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Remember
that knowledge of vowels is essential to good overall singing
because, when we sing
we are in fact, singing vowels.
We are not actually singing
words per se
because, it is impossible
to sing whole words at the same time.
Rather, we break the words up into smaller pieces call phonies,
which were either vowels or consonants,
and because consonants cannot actually be sung but rather are articulated,
we are then left with vowel sounds
and if we are not aware
of what to sing
when we are singing it, the act of singing becomes a guessing game.
What comes of out of our mouths is by chance right or wrong,
and all too often
cannot be easily repeated when it is right, also
style itself within the act of singing is also very dependent
on vowel sound production.
The contras act of shaping vowels differently
than what they were originally intended makes what we are singing unique,
especially when it is repeatable.
But again,
all of these things require a knowledge of what we are singing when we
are singing it
so let's begin to look at our next set of vowels.
Within our system of english vowels, two out of the fourteen vowels are known as
medial vowels. In other words,
they are caught in between a pair of closely related vowels.
Medial "Ah"
is one of these two mid vowels,
and is the reason behind many regional accents
within the United States,
as well as accents heard in non-american-born
English-speaking people.
This vowel is found in words such as "Can't"
"Faster," "Dancing," "Hammer,"
and "Band."
Within American regionalisms,
we hear the sound distorted so much and so often
that it has become
the driving force behind certain accents.
In the south,
we may hear people say "I can't stand it."
which is part of the whole
southern drawl.
In areas in the mid eastern sections of the United States such as New Jersey,
we often hear,
"I can't stand it."
which is a little more nasel and squeezed off.
In countries such as England,
there really is no Medial Ah sound at all.
So, any of these words
would have Medial Ah replaced with regular ah.
"I can't"
will be replaced with "I can't"
and so on.
to pronounce this vowel properly,
we have to realize what it is in between.
It is in between the sounds "Eh"
and the sound ah.
If you want to find the perfect formation of this vowel,
I suggest you take any word that contains Medial Ah,
and replace it with the sound "Eh."
The word "hand" for instance, would start off as "Hen"
and you would repeat this fake word slowly
morphing it into the word "hand."
Let me give an example,
hend, hend, hend, hend, hand, hand, hand.