I attended a great Zoom masterclass led by the great Anders Edenroth, of The Real Group, today. He spent the hour talking about his philosophies of recording, and especially about how to adapt to the new normal and make quality recordings in the home.
But I also wrote down this quote about vocal syllables – things like the sounds a cappella groups make in the background, or the scat syllables we use in vocal jazz groups for soli sections.
“These are not words, these are sounds.”
It is, of course, important to make sure that an ensemble matches sounds – specific consonants, how we start and stop the sounds, and specific vowels, so that they match up.
But we often make much too much of trying to pronounce them accurately. “Pronounce” implies speaking for understanding, and no matter how carefully you pronounce “flat dat ba-da-loot” it will not be understood by listeners.
In fact, the more you pronounce these syllables, the less they match the instrumental styles that inspired many of these wordless vocal moments. Do not treat them as words. Treat them as guidelines to enable matching among the ensemble, but not to be enunciated with the care we give to actual text.