Do modified vowels take you out of the moment? — Page 2

I think modified vowels are fine as long as the correct sound is tacked on to the end.

Two really good examples are in the following;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvwcJUhIa0U

Adam Lambert doing Is Anybody Listening from the Ten Commandments - at 3:05 he goes up to a C5 and the sentence becomes "and still my spirit flays" with the correct vowel sound tied on to the end. I've performed this song, and it's borderline impossible to hit the correct vowel and belt that note.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6_tsLW3X8Y

Jeremy Jordan singing Dolgaya River on the demo recording of Brother Russia. At 2:27, he belts a Bb on the word "run" but modifies it to "rahn" so that he can hit the note.

The other thing is that composers are rarely stupid when it comes to writing in high notes. Very often the belting moment will come on an easily understood vowel or a word that's been repeated several times.

It doesn't bother me except in "With One Look" when most sing the final line as, "With One Look, I'll Be MAHHHHHHHHHH!"

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Guys, how have we reached so far in this post without bringing up the fact that Patti LuPone has built an entire career on modified vowels (some of which I'm convinced she created for herself)?

And I wouldn't change a one of them.

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This board takes me out of the moment :)

For me, "Yewww" is natural in my accent...

One of the most annoying ones: "Let your soul take you where you long to BAAAYYYYYY."

In a truly legendary performance, Helen Morgan in SHOWBOAT (in the 1936 film, at least) sang:

When he goes a wah-hee
That's a rainy dah-hee

In this case, I'll chalk it up to the fact that in the 20's and 30's, you had to be able to project your voice in a huge theatre without microphones. Having a powerful voice was more important than having a ptretty one.

Hmm.... I think it depends. To be honest, I had never even noticed the Astonish-ANG until you mentioned it. I think to a point, speech is always modified, just a little bit. The vowels just sound... different. I guess it's usually more enunciated while singing? But when it stops sounding like speech, and more liking singing (no offense sopranos, but a lot of those really high songs don't sound like people, the words become so distorted) is when it takes you out of the moment. And I totally agree with everyone who has complained about "yew". One word: Aida. There was SO much of that in that show! :P

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

winner.

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"One that bothers me (which I don't know the right solution for) is the pronunciation of "Mormon" in "I Believe." The way it's done accentuates the "i" vowel in the second syllable harshly. I think I would tell an actor to sing in between an "i" and "eh," but it's still not satisfying to me. Maybe it's just the nature of the beast."

Two years in a row the word "Latin" came up in my high school school play. Being from the Philly suburbs (and in a show where the director had bigger problems to deal with than the pronunciation of one word), most people said "La'in" or "La'en" which drove me crazy. But even when people did make a conscious effort to say the T, the TIN/TEN variations were really interesting (and frustrating.) Sitting here going through the different pronunciations of "Mormon" brought me right back.

For me, it depends on the song. The Sutton Foster examples the original poster pointed out don't bother me. Like EricMontreal22 said, pop/rock scores tend to be different.

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