General Music Chat

I thank I'll go bowl an aig..

I suppose we need to remember that the voice is an instrument like any other...

Ofcourse it is. However, the twang/accent has nothing to do with the voice itself. It has to do with diction and pronunciation. And naturally, it depends on where and who you grew up around. So, when some upstate biatch starts singing with a twang or an Australian dude sings with a twang, I get kinda pissed off. It's like fakin an orgasm: It's all good til I know that you're faking it... ha.

It's like an actor on a movie faking the "southern drawl", you can see right through it.. One I couldnt see thru was "House" : an English actor with a US accent, I was dumbfounded..

Hi ZXYZ and Andragon,
I agree about pronunciation, and that it does sound less than appealling hearing a singer faking an accent.
I though, still defend the singer/musicians validity to do it: the voice is an instrument and it is not only the tone of pure notes that the singer controls, but the tone of individual letters and words.
I have no idea about the USA, but here in Europe which is a much larger area of regions and accents, many people learn to speak Russian or German or Hungarian or French and Spanish etc, and in speaking the language you try to learn to make the sounds of letters as someone from that country would speak them.

A guitar plugged into the simplest amplifier is okay, but the tone is hard and pure, so most people add a tadge of reverb or pflange or overdrive to take its sound away from what you might say nature intended it to be.

In the UK where football (soccer) is god, boys grow up able to sing in quite deep manly voices from the chest, because that is the traditional way to project your voice at a football match... if you went to a game and sang from your head like a choirboy your mates would look at you with open mouths!

So yes, I am playing the devil's advocate a bit to encourage the debate; I do though believe we should allow the voice to be seen as an adaptable instrument... think of the singer in Guns'nRoses: is that his natural voice, I mean the one he sang with, from a boy.
And Freddie Mercury: maybe the most beautiful and articulate rock voice ever; was that his natural schoolboy voice, or one he found he could do and developed in Queen... in truth I don't know, but he sounds to me like someone who uses his voice as an instrument, and he used accent and pronunciation in quite a theatrical way often.

Much of my singing is playing nursery rhymes with my little girl, and she likes me to put on a voice for the lamb etc; I shall wait now for the day when she acuses me of faking it!
Mark................

Your daughter and I have something in common.
I too have heard the voice of the Lamb.

Yea, the European crowds are the best crowd/chanters in the world, because of the whole stadium chants. Good stuff.

You still haven't countered my argument, though. Vocal rasp or the tone is very different from singing with an accent. The former add to the "feeling" aspect of the singing, while the latter supposedly accentuates the "authenticity" of the singing. It's quite ironic; the fake accent is supposed to add to the authenticity.

...I, also, suppose it doesn't help that I don't like country, eh?

Hi Andrew,
I know it's all a bit different... but I thought I offered a reasonable explanation.
When you put a rasp in your voice deliberately, you do it very much to increase its authenticity... a wimpish choirboy warble impresses no one, where Bryan Adams singing "everything I do... I do it for you" with its plaintive edge makes you believe it's true as he says it... though he has said it for the past twenty years, and it probably wasn't true when he first said it!
Mark..................

ps. I am sorry that I forget the lady's name on this site who sings opera and rock; my guess is that we would hear a very different vocal tone from her in each of those genre?

He sang it just to get em in the sack. He probably still does. Canadians do that often

Hi Andrew,
Yes I had heard this too about Canadians... I was told it's because they are very spread apart and get very few opportunities to mate so they get very desperate!
I hear they even surprise the odd moose from time to time!
Can any confirm this please?
Bedtime now in little old England!
Mark............

Hi Andrew,
Yes I had heard this too about Canadians... I was told it's because they are very spread apart and get very few opportunities to mate so they get very desperate!
I hear they even surprise the odd moose from time to time!
Can any confirm this please?
Bedtime now in little old England!
Mark............

Well, I will say my Canadian friend will neither confirm or deny the part about the moose...but to be safe I would steer clear of the moose meat.

Hello Jessica,
In England ostrich became a novelty meat for a few years, but I haven't seen it lately; it was a lovely dark tender meat a bit like fillet steak from a cow.
Deer is very good too, and as we have vast numbers in Sussex many get clobbered on the road, but I have yet to find one freshly killed so I can throw it in my sidecar and ride home for a good deer steak.

Of course I was only kidding about the Canadian's love of the moose! But I would give a leg to try the meat... a nice tender young one perhaps?

I was just up off the bed here on the sitting room floor, where in cold weather the three of us sleep in front of our logfire... wife and daughter are still on it watching Federa play Nadal in the Australian tennis final, but all this talk of moose steaks will send me to make some toast!
Cheers Jessica,
Mark......................