Useful techniques and tips you need to know.
As Japanese culture including anime, manga and games have become incredibly popular in the world, the number of people who want to sing Japanese songs have been increasing in the past decade.
In this article, we are going to give you some useful techniques and tips for you to sing Japanese songs even though you’ve never learnt Japanese. The song we’re going to learn in this article is called “Blue Bird’ by Ikimono Gakari.
How to read and pronounce Japanese Romaji.
If you want to sing your favorite Japanese songs, you need to know how to read Japanese Romaji so that you’ll be able to understand how to pronounce the lyrics and even express emotions when singing.
To be able to understand Romaji, you need to know five vowels and consonants in Japanese.
Five different vowels
Let’s have a look at five different types of vowels in Japanese. Since some vowels are pronounced a bit differently compared to English vowels, I want you to learn how to read them first.
あ is “a” as in mother, い is “ee” as in sheet, う is “oo” as in tooth, え is “e” as in set, and お is “o” as in song.
Five vowels in Japanese
- あ（a）
- い（i）
- う（u）
- え（e）
- お（o）
Japanese consonants
You nearly can read and pronounce Japanese letters if you master Japanese consonants which are supposed to be combined with five vowels to make sounds.
There are fifteen Japanese consonants you need to remember.
To make it clearer for you to understand what the combination patterns of Japanese vowels and consonants are, we just put the Hiragana chart below.
Hiragana
- あ（a）/ い（i）/ う（u）/ え（e）/ お（o）
- か（ka）/ き（ki）/ く（ku）/ け（ke）/ こ（ko）
- さ（sa）/ し（shi）/ す（su）/ せ（se）/ そ（so）
- た（ta）/ ち（chi）/ つ（tsu）/ て（te）/ と（to）
- な（na）/ に（ni）/ ぬ（nu）/ ね（ne）/ の（no）
- は（ha）/ ひ（hi）/ ふ（hu）/ へ（he）/ ほ（ho）
- ま（ma） / み（mi） / む（mu）/ め（me）/ も（mo）
- や（ya）/ ゆ（yu）/ よ（yo）
- ら（ra）/ り（ri）/ る（ru）/ れ（re）/ ろ（ro）
- わ（wa）/ を（wo）/ ん（n）
Combinations of vowels and consonants
In Japanese, almost all the syllables are a combination of vowels (which we’ve just learnt) and consonants.
Therefore, if you want to sing any Japanese songs, you need to learn the combination patterns and how to pronounce them properly.
If you have a look at the very first syllable of “Blue Bird”, there is a combination of ‘h’ and ‘a’ and they sound like ‘ha’.
The following syllable is a combination of ‘b’ and ‘a’, and consonants ‘b’ are pronounced the same as in English.
And if you combine this with the vowel ‘a’, it is going to sound like ‘ba’.
When two or more vowels are combined together as one syllable.
As you’ve already leant how to read Romaji which is necessary for you to sing any Japanese songs, now it’s time to move on to the next essential rules about Japanese pronunciation to remember.
Try pronouncing them separately.
When two or more vowels are combined together, you need to pronounce them separately.
If you have a look at the chorus section, there are three vowels combined together: ‘aoi aoi’. Here, It’ll sounds more natural if you put an articulation on each vowel.
When two same consonants combined together.
Put a quick pause in between the previous syllable and the last syllable.
“Habata itara modoranai to itte“
Blue Bird by Ikimono Gakari
These are the first few lyrics of the chorus section from ‘BlueBird”. You’ll notice that there are two ‘t’ at the end and that verse is underlined.
When two same consonants are combined together as one syllable, you need to put a quick pause in between the previous and the last syllable.
For example, when you sing “modoranai to itte”, you need to put a quick pause between ‘i’ and ‘tte’.
Learn More About How to Sing Japanese Songs at Honey Music School!
Thank you so much for reading this.
We hope you’ve learnt much about how to sing “Blue Bird” in Japanese with some Japanese pronunciation knowledge.
If you are interested in learning more about Japanese songs and taking lessons, please feel free to join us at Honey Music School. We’ll be waiting for you!
Information
I have been passionate about learning different languages and playing music since I was a kid. I engaged in childhood education, music education, and second language acquisition research while I was studying at Yokohama National University as a graduate student. After graduation, I worked at an international preschool in Tokyo. Currently, I’m working as a bilingual teacher at an online English school and writing some articles about research on bilingual education. I post the cover songs videos of my favorite artists and my piano performances on Instagram and Youtube, so I’ll appreciate that if you go and check my posts. Thank you.
Comment