OH MY GOD I GET YOU ABOUT THE SHAPE OF THE WORDS. THAT IS A THING THAT I ALSO DO! :D Makes me awesome in spelling bees but deeply terrible at "immersion" language study where you're supposed to pick up the language just from hearing it.
Ahem. I was talking about linguistics. XD
Sadly I do not have a handy link about dentalized r's, because it is a term I just made up to describe this thing Terrence Mann's accent shares with my own! It's... okay, the two kinds of r's that I know linguists talk about are trilled r's (as in "arrrround the rrrrugged rrrrocks" etc) and uvular r's (back in the throat, as in 'Murrican). JRR Tolkien also mentions voiceless r's, because he's a Brit and that is a thing that happens with them! Like, you know, "Heah, portah, put this bag on the caht".
And the nearest I can come to explaining what I mean about dentalized r's is... it started out as a trilled r and lost all its sound without actually losing its presence? It's just that very slight tap of the tongue against the roof of the mouth right behind the teeth (which is why I called it dentalized). Like, it sounds more like a blend between "thlew" and "thtew" than anything else -- not as in lisped "stew", but as in if you slowed it down it'd come out "thuh-tew". Because the trilled r is just so elided that only the trill is left, the distinct "r" sound itself has gone.
And I don't know if linguists even have a word for that! I've never gotten round to taking Linguistics 101 -- it's always one of my next-semester electives. ;P And it isn't very common, afaik; I've literally only noticed it from this relatively small area of the border-South. Get much further north than where I grew up, people don't have Southern accents at all and their r's are straight-up uvular. Get much further south than where Terrence Mann was born, and people speak straight-up Southern, indistinguishable from the British voiceless r. This barely-trilled r verging on a lisp isn't something I've ever heard of as a thing; now I'm curious. :D
SO MUCH JUDGINESS YESSS.
"(for the record, I think Terrence Mann is better on the song "Falcon in the Dive" than he is on "Where's the Girl", though that might just be me liking the one song better than the other and not actually a reflection of how they are sung :P)"
I've listened to both songs close together now and compared them -- and honestly the first thing I have to say is OH MY GOD FALCON IN THE DIVE THAT LAST NOOOOOTE! I thought I'd heard some good breath control in my life, but oh my god, I take off my hat. That was fucking amazing, I just. Oh my god. That kind of sustained power, I thought I was pretty good on my best days and I could maybe pull off half of that length at that volume. And he's not even running out of air by the end. I am amazed. O_O
Other than that, let's see... I think you're right, he is better on Falcon in the Dive than on Where's the Girl. But I also think Where's the Girl is honestly a badly written song. The lyrics aren't very singable -- a lot of closed-mouth line-endings, "but it seems / She's gone" just to pull one from near the beginning -- and the music is way too fast and repetitive, almost yodely, for the sort of reflective intimate song it's trying to be. (I'm comparing it mentally to the Beauty and the Beast OBC, in which Terrence Mann sings the Beast; you might want to download that and listen to his song "If I Can't Love Her", because I think that's what "Where's the Girl" is TRYING to be -- super emotional, powerful, with a tune you can't get out of your head -- the same kind of lightning-strikes-twice for "If I Can't Love Her" as "Falcon in the Dive", even at that early stage, honestly is for "Stars". But it fails, because it's badly written in both lyrics and music. He could have pulled it off with two or three more weeks' hard work on it, because he's JUST THAT FUCKING GOOD - you can already, if you know his style, hear him starting to work out the pacing and the spots where he's going to drop a note and break your heart - but it'd be purely a case of a good singer saving a bad song, and they didn't give him the time to save it before recording the album. :P)
And the Actor Voice, yes! I think most people who do any sort of vocal performance have that to a degree. I did poetry-reciting and spelling bees from when I was pretty young, and also I had a hard-of-hearing neighbor for a long time, so I've gotten in the habit of using my Actor Voice as my default. But I still have a Normal Talking Voice, it just comes out at different times, like in therapy or on a long roadtrip, anytime I'm talking really casually and comfortably to just one or two people. :D
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Ahem. I was talking about linguistics. XD
Sadly I do not have a handy link about dentalized r's, because it is a term I just made up to describe this thing Terrence Mann's accent shares with my own! It's... okay, the two kinds of r's that I know linguists talk about are trilled r's (as in "arrrround the rrrrugged rrrrocks" etc) and uvular r's (back in the throat, as in 'Murrican). JRR Tolkien also mentions voiceless r's, because he's a Brit and that is a thing that happens with them! Like, you know, "Heah, portah, put this bag on the caht".
