Ashley Orlando

Went a little spicy on this one 🌶️🎙️☺️

“Terribly sorry—I tried on this vintage voice and now it’s… stuck” 🤭🎙️✈️

I’ve always been horrible at imitating accents.

But it was so much fun playing around with Old Hollywood vowels and consonants yesterday on this beautiful hapa-haole (English-language Hawaiian) song from 1936.

I almost don’t recognize myself 😂

“South Sea Island Magic”
Lyrics by Lysle Tomerlin and music by the legendary Hawaiian steel guitarist Andy Iona Long.

What happens when I give myself:

1 standard
1 take
1 focus (telling a story that feels personal/authentic to my own life experiences)

WARNING: Giving myself the freedom in this exercise to change melody and phrasing wherever my whims take me, so if that bothers you, just keep scrolling 😁

I haven’t sung this song in a while—hence a couple line mix-ups—but amazingly, out of the times I HAVE done it, this was the first time it reminded me of a terribly awkward period of life when I actually decided to stop smiling (that was an goofy pr***en decision—definitely do not recommend 👎🏻)

But I DO want to develop a daily habit of really connecting to lyrics, so maybe this exercise will become my daily One-Take Workout 🎶🏋🏽🙌🏻