Hey guys welcome to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy and
Learn How To Sing For Guys. I'm Ken Tamplin and I'm going to take you on a really cool journey
that's going to save you a lot of time and frustration okay. Now I want to tell you a little
bit about myself, I'm not your average YouTuber. I have over 40 records out you can go to
wikipedia look up my name and check all this out, I've toured the world for around 25 years and
really have identified what works for singing and what doesn't. I also have a lot of music in
film and television, you can go to imdb.com, put in my name and see all the TV shows from Baywatch
to X-Files that I've worked on over the years. So I'm not your average YouTuber and, and not
all information is created equal so I just kind of want to start there because it's going to save you
a lot of frustration. Now I've also studied under some of the world's greatest vocal coaches and
I've learned that not all of them agree. In fact they're very conflicting and confusing and, and
a lot of them can't even sing to, themselves you know so they couldn't really demonstrate this. Well
I'm about to demonstrate it for you and I want you to come along for this ride. I promise if you want
to learn how to sing this will be well worth your time. Now I do have a singing course, the course is
called How to Sing Better Than Anyone Else, you can find it right here at Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com
if you want to take your studies further. I also have a free singing forum on my website that has
well over 20,000 aspiring singers and and singers in there for those of you that want to learn
if you want to take your studies further, but I also have over 1100 videos on YouTube of really
cool tutorials if you just want to kind of kick the tires get your feet wet to see if singing is
right for you. Now most people don't take their singing to any kind of level because of lack
of confidence, that's a huge thing I just don't want anyone to hear me I don't feel like I'm
good enough or I don't think I can ever sing which I have a video out you should check it out
it's called Can Anyone Learn to Sing and I will put that in the description, just go and kind of
click through some of these links you guys are going to really want to to check all this stuff
out because again it's going to save you a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of frustration
and build your confidence for singing. The second thing is, is the complaint that you get
what inhibits or keeps people from wanting to learn to sing, is they hate their vocal tone. I hate
the sound of my voice you know it just sucks you know whatever or I just can't get any range,
every time I go up I choke off my cords and I you know I do all this stuff and, and it's true
I mean I remember when I started I had no range true story. Yes you know I've been singing a
long time so I've learned a lot of stuff and I've spent around a million dollars on my voice with
different vocal coaches and all the recordings I've done and testing what works and what doesn't,
but I hated my vocal tone, I had no range and I had very little stamina. In fact I would go hoarse
after about three songs of singing because I like to sing hard and some of you say well I
want to sing high and I want to sing distorted, let, baby steps. Let's just talk about baby
steps and how to get there so. Now there's a lot of information on YouTube and I've yet
to see any really great bona fide information on the actual true, legitim, legitimate building
blocks for singing. Now I want to start here, the very first thing, I know I've said this before in
some other tutorials but I'm going to break this down even further. Again if you want to learn how
to sing, I promise you if you just do what I say you'll be blown away at the gains and
increases that you'll get with your voice. Support. Support is king. This is what I want
you to do. I want you to get a chalkboard and I want you to write up on a wall that
you're going to go down this list with me every time you try to do a scale or something with
me or or wherever you're going to do this from and go down my checklist okay so support is king. I'm
going to talk to you about, talk about that more in a minute. The second thing is a relaxation response
in the chest, in the neck and in the throat. This is extremely important okay. So you're
going to constantly be reminding yourself to stave off and shake off the stress because this,
your support or your entire abdominal cavity is the engine that drives your car for singing. I
cannot stress this enough how important this is because without this, the rest of this becomes like
Fred Flintstone in the Flintstone mobile going (sounds) you know with his feet you know right instead of an
actual engine that drives the car. So without this, everything else collapses or at best you're
going to be creating moving targets and bad habits for yourself that are going to frustrate you and,
and have this little demon whispering in your saying you can't do it, see I told you suck,
record yourself, listen back, you sound awful. I did plenty of that and I had the plenty
of the awful guys talking to me in my ear so support, relaxation response in the chest in
the neck and the throat and the vocal tract. What is the vocal tract, it's a fancy word
for your throat. I'm not going to go into all the details of that but I do have some really
cool free tutorials on YouTube on diaphragmatic support. I'm going to cover it now but I also
have a whole tutorial on this on YouTube for free, about what it takes and what is required
for the diaphragm. How this will give you stamina, range, pitch control, you name it, this is your man
okay. The relaxation response is key because that way it doesn't start to mount tension and then
all of a sudden the next thing you know you're straining and squeezing and pinching in the throat
and the open throat technique with the bright ping in the back of the throat we're going to talk
about in a minute, is going to give you the clarity in your throat to start building good resonance to
give you the tone you're looking for, and then once this is achieved we build muscle memory to get
strength and endurance to give us more range, power, better pitch, control etc okay. Now before we get
started on the actual scales themselves for vowels we're just gonna do something called a lip drill.
