Hey everybody welcome back again to Ken Tamplin
Vocal Academy where the proof is in the singing. I am continuing my series on taking amazing
isolated vocal tracks, I'm doing a vocal analysis, a tutorial, little teaching, talking about the
actual recording process, a little bit about the band, the singer, some background history etc.
Next up is Steve Perry "Don't Stop Believin". Of course you know the band is Journey. Before we
get started if you wouldn't mind please like and subscribe to my channel I'd really appreciate
it. I'm getting really close to a million subs so I'd love to hit that million mark that'd
be awesome. I have a singing course for you aspiring singers out there. It is called How to
Sing Better Than Anyone Else and I, you can find it right here at Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com where
I also have an amazing singing forums with around 25,000 singers in the forums all talking about
how to get good at singing and Steve Perry is no exception. So I want to dive right in. This song
is kind of interesting because I remember reading Jonathan Cain writing about his musical journey
literally and saying that he wrote to his father and said you know I've tried and tried, by
the way for you guys that don't know this Jonathan Cain was also in a band
called The Babys before Journey and one of the singers of that band is a all-time
favorite singer of mine, friend and singer of mine is John, not friend sorry I met him a couple times,
is John Waite and John Waite is just a phenomenal vocalist and if you don't know who that is I encourage
you (sings) you now but lurk, look up some of the early Baby's stuff "Midnight
Rendezvous" and stuff buy anyway Jonathan Caine was a guitar player and a keyboard player in that
band also and then left that band I think to do, I forget what the name of that, there was
another interim band but he also did Journey it, you know as his main staple band but
there was an interim band and I can't remember, he did with Jonathan Waite and also Neil Schon and some other guys it was an 80s guy, oh gosh what was the name of that band, (sings) that band. Someone help me out put it in the description for me I'm getting a little brain fog but the other interesting I want to bring
up about this is so in his musical journey and this should be an encouragement to
all of us is, he was going to give up. He was going to give up, Jonathan Caine from
Journey was going to give up, before Journey or during Journey, beginning of Journey or something,
something like that. Actually must have been kind of in, in Journey because he wrote the song right.
So but he called his father and he said hey dad you know I'm just, I don't know, I just can't seem
to make make it in this business I'm trying and you know and his dad says son "Don't Stop Believin'"
and he goes I have an idea, that's a great idea for a song. So here we have Jonathan's Caine's
testimony to not quitting and not giving up because he didn't stop believing. So let's hear this now with Steve Perry on vocals. Here we go. Now a couple, couple things I want to point out along the way. The first thing is for whatever his reasons Steve Perry started doing a scooping thing (sings) you know and does this it's called diphthong or scooping
into his notes. Now I suspect that it was at a time when he was starting to, to want to sing
heavier okay and we see this in you know some of his other songs we're going to cover
this because I'll do a few Journey tunes. Anyway and so in, in sort of the, the
process of that he started kind of getting a little more macho with the vocals
and so forth and you're kind of hearing his stages of that as he's going through this
this incarnation. So I want to listen to it again but, so you were somewhere between Steve
Perry singing heavier and his real light Sam Cook approach to singing. So he still has
this beautiful, warm, you know approach to, very legato, very long-held phrases,
contiguous phrasing we talk a lot about this, but you'll also hear him starting to lean into
the sound which means kind of adding some weight or get some grit to the sound. Check it out again,
here we go. (sings) Here that. (sings). It's easy light. (sings) right. Now I want to point out on south Detroit a couple things and yes I'm going to kind of pick through
this guys so I think that's why you're here, is on south Detroit you can hear him kind of strain
in the throat a little bit and we're going to talk more about this as we talk progressively about
some of the heavier stuff that he's done, but I bring it up because it's the beginning of kind of
a lot of stricture and a lot of pressure he builds and mounts at his throat. Now we know that
he's not that kind of a singer, he's more of an r & b guy and handles things with much more of a light,
gentle, soft approach without slamming the vowels, without slamming the consonant sounds but you hear
him here on south Detroit. Check this out. (sings) here him kind of like leaning into that kind of heavy. And then he backs off. Now I never knew that (sings) I never knew that little crack was
at the end of that check it out. Right. Kind of cool. Interesting. Anyway all
right I'm going to move up because there's big instrumental parts here so we're going
to go right here. Now I love this, I don't normally subscribe to a lot of nasality but I like
the way (sings) right (sings). He's got that real kind of a lot of nasality
in his sound but it fits his style so well and he wears it well that it's not kind of like you know too Donna Summer or too, you know you know (sings) or you know like I said we've talked about Barbara Streisand all the different people that use a
lot of that nasality in the sound, he's very careful in the way he uses it and so he mellows it
out a lot with a lot of the beautiful, warm tones that he brings into the sound. So check it out one
more time. Here we go. Now on the (sings) right. We talk a lot at KTVA about how all vowel sounds stem from it's the la ah and this is such a beautiful
example of if you really, really, really dissect his vocals and listen very closely, a majority of all
of his vowel sounds come off of that vowel that we just heard and it's so beautifully round it's not (sings) it's (sings), it's none of that it's (sings) It's really pretty and round and warm and
tubular and you can really hear the open throat in the back of his throat as he's doing
it. Check this out one more time. Here we go. Beautiful. See (sings) kind of pulling a little bit because he wants to get
a little tension in the sound right. Then he goes back to a really light sound right. Now one other thing I've noticed a lot about his stuff is that he is so consistent it's mind-blowing.
I've seen him three times live and a lot of tv performances as well that were live and his
consistency is off the charts great. I mean just amazing, and a lot, most of the time he would
change it up and do it differently whatever but for the most, and even sing higher notes.
