IPA dictionaries on the web

I’ve been working on some song & aria translations lately and have needed to check the pronunciation for various words.  I own a modest collection of printed dictionaries with IPA at home, but was curious about whether this information is available online.  Here’s a roundup of online dictionaries I found that use IPA:

Italian

• WordReference.com Italian-English
• Wiktionary Italian

French

• WordReference.com French-English (no audio)
• Wiktionary French

German

• Wiktionary German

Russian

• Wiktionary Russian

Czech

• Wiktionary Czech

English

• Wiktionary English – includes American English and British Received Pronunciation (RP)

Note, of course, that the dictionaries above don’t take into account all of the rules of lyric diction (e.g. avoiding uvular R), but they do come in handy when checking things like open vs. closed vowels.  Also, with noted exceptions, the dictionaries listed have audio pronunciation examples for selected words.

Another FYI: WordReference.com has iOS/Android apps, but the IPA (for selected languages) is only on the full website, not the apps.  I’d like to do a survey of online/offline dictionary apps with IPA in a future blog post – if you’re aware of any, please let me know.

Related Posts:

• Interactive IPA chart with sounds [via Paul Meier’s website]
• Digital dictionaries for translating archaic words and spellings
• Working with music texts, Part 2: Translate the text
• Podcast: The Diction Police
• More posts tagged “IPA”
• More posts tagged “diction”

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”

Working with music texts, Part 1: Find the text online, then sync it to the cloud!

This is part 1 of the Tech tools for working with music texts series.

Step 1: Find the text – preferably in a form I can cut/paste

Here are some websites I use to look up cut-and-paste-friendly texts for various kinds of vocal repertoire:

• Choral Public Domain Library (CPDL) – Texts & some translations for: choral works, arias from oratorios and other concert works; mass/requiem/other sacred texts
• Bach-Cantatas.com – Texts & translations of Bach cantatas
• Gilbert & Sullivan Archive – Complete texts of the G&S operas
• The Lied, Art Song, and Choral Texts Archive – Texts & translations for a vast array of vocal literature
• Aria Database – Opera aria texts & some translations
• Opera Guide – Lots of libretto translations in German and English; some original language libretti in German, Italian, and French
• OperaGlass – Libretti and and much, much more
• Lyle Neff’s Libretto Page – More libretti
• Kareol – Libretti including 20th-century works; in the original language and in Spanish translation; click on “Por Autores” for composer or “Por Obras” for title; when you get to the page for the specific opera, click on the “Libreto” link at the very bottom of the page
• Leyerle Publications – Text, translations, and IPA.  Home of the excellent Nico Castel libretti books, the Beaumont Glass books of lieder texts, and many other comprehensive song text reference books.  Okay, it’s not an online resource (well, mostly not) but everybody needs to know about these books – you can always go to the library and scan them
• IPA Source ($$$) – Text, translations, and IPA for songs and arias; note that you CANNOT copy/paste from their texts because they are in secured PDF files
• SingersBabel ($$$) – Text, translations, IPA, and audio for choral works and oratorio arias, art song, and song cycles.  Not sure if their PDFs are cut/paste-able. [Update: Dan M. at SingersBabel says: “The PDFs on the site are secure and therefore copy/paste isn’t possible, but the original text and poetic translation (when available) can be copied from the box directly above the PDF.”  Thanks for the clarification, Dan!]
• Poetry and literature websites – e.g. the poetry of Goethe or the complete works of Shakespeare
• Google – because sometimes texts crop up on random websites or in liner/program notes online

It’s not unusual for me to have to do some quality control and vetting of texts I find online.  Sometimes they are well-edited.  Other times I run across questionable quality, discrepancies due to different editions, or translation mistakes.

Ebooks are another way to get texts, sometimes for free.  For example, here are free ebook libretti at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Project Gutenberg.  Apple’s iBooks store has some free opera libretti too.  To read the Amazon and B&N ebooks, you can download the Kindle app or Nook app for most tablets and smartphones.

If a text isn’t available in a convenient electronic format, there are, of course, lots of printed reference books too.  One could try scanning the text or libretto from a book using the OCR option on your scanning software and extracting the text that way.