Now many of you guys have probably cruised around the internet and seen this and like I said I've
seen a lot of tutorials on YouTube where they don't build this from the ground up. So the first
thing we're going to do is a lip drill. Now this is for guys I'm going to do one for ladies also
but this is for you guys in your vocal range or what would be considered your testitura. Now I am
a high baritone so I start warming up my voice as a high baritone as are most males okay. There's
some tenors out there, there's some eleveners out there, no but there's some some baris and basses
and whatnot but this is the mean average of most, where most guys sing. So some of you say I know
I've seen the lip drill and I can't do it, you go (sounds) with your lips and you can't really move them. Now some people do this (sounds) where they pinch their lips together or their cheeks
together excuse me, to allow their lips to relax. You can do that to start but I suggest you move away from that and just really just walk around the house and just go (sounds) wet the lips, kind of get them wet (sounds) because you're looking for a relaxation response
in the face and there are most people that get so tensed up it's, they can't do it because they don't
have relaxation response. Now I was not able to do this when I first started singing I had to learn
it. So everyone can do it, they just have to learn it. So if you can't do it just know you're not
alone, it's something we practice like anything we practice okay. You can start this way but I suggest
that you move on from that and do the best you can to get past that. Now we're gonna do a simple
major scale triad and we're gonna start all the way down here. So if it's too low for you, guys you
can wait till it comes up but we're just gonna go (sounds) okay. So now I wanna go. That's the scale right. I'm not
going to talk about support just yet though I said it's the engine that drives your car. I'm going to break this down and then I'm going to play a game of Simon says with you. Right
now Simon says you do nothing without taking the breath and using diaphragmatic support. If
you don't, you're out of the game okay. So no matter what I confuse you with in your throat and
this and that and talk about different stuff, if you don't take your breath and you don't have
the engine, likely, the likelihood is that your throat will collapse, you're going to pinch and
squeeze and choke and this and that you know you're getting all frustrated okay. So we're going
to come back to this over and over again. Again you're going to put on a wall, on a chalkboard.
You're going to go support, first thing you're going to look at okay do I support before I do
anything, take a breath before I, I do a scale, a lip drill, nothing I'm gonna go did I support right. Then am
I relaxed, am I in a relaxed state okay. Now what am I supposed to do okay. Support, relaxate.
Not what I supposed to do so. I'm gonna do it nice and slow. Just try to match the tones as best as possible. Now for a lot of baritones and high baris and
even in the case of some tenors, you're gonna start to feel it pull there a little bit like, gosh I'm
starting to feel a little tension in the throat and that is because you're trying to
stay in what is called chest voice, or your call register, or maybe
even your speaking register which are different and I don't have the time to
cover all that right now, just know that I'm speaking in my speaking register right now.
My belting register is like hey, hey, hey while I'm calling out to someone. There's something
called the passaggio which is the register break (sings) that awkward yodel that you have between
your chest voice and your head voice. So for simplification purposes I'm just gonna refer to
this as chest voice and this, your falsetto as head voice okay. Chest voice, head voice. I'm gonna
keep this really simple. So right about here. Do it with me again. You're probably feeling
a little pulling sensation at the top. And that's because you're trying to stay in
chest voice. Initially what we want to do is we want to roll into head voice just to wake up the
voice first. Now one of the biggest mistakes even more advanced singers do is when they're in a rush,
they try to wake up the voice too quickly and when you do that it puts strain on the voice and no
matter how good of a singer you are, you actually hurt the voice at a point where you kind of get
frustrated because you can't get to that placement that you had when you were singing in the shower
you know what I mean when it was really easy to sing. So what happens is you kind of shock the voice
and the voices goes hey man I just can't do this you woke me up too quickly. You want to take your time
to wake up the voice and do this correctly. So if you want to roll into chest voice
to head voice, it's a good idea to do that so that you can relax and wake the
voice up. So let's start back here. Right there I'm rolling into
head voice at the top, my falsetto. Let's come back down. If your lips don't move, kind of lick them, keep them wet because it makes
it easier for them to move. Okay now as I promised I was going to come
back to support. I just wanted to kind of wake up the voice a little bit. Now I was using
diaphragmatic support and you can hear it. Now if you don't use diaphragmatic
support you're going to feel yourself going (sounds) and hardly going up at all and feeling
strain. So I want you to practice something. I want to practice this idea or this concept of
calling out to somebody. Now I'm not looking for you to build stress in the stomach or tension in
the abdomen but it's a good way to just kind of understand, am I using diaphragmatic support. So I
just want you to go hey and you're going to take this breath from your stomach right here, you're
going to breathe in and you're not going to breathe in so much from your chest it's from your your
tummy, your stomach area. Hey, breathe in again, hey, breathe in again, hey and you're gonna feel
this strength. Now if I didn't have the strength this is what it would sound like. Hey, hey, hey, hey
right. I don't have anywhere as near the strength of the engine that would drive my car. So I'm
gonna take in this breath and I'm gonna do another exercise and it's called the tongue
exercise. Now it might look kind of silly but it's worthy okay. You're gonna have the feeling
of the sensation like a ball in the back of your throat and the vowel that you're gonna sing
