Singing Instruction - Words That Work For You, Vowel Modification

Singing Instruction - Words That Work For You, Vowel Modification

Poets and songwriters use self-expressive words often and effectively. For the singer or actor, the trick is to train yourself to recognize those special words quickly and easily, and then to speak or sing them almost reflexively, letting their emotion, color and power come through.

Let's suppose you are singing these lyrics: "My beautiful love, as we lie together now I feel as if I were rising up to heaven, softly and gently, but within the quietness there is thunder." (I realize that probably sounds like a scene from a porn movie, but....

Look carefully and the expressive words will pop out: "beautiful," "love," rising." "heaven," "softly," "gently", "quietness"

Speak each of these words several times. Take your time, and you will hear them express themselves by their sounds. Listen to what part of the word is the most expressive. For instance, the word "beautiful" expresses itself beautifully when we gently stress the "beaut" section. Maybe we stretch that part out a little, making the feeling more beautiful.

The word "softly" really does express softness. Gentleness. While the word "thunder" actually thunders out of the softness. Its sound actually expresses it's meaning, and gives you some powerful clues on how to say or sing it.

Try writing down the lyrics to a favorite song. Then list the expressive words. Practice saying or singing them using the technique I described above.

Become more and more aware of the special words and your singing will improve more and more.

2. Can't hit those high notes? Try Modifying the Vowels

How often has this happened to you? You're singing a song, and you get to the most important part and find that a note or two are too high for you. Your voice strains, and you push and try to force them out only to get a squeak. What to do? Find another song or...

One of the most important secrets of singing is called "vowel modification," and it's just what the name says it is: When you get to those high notes you can't seem to squeeze out you modify or change the actual word you are singing to something more easy to handle. Let's find out how this works.

The singing vowels are "A", "ee", "Ah", "O", and "au". All words use some variation of these vowels in their makeup. This is nothing new. But did you know that vowels can be substituded for each other when we sing very high notes?

For instance: let's say that the word you are to sing on a high note is "me", and you can't sing it without sounding like Tarzan. Try substituting "mih" for "me". This could make it much easier to sing the note, and the listeners probably won't hear the difference.

Instead of singing "mine" sing "mahn"

Substitute "lave" for "love; "raht" for "right'; And so on.

Examine the vowels you are supposed to sing on those very high notes and try substituting vowels which are easier for you to handle. Record yourself doing this and you will hear that the word still seems the same unless you modify it too much. Experiment and you will discover that you can sing those impossible songs...with a little vowel-tweaking.