Interactive IPA chart with sounds [via Paul Meier’s website]

I’ve done most of my study of singing and related skills outside a university setting.  Because of that, I’d never taken a formal diction class and I had to learn IPA by myself.  The interactive IPA chart at Paul Meier’s website was an extremely helpful tool for this process.  (Note for iOS users: The chart is Flash-based, so you’ll need to view it with your laptop or with a Flash-friendly browser such as Puffin Web Browser Free on your iPad/iPhone.)

To use the chart, you just click on the symbol and it plays the sound.  As classical singers, we will mainly be interested in the vowel chart and in a subset of the pulmonic consonant chart.

Credit: http://www.paulmeier.com

A couple of little caveats with this chart: I seem to remember a diction coach taking issue with a couple of the vowel sounds but I don’t remember which.  Also, a chart like this is not going to distinguish between the subtle vowel shadings/nuances in different languages that are sometimes transcribed using the same IPA symbol (e.g., the difference between French and German schwa).

Related Posts:

• Podcast: The Diction Police
• Working with music texts, Part 1: Find the text online, then sync it to the cloud!
• More posts tagged “IPA”