Ah but Californian lazy sounds good, Texan lazy sounds good, Washington Lazy sounds terrifying. So I'm not sure if it's different degrees of laziness or just different tides over the pebbles (hey you brought pebbles into this)
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When I was young I used to think I had "no accent". When I travelled, and especially when I went to university abroad (well, in the UK, but that is abroad from my home even though I am a British passport holder), I was soon dissuaded from that line of thought.|
Originally Posted by Westley
That's exactly how we sing AND speak. With "no accent". Not everyone in America sounds like a New Yorker, a Minnesotan (yah dontcha know) or a Texan (Ah tell yu wut!).
Some of us speak "plainly" with a boring non-accent that can't really be parodied. And THAT is what I'm talking about. |
An American I knew thought I sounded Australian. When I lived in Buckinghamshire (south England, near London) a lot of people there thought I was from New Zealand. When I lived and went to university in Yorkshire (north England, I was near Leeds) several locals and a Scot I knew at uni thought I was Canadian (older Guernsey folks, like my late grandfather, do/did tend to add "eh" to the end of every sentence, though I only slip into doing that when I get drunk), while many Scousers, Mancs and Geordies (all Northern English folks with strong regional accents) thought I sounded like a "southern English softy" (yes, England has a strong North/South division/rivalry too). A girl I dated from Gran Canaria even said she thought I was South African when she first met me.
So I no longer think that anyone has no accent. And I think the accent you natively have can even affect how other people sound to you. Funnily enough people from the south/southeast of England also sound like they have "no accent" to me, in addition to folks from where I live, and yet when I used to go on family holidays to Hampshire (mid-south England) we always got asked by strangers where we were from - they could detect we weren't local from our accent, while they sounded "accent neutral" to me - weird, eh?
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Originally Posted by Westley
HA! I just took an online quiz which is pretty fun. Here are my results:
""You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio." |
. For fun I took the quiz - apparently I sound like a New Yorker, which tells me that quiz is a little bit ... insular. I don't think I could sound less like a New Yorker while still being a native English speaker.As far as the BBC used to be concerned Edinburgh English (England + Scotland hybridised accent - somewhat like Prime Minister Gordon Brown's accent) was the perfect neutral accent for broadcasting - the one least likely to cause offence, be misunderstood or evoke regional bias in the many areas of the UK which have their own strong regional accents. Thankfully nowadays they're a bit more broad minded so we get plenty of different regional accents on TV (which probably makes a lot of British shows utterly impossible to understand to Americans, and also to anyone who doesn't speak English natively but learns it).
Well, my lancastrian (English) accent came out as:
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I don't get asked those questions. Mostly I get asked to repeat what I just said. |
Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop." |
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I can live with that, London/New York mentality
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Your Result: The Northeast Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak. |
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3Ms - Manufactured Mainstream Music|
Originally Posted by Westley
....when you sing? This is something that I've always noticed for years, but just thought to actually ask some foreigners.... when Brits, Aussies, and even some from a non-English speaking background sing, they often times "lose" their accent and "sound American".
Why is this? Do any of you know? Is it by accident, or is it planned? Do they "sound American" on purpose to sell more records in America, or is it just the way the voice changes when the sounds are elongated? Some examples: Heck even the RUSSIANS sound American when singing English: Tatu And most of these people have pretty THICK accents when speaking... So, can ANYONE answer to me why this happens? |
in other words - awful
http://www.scene-and-heard.com/cov/covsig.jpg
It's just a thought, but going by the OP list maybe it's because American radio stations only plays the stuff that sounds American?
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Originally Posted by Bull Throttle
It's just a thought, but going by the OP list maybe it's because American radio stations only plays the stuff that sounds American?
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Damn...you sure you can't take him back?|
Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
As an Irish Person let me reiterate our apologies for Bono. We're very, very sorry for that (but he's yours now!).
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In your examples..
Elton John = Emulating the American Rock and Roll style.
Basically all the stuff that you Americans import are usually stuff that sounds American. Infact it's a pretty common occurance in marketting to 'Americanize' bands to get them to sell, infact the versions you hear on the radio are usually specially treated versions of the songs to sound just that little bit more American most of the time.
Hmm...here's a thing...I've always considered Queen to sound 'British' thanks to the unique vocal stylings of the late, great Freddie Mercury. Mind you his voice was pretty much unique and a style all his own.
According to a friend who does singing professionally (weddings and the like, mostly big band stuff like Sinatra) 95% of all voice coaches will train a singers voice to sound more American...if only because it's a more generic singing voice and allows for a wider range, any accents normally get trained out completely for when people sing.
There is such a thing as a singing voice and a talking voice.
So that's your answer, most of the talentless pop twats that we ship over to you are trained to sing in the American style and then further treated to sound even more American in the studios.
The Super Furry Animals sound delightfully Welsh. As does Marina and the Diamonds. And the entirety of Brit-pop in general sounds British (Oasis, Blur, Pulp etc).*
As the others say the stuff you seem to end up with mostly is the stuff packaged to sound American, probably so that you don't recoil in horror (or at least that's what the suits think would happen).
