Wordscapes
- Irene Feher
- Oct 10
- 3 min read
Words can be ssooooooo evocative. When I read poetry, inspirational writing or autobiographies, it’s as though I can hear the writer’s voice in my head. I also enjoy reading aloud. I delight in puns and wordplay. Whimsical, wondrous, willy-nilly, wonky, wacky, woeful, wistful, wonderful words.
In our online EuSing! Class this week we improvised on words: we sang them ssssllllllllooowwwwwwlllllyyyyyyyy, then fast and rhythmic. We sang only their vowels, then only their consonants. We repeated syllables, prolonged and bloomed vowels and consonants. We sang words smoothly, then pointillistically on high notes, on low notes, sometimes with multiple pitches on one syllable, sometimes melodic, sometimes monotone. We whispered, called out and babbled. There are so many amazing ways to sing words.
If you play an instrument, you can take any word and engage in an activity that I call “say it then play it”. There are so many different ways one can say and play words. Words strung together in phrases create intricate rhythms. How we articulate words can impact their sound or meaning. Moving natural accentuation to unexpected places can have a fun and peculiar effect.
If the title of this book is perplexing, you can just imagine the laughter that ensued when one of my longtime friends Allan brought this little book to one of my family gatherings. My family all read French but it took a moment for us to realize that the bizarre nonsensical French poetry we were reading out loud sounded like English Mother Goose rhymes recited by a French speaker. Here is one famous example I found online:
“Un petit d’un petit / S’étonne aux Halles Un petit d’un petit / Ah! degrés te fallent
Yes, it’s the first two lines of “Humpty-Dumpty”.
It is amazing how we can rethink the sounds of words and how we articulate them. I bring my students’ awareness to their articulatory landscape. We never think about how we articulate. Fine singers and windplayers articulate sound with the same finesse that instrumentalists articulate with their fingers.
Babbling is an unexpectedly fun way to play with vocal color and musical expression. Straight out gibberish can be easily transformed into the most amazing vocal grooves or seed rhythms. Made up sounds, also known as vocables or in the jazz idiom as scat, are nonsense syllables that sound instrumental. You can also have a very expressive and sometimes hilarious spoken conversation on nonsense syllables. This is the best way to engage in paralinguistics. Paralinguistics focuses on HOW something is said rather than on what is said. I enjoy exploring made up sounds in the vocal studio because so much expression emerges.
During my years of classical singing, I fell in love with art songs. Art song is an intimate form of classical chamber music in which songs are performed by a singer and pianist. Among my favorite art song composers are Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf, Gabriel Fauré and Aaron Copland. My pianist colleagues and I would spend hours experimenting with nuance, interpretation, dynamics, phrasing, and interaction.
Among my Music for People community are a number of wonderful pianists who I enjoy improvising art songs with. I will sometimes make up the text on the spot, or sing a poem, or I will simply sing in a spontaneous made up language. I had the opportunity to offer some art song improv workshops and I loved the way it has both the pianists and singers actively experience the compositional and interpretive process.
I posted several improvised art songs on my YouTube channel. Here are links to several of them. I was very lucky to have the opportunity to expand the chamber music form with other instrumentalists.
Kindness
First Snow
Something Real
I have so many more recordings to go through, but admittedly it is more about the joy of the creative process than the final result. I look forward to more songs in the moment.
I encourage you to chatter, whisper, babble, chant, sing and create your own wordscapes.
SHHHMMMEEEEDAPMOPAHDWEPIDAH
New article in the Unmasking the Elephant series: What's the Rush?
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!
This has always been my favorite holiday of the year. Surrounded by vibrant fall colors, I love gathering with those close to me to share great conversation and comfort food.