Once I have the text in electronic format, I upload it to a cloud-based service so that I can access it anytime from my laptop, iPad, or smartphone.  This way, I always have the text with me to study and review.  I can view the texts on my iPad, where my score library already lives.  And if I’m translating or annotating the text, I can work on it on my iPad while I’m on the go.

So far, I’ve been using Evernote (like a notepad app in the cloud) to store and edit plain text versions, or Dropbox if the text is in a PDF document.  Since forScore can import PDFs from Dropbox, I can put my text into a forScore setlist together with my score.  In the future, I might try out a more heavy-duty iPad/Android office suite such as Quickoffice Pro HD that would let me edit texts as a Word document, sync them to my Dropbox, and export them to PDF files that could be transferred to forScore.

Related Posts:

• Coming up: Tech tools for working with music texts
• Working with music texts, Part 2: Translate the text

Coming up: Tech tools for working with music texts

Credit: Wikimedia

I have a system for learning texts for works of music.  I’m continually trying to make improvements to it, and to make myself actually follow the process.  My process is a little bit different for concert/recital works vs. stage works, but it goes something like this:

1. Find the text – preferably in a form I can cut/paste
2. Translate the text – if not in English (or if in archaic English!)
3. Dramatic intention – Paraphrase the text, work out a subtext
4. Work the diction – make IPA notes/transcriptions, listen to recordings of native speakers singing or reciting the text
5. Memorization – listen to the text, speak the text in monologue/dialogue/rhythm
6. Review & Reinforce – this is the time when you’re in rehearsals and think you’re off-book, but keep flubbing little lines in the recits, etc., so it’s about finding ways to drill and kill…

In the next few posts, I’ll discuss some of the tech tools and online resources I use to get things done when I’m learning texts.

Podcast: The Diction Police

The Diction Police podcast is, in my humble opinion, a must-have resource for every singer.  The host, Ellen Rissinger, is a coach on the music staff of the Semperoper in Dresden.  She invites native speakers who are singers, conductors, or coaches to read aloud the texts of arias or art songs in the standard repertoire (and sometimes not-so-standard repertoire).  Then they have a discussion about the basic pronunciation rules, the finer points of diction, the most common mistakes non-native speakers make, and diction issues where experts may have differing opinions.

The podcast covers the standard languages of Italian, German, and French and has also ventured into Russian, Czech, Hungarian, Swedish, Norwegian, Spanish, and British and American English.

The podcast’s website has several useful indexes–you can browse episodes by language as well as by aria/song title, and there is an episode guide.  It’s really useful for both general language/diction learning as well as polishing specific arias.

One thing I really like about the podcast is that Ms. Rissinger starts off most episodes with a short segment featuring study tips and career/life advice for musicians.  It’s delivered in a friendly, non-preachy way and is usually accompanied by personal anecdotes of her own successes and screw-ups(!)–kind of like “things I wish I’d known when I started out.”

Also, her Seven Steps to Learn Music are my gold standard for learning repertoire.

The Diction Police podcast is an incredibly rich resource, and I think it speaks to Ms. Rissinger’s expertise, love of lifelong learning, and generosity of spirit that she produces it and makes it available for FREE.  It is a great gift to the world of singers.

You can subscribe to The Diction Police through iTunes or with your favorite podcatcher app  (I use DoggCatcher on my Android phone).

Tip: Download extra forScore stamps for music annotation

[UPDATE 9/5/12: I’ve posted a video tutorial that takes you step-by-step through the process of downloading and importing extra forScore stamps.]

If you use the forScore iPad app for reading and annotating music, you can download and import additional stamps for marking your music.  This website has several sets of downloadable forScore stamps including arrows, music notation symbols in different colors, and “watch the conductor” eyeglasses.  Of particular interest to singers: the website also has stamps for breath marks and IPA symbols for lyric diction.

I like using stamps in forScore because I can make legible markings more quickly.  E.g., if I try to write in a comma/breath mark with a stylus or my finger, it takes me about five tries before it looks like something other than a random squiggle.

For instructions on how to import stamps into forScore, check out their user guide.

Related Posts:

• Video: forScore Tutorial: Download extra stamps for annotation
• Video: Presentation on forScore for iPad [via Schola Cantorum]
• Coming soon: Version 4.0 of forScore for iPad
• More posts tagged “forScore”