just like you did on the lip drill, will have the sensation of singing the word love, uh, la, oveokay. We're going to go like this (sounds) from my stomach. Hey, hey (sounds). Okay so every single scale we
do you're going to do that. Now you're not going to use as much air
and as much power in that but it will help you understand the beginning stages
of using your diaphragm. So here we go. I got it okay. Hey I'm calling out hey. Okay I got that strength. Take the breath, relax the stomach. Remember
that's number two on your checklist right. The support and the relaxation response so between
each breath you're gonna totally relax the stomach so that it doesn't be like the guy that's doing
dumbbells or barbells where he does a bunch of reps and his relaxing point he thinks is here
which could be your stomach that's all bound up, that's not relaxing at all because it doesn't
give you the ebb and flow and the freedom in the stomach to be able to do this over and over
again without building or mounting tension in the chest, in the neck and in
the throat. Here's the next one. You feel that pulling sensation again at the top if you're going (sounds) you're trying to pull your chest voice up. Go
ahead and roll into head voice, your falsetto. This is just to open up and wake up the cords. Think of the word uh like love
in the throat, like there's a ball. See even her, there you heard my yodel a little bit
I didn't relax enough and keep the throat open and we're gonna talk about training the
throat to stay open but even I just did that. I'm not warmed up today, I'm
doing this with you guys it's kind of cool that even I, I still kind of have to
work at it guys. I'm not immune from this. And if you do hear the yodel it's
okay but it'd be really good if you pulled back the volume to where you could
get through the passaggio, the register break, without hearing that yodel to
start to build the passagio. Cool did you remember to do the breath between each
phrase. Did you remind yourself that you look at your chalkboard and say man I can kind of feel
I'm already starting to build a little tension in my neck, it's kind of, feeling in the back and
the front right. Remind yourself of that because this bad boy down here is going to relax all this
up here. Now another thing you probably noticed, is you're starting to get a little bit of a bright
ping in your, in your sound. It's kind of sounding brighter huh. Hey, hey it's kind of getting brighter.
Well ping is king. Now I've coined a lot of phrases and that's one of them and that bright ping is
the only true sound that actually grows the voice. So the overuse of air is the arch enemy to the
vocal folds. So if you use too much air what's gonna happen is you dry out the cords and you
lose phonation or sound and you get something called dysphonia. Dysphonia is just the lack
of sound or not being able to phonate okay. Now so we're to move on to the next
scale or the next, tutorial on (sounds). Now why this ah vowel is so important is that
all vowel sounds, all of them stem from the ah vowel and let me explain why. The ah vowel is the
biggest vowel we have. Ah, ah. Now you remember me, hearing me use the word vocal tract or vocal tract
shaping. The vocal tract is the throat and this ah vowel, since it's the biggest vowel we have
it's the hardest vowel to manage. So if you have ee it's smaller or ooh is really small right.
Those vowels don't require as much strength and build up as much sound pressure in the throat,
though they can depending on going from an ah to an ooh you go from a big sound to a small sound.
You're taking a lot of force into a small sound and I don't have time to cover all that. I
cover that in my singing course so again if you guys want to take your studies further,
Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com where I have a singing course called How to Sing Better Than Anyone Else
but on this ah vowel it's the la ah. This bright ping and the back of the throat, I recommend that you
either get a handheld mirror or a mirror that you can look at when you're doing this. I don't care if
you have to go into the bathroom or wherever you got a credenza in your in your living room or, or
in your bedroom or something. Go up to this mirror. I want you to look at the back of your throat and I want you to go uh, uh and you're gonna go oh wow I'm, I'm not really opening my throat very much am I. Ken wants me to
go ah, ah like the doctor wants to see your tonsils. He's looking with a flashlight in the back and he
wants to see the back of your throat. Now what that does is is it drops the tongue to the base of the
jaw okay and it opens up the back of the throat. Now you're gonna be shocked as you start going
through some of your vowels, you're gonna watch your tongue go back and constrict in the back
of the throat and you're literally gagging on your tongue and you're wondering why it sounds
like you're you're singing through cotton or you have the socks, a sock stuffed in the back
of your throat or like you're singing through a pillow or something right, because the tongue
starts to constrict in the back of the throat. We want to drop it to the base of the jaw
and open up that throat as much as possible. So that we get resonance or ping, bright ping in
the throat. So on the ah vowel we're gonna go. Really open. Open, look in
that mirror is your jaw open. Now you feel that pulling sensation, it's okay
still to go a little bit into head voice but now we're going to start to wake up the chest
voice a little bit more and bring it online so we can start to build resonance in the chest voice,
because we have to build our chest voice first, before we start building the passaggio, before we
start building head voice, because it is, because it is the foundation of the house that you're
about to build. Let me say this again, your chest voice is the very concrete and foundation that we
are laying as the cornerstone to build your house. If this is built incorrectly, you will not be
able to put to build your walls or build other room editions on that house with consistency. So
if you're wondering gah I just can't be consistent, I try this song and sometimes I can sing the note
and sometimes I can't, it's this folks, building consistency and that's what I mean when i say
that not all information is created equal with all these people offering all this YouTube advice.
