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Subject: Re: Diction (was Misheard Song Lyrics)
From: "jjh"
To: Vocalist <vocalist>
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On Mon, 7 Feb, Chris Thomas wrote:

>I have a French student and getting her to sing in English is really
>interesting -- she tends to over-open vowels, really distorting their
>pronunciation. I have to find French equivalents and have her rewrite the word
>so that she can give it a better pronunciation.

Dear Chris et al:

I am absolutely green with envy that you get a whole semester on one
language! Shangri-la! Here, I have 1 measly credit (2 hours of "seat time"
per week) to teach English, French, German, and Italian! Oh the pain! At
the same time, I can't complain about it because this course was only
recently instituted here, at the firm insistence of my predecessor in the
job. In other words, we're lucky to have the 1 credit at all!

About your French student: I had a Swedish student once who had similar
problems. Amazingly enough, after only a couple of years in the U.S., she
had adopted a "Valley Girl" type of speech ("it's like, you know, and I was
like, and he was like...yada yada yada!"), with wide-open and distorted
vowels. Then she proceeded to take her understanding of American speech
into her singing. I have been told that many non-Americans may share this
"wide-open" perception of American speech. Anyway, her problems started
with her perception of the language. Did it help that I was teaching in the
Midwest? Probably not!

With this particular student, I started by explaining to her the concept of
"spreading vowels," and she quickly understood that she couldn't do that
when she sang. We did a lot of mirror work, and that seemed to help. Your
solution of French equivalents is pretty ingenious; wish I'd thought of
that!

I saw an interesting report on 20/20, I think it was last fall. A
university professor who had developed a computerized phonological atlas of
American accents. Click on any point on the U.S. map, and you can hear the
vowel phonemes for that region. The examples they used were California
(Valley Girl), Chicago (Dennis Franz on NYPD Blue saying "what happened?",
with a very nasal [ae]), Birmingham, AL, Minnesota, and Boston ("pahk the
cah in Hahvahd Yahd"). It was absolutely fascinating! I would love to show
my students this tape, to illustrate the hazards of talkin' Amurrican!

>I have other students who go to a high school where their chorus director has
>them modify vowels starting at about C5 (C above middle C - is that number
>right?) and so their vowels in ALL languages come out weird and they wind up
>with too much space. I fix them, but then they get yelled at when they come
>back to class with their vowels in a non-distorted place.

Oh yes, this scenario is a familiar one. I once had a student who was asked
to "sing dark, with a back placement" by her high school choir director
(pulling her tongue way back in the mouth in the process--that How she was
able to sing "dark." This choir director was pretty convinced that "darker"
tone blended better. I'm not so sure I agree, but then again I don't work
with choirs all that often. Maybe it's a legitimate technique. At any
rate, my student tended to sing very flat when she was in this mode. She
would come to her voice lesson and have to sing for me with her tongue
behind her bottom front teeth, with clearer and more focused vowels. How
frustrating it must have been for her!

My question about this topic is, is it necessary to modify vowels at about
C5? When I sing a middle C, I don't have too much mouth opening, but I do
have slightly more opening on C5, which would cause a slight modification.
I guess I've been singing so long that I don't let the vowels get too fuzzy,
unfocused, or distorted, but a high school student might have problems with
this. Is this choir director specifically asking them to modify their
vowels, or is he/she just asking them to relax their jaws? Or is the
situation more like the one that I encountered ("darker vowels blend
better")?

Cheers!

Jana
--
Jana Holzmeier
Dept. of Music
Nebraska Wesleyan University
5000 Saint Paul Ave.
Lincoln, NE 68504
jjh-at-nebrwesleyan.edu
402-465-2284