Why Phrasing is Important for Your Singing
Phrasing. What is it and why is important to your singing? Having an understanding of phrasing is essential as a singer. With the many skills to be aware to safeguard your vocals, this one, in particular, is crucial for how you sound. Read below for a breakdown of how phrasing is important to your singing along with helpful advice.
What is phrasing?
Simply put, a phrase is a sentence or part of a sentence. According to dictionary.com, it is “two or more words that express an idea and are a part of a sentence,” or “a small group of words standing together as a conceptual unit, typically forming a component of a clause.” What does this have to do with the concept of phrasing in singing?
Have you ever noticed that when a great singer is delivering a song, it sounds like they are simply speaking the words? It sounds effortless like they are saying the words for the first time. In learning to be an artist, it’s essential to understand how to phrase and develop your own interpretations. Phrasing is the technical foundation for bringing emotion to the song.
Why Phrasing is Important
When learning a new song, I tell my students to start by continuously speaking the words. Speak them as if you’re doing a cold reading of a script, noticing accented syllables and flow of the language. Since many young students don’t understand the concept of a syllable or accents, I explain that accented means louder, stressed, or emphasized. If we didn’t accent our words when speaking, instead of saying everything at the same monotone level, we would sound like robots. Everything would be monochromatic with no variations in intensity, making it difficult to understand the sentence and completely removing any emotion.
How to Phrase a Song
Again, speak the words! On the working copy of your music that you use to write notations and reminders, make personal notes to quickly memorize your adjustments. Underline the accented syllables. “Lean” or “cry” into the accented words with slightly elongated vowels and emotion.
Composers often place the emotional words on downbeats or the first beat of each measure, so pay attention to those. Circle consonants you want to emphasize. Put a little break sign or a backward “L” before the “vowel-initiated words” (words that start with a vowel) you want to glottal. Put a little connector sign between vowel-initiated words you want to make legato or smooth.
A true glottal is an onset of tone, slamming the vocal cords. We never want to do that! The opposite is a breathy tone where the cords are not touching or approximating totally. A perfect onset is right in the middle—your voice teacher can help with that. But when a musical director asks for “a little glottal,” they want you to pause the air slightly before saying the vowel-initiated word.
Note the flow of the language when you speak: There is an impetus, a momentum, force, drive, or movement toward the next word, toward the next concept, or the end of the sentence.
Are you enunciating them with thought? Are you making them hard or soft? Percussive or gentle? Quick or drawn out? How are you using your lips, tongue, and jaw to articulate your enunciation?
