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 one it's how to sing with compression and
vocal fry. Now it's kind of an interesting subject for me because I've
been discussing compression for like over 25 years now and it's interesting
to see that it's finally come around on the internet now I don't know if it's
people that have seen stuff that I've, you know, talked about over the last at
least a decade, and they're regurgitating that, or whatnot, but I think the most
important thing we can start with is that no matter where you get your
information, and especially on such a sensitive subject like compression or
distortion or vocal fry, make absolutely certain that that vocal coach themselves
can do it, and do it well, and that they demonstrate other students that do it,
and do it well. And I'm not talking about just one little line, or you know, a ditty or 10 seconds here I mean full-blown, three, four minute
songs, and preferably, I mean, that you've seen that they've toured and that they
can do this in sustainable 10 songs, 11 songs, twelve songs, four, five, six
nights a week for years on end. Now why I say this is because we have a lot of
people that have lost their voice in fact most people, especially in the 80s
and the 90s that used a lot of compression have lost their voices
completely for lack of knowledge of how to, how to do this correctly. So let's
start there. But so how to sing with compression. Let's identify first what
compression is, okay? It's the concept of compressing air in the glottis. It's
called glottal compression, or hyper-glottal compression. Now there's lots of ways
that people go at compressing a sound and we're gonna get into vocal fry in a
minute, because there's some do's and don'ts with that. But the very first
thing I want you guys to identify is, is that it's not just that you can compress
air and squeeze off a note and sound like you're singing through a straw or
something like that you actually want to be able to take
this idea of holding back the air and compressing that air, because the overuse
of air is the kiss of death to your vocal folds. It's like taking a
flame thrower of air your vocal folds. It dries them out pretty quickly. Then they
become swollen. Then you lose good cord closure, and when that happens then all
of a sudden you start ramming more air just to get phonation or sound, and it
becomes vicious cycle that repeats itself, where
you find yourself going hoarse after three, four, maybe five songs, especially
you know depending on how heavy you sing this becomes exponential, depending again
on how much distortion or how much compression you want to use. So! But let's
discuss what compression is so compression is the idea that we hold our
breath like I'm doing right now now you probably don't realize I'm doing this
but I'm holding my breath and I'm talking to you at the same time now if
you're really acute and keen you can really hear that it's not like when I'm
talking to you like this and expunging a bunch of air. I'm actually holding my
breath back and doing this. So! You start on that premise, but it's far from the
only thing we do, and let me explain why. By the way, I have a singing course. It's
called How To Sing Better Than Anyone Else, and I cover all of this thoroughly
in my singing course. It's not something I can cover all right here in one
quick tutorial, but at least you'll get a flavor for what I'm talking about, so
that if you do decide to take your studies further, it will really help you
understand why this is important. Now so we have this this concept of cutting
back the air, and it's not just that we can control or stop the air itself. It's
that we worked in good open throat technique, or the idea of keeping the
throat open, the tongue dropped, the throat open, that we don't literally gag
on our vowels, or, you know, start sound like we're heaving up our vowels, or like
I said singing through some tiny little straw, or was pinching and squeezing and
choking off the notes. See, that's what most people do when they sing, especially
if they start to sing loud or belt or want to sing heavy with Distortion. Cause they ehhhhh... and they just kind of pinch and squeeze and that. And that is a form of compression.
Not good compression, but it's a form of compression. What you want to do is you
want to work in a daily regimen of scales that allow you different vocal
techniques or open throat techniques for vowel placement of
getting your vowels placed well first, with strong diaphragmatic support, and
then once those vowels are placed, you can gently start to lean into a sound or
kind of pushing into it a little bit to start develop, start to develop
this compression. Well this is also important too, because we don't want to
go straight from a clean sound to a distorted sound. We're gonna really hurt
ourselves. And this is this is kind of crazy guys, because, like
I said, I can't express this enough. Be careful where you get your information
from on the subject. People can parrot things, they can read something on the
internet, they can see someone else's video and try to regurgitate that. If
they can't really do it effectively themselves and don't have other students
doing it, run like your hair's on fire, because this subject, it's an extreme
sport, especially if you take it to it's distorted components of it, and if you do
this extreme sport, and you light your hair on fire, and no one can tell
you how to put it out you could you could really seriously damage your voice.
Now, even in cases like Adele, she uses a form of compression and she's going
through two surgeries now. The first one she's had a while ago and now she's
going through a second. Of course I know she smokes a lot, I know she drinks, and
some other things like that to contribute to that, but also, though, it's
just from singing incorrectly. And we've seen a lot of surgeries lately as a
result of this. So, let's get back to compression. So we want to have really
strong diaphragmatic support. Again, I can't stress this enough. If you haven't
seen my video on that, check it out. Again, it's in my singing course in its hugely
expanded version of that. But what we want to do, is like I said, we want to
learn to hold back the air. Kind of like we're talking underwater. Hey, man! How's it going? Blooop! Pretty good. What are you doin'? Not bad! All right! Cool! right? But we don't want to end it there because we don't, like as in the case
of vocal fry' where people go ehhhhh! Congratulations! All you did was choke
off the cord. Okay? Now I'm not dissing vocal fry, but I want to emphasize this.
