Being a Singer

Let's recap our vowels:

• Primary series |ᴜ| |ə| |ɑ|
• Front Vowels |î| |ê| |æ|
• Lip-Rounded |å|
• And that maverick |ȓ|

And let's recap our rule: We are trying to find a way through all these vowels of the song that allows the voice to remain mobile, expressive and un-strained. The only way to achieve this is to use the narrow deep place in the throat for all the vowels. The only vowels that remain inside that space are given above, so those are the sounds we have to use.

In the following three excerpts from popular songs, I have placed the standard 'by-the-book' vowels above the lyric lines.

The first is 'Someone you Loved' by Lewis Capaldi. Here's the chorus:

I did the above substitutions by-the-book, unstyled without reference to the recording. Listening afterwards to his performance it's interesting to note that Capaldi tends to keep quite a rounded shape resulting in front vowels that are a bit more towards the lip-rounded sound like German |ü| rather than the straight-out |î| sound. There's nothing wrong with that: his vowels are resonant and we can stay lip-rounded if that's how we want to sound: his underlying path is on the level. He does of course do some upward breaks on the verse, which I talk about in detail elsewhere ('Soundscaping'). Also I favoured a vowel change on the 'my guard', going for |ɑ||å|, probably followed by |ȓ|. Capaldi sings it straight m|ɑ| g|ɑ|d same vowel for both words. Maybe his speaking accent has some influence on his vowels styling and consequent dark overall tone.

A final comment on Capaldi's sound: although a very modern sound, the high pressure air and consequent extra-deep and rounded vowels he uses on the louder passages is to my ear somewhat similar to certain old-school metal-singer technique.

Now for something completely different: As American as it gets, awarded and nominated all over the place, the song is written by  Lady Gaga with Andrew Wyatt, Anthony Rossomando and Mark Ronson. So you can be sure that every vowel and phrase was studied and polished. Additionally the performer was on the songwriting team which can (not always) give a song an edge in the way it fits to a singer and her style. So we can be examining the song for all kinds of fancy poetical fripperies.

Here's Vs 2:
 

Again, this was done by-the-book first, but knowing the song's background I did it American style with the retroflex R |ȓ| sounds noted in. On listening back I figure it's pretty much what she did, except on I'm Falling she uses |ɑ| on both vowels, where I used |ɑ||å| which is perhaps more a British concept. But again, both are perfectly good, it's just a styling choice which is always yours to make. Also, on 'deep end' and 'surface' she uses |æ| not |ê|. But after all,  |æ| is just a more potent version of  |ê|, so again a great styling choice that helped make a brilliant vocal performance.

I mentioned fancy songwriting earlier: just a note on the kind of thing you can look out for when examining a song is the balance between 'surface' |əȓ||æ| and later in the same line 'hurt us' |əȓ||ə|. In the soundscaping chapter there's lots more about this and allied topics.

Remember: Although we might write all the vowels into a vowel-path document that does't mean every vowel has the same dynamic weight: Only some vowels will be key vowels, others will be subordinate and partly muted or sung with breath in the tone, or simply glossed over, becoming just a rhythmic blip. Once again, those are the stylistic choices you need to make, in consultation with what the song is telling you.

If you are interested in song analysis, including vowel path, then I present a weekly YouTube channel where I analyse songs. I also have an ever-growing library of vowel-path documents avaiable on request to subscribers. 

Here's a third song, one that has been covered by so many artists they simply can't be counted. It was written by a luminous team of established hit songwriters Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, and George David Weiss, the latter having been president of the Songwriters Guild of America at one time