* *(Also we're very sorry for Boyzone, Westlife and Jedward too. Actually those three are all Louie Walsh's fault)
Now I've depressed myself with the lack of decent Irish musical talent*
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Don't worry Carni, My Lovely Horse buys a lot of brownie points, you're still in credit...just. |
Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
The Super Furry Animals sound delightfully Welsh. As does Marina and the Diamonds. And the entirety of Brit-pop in general sounds British (Oasis, Blur, Pulp etc).*
As the others say the stuff you seem to end up with mostly is the stuff packaged to sound American, probably so that you don't recoil in horror (or at least that's what the suits think would happen). * *(Also we're very sorry for Boyzone, Westlife and Jedward too. Actually those three are all Louie Walsh's fault) Now I've depressed myself with the lack of decent Irish musical talent* Thank the deities for Fight Like Apes! |
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Actully, U2 does sound pretty Irish to me. The Cranberries sound VERY Irish as well as Sinead O'Connor|
Originally Posted by Westley
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The Beatles sound very British to me, even being able to hear their regional accent, Liverpudlian. The Who were also very Brit-sounding (maybe one of the reasons they never got the Grammy nod
).As far as American singers, please don't say Elvis represents the 'American accent.' His singing was heavily inflected with a Southern dialect.
But, in general, singing smooths out regional accents because most regional accents are defined by patterns in speech which are not replicated in mainstream singing: clipping of sounds, mudding of vowel sounds, application of pitch patterns to every word, phrase, or sentence (since the song has its own melody which enforces a pitch).
Also, just like there are formal styles of speech versus colloquial styles (e.g., people will say 'gonna' and 'wanna' in conversational English, but, when giving a formal speech, they will say 'going to' and 'want to'); mainstream music has a formal style which trumps the singer's normal conversation speech behaviors.
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"Love me do" is British for "love my hair."
Fun factoid: all of the variations of the British accent are fairly recent, rising within the last 200 years or so. Americans in the northeastern part of the US actually speak the King's English, so authentic Shakespeare would essentially be done in an accent similar to the Boston-Maine area. Along with the accent, a lot of Ye Olde English expressions and phrases were preserved over here, as well.
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*tries to picture Hamlet portrayed by John F. Kennedy.*|
Originally Posted by Ironik
Americans in the northeastern part of the US actually speak the King's English, so authentic Shakespeare would essentially be done in an accent similar to the Boston-Maine area.
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rofl
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Are you kidding me? The FIRST LINE of "Kryptonite" sounds like the ******* Lone Star State anthem.|
Originally Posted by Westley
You don't even have to go to COUNTRY music to hear southerners "losing their accent". I can give you one PRIME example off the top of my head: 3 Doors Down.
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"I tukk a wawk arahnd the wurld to eese mah trubbled mahnd?"
Really?
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Originally Posted by Bull Throttle
Don't worry Carni, My Lovely Horse buys a lot of brownie points, you're still in credit...just.
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Christ, I thought Jedward and the rest of the Louie Walsh brigade were bad. Sorry America. Even we have no idea what's going on here.*
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This thread is further proof that American English is the goodest way to talk...
wait.. d;D
Only read the first post, so forgive any repetition, but:
Nonsense. Loads of European bands/singers don't sound american. British bands off the top of my head which are patently singing in a british accent are Pulp and Blur, and Gogol Bordello and a host of polish bands i hear every day don't sound american at all. and Tatu? hear them in the original and you'll realise they were only putting on a yank accent because, well, lowest common denominator and all that. In a market which even insists on remaking British films because they're not American enough, it's not surprising that you get dumbed down Americanised versions of things.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
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Likewise.|
Originally Posted by New Dawn
None of them sound american to me. [/CENTER] |
If you listen closely they pronounce the words they sing aren't rhotic in comparison to American singers. For example R-coloured vowels (found in American accents) in words such as car and north is less exentuated in English artists tracks.
Maybe the music styles can be quite similar at times... but I guess that's why they call it pop music.
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As a singing teacher I don't teach people to sound American.
However, I do usually have to change the vowel sounds produced when singing and speed up the consonants.
Take the simple phrase 'I love you'
If I were to say it like I sing it you would hear ' Islay View' That is Islay as in the Hebridean Island which might not help if you don't already know how to pronounce that...
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It possibly harks back to the 1950s when americans were seen as cool and exotic because of Elvis and/or movie stars like Marlon Brando/James Dean.
There are plenty of musicians who sound regional, but it's also worth bearing in mind that all the pop that gets into the American market comes through people like Simon Cowell. If he doesn't like regional accents (or thinks that americans won't like/understand/buy them), then you don't get to hear them.
You should also recognise how lazy (not an insult) the american accent is, the words are like pebbles worn by the sea, the rough edges which you find in the accents of other countries are rubbed away. It's easier to say "gonna" than "going to", for example, and this is usually allows for a better flow of words which is important when singing.
I believe that it's significant that a lot of americans came originally from south-western england, where the accent is very rounded. Think pirates. A lot of americanisms appear to originate here.
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