compared
to someone that has a brighter timbral sound, right? Now, the brighter timbral sound, remember
I said this over and over, "Ping is King". You really want that bright “It’s the
LAH!!! AHHH! AHHH! AHHHH! Bright sound. Because that bright sound, if we develop it
correctly, is the most transparent sound that we could have, in leaving us "naked in December
snow" and seeing the transparency of the pitch. So if the sound is colored, or covered, or darkened,
it’s easier to kind of muddle your way through and you can’t quite hear rrrrrrrrrr. You can’t really tell the exactness or preciseness
of the pitch, whereas if it’s a bright timbral sound, you can. Now, I’ve also said this from day one of
way back when I first started teaching, guys, record yourself. And listen to yourself back, so you can hear
what your mean average of pitch is, relative to a chord or an instrument that you’re
playing, a piano, a guitar, or whatever. Now, I want to discuss this idea of the coloring
of the sound, and then I’m going to get into helpful hints on how to get to the pitch correctly. But if there’s a guy that comes in and he’s:
“Woahhhhhhhh” and he’s real colored… Ohhh, Ohhhh, Ohh, Ohh, Ohhhhh… Right? There’s a big difference in that guy compared
to AHH, AHH, AHH, AHH, AHHH! Right? The guy that’s bright is going to actually
be kind of right smack dab in the square of pitch, should be, or maybe even a little sharp. Now, I like to start there, because you can
develop a lot of bad habits by coloring a sound. Now, does that mean we always sing with a bright
timbral sound? No, of course not. We can use color, and we can darken sounds
for color all the time. But once we’ve developed that transparency
of being able to see, and crystal-clear, be able to hear that pitch, we can add all the
color that we want to the sound. So I recommend starting with a brighter tone. Now, when we go into these scales. I’m just going to do a simple triad. There’s a tendency to have a diphthong,
or to scoop up into the notes. Lahh, Ahh, Ahh, Ahh, Ahh, Ahh, Ahhh. And that’s just fish-tailing, creating a
really bad habit. We really want to get the exactness of the
pitch, so we want to go: LAH, AH, AH, AH, AH, AH AH. And how I do it is by raising the soft palate
in the back of the throat: AH! AH! AH! And creating as much space as I can, I come
in from behind the note, and I drop down on the note instead of pushing up to the note,
which has a tendency, psychologically to hurt confidence, and to think of always pushing, always arduously going up to a note. No! I want to come in from behind the note. So, it’s kind of funny, when I think of
coming down off of a scale… Have you ever taken a slinky, and you take
the slinky, if you don’t know what a slinky is, it’s kind of like a coil that the children
played with it goes: Shhh, Shhh, Shhhh! Right? I think of taking a slinky and letting it
kind of go Chhk! Chhk! Chhk! Chhk! Down the stairs, as I’m letting this thing
roll down the stairs, I psychologically think of myself coming down off the notes like that. In the same way, with the slinky when you
have weighted the slinky and you have the slinky going upstairs, the slinky goes up
the one stairs, and it kind of whips around and then it pops to the next stairs and it whips
around again and it pops up to the next one. Well, I want you to think of that in the context
of how we’re about to do these scales of instead of pushing
up to the note, we’re going to come in from behind the note and drop down on it, so… Lahhh, Ahhh, ahhh, ahhh, ahhh, ahhh, ahhh! Did you hear I’m not going Lah, ah, ah,
uh, uh, uhh and straining in the sound? I’m coming in from behind and dropping down. Lah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah… Lah, Ah, Ah, AH, AH, AH, Ahhh… Okay? Now! One more thing. It’s really good to identify the notes that
you're singing, right out of the gate. So if I’m going to go:
Lah… Lah… Lah… Lah… Lah… Right? So again, get your recorder out and listen. Am I below the pitch? Lahhhh. Lahhh. Or above it? Lah… Lah… Or am I right in the center, right spot on
at the ping of the pitch? Lah… Lah… Lah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ahhh… Lah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ahhhhh… And play some games with yourself to see how
many times you can hit that instead of going ah, uh, eh, uh, oo, uh… And see how many times you can successfully
ping that note, ping that note, ping that note, over and over again to get that pitch. Now I know too, that singing an a cappella
does help us attain good pitch if we can stay in the mean average of pitch through a two-minute
song or one minute song, or at least a verse and a chorus of something… However we have to develop good pitch habits
first with the music bed or an instrument, to get the muscle-memory first, and develop
good quality pitch with consistency, then we can move on and develop even farther by
doing a cappella exercises, or, and/or singing songs and a cappella. So, hopefully you guys appreciate this. If you liked what you heard, please like and
subscribe to my channel, and we have more on your way!