Now, that might be okay to help understand the process of starting or
initiating wanting vocal distortion and you start with fry to kind of get the
feeling in the throat just hear how it sounds or whatever, and then you get away
from that sound, and you open up the sound. I want to give you an example of
this really quickly, because I think this might help you. One of my students,
Gabriela Guncikova, came to me many years ago. She was in a
band called Maryland, and she did a Nazareth song. She was a wonderfully
talented person on her own, however Gabby will be the first to admit that when she
came to me, she was losing her voice every single night, and only able to sing
about three or four songs. So I want to play this Nazareth clip for you right
now. Check this out. Alistair Birch from SBS Radio in Austrailia. Can you tell us a little about the influence of
Ken Tamplin on your music and... Half my range and my technique! It would
just work! I would I would be losing my voice, and that time I had a problem with
that I was I would sing for an hour and I would lose my voice. This is something
that's not happening anymore, because I'm trained, and for rock singers especially,
it's very easy, very easy to lose the voice when you scream and you use so
much of distortion. Okay, if you see you'd say the average person would say wow man
that was cool Ken what are you talking about? I love that Distortion! Well if you
get a chance and you go through all the videos that I've done with Gabby, and you
see how much I've opened up her voice to maintain wonderful distorted
sounds, wonderful compressed sounds, but the roaring lion of openness: Number one:
the ability to control the air. Number two, and the range that she was able to
get from not closing or clamping or crimping down, like I said "singing
through a straw", you know, closing down and choking off the cords. All of a
sudden she has range that she never imagined she could have: that comes through a series of exercises
that I have in my singing course where you have to continually do on on all
your vowels, too. Do these different open throat techniques to first initiate open
throat, and then gently start to lean into this sound. Now. Back to compression.
So, within this compressed sound, we start out very light on the compression. I don't mean light as in singing, I mean not using that much. So in other words if I go hey... Right?
I'm holding my breath. Hey... You know, you kind of hear me cutting back the air, right? Well,
there's a there's a deception in this in that, and I'm gonna talk about this when
I do a video on belting, as well, that there's an idea that it sounds like when
people are using distortion or growl or anything, that they're just... the blood is
coming out of the throat! of it's like a throat bleed! Aaaah! Kind of a sound! Right?
It's actually the opposite! It's that we built up such quality resonance with the
voice. Quality resonance with the sound, that the voice has gotten bigger with
less volume and less air, okay? So, let's do this again. So, you can do it with me.
Hold back the breath and go heeeeey... Haaaaa! HOOOO! Ooooh! Right? You can hear me compress the sound. Now, I could
use a lot of air and not compress at all. Hey.... Haaaa! Oh! You hear all that air that I'm using in
this sound. like I said that's the kiss of death
it's like a taking a flamethrower of air to your vocal folds and you only get
four or five songs that way. So anyway so as we start to compress this sound: Hey...
Over time, when we sing and we maturate the voice, and I don't want you guys
doing this the first week, second week, third week, stuff. Come on, guys! Think
about this. It's like going to a gym and working out. We're growing muscle
structure here. You don't get to be The Rock overnight. Right? You've got to go
into the gym you've got to work out, you've got to do this stuff correctly.
So you go: Hey... Then you kind of lean into it a little bit more... Heeey! Heeey! Heeey! Now!
The genius of compression is, is that it develops a beautiful tone, kind of that
whiskey kkk kkkk kkk kind of sound that happens around a voice of a singer that's been singing
a long time. You say "man I love that guy's tone! He just has that smoky, woodsy
lightly gritty, distorted sound! I want that sound!"
It comes from doing this, this way correctly. Right? Now you can end, up you
know, like a Bruce Springsteen, you know BORN In the U.S.A. I was... You know, have this overly distorted, really unidentifiable,
not, not sexy-beautiful, just kind of powerful middle-America kind of sound.
That's one way to approach it. Or you can have a lot of versatility in the sound
with different layers and shades of this compression, like I've demonstrated over
and over and over again in many of my videos, where you can use certain amounts
as much as you want. You could be clean on the sound you could be a little dirty
on the sound, you know: HEEEEY! Or you could be, like, really dirty or even like with the growl videos I have, check
those out, where I'm just like, opening up you know, some of the false vocal folds,
relaxing those, and just really leaning into his sound, you know, to kind of
scream. Or do scream. So anyway, again you guys, thank you for joining me! Ken
Tamplin Vocal Academy, where the proof is in the singing, and I want to touch one more
thing of fry. i forgot to almost mention this, is that you can start with fry to
understand the concept of distortion. That's okay. But! You don't want to stay
in fry, because if you stay in fry, then you're, again: squeezing or crimping or
clamping up: ehhhh! you got this really, instead of heeeey yeah
yeah! You have a really nice open thing that you can come alongside with a big
open throat sound, in order to give you what you're looking for with compression.
Okay? Thanks again for joining me. Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy. Stop by my singers
forums, man, we got 11,000 people in there now, it's growing like a weed! If you like
and you want to check out my course How To Sing Better Than Anyone Else. Ken
Tamplin Vocal Academy dot com! Check me out on Twitter, Facebook, I'm all over the
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