Hey guys! Welcome back again to Ken
Tamplin Vocal Academy, Where the Proof continues to be in the actual SINGING! I
got a lot of requests for this, and you know, "What is mask and how do I use it
for singing?" Well, some definitions mean one thing to one person. It might be, mean something to someone else. So, the whole idea is, you know in old Bel Canto, which
is the old opera style of singing is that you're singing into a mask. Now I
want you to sort of picture this, because that's why it's called mask. So have you
ever seen what's called a thespian mask, which is you know, the funny faces you
know, where you put these masks on, right? They use them at the cocktail
party so you don't know who's who. Anyway so singing into this mask, this idea
that you're singing right to the front of your face. Well, what the problem with
this is there's - there's a good and not so good about this. The first thing is, is
that we don't just employ singing in the mask. You're not gonna go: "Hey!" I don't just force the
sound into the front of my face, okay? So, what we do first is, and I have a
video that's coming out, I think I'm not mistaken this Thursday on open throat
technique. In fact, it's kind of interesting. I was one of the few guys
that was even talking about this ten years ago, and now it's becoming, you know, more of an in-vogue conversation to have about, you know, singing. Anyway, but
that we develop good open throat technique first... Now, if you don't know
what that is, check out my new video that's coming out on this. It should be
out, like I said, I think on Thursday. I explain it, and I have I have a singing
course called How To Sing Better Than Anyone Else, and I walk you guys through
this, step-by-step on how to get this stuff. It's if we have "It'sThe LAH!!! AH!!" and we have a real "open throat" approach
to this first, and we build muscle memory with good strong diaphragmatic support,
etc... Then we can start to employ mask la Now I'm not just elongating the
vowel. It's not what I'm doing. I'm actually smiling.
I'm pharyngeally spreading the sound and I'm smiling, and I bring this out at the
front of my face You hear the difference? Right? So the higher up we go, what we
find is that ( La...) when I get up higher, in my upper register, I can hit all these
resonators inside my face and really open up the sound. But... there is a caveat
to this, which means you know something we have to consider. And that is that we
don't want the sound to only come, you know, On New Year's Day..you know we don't
want that. We're not looking for the Stevie Wonder sound, right?
What we want is On New Year's Day we want both the beautiful roundness of open
throat technique, first, as our first line of defense, and then we want to roll the
sound up into the head and across the roof of the mouth, and out. So "On New Year's Day is what I said I want you to sing like this. I want you to have this mask like mine. I'm not singing so nasally that it sounds annoying" right? So we really
want to have a warmth to the sound, bring the sound up into the head first, roll it
down into the front of the face into the mask. Have it come across the roof of the mouth, and then we can open up the sound with
resonance from the warmth that we've had not just only - now I did it I did a video
on this, you know, how to sing like your favorite singer, whatever. And there's a
lot of great singers that use a lot of mask, and let me, I did this
demonstration before. I'll do it again and I'm gonna hit a couple other artists
here. You have guys like Dennis DeYoung from Styx, you know, I'm sailing
away set an open course for the Virgin Sea
and I've got to be free. Free to face the life that's ahead of me. Well I'm the
captain, so climb aboard. We'll search for tomorrow on every Shore. And we'll try the best that we can To Carry On. You know
and then all of a sudden it's COME SAIL AWAY!! And he hits these insane killer notes. You know, go way up, ha, ha.! So he gets this sweet thing! On the way I was out of pitch when I did that, but it still sounded good! Anyway, but you
know he has this real sweet spot that he's in, right? And he he resides in that.
Well there's a lot of singers that do that. I know I keep beating this up over
and over again but Lou Gramm, and I do this, I've done this a million times. I'm
gonna do it again. You know "say you will, say you won't. Make up your mind
this time. Say you do, say you don't, wanna be mine. Right? So he has all this. but if you really listen to Lou, Lou actually brings the sound in behind, from behind he
drops down on the sound and he brings it to the front of the face. Very different
than what Dennis DeYoung did. Now if again if, you know, if we do "like a fool
I went stay too long, and now I'm wondering if your love's still strong, ooh, baby!
Here I am. Signed, sealed, delivered, I'm yours! Like a Stevie thing. Or very superstitious.... Writing's on the wall... he's got really
frontal sound. I personally would sing it: Very superstitious
Writing's on the wall 13th month old baby Ladders start to fall, you know if you
believe you know and he's got this really really frontal sound but some
people are just kind of wired for that right Barbra Streisand was wired for
that Donna Summer was wired for that Celine Dion is wired for that so you
know you know if you think of my heart will go on or some of the songs, you know
you hear all this nasality that's brought in the front of the face. It's
kind of shrill and annoying, actually. Now Donna Summer got away with it because
she's Donna Summer. You know what I mean? And and there are certain people that
wear it well, but for the most part that's not our first line of defense. Our
first line of defense is getting through open throat technique first, and then
employing mask, after. Now I cover all of this in my singing course called How To
Sing Better Than Anyone Else at Ken Tamplin Vocal
Academy.com If you're interested come check it out. Join my singers forums, man. We've got thousands and thousands of singers in there, where you can go and we
can just have these different ideas, and we shoot them around you can post videos, ask questions. It's free. Check it out! It's awesome. You can find me on
Twitter. You can find me, certainly on Facebook. Find me here on YouTube and
a bunch of other forms of social media and if you have questions again go into
my singers forums. You can get all the information you need out of there to
decide where you want a head with your voice. Thank you for joining me. Ken
Tamplin Vocal Academy, Where the PROOF is in the SINGING!
Peace! Out! Hey guys! If you like what you heard, please LIKE and SUBSCRIBE to my
channel. And if you want to get notified when I have a new, cool video come out,
you need to go to my channel and click on this little Bell icon, and it will
actually notify you every time I have a video come out! Thanks guys!
