[nabs-l] Community choir question

[Bridgit Pollpeter]

Kelsey,

The best advice I can give is to think how you say a word with a given
vowel sound, then emulate how you speak it when singing. For example, if
the director says to use an Ah vowel sound, speak Ah out loud, consider
how your mouth feels when speaking it, then try to sing it. Does this
make sense? The shape of your mouth will be the same speaking when
singing.

Bridgit
Message: 13
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 23:44:20 -0400
From: Kelsey Nicolay <piano.girl0299 at gmail.com>
To: nabs-l at nfbnet.org
Subject: [nabs-l] community choir question
Message-ID: <5281a422.450d320a.3352.ffffb0a8 at mx.google.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed

Hello,
I currently sing in a community choir in my city.  I like it a 
lot and have really become good friends with people in my 
section.  However, I've been in choirs since fourth grade, but I 
still have trouble understanding vowel shapes.  I guess it's 
because my directors really didn't know how to explain that in a 
way that made sense.  Anyway, the director will tell the group 
something like: "Oo should look like ah." But if I don't know 
what that looks like, how am I supposed conform it? So my 
question to you guys is: Since this is a community choir, do I 
need to tell someone about this? They put me next to two very 
strong singers, one of which is a board member.  I feel 
comfortable talking to both of them and they do their best to 
help me out, but I just feel very uncomfortable bringing this up 
with anyone.  I think this is kind of a silly question to ask 
your director considering I've been in choir for this long, but I 
also don't want to stick out either.  Should the board know about 
this so they can figure out how they can help me understand what 
he's talking about? How can my neighbors unobtrusively show me 
this during rehearsal? Is there a good tactile clue that I could 
establish with them to let me know that the director wants the 
vowels to be more round? If it is at all helpful, I'm a tactile 
learner as well as an audio learner, so I need someone to 
actually show me how to do something.  Someone who has been in 
this situation before, please share your thoughts.
Thanks in advance,
Kelsey Nicolay