-----Original Message----- From: dredeman [mailto:dredeman@w...] Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 11:28 PM To: vocalist-temporary@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [vocalist] May Germany forgive me ;)
Dear (promero?) and co vocalisters,
I don't want to say anything about the voice, simply because I'm not qualified to do so. Your German however, needs some serious attention. I suggest you take a course in German, because your pronunciation also gives me the impression that you don't understand much of the words. (In my opinion it is not enough to know what the words mean, you should be able to understand what it means if you say the words in different ways, and you should be able to understand why the poet wrote exactly these words.)
Even worse: in this way you'll get used to pronunciate words wrong and even sing wrong words, and as most of us know, it takes a very long time to get rid of bad habits (And I do feel qualified to tell you something about that.)
To be honest: At the moment it sounds somewhat like a funny character in television, and it gives me the impression you don't really care whether you are doing it right or wrong. Exactly that will most Germans (and Lieder-lovers) never forgive you (neither will most singing teachers, judges etc.) You sing e.g.:
das muß ein schlechter Mjuhlert sein der niemals fiel das Wanderein
instead of
das muß ein schlechter Müller sein dem niemals fiel das Wandern ein
The der instaed of dem makes it very funny: that must be someone who fell into a Wanderein or Wanderwein (whatever that may be), instead of someone who got the idea of starting to wander. Things like 'der instead of dem' are important, because native speaker expect something else after 'dem' as after 'der'.
It is the same like saying in English: 'The man it cried'. You start wondering: what is wrong, the word it, or the word man? Mistakes like that irritate and take all attention away from your singing, and I don't expect that you want that to happen.
The u umlaut, is a combination of a u (like in cool) and in i (like in why), so starting from an a (like in car, italian a) you just close the mouth somewhat from the corners, and take the tongue position for the i-vowel (as described a couple of days ago by Lloyd.) Never put a i or a j in front of it, that's very American! Now it sounds like mule (kind of donkey) and that is defitively wrong.
Then you sing 'Muellert' which sounds very funny (where did you pick up that 't'?), you make the 'sch' much too sharp, forget mostly the last consonant of Wandern (but the last three times it gets better, but I suppose it is still completely unaudible in a concert.)
Then you combine Wandern and ein to one word. That would be great in Italian, but Germany is another place in Europe. Maybe as a president you can get away with it, but as a singer you should know the difference between the two countries. (I admit that both countries were wrong during Worldwar 2, but for the rest there are many differences.)
Best greetings,
Dré
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