What's the most important thing when you sing English songs?

Hello everyone!

I’m Mayu, a singer who made her dream come true!

Today, I’d like to share some tips on how to sing English songs better—a topic that comes up a lot among my students.

When it comes to vocal training, of course, the basics are important whether you’re singing English songs or Japanese songs.

In my lessons in Shinjuku, I always make sure to include basic vocal exercises as well as technique training.

However, because so many of my students want to sing English songs, I put a special emphasis on correcting their English pronunciation.

Having good pronunciation can actually make your singing sound so much better and give your voice a completely different level of power and authenticity! lol

First of all, there’s something important that English learners need to understand:

Before moving your mouth, you need to understand the pronunciation in your head.

Pronunciation is, of course, about how you move your mouth. So many people start by trying to match their mouth movements to the sounds they hear.

But before you even try to pronounce the sounds yourself, it’s more important to first understand the connection between combinations of letters and the sounds they produce.

Think of it as a puzzle.

Before you start speaking, learn how the pieces of this puzzle fit together.

And that puzzle is called phonics.

Phonics is not about the sound of each individual letter like the alphabet. Instead, it teaches you how different combinations of letters produce different sounds.

Children in English-speaking countries typically learn these sound patterns after learning the alphabet.

Try searching for “phonics” or “phonics pronunciation” on YouTube.

You’ll notice that phonics sounds can be quite different from the way we pronounce the letters of the alphabet.

Example ①

Take the letter A.

A is the “A” in apple, right?

When you say the letter A by itself, it’s pronounced “ay.” But in apple, the A makes a sound closer to “ah”—somewhere between “ah” and “eh.”

In Japanese, we have 50 basic sounds, and the sound of a hiragana character stays basically the same whether it appears by itself or as part of a word.

That’s one reason English can be particularly confusing for Japanese speakers.

In English, the same letter can represent completely different sounds depending on the word.

Another challenge for Japanese speakers

Another difficult point for Japanese learners is that we become very familiar with the alphabet through romaji, or the Romanized spelling of Japanese.

Because of this, it’s easy to apply Japanese romaji pronunciation directly to English.

Example ②

Take the letter U.

In English, the name of the letter U is pronounced “you.”

But in Japanese romaji, U represents the sound “u.”

So when you see the English word up, you might accidentally pronounce it based on the Japanese “u” sound—or even try to use the English letter name “you.”

But the correct pronunciation of up starts with the short vowel sound “uh.”

The important point is that this sound doesn’t really correspond to either the English letter name “U” or the Japanese romaji pronunciation.

That’s phonics.

Example ③

Earlier, we looked at apple, where the letter A makes a short vowel sound.

But when you see age, the A is pronounced with the long “A” sound.

So even though it’s the same letter A, it can have a completely different sound.

Why?

Because the pronunciation changes depending on the combination of letters around it.

That’s why phonics teaches you to learn letter combinations as sets, rather than trying to memorize the sound of each individual letter.

Today, I wanted to take a closer look at what phonics actually is and why it’s so important when learning to sing English songs.

Next time, I’ll talk about some specific exercises you can use to practice it! ♪

See you then!

Mayu