Adele in the Attic

It’s 2011. Adele is finally granted a visa to visit America:

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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Be Good – Be a Good Detective

You need no excuses to listen to Gregory Porter. It’s always a delight. If you’re inspired to cover his songs, do your detective work first. Like a lot of jazz singers (Amy Winehouse comes to mind) Gregory often ghosts consonants like d, t, n & m at the end of words. Softened endings often suit the jazz mood. But be careful when you sing a cover: a softened consonant isn’t the same as no consonant.

Try this exercise: in his song Be Good (Lion’s Song) Gregory sings the phrase Be Good fifteen times. Can you hear the d sound every time? Does the d sound exactly the same every time?

The Four Tops: American Ghosts

Some of you have asked if ghosts are a feature of British English alone. Good question, but no. Ghosts haunt American English too. Listen to the The Four Tops singing Reach Out I’ll Be There. Can you hear them pronouncing the t of Reach Out?

Don’t Look Back in Anger and don’t forget the T

People often choose Oasis songs for singing contests. They’re powerful and catchy. Sadly, a lot of contestants don’t listen to the Gallaghers properly. Just because Noel ghosts some of his consonants, it doesn’t mean they’re not important to the song.

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: