For Micro-learning in the Madness of our time. This, a highly specific post, but here’s a piece of advice for folks downloading the scores to I Have Never Loved Someone (the way I love you) or anyone else who is thinking about text clarity:
Drop your jaw. Plant a finger on your chin, or watch yourself in a mirror to check if you really are letting the jaw be free. Go slowly. Use the jaw as little as possible, especially on consonants such as L, M, N, F, hard Gs, Vs etc. Have playfulness going through the alphabet to see how many consonants you can do without using the jaw. Separating the tongue, lips and jaw is an octopus routine!
Consider each and every vowel. Try singing the melody slowly on each vowel. I resort to the French oe sound for words using -er (like never), as in fleur. I think French-ifying the vowel sounds nice. Even if you opt out of the jaw dropping experience and want a more conversational vibe, you still can spend useful time considering vowel clarity, and try not to muddy the waters of one vowel to the next. Let your ah be ah (not uh) or your ee be ee. Doo-bee-do-bee-do!
Mind the diphthongs, cause unless you enjoy making a point(!) out of that eeee at the end of the ah, (for example I = ah+ee,) to elongate the line and have consistent tone, the second vowel color of a diphthong is typically as short as possible.
Be rhythmically precise & do not slow the song down (unless it is deliberate). Keep a sense of the internal clock. A finger on the kick-drum-pulse even if the kick drum is imaginary. To be in front or behind that pulse is the glory of Rock-n-Roll. That’s the magic of phrasing, dahling. That’s the groove. If we lose sense of the internal pulse, then there is no groove to be made from being forward and backward in relation to the CENTER of TIME.
Maybe we get lost in the feeling of the song, or maybe simply trying hard to be together with your neighbor chorister, a group slows down. It can be really hard to keep track of the imaginary clock. Particularly on songs like this, where the melody becomes the clock and everywhere else is choral texture. But slowing down can so easily tip the tune into the saccharine or sentimental. A gently relentless forward lean of the tempo is what I think keeps the song balanced emotionally. The story is always moving forward toward its landing point: you’re okay. Overly luxuriating earlier can lead us down a sugary syrupy slope.
If I may step up to my soapbox… Darling, please for the love of all things specific, do not swoop into pitches as a default. I find that the very idea of “singing popular music” causes classically trained folks to flip a switch in their brains, thinking they suddenly should swoooooop into the beginning of every phrase. Scoopin’ n swoopin’ is not an informal gesture. It doesn’t make the music more personal, or more relate-able. That this swooping is such a ubiquitous tendency in classical singers is a wonder. If we swoop-n-scoop, honey, do it with intention. The divine Etta James’ At Last as example.
This has been a public service announcement. Take what you want and leave the rest. Go forth and make peace, dear Earthling.
