The Weeping Song

Weeping is an ancient English word. Its sound and shape are crafted to speak directly to the human heart. We feel it; we don’t think it:

Skyfall, Adele and the Ghosts of English Song

Written English is full of silent, dead letters: the k of knee, the b of thumb or the h of stomach. When it’s sung, English is haunted by different ghosts – consonants the singer chooses to shape but not to sound. Ghost sounds.

Ghost sounds are a powerful tool to use when you sing in English. And a dangerous trap if you’re learning English songs by ear.

Adele sings a full fright of ghosts into Skyfall. We all know that the word Skyfall ends with an ll but,  when Adele sings the word, what sound do you actually hear? An ll, or something slightly different? Is the sound exactly the same every single time she sings the word? Why does she sing the sound as she does?

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Diana Ross and the missing B

When you sing, you have a choice. The choice to bury a consonant and the choice to bring it out into the light when it suits you.

Listen, with your eyes closed, to the Supremes singing My World is Empty Without You. What’s missing from Diana Ross‘ life? A lover called Bay? eBay? A Turkish Bey? What word can you hear?

If you know the song, you know the answer. If English is your native language, you’ve guessed the answer. So ask yourself a different question: when does Diana choose to sing the word clearly, right through to the last consonant? Why then and nowhere else?

Where does Alberto come from?

Which side of the Atlantic do you think this R&B singer comes from? Do you imagine him flying home to Manchester, Montreal or Miami as soon as his European tour is over? His vowels, his name, his beard or the make of his guitar might give you a clue:

Friday on my Mine? Really?

Consonant ghosts haunt English songs. If English isn’t your first language and if you’re learning an English song by ear, don’t get tricked by the sound. It’s a choice to mute a consonant, but it’s a mistake to ignore it, just because you didn’t hear it clearly in the original version.

Practise English ghost hunting: listen to the chorus of The Easybeats song Friday on my Mind. The word mind is repeated 4 times during the song. How many times can you actually hear its final d clearly? How can you be sure Stevie Wright isn’t singing Friday on my Mine?:

From Lorca to Leonard Cohen and back again

It’s a marvellous thing to write music that suits the original flamenco Spanish of the Lorca  poem as much as your English translation:

 

A squillo

It’s a lovely thing to see image and movement in the service of knowledge.  Ming Luke provides the words, Franz Palomares brings them to life and Ted-Ed provides the screen:

© Sing Better English 2020

What the Stranglers did to their Diphthongs

R.I.P. Dave Greenfield. Keyboardist, songwriter and singer.

When you listen to the Stranglers’ song Golden Brown, pay close attention to the way Hugh Conwell sings the word brown:

Lighting every step on the Stairway to Heaven

Stairway to Heaven is a classic choice for song contests.  If English is your native language, don’t take the words of this song for granted. If English isn’t your native language, don’t take the words of this song for granted. The words matter.

They matter, but they’re not a liturgy.  Dave Grohl captures the heart of the song without reciting every word in order. Or at all:

Bunraku

Because singing is communicating and connecting. And because all the arts inform each other:

Making music

Music: Poppy Ackroyd

Director: Ainslie Henderson

Producers: Puppet Animation Scotland

Akala: Carried Away

The mouth is almost like a percussive instrument. If you use it in the right way, your flow can have melody coming from the vowel sounds, but then percussion coming from the consonant sounds. And your flow of how you divide up these consonants and vowels determines how nice an instrument your rapping can become.

Akala

Lady Leshurr

“I started thinking, ‘You know what? Why don’t I just rap?’ Because it’s just poetry with a beat behind it, really.”

Lady Leshurr in The Guardian.

Jazz, respect and memory

What’s a Polish song doing on a blog about singing in English? Blaszane Mordy is here to show that connecting with a song is a conscious skill, and an ability, that transcends language. You don’t need to understand Polish to ‘understand’ Lautari‘s Blaszane Mordy. Emotion pulses within the shape of the words alone: