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To: "VOCALIST" <vocalist>
Subject: Re: TECH: singing "ah"
Date sent: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 12:55:52 -0500
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

Uh would be an unacceptably darker substitute for ah if both were being
pronounced according to the phonetics books. If a student's spoken and/or
sung ah is on the high-wide side, aiming towards what she thinks of as uh
may help her release some upward-sideward tongue tension and land her smack
dab on an IPA-approved ah - due north of uh. This seems to be a common
ailment here in Albany which I did not come across in my students when I
lived in Chicago. Chicagoans on the other hand, have a creative patois all
our own!

Of course, not hearing the particular student makes it more difficult to
diagnose and offer the best suggestion. Wouldn't it be fun if we all had
high quality mic's and digital cameras set up and could record accurate
real-world examples for our questions? We could post them at a specified
site and have something more concrete to go by than a description which may
or may not hit on the underlying problem at hand.

Laura Sharp

----- Original Message -----
From:
(snip)uh is darker than ah and aw
according to most schools of thought regarding vowel modulation. too dark
an
ah can be caused by too 'covered' a tone. maybe throwing in a little jerry
lewis might help.