You know Dean Castronova did an incredible job, you guys don't know who Dean Casternova is
the former drummer for Journey also threw down pretty hard on some of this stuff,
but if you listen to his vibrato it's really consistent. Now for those of you following
me and following me doing the vocal stems, isolated tracks you know, series that I'm doing you
know that we just came off of some Freddie Mercury and I'm not dissing Freddie at all so don't think
that but I'm just going to point something out. I'm not sure when these are going to release either but
we showed the inconsistency of Freddie Mercury's vibrato compared now that to Steve Perry's vibrato
and how you're going to know this is when you hear him do the harmonies, his harmonies vibrato
exactly with his original lead vocal so precisely that it, it's not though, but it almost sounds like
someone that auto-tuned or detuned down the vocals and then used those as harmonies for the thing
but they didn't back then he actually sing it, but listen to how consistent the harmonies are with the vibrato as they match exactly. Check it out. It's coming up right here. Here we go. Here that. So you have these perfect vibratos where he goes (sings) right and they're exact and then he can go (sings) right and then taper off this perfectly executed vocal at the end of it holding (sings) right at the end. That my friends is ultimate
singing that's ultimate vocal control okay. Whitney Houston there's a few people that have
that, he's certainly one of them and just does a killer job. All right let's continue.
Here we go. (sings). There's that (sounds). You hear that plosive but they kept it in there we've talked about it (sounds) you hear a big explosion on the
word p usually windscreens control that. A new, a new technique by the way, you might have seen
Steven Tyler do this in one of his videos. I use this all the time. A lot of times we do live vocal
demonstrations here despite what some people think I don't care what people think because I care
about some great singing but if you'll notice like when we do these live things a lot of people
don't like the windscreen because they want to be able to see it. So there's a technique of recording
where you can sing across the microphones. So I go hey hey hey and as I can sing heavy, you can
still hear that the mic sounds every bit as good as singing into it but I'm not hitting it with so
much plosive or explosions of air, that way I don't need to use the windscreen and then I can position
the camera in such a way you can see me physically what I'm doing and it's not an obstruction of a
big windscreen. So that's a way around a windscreen with a big diaphragm mic like this, is singing
across it like this like I said. Steven Tyler, I forget what video, he has himself doing this where
you can sing it so in in here in the room if you notice, you can't really tell but the microphone is
really far away from the vocals and we're singing to the camera this way so we're not singing
directly and you get all those extra p's and q's and p's, t's excuse me and popping sounds but
you can hear the plosive here in the on it here check it out. There's that perfect vibrato again. So if you notice too from a pitch standpoint he is just as accurate as it gets, like you can't you know,
if you're really even looking for something it's almost like chances are he wasn't out of
pitch he was deliberately doing it to like scoop into a note or give a little minor blues
feel to it or something. So there's no, there's no pitch issues at all. There is one thing I'm going
to talk about and I'm going to talk about his support but I'm not going to do it on this song
I'm going to do it on something else coming up so I'm going to be doing like I said a few Journey
tunes but I wanted to point out there is something I would have liked to have heard more
from a support standpoint come from him and I'll explain this later but let's continue we're almost done
and I want to bring in some of the track and show you how this works with the tracks cause I want to
talk a little bit about that as well. Here we go. (sings) (sings) (sings) you hear that (sings) It's (sings) right. He's kind of leaning in because
he wants to get some distortion out of the sound and he's using a technique that's kind of pinchy
squeezy which isn't, you know we talk about that, keeping the open throat first and bringing
in glottal compression after the fact. He's not really doing that here he's kind
of doing his own version of distortion. Now that time he chose not to vibrato on
the note I forgot about that. So anyway all right so I want to go back a little bit. Now, well
actually there is an ending here so let me do that. Now it's interesting there's no harmonies here at the end. Did you notice on the very last
note, he added some distortion to it that he didn't have on any of the other
tracks or previous takes. Check it out. Right and you can hear this is sort of the beginnings of him walking away from that smooth, smooth as silk, Sam Cook kind of sound. Now my
understanding, I could be wrong, you guys are welcome to correct me if I am, but my understanding
is, is that Jonathan Caine was looking for an edgier sound when he was going through some of this. So
we're going to talk about this on the next tune I'm about to do, not this this song here but
another release that's coming up for Journey, and I actually think a lot of that cost him
his voice okay or cost a lot of his voice. Some of his range, some of his control etc was kind of
stepping into something he wasn't quite used to and didn't know quite how to handle it. Maybe he
could have behind the red light doing records but not night after night after night after night of
singing like a Dio or a Coverdale or somebody with a heavier sound okay so but I want to add the
track to this because I've talked a lot about this. I want you to remember how gentle he was on
singing this whole song. It was so gentle. Once in a while he'd lean into the sound here and there
and also how the way the band is orchestrated and how the vocal is placed in the mix, makes his
voice sound as big as a house. Well it is big because it's got all these beautiful round
harmonic overtones but the reality of it is it's not as big as I remembered, not that it's not
big, but when I add the track it go ah, okay yes it is what I remember it just makes it when it all
comes together it makes it sound big. Check it out. All right now I do remember, and I want to
add this now, that they did have a fair amount of reverb on it that this is more of an
isolated track without as much reverb. So I want to go ahead and add some of these
reverbs in it as the track goes by so we can hear it alone first with just some reverbs
I called up kind of quick but check this out. Okay so it fattens it up a lot. Now check it out with the track. Now let me take them out real quick because
it's only fair that you hear it real quick without any of those, those tracks in there. Now
check it out again one more time. Here we go. So you see how much of a difference a lot of
these effects and embellishments come in that really contribute to the bigness of the track, the
energy of the track, the dreaminess of the track cause it's kind of a ballad, is a ballad and so forth but
anyway gang, hopefully you enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed doing this and I got many more coming
your way and definitely check out my next video.
