Stepping into a song: “Le Premier Bonheur du Jour”

When you sing, you’re telling a story. Like any good actor, you need to believe the words as they come out of your mouth; to choose them. No matter who wrote them.

Watch Françoise Hardy switch from ‘young female guest’ on Sacha Distel‘s TV show to ‘woman in love’.  We believe her as she starts to sing. Why? Because she believes herself. You can see her refocus and prepare in the video. Watch her pupils get bigger, then smaller, around 14 seconds in, as she prepares to sing Frank Gérald‘s words:

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Singing True Milk Chocolate Love

“I love you” is one of those phrases we measure precisely, down to the smallest change in breath and intention. Speaking it, singing it and hearing it. Especially the first time, and the last few times.

At least one important person in your life will have said “I love you”, without meaning it. A deep, protective human instinct awakes in your heart and warns you: “Beware“

If it wasn’t too recent and it isn’t too painful, think back. What alerted your heart to the lie? Did the word ‘love‘ sound too thin and hollow? Or was ‘I love you’ overstuffed with emotion? What detail in the sound tipped you off to a falseness in the words?

When White isn’t Right

When you sing about love, it helps to think about chocolate. From  the whitest of white to the darkest of dark, with added chilli.  From Michael Jackson’s upbeat love in A.B.C. to Bob Dylan’s weathered disappointment in Love Sick.  Same word, different flavours.

You’ve tasted white chocolate, I’m sure: light, sweet and easy. White chocolate love is the version you learn at school – full of innocent enthusiasm: I love Maths. He loves kittens. We love Zayn Malik. 

If you grow up in an English speaking country, the word love grows up with you. There comes a time when you start using love for men and women, not just rabbits and Geography. The word love gets coloured by your experience of romantic human love, good and bad. You will be able to shade the word when you say or sing it, from white to dark, and anywhere in between. Your thoughts will shape your mouth.

It’s the idea of love that you’re holding in your mind as you shape your mouth that forms the word. It’s not necessarily a conscious decision, but your audience will read the intention behind the love you sing or speak. Each time you shape the word for them.

Has anyone ever told you “I love you” without putting their heart and soul into the words? It feels disappointingly hollow, doesn’t it?

A white chocolate, emotion-free “I love you” communicates flippant disinterest, in a romantic song. When you’re looking into another human’s eyes, you need to use a milk chocolate love, at least. In song and in relationships, it’s wise to get the love flavour right.

If you learn English as a foreign language, the word love may never have an opportunity to grow up. If love stays, filed away in a corner of your mind, in a single, childish, white chocolate version, your mind will shape your mouth the same way every time you come to sing the word. Your audience will feel the mismatch if the song calls for emotion, but you offer them disinterested enthusiasm and an “I love tennis” version of love. You’ll lose their trust.

Yes, there are white chocolate love songs – usually written by very young, very innocent men. They’re light and casual. They skip along. They’re the only place that your jolly, white chocolate love will ring true. But, even in a white chocolate love song like the Beatles’ Love Me Do, first written out in a school notebook, notice Paul McCartney deepening and darkening the flavour of the title line, from white to milk when he sings alone:

She Loves You, Yes, Yes, Yes

They completed “She Loves You” in McCartney’s house back in Liverpool. When his father heard the song, he said, “Son, there’s enough Americanisms around. Couldn’t you sing, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ just for once?” McCartney said, “You don’t understand, Dad. It wouldn’t work.”

                                                                                                     Rolling Stone Magazine

Why not?

© Sing Better English, 2015

Nectarine? Soup Tureen? Sex Machine?

If I asked you to identify the two most surprising words from James Brown’s Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine, one of your choices would be machine. Mr Brown knows that he’s invited an intriguing image into his song. He doesn’t want it to grow in his listeners’ minds before he has a chance to shape it to his will. He works hard and fast to make sure that sex machine becomes a powerful ally, not a powerful distraction. He avoids winking or giving a quick pelvic thrust as he sings sex machine. He keeps his audience with him by keeping the word sex neutral. He treats it no differently from get, on or up. Like a fax machine. Watch him and ask yourself: if he’d emphasised sex or sex machine, would he have intensified the power of the song? Or would he have stepped over the invisible but definite line into sleaziness?

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: