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Myles Kennedy - His Technique

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Elvis

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In the light of the recent thread about people being born with singing ability and another thread regarding Vocal Coaching getting low PR.

Myles is talking here about how he learned to sing (well not really how he learned but some info on his singing journey).

Take a listen!

 

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I have seen these interviews before but I am glad you are discovering them. Also, I would invite you to watch performances of him with Slash. Myles is a master of breath management, not having to sing very loud but still carrying across what is needed.

 

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Ron is spot on.  So much has to do with how you control the breath.  

But the benefits of breath work are very hard to articulate.  You have to feel them for yourself, get in touch with them.

The best way I can explain it is you gain such a control that you feel this newfound adjustability to your voice.

 

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Jesus jetpacking christ, his tone is so perfect it's depressing. After 10 minutes of hammering at "tell me what it feels to live a lie" I nailed the tone, but it's really friggin hard to keep up. It's totally different from how I'm used to singing.

As a side note: I've realized that I've made a great error in how to learn songs, and maybe some newbies do the same. I used to practice songs by just singing them through over and over and making adjustments here and there. The best and most efficient for me at least is the way Phil suggested, the way I never really got around to practicing because it felt too tedious. Every time I go back to it I ask myself "why the fq didn't I do this before?"

And that way is learning the song one. Phrase. At. A. Time. Recording and retrying until it's perfect, even if it means you're stuck in the friggin first phrase of the first verse for half a day.

The reason I write this is because I didn't take the hint from Phil. I just said "alright I guess I'll try" and I did for a while, but the process always had the same workflow:

- I play back a difficult phrase

- I try to mimic it, usually fail, repeat it a couple of times til...

- i say alright f it, I'll sing it like I always do since "I can't sing like he does since it's his tone etc etc etc...." and other collected excuses...

And I'd never develop an ear-voice coordination to be able to produce the same tone with my instrument. It's very unlikely that you CAN'T do the same tone, it's just a matter of getting it EXACTLY right with YOUR voice. It takes time, but once you nail it once you'll nail it always, so the return of investment is huge. I urge people to try it.

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Weird. He sounds like an SLS singer to me rather than anything I'd imagine Belcanto taught singers singing rock would sound like. He's got that vocal fry going all the time, the way he's capping the mass of the phrases reminds me of SS/MM. It's actually almost exactly like the end result tone in MM.

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I actually never really knew how to identify SLS/SS/MM. I remember reading somewhere that these singers would lack power? But I'm not really sure about that to be honest. What do these folks really teach?

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Ron Anderson has taught 1000's of singers over the years. All sound different. Once you've been given the Technique and the Tools its up to you how you use them. Bel Canto, as I understand translates to beautiful singing. Myles sounds as if he meets the criteria to me. It's just he sounds as if he is more inspired by the Jeff Buckley's of the world rather than the Dio's. I had the Sing Success course and the Mastering Mix course. Absolutely no explanation given about breath support and what it does, or even what certain exercises were supposed to achieve... And the male singer struggled to demonstrate his own exercises. Female was very good though. And the other major downfall... No explainations how to..um... sing an actual song.. As standalone courses I thought they were pretty useless. I don't know what the traditional/original SLS taught but Daniel Formica is a brilliant singer and said he has found use in it.

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It is 50/50 on programs/teachers VS. the individual. You can offer the best program in the world and if someone doesn't practice or sing regularly to follow up on it and sustain that growth, it won't go anywhere. The main reason Daniel sings great is because he sings ALL THE TIME, to make a living. When you are on your voice that much, you get strong and you get good. Daniel can correct me, but I believe that is probably the biggest influence on his success, as it is with most singers.

Training programs are very helpful for sure, especially for beginners that are wiling to get to work.

Sing Success course and the Mastering Mix course. Absolutely no explanation given about breath support and what it does, or even what certain exercises were supposed to achieve... Nor...um...actually how to sing an actual song.. As standalone courses I thought they were pretty useless.

Precisely... no news here. Lets be clear on something... the reason you don't get the explanations on how things work, or any discussion about vowels, or respiration or anything that really slightly touches into some science of singing... is simply because... they don't know anything about these topics.

A teacher will teach what they know... they want to.. its what they are proud of!  If a coach really understands vowels, formants, onsets and respiration, etc... they would be talking about it!!!  He would be teaching it, but you never hear any of this from SS/MM... and many others on YouTube... why?   Because they are clueless in these matters... For the vast majority of teachers on videos, it is just "circle talk" of buzz words...  There are a LOT of "circle talkers" on YouTube... don't listen passively and just assume.. ask yourself, "what is the point", "how does that happen", "how does that work", "is he now going to explain that...", "... is he going to demonstrate what he is talking about?", "... does this coach have any content of them singing... even something simple?" I NEVER produce a video where I am teaching as the presumed expert and fail to demonstrate or explain in sufficient detail what the hell it is that I am talking about.

But anyways... back to Myles... 

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It is 50/50 on programs/teachers VS. the individual. You can offer the best program in the world and if someone doesn't practice or sing regularly to follow up on it and sustain that growth, it won't go anywhere. The main reason Daniel sings great is because he sings ALL THE TIME, to make a living. When you are on your voice that much, you get strong and you get good. Daniel can correct me, but I believe that is probably the biggest influence on his success, as it is with most singers.

Training programs are very helpful for sure, especially for beginners that are wiling to get to work.

Sing Success course and the Mastering Mix course. Absolutely no explanation given about breath support and what it does, or even what certain exercises were supposed to achieve... Nor...um...actually how to sing an actual song.. As standalone courses I thought they were pretty useless.

Precisely... no news here. Lets be clear on something... the reason you don't get the explanations on how things work, or any discussion about vowels, or respiration or anything that really slightly touches into some science of singing... is simply because... they don't know anything about these topics.

A teacher will teach what they know... they want to.. its what they are proud of!  If a coach really understands vowels, formants, onsets and respiration, etc... they would be talking about it!!!  He would be teaching it, but you never hear any of this from SS/MM... and many others on YouTube... why?   Because they are clueless in these matters... For the vast majority of teachers on videos, it is just "circle talk" of buzz words...  There are a LOT of "circle talkers" on YouTube... don't listen passively and just assume.. ask yourself, "what is the point", "how does that happen", "how does that work", "is he now going to explain that...", "... is he going to demonstrate what he is talking about?", "... does this coach have any content of them singing... even something simple?" I NEVER produce a video where I am teaching as the presumed expert and fail to demonstrate or explain in sufficient detail what the hell it is that I am talking about.

I've got no intentions of becoming a voice coach, don't have the patience  hahaha. I'll be very candid and say I got absolutely sucked in by the prettiness of the SS, MM and mastering vibrato products packaging. Not too mention all the 'famous' people the products claimed... Then you get the product and its mutton dressed up as lamb. And those famous people that the course is claiming... Well they've been shown a basic warm up routine of lip burbles and humming. On top of that, they are still blowing out their voices and going to another high profile coach such as Ron anyway to repair their voice. Absolute smoke and mirrors regarding those particular products.

Ps... Thanks for fixing that Rob

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 I got absolutely sucked in by the prettiness of the SS, MM and mastering vibrato products packaging. Not too mention all the 'famous' people the products claimed..

Yep... This point you making, is also well understood by insiders and his colleagues.

I have ALWAYS said, Brett is the best at marketing. He always has been the guy that is the most difficult to compete with on getting your message out there. And that is not a put down. My compliments go out to him and his staff for being so successful in their marketing efforts and slick presentations. But... sometimes the guy that spends the most money on marketing is nothing more then... the guy that spends the most money on marketing.  

Also, ... the name dropping in this business is HIGHLY SUSPECT!  Coaches that name drop know that consumers are impressed by that and some really play that card hard. But most of the time, it is brutally exaggerated. 

The best vocal training programs are, flat out... My program "4Pillars", CVI book, KTVA, Kevin Richards and Jaimie Vendera's stuff is always prolific and abundant... Period... and I couldn't be more honest then that.

Anyways... lets get back to Myles... 

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Sorry about the spiel but I got absolutely burned by those products (and forum) and still get angry when I see them brought up.

i was naive and just went for the most expensive looking course... Probably like most people new to vocal training. I rejected the negative reviews and just put it down to people not doing the work. It since has received a lot more Internet haterade from when I first start 15 months ago. It's not unwarranted.

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Yeah, Myles sounds like the opposite to Ken Tamplin, and I was just pointint out that if you put the male demo of the balanced mix exercises (and song, obviously, since there's the whole "applying exercises to songs" part in MM which people seem to miss) the two sound pretty much the same. If you put Tamplin's anything as the comparison then the two sound exactly the opposite, the other sounding strained while the other sounding effortless. And it's more about stylistic choice than anything else, like Blah said, the same teacher has taught singers that sound totally different. That's awesome!

It's awesome to see that there's no cookie cutting. It's all about what resonates with you, whatever makes the most sense, no matter how it's said or taught (like Myles saying "it's all about how I hold my palate and how I breathe").

Also, MM is awesome. So is Pillars. And KTVA. And VA and RYV and SFTS. I'm not into bashing anything since everything has something to learn from and they all aim for pretty much the same end product.

Myles' GNR stuff is great, I like his tone better than Axl's, he sounds more effortless.

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Khassara,

The spirit of your post above was fair.  

In regards to Ken, I think it sounds fairly the same. To me, they always sound like Ken Tamplin... typically sounds great, but sounds like Ken Tamplin. Which really is what people should be focusing on in their own voices and get off this shadow chasing concern of trying to sound like someone else.

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Yeah, Myles sounds like the opposite to Ken Tamplin, and I was just pointint out that if you put the male demo of the balanced mix exercises (and song, obviously, since there's the whole "applying exercises to songs" part in MM which people seem to miss) the two sound pretty much the same. If you put Tamplin's anything as the comparison then the two sound exactly the opposite, the other sounding strained while the other sounding effortless. And it's more about stylistic choice than anything else, like Blah said, the same teacher has taught singers that sound totally different. That's awesome!

It's awesome to see that there's no cookie cutting. It's all about what resonates with you, whatever makes the most sense, no matter how it's said or taught (like Myles saying "it's all about how I hold my palate and how I breathe").

Also, MM is awesome. So is Pillars. And KTVA. And VA and RYV and SFTS. I'm not into bashing anything since everything has something to learn from and they all aim for pretty much the same end product.

Myles' GNR stuff is great, I like his tone better than Axl's, he sounds more effortless.

Ken has a lot of different influences... Paul Rogers, Lou Gramm, David Coverdale, Sammy Hagar and Dio are a few of the primary ones so he worked out a way to get that 'strained' sound safely and sustain it. I'm pretty deep into his course (and I'm certainly not here to sell it) but one of the elements I see that is constantly misunderstood about his primary style is how it sounds and how it feels is an oxymoron when you really get the technique going. Again, it's all about good technique and how one chooses to use it stylistically. 

Rob, if this post oversteps any boundaries, feel free to edit it.

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BlahBlah: I thought as much when I started it, since the main exercises feel more like the stuff Cunodante wrote about sometime ago, about maximizing resonance with minimal effort. There's still a lot of stuff that caused me, for one, to misunderstand how the physical sensations should feel. But like I said earlier, Myles has that same weird tongue thing going on the sweet child vid.
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Sorry about the spiel but I got absolutely burned by those products (and forum) and still get angry when I see them brought up.

i was naive and just went for the most expensive looking course... Probably like most people new to vocal training. I rejected the negative reviews and just put it down to people not doing the work. It since has received a lot more Internet haterade from when I first start 15 months ago. It's not unwarranted.

A point for using haterade in a sentence.

I would slightly disagree with the idea that Brett is a marketing genius, at least completely, though quite a bit of the way there. And this is why:

In exercises, awesome. In well recorded songs and  videos, great.

Live, not so much. The videos available of him singing live in a club are not him in his best light and I don't see other videos that are better and could eclipse the ones that don't sound as good. Though you cannot always erase from the internet a bad video, you can make a bunch of good ones that overtake it, eventually. Now, there will always be the Asburgers' patients who won't let the one bad thing go and you can't fix them and medication can only make that a bit dulled. (I know because I can remember forever what someone said or did to me wrong, even if I later "get over it" and move on in life. The memory is elephantine in some regards. And it is not fixable. Not that I have asburgers syndrome but I do understand what happens.)

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Khassara,

Im not keen to be accused by you of bashing anyone, because that was not the spirit of my post.

BlahBlah: I thought as much when I started it, since the main exercises feel more like the stuff Cunodante wrote about sometime ago, about maximizing resonance with minimal effort. There's still a lot of stuff that caused me, for one, to misunderstand how the physical sensations should feel. But like I said earlier, Myles has that same weird tongue thing going on the sweet child vid.

it's interesting that you mention the tongue. I really thought that would be one of the tenants of good singing in general and not really specific to a certain technique or style of singing. It creates more space for resonance and gets rid of stricture in the throat. Steve Perry does it, Myles, Dio, Ron Anderson in his demonstrations, all the 'Divas', Sam Cooke, Pavarotti even pokes it out a little sometimes like Ken on the big notes.

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