CONSONANTS & DISSONANCE

By Joanna Cazden

Back in elementary school, we all learned that the 26 letters of the English alphabet are divided into two categories: vowels and consonants. Vowels are relatively similar to one another acoustically. Consonants, however, encompass a much wider range of sounds, some of which cause unique problems for microphones and the rest of the audio chain. The more you, as a vocalist, understand about the articulation of consonants, the better you can control them and minimize the problems they present to a sound system.

Speech scientists categorize consonants according to how and where they are produced in the mouth. As you become more aware of the relationship between how consonants sound and how they are made, you can fine-tune your pronunciation of lyrics to work with, rather than against, your gear.

Vowel Play
First let's take a quick look at vowels, which are the sustaining sounds of speech and singing. They radiate from the mouth with minimal obstruction, somewhat like tones from the bell of a trumpet, and they ride on a relatively steady stream of air. Different vowel sounds are produced by changing the shape of the mouth and (more subtly) by altering the tension or stiffness of the walls of the mouth. These muscle manipulations become evident acoustically as spectrum or timbre changes.

For example, the vowel ah involves a relatively vertical mouth posture, with the jaw dropped and the tongue and lips relaxed. In contrast, the vowel ee requires a higher tongue placement and often incorporates a wider lip position and increased tension in the muscles of the mouth and throat, all of which contribute to that vowel's more treble and penetrating tone. (For more information about this subject, see Vocal Acoustics.)

Each singer's oral anatomy, personal style, regional dialect, and subculture influence his or her pronunciation of vowels, but these variations do not usually interfere with being understood. In fact, rock singers, such as Mick Jagger, seem to have created their own "dialect" (e.g., pronouncing the pronoun I as ah). The similarities between this singing style and the speech dialects of African-Americans from the deep South reveals the strong influence of blues and early R&B on classic rock.

Yada Yada Yada
Now, consider the rest of our language: consonants. Starting with those that are most similar to vowels, the consonants w, y, l, and r are favored by singers and lyricists, because they shape vocal resonance in appealing ways and are relatively easy to amplify or record. These consonants, classified as glides (w and y) and liquids (l and r), are momentary timbral shifts made by rounding the lips or curling the tongue. They alter the resonance and spectrum of the vocal signal by constricting, but not interrupting, the flow of air or sound.

However, the majority of consonants are made by valving or obstructing the singer's outgoing airstream. These more aggressive consonants are generally described according to how they are produced. The two subgroups that most often cause problems for sound systems are the fricatives and plosives.

Plosives are produced by momentarily stopping the flow of air, then suddenly releasing it in an explosive manner. The plosive consonants are p, t, k, b, d, and g. By contrast, fricatives are produced by a tight constriction of the airstream, and their name arises from the friction of the air being forced through a narrow passage. This group includes s, z, f, v, th, sh, and zh.

You might have heard the term sibilants, which refers to a special subcategory of fricatives, s and sh. Their high frequencies and moderately high amplitude are infamous to sound engineers and choir directors.

Another distinction of importance to vocalists is whether a consonant is pronounced with help from the vocal cords. Consonants that include a vocal sound are referred to as voiced (e.g., b and z); those without vocal-cord vibration are called unvoiced (e.g., p and s).

The unvoiced plosives and sibilants completely replace a vocal tone with air noise for a few milliseconds, and this noise is more intense than any other sounds in our language. These high-pressure consonants are the bane of sound technicians.

Clearly those foam balls or dirty socks placed over microphones are not there to filter the sound. Their job is to screen the mic from surges of air pressure, either prolonged (sibilants) or sudden (plosives), and to keep these fluctuations from interfering with a clean reproduction of the rest of your vocal expression.

Solutions
So what's a singer to do? Pop screens can tame plosives somewhat, but they do little for sibilants, and those external screens on gooseneck clamps look odd on stage. De-essers can help with sibilants but must be configured carefully to avoid dulling the overall tone of your voice.

Some performance techniques can help tame these voiceless demons. For example, you can turn your head as you utter the particularly egregious sounds so that the mic is aimed at the corner of your mouth, away from the nastiest blasts of air, and leave the rest of the cleanup job to your ever-patient engineer. But keep in mind that each consonant lasts only a few milliseconds. Few engineers can ride the board as fast as your lyrics fly.

Better yet, you can cheat on your pronunciation so that less air is expelled on these particular sounds. Here's how to practice this: first, hold one hand an inch or two in front of your mouth. Say "buh, buh, buh" at normal speaking loudness. You'll feel little bursts of warm air on your hand. Then say "puh, puh, puh," and notice how much more air is expelled on p. This causes the extra pop or boom that drives engineers nuts.

Now practice saying "p" without pushing out that extra air. (This is how p is produced in many other languages, including Spanish; it's called unaspirated.) Then, see if you can say "paper" with no more breath than "baby." Once you have the feel of it, try practicing more complex words and phrases, such as "purpose, people, pack it up, pick up the pieces," using the reduced-air-pressure adaptation. The final step involves trying some song lyrics that have been troublesome.

For a similar adaptation of the noisome s, practice it with your tongue slightly lower and closer to your teeth. This comes closer to the position for th, so you might feel as if you have a partial lisp. The idea is to soften the impact of the s, and perhaps lower its frequency a bit, without distorting it so far that your lyrics are no longer clear.

At first, you might need to go through all your lyrics, marking the trouble spots and practicing each phrase, before you get on stage or record that demo. After a while, though, these techniques will become automatic, and you won't need to practice each instance. Nor will you have to cheat this way on every high-pressure consonant when you're actually in performance. Just softening an explosive p or an ear-piercing s when they are most exposed, such as at the beginning of a phrase or in a loud climactic line, can clean things up a lot.

Remember that, as a singer, you convey tone, melody, and emotional expression during vowels, but consonants carry the meaning of your lyrics. Consonants also provide crisp punctuation in the flow of the voice, focusing the poetry and storytelling that are part of the magic of song. So treat 'em right, and remember the old typesetters' advice to mind your p's and cues.

Reprinted from Electronic Musician's Jam supplement, December 1998

Back to Archives TOC