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:

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Fire – Five Ways

English words are like onions, when you sing. Chop them, roast them whole, caramelise them, scatter them as crunchy red raw rings on a salad. They never stop being onions, but you’re in charge of the flavour and the texture they provide.

Fire is a classic onion. We all know what fire is. It’s the singer’s job to make us feel what fire ‘is’ in their song.

Arthur Brown sings a powerful, all-encompassing fire. The fire of myth. Wicker Man, Hell-fire, Prometheus. Fire as pure element. Fi-ya:

This is a Voice @ The Wellcome Collection

If you are in London before the end of July, it’s worth catching the Wellcome Collection‘s exhibition This is a Voice:

Those Does

Does the does of those does rhyme with buzz, or with flows? Or with neither?

Can you or can’t you? Your audience needs to know

When you sing in English, be kind to your audience. They rely on you to be clear, especially when you sing words with opposite meanings but similar sounds, like can and can’t. Without your help, they won’t know which word you’re singing. The confusion will distract them. They won’t relax until they’re sure whether you can or can’t feel it in the air tonight. You’ll upset them if you sing “You can’t leave your hat on” or “We can stop” or “Baby, you can’t drive my car” by mistake.

If the difference between can and can’t isn’t clear to you, how do you make it clear to your audience?  First, focus in on the sound. Watch Los Bravos singing Black is Black. How many times do you hear the word can and how many times do you hear can’t?  By the way – where do you think the singer is from?:

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: