Let’s start by establishing something really important:  Singing with an accent in itself is not a bad thing.  Every singer has some sort of accent.  How many Americans try and sound like they’re from Liverpool while singing a Beatles song?  And more recently, would Green Day sound right without that British accent a-la Johnny Rotten?  What about a more extreme example, like the Cranberries?  No one cares.  If it sounds great it just sounds great and it can even give a singer charactor.  Try singing country music without that “twang...”  A bit of a southern accent only helps.

It’s all part of making a singer special.  When the singer starts singing you should know right away who they are...  Oh that’s so and so.  Accent is part of that.  In addition, you want to really FEEL the lyric.  This is the absolute most important thing.  While you can’t completely mispronounce a word, a great emotional performance can sell a not so perfect enunciation or vowel choice.  If it comes from the heart, we feel it.  A perfect example of this is the 70’s and 80’s band “REO Speedwagon.”  Terrible pronunciation, and multi-platinum selling records.

I’ve been very lucky to have taken lessons from a couple of truly amazing voice coaches, Ron Anderson (briefly) and Bob Rose (extensively).  I did this because as a guitar player, when you can also sing you get hired a whole lot more often!  I never intended to use the skills I learned in the ways I’m using them now - to help people with varying degrees of english language skills sing in english and in many cases sound good doing it.  It started as an accident, with a Finnish girl band called “Tik Tak.”

Press play on the picture to the left of the girls playing live and you’ll hear one of my favorite songs off of that first record.

Since then I’ve worked with a lot of singers.  Some more successful than others.  Lately I’ve been really concentrating on phrasing more and more.  Bob (Rose) says that anyone can learn to make any sound, because we’re all physically capable of producing them.  Phrasing is something else.  Some people get it, some don’t, some of it can be taught.  Luckily most of my singers can really sing so they are able to get the phrasing right with some coaching.  It’s also VERY important for the singer to hear a recoding of themselves making the sounds and trying to sing the lyric.  I’ve found that they learn much faster this way.

When phrasing there are two key things I’ve found so far in dealing with Finns, Russians, Estonians and Latvians - They pronounce vowels and consonants with equal importance and and they don’t usually understand when to close a diphthong.  In case you don’t know, a diphthong is a vowel sound made by combining two vowel sounds  I’m not going to spend the time on the right phonetic notations.  If you really need more info just follow this link.

Let’s take the case of the Finns singing in english.  In finnish, double consonants and vowels are actually pronounced.  The double vowels aren’t very impactful when singing in english but the consonants change everything.  This is kinda hard to explain without getting into music theory and notation but I’ll give it a stab.  A word like “Kukka” gets pronounced Kuk-ka.  Since you’re pronouncing both of the Ks this adds time to the word.  In both singing and speaking Finnish you need to do this, because taking the extra K away actually changes the meaning of the word.  I’ve noticed that some translations into Finnish actually have to change the melody slightly to accommodate these things.

So when Finns sing a word like “cannot” they end up applying equal time to the vowels and consonants.  It sounds a little odd in my American ear, and at first I couldn’t understand what was wrong.  I didn’t hear anything actually mispronounced.  Eventually I realized that the “a” sound was too short, while the “n” sounds was too long.  When I sing the word, the n is audible but not overly emphasized.  The Finn (Russian, Estonian, Etc.) spends too much time on the n and throws the phrasing off. 

Now that I’ve realized this it’s pretty easy to either coach it out of the singer, or in a worst case scenario, stretch the vowel and shrink the consonant in Pro Tools using elastic audio. 

Here’s my step by step approach:

1. 1. Roll some sort of recording device.  It can help the process a lot when the singer can review what we’ve gone over later. 
   

2. 2.Start by reading through the lyric.  I find that this can be a key part of the process.  Use this time to explain concepts and discuss how words are formed if there are problems.  Sometimes it may be necessary to change some lyrics if that is possible.
   

3. 3.Open up a Pro Tools session or some other equivalent pro recording program of the song you’re going to track later.  I like to use an SM 58 right there in the control room as a mic.  Have the singer go through the song, line by line if necessary, until you have a decent version of the song with correct pronunciation.  This does not need to be a great performance, just very correct.
   

4. 4.Make a cd of all the above work, or some other form of audio file and send the singer home to practice.  Ideally one or two days should be enough before the actual session.  They should practice hard that evening and get a good nights sleep to let it all sink in.  The sleep is critical, since this is the time when our learning is solidified.
   

5. 5.For the actual session, I get them singing correctly for a few takes and then go for the performance.  This gives me the material I need in case I get a great performance with a messed up word or two.  I can use the earlier material and cut it in to fix the problem spots.
   

6. 6.It’s really important to talk to the singer about what they are singing and why.  I’ve been really surprised on many occasions because I thought the singer knew what they were singing about, only to find they really where in a completely different place.  And another thing... get the lyric out of their hands as much as possible.  You can really tell when they are reading.
   

Obviously there’s more to it than these few things, but this is a good start!  Have fun singing and I hope you are accent friendly!

Tracy