French is, in many ways, more difficult for an English-speaking person to sing. It is so full of complex and trying vowels. It requires the utmost subtlety.
Alma Gluck
Maybe I was just born with a little bit of vocals or natural talent, but I feel like I taught myself. I just started taking vocal lessons to just work on my breathing, my vowels and stuff.
Bryson Tiller
My favorite rhymes are sort of half-rhymes where you might just get the vowel sound the same, but it's not really a true rhyme. That gives you far more flexibility to capture the feeling you're trying to express. But sometimes it's best not to have any rhyme.
Conor Oberst
The big political news, Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he's running for governor of California, and already, people are chanting, 'Four more vowels, four more vowels.'
Craig Kilborn
When you make a melody that doesn't come with words from the get-go, sometimes you're just thinking about random vowel sounds that go with it - and it's really, really hard to write lyrics that actually obey the vowel sounds.
David Longstreth
'Y' is about the weakest letter of all. 'Y' can't make up its mind if it's a vowel or a consonant, can it?
David Mitchell
Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
Duke Ellington
The only vowel I'm concerned with is 'I.'
Enzo Amore
Garrison Keillor's 'Lake Wobegon' books create a world I can immerse myself in over and over. I love the deadpan humour, the warmth, and the wonderful characters in The Sidetrack Tap. I discovered them when I was about 30, starting with 'Leaving Home' and 'We Are Still Married,' and fell in love with the place and those flat Midwestern vowels.
Fiona Barton
Out of the simple consonants of the alphabet and our eleven vowels and diphthongs all possible syllables of a certain sort were constructed, a vowel sound being placed between two consonants.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
My family is from Liverpool, so I have some of those vowel sounds, I've got the slack tone of someone from Birmingham, and then I was raised in Bedford, which is just north of London. So my accent, if it's possible, makes even less sense to a Brit than to an American.
John Oliver
I had a teacher who stressed for me the importance of diction in terms of... I want to be very careful about how I say this... in terms of supporting one's voice when one is singing. In other words, if you hold on to your words, your voice will pull through for you when you're singing. So be true to your vowels.
Julie Andrews
Obama's middle name differs from my last name by only two vowels. Does the McCain-Palin campaign view me as a pariah, too? Do McCain and Palin think there's something wrong with my name?
Khaled Hosseini
When you're insecure about your technique, you close yourself off. Your shoulders tighten. The first thing, you should open your body and sing. Be happy. Sing real vowels, real Italian vowels. When you're learning a good way to sing technically, you find it's very easy to sing well.
Marcello Giordani
I think Britain is a bit class-ridden. People tend to be judged by how rounded their vowels are.
Miriam Margolyes
Where I think the American actor is slightly at a disadvantage is in vocal technique. I don't think that words are their friend in the same way that English actors are used to using words: understanding about consonance and how to shade a vowel to show emotional color.
For my convalescence, I had to exercise my voice only with vowels. It is a medical rule after a long loss of voice.
Nana Mouskouri
The fact that I am Latino is not a secret. There's not much I can do about that. It is what it is. I think people know that my last name ends in a vowel. What can I tell you?
Pete Gallego
My brothers and sisters and I spoke in a language called Egg Latin. In the early '50s in Canada, this became a fad way of talking among certain people. It's based on the concept that in every syllable before the vowel and after the preceding constant you insert the word 'egg.' So, my name Phil would be 'Pegghil.'
Phil Hartman
I felt so out of place at the Miss India pageant. I had just come back from America, and I was told I needed to lose my American accent and learn the Queen's English, so I had to enunciate my vowels and speak well and eloquently. Giving up a New York accent is pretty hard.
Priyanka Chopra
There are certain choices you make as a songwriter, based on vowel sounds and melody and chord changes.
On the last drafts, I focus on the words themselves, including the rub of vowels and consonants, stressed and unstressed syllables. Yet even at this stage I'm often surprised. A different ending or a new character shows up and I'm back to where I began, letting the story happen, just trying to stay out of the way.
Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants.
I have a dialogue coach who helps me out with some of the more tricky Chicago vowel sounds.
Some people with autism who don't talk, all they hear are vowel sounds. Like if I said 'cup,' they might just hear 'uh.'
Four hours of prosthetics every morning, the jowls and the nose, and it was very hot so they're having to attend to it all day, and you're still petrified of so many things, such as, can I speak properly? Hitchcock never quite lost those East End vowels, even though he had the softened California consonants.
