“Hi Ken,
I’ve just recently a discovered your web-site and I must say that by the looks of it your Vocal Technique is just what I’m looking for. I wanted to purchase the Stage 1 DVD + some web-lessons to really improve my singing voice.
Before I do that, there’s a few questions I wanted to ask:
1. I know that you teach vowel modification as part of your
technique, but what about the closed vowels (uuu and eee). How do you
teach those? It’s important because I would not want to modify eee to
ehh, for example.
2. What is your view on bridging? I know that some advocate for
low head tones and bridging early, yet, by the sound of it, you’re
carrying chest up quite high.
Thanks in advance,
Vlad”
Ken Tamplin:
Hi Vlad,
1) Closed vowels (uuu and eee) are part of the modifications. On (uuu) you must first start with an open thoat oo (like the word look) and close that sound to uuu keeping an open ball sensation in the back of the throat but not compromising the vowel sound to uuu othwrewise, you lock the larynx down and over stress the thoat (especially if you are singing heavy). EEE, is a different animal. It still is open throat but does not rely on the “(ah)” vowel (like law) in the same way. The A vowel becomes your platform for this. This does not mean that phony weird sound people make when they sing oo (like look) when people want to hear a real oo (like who) or when people sing eh on a word like “feel” and instead sing “fail”. People want to hear the real vowel. There is a way to do both, but safely. To sing a spot on ee vowel is a killer and must have an eh platform but be quickly transformed back ino the “real” ee while holding the eh feeling in the throat but using mask technique. This is how it is accomplished Again, not a phony eh sound when people want to hear ee.
What is your view on bridging? I know that some advocate for low head tones and bridging early, yet, by the sound of it, you’re carrying chest up quite high.
2) I have been singing professionally since I was 17 (now 30 years) and I have never sung better. It’s my life long experience (and yes I know the arguments but the proof is in the singing) that in order to stretch the chest voice you MUST bridge later. ESPECIALLY for belting wailing. (there is a safe way to do this) What people aren’t being told about early connection is this: The whole concept of bridging early (and they may not even know this) was an old Bel Canto trick of getting sopranos to have little or no identifiable register break in their lower registers. But they also had no power in their lower register either. A Maestero’s only concern was keeping them singing high and ignoring their lower register because he could care less about the low notes. (this happens in choirs all the time to poor
contraltos. They shove them in the soprano section and KILL their strong mid sections) So now people are teaching Tenors to do this as well, completely wimping out their upper mid registers in the name of the “high high notes.” What’s my point? It means you CAN’T build a heavy belting voice like this. Early bridging was designed to do the exact opposite. Ironically, what people are also not aware of is this: If you train the upper mid voice to connect powerfully (instead of bringing down the head register) it will grow the upper mid voice bridge like mad AND you then can still learn early bridging once this is strenghthened correcly. The irony is that you CAN’T do it the other way around because the upper chest voice won’t sustain it. This is a LOT of information and there is a LOT more to it than that, but that is the very condensed version. I do this by consultation.
I hope that helps with your questions.