Trust me on this, this is absolutely key. So again. Did you remember the support,
the relaxation response. Constantly remind yourself, open throat. Here we go. You can start to wake up the voice you
don't have to go quite so much into falsetto. Now the higher up we go, the more strength we need
in the sound. If you notice you can hear something called resistance. Resistance meaning resistance
in the stomach of strength. Now I like to build an analogy for people. Have you guys ever seen
that belt that people put around their their feet and their, it's kind of an elastic thing with handle grips and people go (sounds) and they do this, this isometric kind of strength
training right. Think of that as your abdomen (sings) right. So the higher up you go, the more strength
you need in the abdomen, to sustain and hold up, buttress, hold up that note. Otherwise it's going
to collapse in the throat, you're going to crack, you're, it's going to collapse, you're going
to go ah and you're going to go, you're going to start blaming the throat. Don't blame
the throat, blame your stomach first and remind yourself I feel like Mr. Rogers. Boys and
girls did you remind to take your breath right. So did you remember to take your breath so let's
do it again. Take the breath, relaxation response The higher up we go the more strength we're going to need. Open that throat like the doctor wants to see
your tonsils. Keep reminding yourself of this. Now I'm gonna stop on this F sharp 4
for a reason for now and that's because most baritones that's about the highest note
that they would normally hit okay. Now I go (sings). I can easily sing an octave above
that and everything in between because I've trained my voice to a place where
I know how to get to all of these places with strength, a relaxation response and correct
vowel placement. That is what it is all about. This is like the holy grail of singing, if you
get this down you're just gonna go oh my gosh I can't believe how fast my voice is growing, how
much I'm learning and if you build this correctly, you will save yourself from the pitfalls of not
getting the consistency and putting moving targets in front of you that you hit sometimes and you don't
hit you know whatever. So let's come back down. Okay now what we're going to do is
we're going to pause for one second and we're going to say gosh Ken that's cool
and I do feel like my voice is growing and, and it's a lot easier and I feel freedom in my
singing etc. Let's combine all this together and just remind yourself or I'll try to remind you to
go through it. We're just gonna do the lip drill, the tongue exercise and this one exercise back
to back, to warm up the voice and give you the confidence that you're looking for, to know
that if you're able to do this and you're able to get this with consistency, you absolutely
can learn how to sing. Here we go. Remember the breath. Remember to relax the stomach between the breaths. Strength in the abdomen resistance at the top. Lick the lips if they don't burble. Remember the breath. The tongue exercise like you're singing the word love. Add a little a chest voice and get past the
falsetto. Start to bring chest into the sound. Strength in the abdomen. Cool the ah vowel. It's the la ah. Doctor wants to see your tonsils. Go over your checklist Breathing, breath support, relaxation response. It's the la ah. Resistance, strength at the top. Okay cool now what I want you to do is I want you
to take about a three minute break. Stop the tape, wait for three minutes. I want you to let your
voice relax for a second. We just did a lot in a very short period of time for
someone just learning how to sing okay and we want to build up stamina safely and
correctly over time. So you can stop and you can redo these last exercises I just did back to back
and maybe even take it higher you know to here or to here, a note or two because you're going
to find out that the voice is starting to wake up and you're able to get another
note, maybe two more notes out of it and then you can use that and go up a couple
notes higher and this is how we correctly grow and learn how to sing for guys. Please like
and subscribe to my channel that would be cool. Don't forget I do have an amazing singing
course it's from the basics of our beginners, all the way to the most advanced professionals at
Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy.com and definitely check out my free singing forums over there because
there's a lot of incredible information from a lot of people who just want to learn how
to sing okay. Thanks guys and until next time peace out.
