The article I read was called The Tongue as Master of Your Singing: Vowel Modification by Shirlee Emmons. This article overviews five main elements that directors find problematic in coral pieces, all of which can be solved by vowel modification. This article explains why vowels need to be modified for louder, softer, higher, and lower notes. It explains why most choir teachers promote the “blend” of the group by embracing a theory of only using “pure” vowels. In this reflection essay I will review and expand on the different types of vowels: “pure”, acoustical, and speech. First, a “pure” vowel is considered to be one that delivers ease, beauty, and resonance for each particular pitch. When a singer correctly uses vocal tone formed by “pure” vowels, they can avoid muscular problems including hyperfunction and hypofunction. Hyperfunction is when the laryngeal muscle (where the vocal cords are) has increased and poorly regulated tension which can cause Edema, Nodules, Polyps, and Ulcers. Hypofunction is when vocal cords are under functioning and have inadequate tension causing air to escape. Both of these can result in stiffness in the vocal tract, hoarseness, deviations from pitch, limitations in range and dynamics, and other dysfunctions. This makes the singer have to deal with very serious …show more content…
Many choral directors and teachers consider this to be a “pure” vowel, too. This allows someone to produce a clearer and louder sound. The more harmony is used in these vowels, the more vibrant the voice is. These vowels allow the voice more capacity and carrying power. These vowels can give a therapeutic feeling to the singer’s throat, as well as the ears of the audience. When using them, it is also easier to use the appropriate amount of air needed and not disrupt the air supply. Acoustical vowels don’t distract from the song and help you to carry your message
In an experiment, around 350 Chicagoans, were recorded reading the following paragraph, titled “Too Hot for Hockey”, this script was written specifically to force readers to vocalize vowels “that reveal how closely key sounds resemble the accent's dominant traits” (Wbez). The paragraph is as follows:
Seikel, J. A., King, D. W., & Drumright, D. G. (2010). 12. Anatomy & physiology for speech,
I decided to go about this assignment by making a table (table 1.) and marking how many times I hear or notice nine different vocal changes, as well as certain miscellaneous anomalies.
The Voices also build a relationship with the listener, they seem to be trustworthy and to have a sense of humour, and this helps the listener to learn about the characters and to understand the town. An example of this could be found in the prologue when the First Voice addresses the listener personally by saying “Only your eyes are unclosed” and again when it says “And you alone can hear the invisible starfall”. The effect of this makes the listener feel like the Voices are talking to them alone.
Another technique we have to learn in choir practice is we learn now to pronounce vowels and consonants correctly. An example of that would be pronouncing out “D”s as light “T”s. We also have to keep our mouth round and you cannot smile while you’re singing or else it ruins the effect of the vowels. One thing we always always must do is to pronounce the consonants loudly. What our conductors always make us do to help us remember this is to say “We LoVe ouR CoNSoNaNTS!”.
The voice is our primary mean of communication and expression. We rarely last more than a few minutes without its use whether it is talking to someone else or humming quietly to ourselves. We can use the voice artistically in many ways. For example, singing carries the rhythm and melody of speech. It creates patterns of pitch, loudness, and duration that tie together syllables, phrases and sentences. We use the voice for survival, emotion, expression, and to reflect our personality. The loss of the voice is a severe curtailment to many professions. It is affected by general body condition which is why we need to consider the location of the larynx and how that organ produces voice. Surprisingly, this complex biological design is mechanical in function. It is mechanical to the point that when it has been excised from a cadaver and mounted on a laboratory bench, the larynx produces sounds resembling normal phonation. (Titze, Principles)
Nooteboom, Sieb G. 1969. The tongue slips into patterns. Leyden (studies in linguistics and phonetics. The Hague: Mouton, 114- 32
She then mentioned a case study of Temiar (Mon-Khmer, Malaysia) that he had a highly contemplated example of epenthetic vowel situation in elongated consonant groups. Temiar permits just CV and CVC syllables. They are provided with an onset of three or four consonants, Temiar embeds epenthetic vowels to shape a thread of open syllables ended by a closed syllable. The epenthetic vowel is considered as a schwa in open syllables and [e] in closed syllables. The nature of an epenthetic vowel might be resolved in one of two ways: it is either a settled, default quality which may, obviously, be liable to standard allophonic variety as per the dialect's phonology; otherwise the quality is dictated by some piece of the phonological setting.
