'Tis just about the Messiah season, and time to start working on our diction for it! This week's Tutorial covers "O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion", focusing on what happens when 't's and 'd's come together and how to deal with 'r's in English Diction with Jason Nedecky.

We have already worked through some of the Messiah arias on the podcast (Comfort Ye Episode 66/Rejoice Greatly Episode 67); the complete Messiah, including IPA transcriptions and text readings by Jason Nedecky (our contributor for this episode), is available at The Diction Police: Special Diction Unit!
All of the Special Diction Unit premium content is available at www.dictionpolice.com either by subscription or individually! If there are texts you are looking for that we don't offer yet, please contact us at info@dictionpolice.com to let us know, so that we can develop the repertoire that you need. You can also follow The Diction Police on Facebook or Twitter.

Episode 84-SDU Tutorial (audio version)

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In this episode, Jason Nedecky is back to talk about unstressed vowels, the consonant cluster 'str', and triphthongs, using Purcell’s "Strike the viol". 
The Diction Police website offers phonetic transcripts of texts, with word-for-word and poetic translations, text readings by native speaking opera professionals, along with a variety of video tutorials that are useful for both professional singers and for teachers to supplement their diction classes. The Diction Police was founded on the principal of native speakers pronouncing and discussing the diction of their own languages, and we continuously strive to offer the highest quality lyric diction resource possible. 
Over the past 9 years of the podcast, we’ve now comprehensively covered the four main singing languages as well as many others, so from now on we’ll be releasing new episodes less regularly and only cover special topics, such as rare languages and dialects. All the previous episodes of the podcast will be available on iTunes and at the website, and all of our other resources and materials will still be available on the website through individual and studio subscriptions and now also through university library subscriptions! 
Talk to your teacher about getting a subscription for your school or inquire for more information at info@dictionpolice.com

Episode 115-SDU Tutorial (audio)

Episode 115-SDU Tutorial

Since the podcast comes out every two weeks, on the off-weeks we post Diction Tips--very short tutorials focusing on a specific topic in Lyric Diction.
In Diction Tip #33, Jason Nedecky talks about the long vowels that occur in British Received Pronunciation and explains why we don't need to mark them in phonetic transcripts.
For more Diction Tips visit the videos section of our Facebook page or you can find all of our Diction Lessons, Diction Tips and Tongue Twisters for Singers at www.dictionpolice.com!

Diction Tip #33

In Episode 114, Jason Nedecky leads us through the text to Purcell's "What can we poor females do?", talking about long vowels, the Daniel Sitteth rule, and the difference between the [ʌ] vowel and [ə]. 
 
For more information, go to dictionpolice.com !

Episode 84-SDU Tutorial (audio version)

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