Hi, Mike,
I repectfully disagree with your statement that "calling these vowels
'short' places an unneccesary characteristic on them." Those of us in the
US who learned phonics in elementary school, and to some extent, those who
learned through "whole language" have grown up with the terms "long" and
"short" as part of the vocabulary related to language sounds. In my
experience the use of these terms poses no problem in the voice studio.
Rather, it is the use of the phonetic terms of "open" and "close/closed".
Most US college singers study lyric diction as freshmen and are adding the
phonetics terms to their pronunciation-related vocabulary. I find that from
time to time it's necessary to use both sets of terms in the diction class.
In Italian diction study, at least a third of the native American-English
speakers in my classes open /i/ when it is shortened by following double
consonants. Thus "piccolino" /pikko'lino/, becomes /pIkko'lino/. It is
helpful to put the problem in perspective by discussing our treatment of
long and short vowels in Am. English and what relationship this may have to
open/close vowels in Italian. They soon learn that what is short in spoken
language is sustained in song for whatever length of time the composer
determines and whatever degree of opening/closing the language and teacher
require. Similar problems occur in the teaching of German diction. We come
back to stress and length patterns closely aligned to our native language.
However, successful singers readily adapt to the demands of speech in song.
Now I'm going to reread Caio's posts on stress/syllable timed languages.
Hmm....
Cindy Donnell
lloyd wrote of 'push', 'nook', 'look' and 'pull':
<< There is a problem here because these sounds in English are short forms
of a vowel and are never sustained in spoken English. However, when one
sings in English, these sounds must be sustained so . . .the singer must
learn how to sustain them. It is a very learned skill. >>
learned skill? i'd prefer you think of it as a problem of conception.
calling these vowels 'short' places an unneccesary characteristic on them.
it places in the mind of a singer an unneccesary obstacle to singing them
'long' or, continuing to sing them for a longer time. it (they) is a sound
that can be sung for any duration within a singer's physical limitations to
continue to produce sound.
mike
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