These three groups were then asked to complete three different tasks. The first was to repeat and segment 20 different words (5 consonant-vowel-consonant, 5 CCVC, 5 CVCC, and 5 CCVCC) and two overall scores were administered to the participants. Both scores were out of a maximum of 20 points; the first score was based on giving 1 point for each correctly analyzed word, and the second score was based on giving 1 point for correctly analyzing medial vowels.
The vocal cords are muscles, and like every other muscle, exercising them enables a better performance. Because of auto-tune, it takes less work to make a good album, which has resulted in more singers, but it has also resulted in many singer's success being determined more by their image than their singing. For example, Lana Del Rey, a famous singer, cannot hold a note for more than a split second before her voice shakes and swerves. Her live performances are heavily diluted with a backing track to support her weak vocals. Even with her lack of vocal ability, she has reached the top of the music charts with several of her singles.
All of us have a singing voice, but not everyone has developed a proper vocal technique or how to use that voice. If you ever have a chance to head out to a Karaoke Bar one evening, chances are you’ll witness a variety of passionate singers. But let’s be honest, some are less pleasing to the ear than others. The point is, there are so many naturally good singers out there that just don’t have the right technique. Even those with the proper training could very easily raise their level of sound and reduce the amount of effort they involved in sounding great.
It is one of the main languages in the world and it is the international language these days. English language is the language that faced many changes that affects in several things. For example, some changes occur in writing system, phonological system and other changes during many centuries. English language is about four stages: Old English, Middle English, Modern English, and Early Modern English. In each era, there is an affection of other tribe’s languages on English language. As an example, Germanic tribes who moved into Britain and have an impact on Old English language are (Angles, Saxons, and Jutes). In the same way, the effects of the tribes lead to have many changes in vowel system, which calls the Great Vowel Shift .In this paper, I will discuss the Great Vowel Shift and the the process of that huge change.
42 In the case of silence, the passage of breath is open through the throat and the cavities above it, thus, the air flows freely through the two operations of exhalation and inhalation without any friction which could cause any production of any sound. In order to produce any sound, this involves the raising of the diaphragm (during exhalation) which presses the lungs and makes the air push out from the lungs to the point of articulation (i.e., the place of obstruction of the sound). As a result, the sound will be produced (Al-Hamad, 2002: 59). The production of a consonant sound requires close articulation by one or more vocal organs, which causes an occlusion at this point of articulation.
All languages have vast variety of speech sound. Phonology have essentials terms in which each of them show the difference between how phonology is differ than phonetics as its not responsible for how to articulate. These phonological terms known as : phoneme , allophone, clear & dark l , syllabic l, minimal pairs , assimilation ,linking r , intrusive r, aspiration , consonant structure & syllable structure. A phoneme is a meaningful sound which shows the difference between two sounds which can change the meaning of word like : . Although allophones are the variation of same sound but they don’t change the meaning of it like < pin / spin >. However
Syllables can be stressed in words, and this can happen in many languages. When there is a stressed syllable it can be marked by an accent mark (`), and there can be multiple words that are stressed, but there is always one stressed vowel that is stronger the other stressed vowels. “Stress, pitch, and juncture work together to create intonation. Stress is the emphasis to certain syllables, pitch is the musicality of a spoken language, and juncture is a pause between words of sentences” (Phonology lecture, 2016). There are many syllables that carry stress, but not all of them have the same stress, and it is always a vowel. The primary stress is very difficult to figure out no matter where you are from because people speak different all over the world. In a sentence or phrase, there is usually one syllable that has more stress that any other syllable. The pitch can go up and down depending on how a sentence or phrase is said. Usually, when sentences are yes or no questions, the pitch ends by rising at the end. If it is a statement or is asking something other than yes or no, the pitch will end flat or fall.