Something stage actors will catch that others may not
I recently ran across the BBC video of "God Only Knows" that has a crapton of famous singers in it. Because I've done so much stage singing, I now notice how often people sing "choo" instead of "you" in these songs. For example, Brian Wilson sang it, "God only knows what I'd be without you..." Whereas several of the other singers (many of whom I couldn't identify) would sing, "God only knows what I'd be withow choo..."
I was disabused of singing "choo" (among other word smushes) when I did choral work at first, and then when I did my sole Gilbert & Sullivan show this came up again so now I say the ending consonant of the previous word and sing "you". I'm quite deliberate about it. When I did a production of "A Christmas Carol" last year and we were singing a wassail song, I remember almost singing staccato during "our bowl it is white" just so bowl and it wouldn't smash together into one word.
This does not help when singing other languages, however. In Spanish (for example) if a word ends in a vowel and the next word starts with one, the last syllable of the first word and the first syllable of the second word get munged together. Oh, and words that start with h count since h is silent in Spanish. For example, in "Eres Tú" there's a line "como el fuego de mi hoguera" which on first blush would require ten separate notes to sing, one per syllable. But you only get eight because como and el are smushed together (sung "coh moel") and mi and hoguera are smushed together (sung "mio guera").
And this, folks, is why I love language so much.
I was disabused of singing "choo" (among other word smushes) when I did choral work at first, and then when I did my sole Gilbert & Sullivan show this came up again so now I say the ending consonant of the previous word and sing "you". I'm quite deliberate about it. When I did a production of "A Christmas Carol" last year and we were singing a wassail song, I remember almost singing staccato during "our bowl it is white" just so bowl and it wouldn't smash together into one word.
This does not help when singing other languages, however. In Spanish (for example) if a word ends in a vowel and the next word starts with one, the last syllable of the first word and the first syllable of the second word get munged together. Oh, and words that start with h count since h is silent in Spanish. For example, in "Eres Tú" there's a line "como el fuego de mi hoguera" which on first blush would require ten separate notes to sing, one per syllable. But you only get eight because como and el are smushed together (sung "coh moel") and mi and hoguera are smushed together (sung "mio guera").
And this, folks, is why I love language so much.