Useful techniques you need to know when you sing Japanese songs.
Hello, J-pop lovers! Welcome to Honey Music School.
If you are interested in singing Japanese songs, this is the best place to join because we are going to sing “Lemon” by Kenshi Yonezu today.
Point.1
First of all, let’s go through four points. The first point is that you need to remember, in Japanese, syllables are constructed by the combination of consonants and vowels.
On top of that, each of the vowels always sound the same regardless of what consonant you have before it (vowel).
For example, if you have a look at the first line of the lyrics, you see ‘na la ba’ which start with ‘n’ and ‘a’, ‘l’ and ‘a’ and ‘b’ and ‘a’ and they all have the ‘a’ sound.
Point.2
Now, let’s move on to point 2. It is quite important to know that when singing Japanese songs, Japanese syntax/grammar is sort of backwards to English, so what you need to do is read the lyrics backwards so that it makes more sense.
Point.3
There is a thing you need to know when you sing ‘Lemon’ by Kenshi Yonezu, which is that Kenshi sings this song with slur on some of the notes (If you look at the diagram above, you’ll notice some syllables are noted in red where syllables he puts slurs on.).
Kenshi puts slurs on some notes so it gives you the flavor of lonliness and longing sadness.
Point.4
Finally, we are going to look at point 4. Remember that when the drum sound starts coming in, that sound gives you the swing feel.
You need to get used to this swing rhythm when singing ‘Lemon’ like Kenshi Yonezu.
Learn More About How to Sing Japanese Songs at Honey Music School!
We offer online lessons at Honey Music School by native Japanese vocal teacher who can teach you many useful techniques and tips to sing your favorite Japanese songs.
If you feel like singing more of the rest of ‘Lemon’ by Kenshi Yonezu or if you have any other Japanese songs you want to sing, please join us at Honey Music School.
Until then, see you soon!
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.