And the nearest I can come to explaining what I mean about dentalized r's is... it started out as a trilled r and lost all its sound without actually losing its presence? It's just that very slight tap of the tongue against the roof of the mouth right behind the teeth (which is why I called it dentalized). Like, it sounds more like a blend between "thlew" and "thtew" than anything else -- not as in lisped "stew", but as in if you slowed it down it'd come out "thuh-tew". Because the trilled r is just so elided that only the trill is left, the distinct "r" sound itself has gone.
And I don't know if linguists even have a word for that! I've never gotten round to taking Linguistics 101 -- it's always one of my next-semester electives. ;P And it isn't very common, afaik; I've literally only noticed it from this relatively small area of the border-South. Get much further north than where I grew up, people don't have Southern accents at all and their r's are straight-up uvular. Get much further south than where Terrence Mann was born, and people speak straight-up Southern, indistinguishable from the British voiceless r. This barely-trilled r verging on a lisp isn't something I've ever heard of as a thing; now I'm curious. :D
SO MUCH JUDGINESS YESSS.
"(for the record, I think Terrence Mann is better on the song "Falcon in the Dive" than he is on "Where's the Girl", though that might just be me liking the one song better than the other and not actually a reflection of how they are sung :P)"
I've listened to both songs close together now and compared them -- and honestly the first thing I have to say is OH MY GOD FALCON IN THE DIVE THAT LAST NOOOOOTE! I thought I'd heard some good breath control in my life, but oh my god, I take off my hat. That was fucking amazing, I just. Oh my god. That kind of sustained power, I thought I was pretty good on my best days and I could maybe pull off half of that length at that volume. And he's not even running out of air by the end. I am amazed. O_O
Other than that, let's see... I think you're right, he is better on Falcon in the Dive than on Where's the Girl. But I also think Where's the Girl is honestly a badly written song. The lyrics aren't very singable -- a lot of closed-mouth line-endings, "but it seems / She's gone" just to pull one from near the beginning -- and the music is way too fast and repetitive, almost yodely, for the sort of reflective intimate song it's trying to be. (I'm comparing it mentally to the Beauty and the Beast OBC, in which Terrence Mann sings the Beast; you might want to download that and listen to his song "If I Can't Love Her", because I think that's what "Where's the Girl" is TRYING to be -- super emotional, powerful, with a tune you can't get out of your head -- the same kind of lightning-strikes-twice for "If I Can't Love Her" as "Falcon in the Dive", even at that early stage, honestly is for "Stars". But it fails, because it's badly written in both lyrics and music. He could have pulled it off with two or three more weeks' hard work on it, because he's JUST THAT FUCKING GOOD - you can already, if you know his style, hear him starting to work out the pacing and the spots where he's going to drop a note and break your heart - but it'd be purely a case of a good singer saving a bad song, and they didn't give him the time to save it before recording the album. :P)
And the Actor Voice, yes! I think most people who do any sort of vocal performance have that to a degree. I did poetry-reciting and spelling bees from when I was pretty young, and also I had a hard-of-hearing neighbor for a long time, so I've gotten in the habit of using my Actor Voice as my default. But I still have a Normal Talking Voice, it just comes out at different times, like in therapy or on a long roadtrip, anytime I'm talking really casually and comfortably to just one or two people. :D