Singing Songs

This is focussed on learning to sing songs from foreign languages and cultures, but you can use the same technique for any song (with the sensible exception of song types that I have no idea about).

Melody & Rhythm

First, play the song a lot, in many environments.

Listen to it especially at home and in the shower.

Sing along with the melody only, especially if it is complex or unusual. Just familiarise yourself with the flow of the notes and the melodic shapes that the singer uses.

And focus on the rhythm of the notes in the melody. Notice the typical rhythms. Notice the variations, are there any patterns to how the rhythm mutates? Notice the deviations away from the patterns. Notice any words or notes that are lengthened, notice any pauses. This is especially important if you are learning a song from another language or culture: the melody constructs can be dramatically different between different cultures, especially if the cultures originated from entirely separate substrates.

Second, can you dissect the melody at all?

Perhaps the singer uses little accidental notes sometimes. These are not part of the melody. Notice them and iron them out so that you can grasp the true melody properly. You can add the accidentals back in later, or add your own stylistic changes.

Lyrics

Third, now that you are familiar with the melody and rhythm, look at the lyrics.

We are not trying to memorise the lyrics. You can do that in a later phase if you wish.

Lyrics are like detailed decoration. If you try to sing along before you know the melody well enough, you will be creating incorrect neural pathways in your brain for this new song. It is more sensible and efficient to simply avoid making any lyric-related neural pathways until you have the melody and rhythm .

Remember that every action you do utilises neural pathways, and the more times you repeat that action, the more reflexive it'll become.

You absolutely do not want to create dysfunctional, erroneous reflexes!

Thus, it is much better to avoid creating any altogether. Avoid that by ignoring the lyrics until you are ready to sing the lyrics at the correct pitch and rhythm.

Read the lyrics along with the song a few times. Mumble them or say them if you can. If the melody is complicated, don't worry about that for now, just focus on the timing of the words.

In singing, we are allowed to make "frame-drops", because the timing is more important than the words. In a song, the rhythm is king, if you deviate from it you will confuse everyone else playing with you, everyone singing along, etc. You abide by the rhythm. This is not optional. Thus, if you miss a word, you miss that word. Do not try to sing it late.

We can consider this as equivalent to "real-time computing".

Notice which lyrics you struggle to say/sing at the right time. Focus on them, without the music, then with the music. Loop the section in your and slow it down as much as necessary so that you can repeat it correctly, over and over. You'll do this process again for the whole song later when it comes to practising and consolidating your flow.

Pronunciation

Yes, this part gets its own section.

If you think that pronunciation isn't that important, or that it's ok to be "good enough" rather than "I'm always improving to become as good as possible", then read .

Here, you need to focus on three main aspects:

1. Pronunciation of the words

2. Pronunciation of the connections between every word

3. Intonation & of each word within its pitch

Intonation in songs in non-tonal languages is usually irrelevant, as the tonation will simply bend to fit the melody. But in tonal languages, sometimes the word tonation is necessary, and sometimes the singer chooses to do it regardless of how important it may be.

Some Vietnamese songs — usually the more-traditional ones — abide by their language's intonation rules. Some tones are pitch-based, some are quality-based; thus, some are harder to include within a melody, while others are simple. In some songs, the pitch of the word's tone starts on pitch of the note in the melody, but in other songs, the tone's pitch ends on the pitch in the melody. And sometimes the tone is abandoned altogether 😂 If you are singing a tonal language, you should probably take some time to master the tones first!

1. Pronunciation of the words

If you don't already speak the language, go study the IPA for it. If you're not familiar with IPA, go study that too. And also study the IPA of your own language so that you understand where you're starting from and therefore can build a bridge between your own pronunciation model and your target language. The in the target language will have different allowable variances than in your own language, so it is vital that you learn which how to pronounce correctly — otherwise, your pronunciation variances will sound like you are saying different words!

a) study the IPA of your language

b) study the IPA of the target language

c) practise pronouncing accurately in the target language

d) use your new pronunciation model to practise the lyrics

Always start slowly!

2. Pronunciation of the connections

In pronunciation, this is called "connected speech".

The Myth of Liaison

Note that "connected speech" is NOT "liaison";

Also note that "liaison" does NOT exist in English, despite what your teachers may have taught you!

In linguistics, "liaison" is specifically the pronunciation of usually-silent final letters, in French, when the next word begins with a vowel.

This is because many final letters in French are silent as per the rules of French phonology.

In English, in general, final letters are not silent under any rules (except for Magic E, which is a totally different situation), and final letters are always pronounced (whether with an audible sound or a cutting of the sound, such as the glottal T). Thus, a word spoken in isolation already has its final sound pronounced, so a word spoken after it does not have any direct impact on the pronunciation of that final sound.

As a disclaimer, there are certain phonetic circumstances in which something that seems like "liaison" happens, and it is a liaison-like effect, but it is not liaison per se.

This is actually really important for English learners to understand, because a mis-apprehension of this concept results directly in English learners believing that it is ok to drop the final sound of any or even every word. This may be even worse than we might imagine, because "dropping" a sound means different things in different languages! In English, "dropping" a T or a K means dropping it down to the glottis, while dropping a G refers to pronouncing an ⟨ng⟩ /ŋ/ as only an ⟨n⟩ /n/. But for Vietnamese learners of English, they do not perceive the glottal T (because a glottal stop is part of a tone for them, the dấu ngã), so when they "drop" a T, they end up pronouncing an open-ended vowel instead.

The Myth of Liaison is actually extremely damaging to students in their learning & training.

[[ read more on Phlowyd Linguistics ]]

Start slow, speed it up gradually, reach full speed, then make it faster than full speed. Once you are comfortable saying & singing the lyrics faster than the original song goes, you'll be more-than-comfortable singing it at its normal speed.