On singing the way I talk

Daniel Greene — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 18:56:46 +0000

I’m working on overcoming my classical training to sing the way I talk. Here I’m talking about and showing the difference between my “standardized” voice and my “individualized” voice, using the song Chasing Cars to give examples. What do you think?

Happy twenty-ten! (Not two-thousand-ten.)

Daniel Greene — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:21:38 +0000

Why do I hear people saying “two-thousand-ten” or worse “two-thousand-and-ten”? How laborious is that! People, there’s a reason Prince didn’t sing “Tonight we are going to party as if it were nineteen-hundred-and-ninety-nine”! He sang “Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s nineteen-ninety-nine” because brevity is vernacular.

Sure, it was fine to say “two-thousand.” No problem. I was great with “two-thousand-nine.” But that decade is over, and time’s a-wastin’.

Let’s look forward. Ten years from now, are you going to say “two-thousand-twenty”? God, I hope not. It takes too much time. And the unity and brevity of twenty-twenty is so much cooler. Well, so is twenty-ten.

Don’t let ten years of starting years with “two-thousand” stand in your way. Break out, baby. Try something new. If you don’t start pronouncing your years with “twenty” now, you’re going to sooner or later. Might as well be among the cool people who do it right from the start.

Here’s to 2010. Make it a good one.

Betcha said twenty-ten!

An interpreter's interpretation » diction

On singing the way I talk

Happy twenty-ten! (Not two-thousand-ten.)