Enunciation issue when singing Sandy Lam's song《Still》& Mariah Carey's song《I still believe》
Singing not only requires you having the sense of rhythm and in tune, enunciation is also very important. Are you sure you can enunciate those "simple" words ? Should we grin to sing Sandy Lam's song 《Still》？I will take the 2 songs <Still> and <I still believe> as examples to explain the issue of enunciation in singing.
【Video Version】
【Text Version】
Does Sandy Lam grin to sing the song <Still>😬」？
<Still> was a song released in 1989 and sung by Sandy Lam. It was a Cantonese cover of an English song <I still believe> which was originally sung by the American female singer "Brenda K. Starr”. But most Asians are more familiar with Mariah Carey’s cover version released in 1999.
Do we “bite” a word (that’s related to Cantonese) ?
Actually we don’t “bite” a word. Other than the teeth, we use our lips, tongue and palate as articulators. Every word is composed of consonant and vowel. In order to say or sing a word clearly, we need to clearly produce the “vowel”; while consonant is relatively for complementary purpose.
Take the song <Still> of Sandy Lam as example. Most people may think that the word “依” need to be sung with a mouth shape when we take the photo (say “cheers” with horizontal mouth shape and teeth exposed). If that’s the case, the mouth shape will be too “flat” and the voice will be lack of richness and depth; our voice cannot be forwardly projected.
Both consonant “Y” and Vowel “EE” need to have tip of tongue slightly touching the bottom inner teeth, while the middle of the tongue will be raised (forming an arch). This would narrow the space between the tongue and palate. To increase the vocal tract space, we need to slightly drop down the jaw so that the space behind the tongue could be increased. This would make our voice full and firm. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is " ji"
Same logic applies to the song “I still believe”. You can find the phonics and IPA as follows:
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