Does my singing sound fluent?

Question

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UPDATE AGAIN: i'm singing this other song to practice. any advice would be appreciated!!!

EDIT: i just realized, i was erroneously attempting to roll the R's that followed "t" and "c" in "cruzados" and "encontró". i'll stop doing that

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previous update: Here are my latest attempts after taking Ángel José Riesgo's advice:

newer audio sample

I can tell I'm not quite there yet, at least not consistently. Which T's and D's here sound the best -- and do any other phonemes need work?

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This is the last line of a song I wrote:

Soñaba con una fidelidad como la tuya.

(OUTDATED, SEE ABOVE): soñaba con una fidelidad como la tuya

My intended meaning is "I always dreamed of a faith like yours." The song's tone is meant to be formal, self-serious, grandiose.

1. Is the line grammatically correct?

2. Would a fluent speaker phrase it that way?

3. Does its cadence flow well with the melody?

4. How's my enunciation and delivery?

Here are two more (OUTDATED) samples: "don't cry if not for me. ve a dormir ahora (go to sleep now)." "please be faithful while i'm gone./ guarda tus cuatro dulces patas (save your four sweet paws for me)." I hope this helps you judge my rolled R's and general authenticity.

I know this is asking a lot, but if there are grammar/meaning issues, I would greatly appreciate fixes that still adhere to the piano melodies at the end of each file.

Besides that, I am looking for ways I could improve to sound as authentic as possible. I record in two weeks.

Thank you!

EDIT: I just thought of something that would really help -- recommendations for songs IN spanish, at a similar tempo, whose singers have a similar voice type as mine. So I could study those songs trying to mimic them line by line.

Answer 1

I'm going to answer your questions 1, 2 and 4 for your first audio sample (question 3 is more about music than language).

The sentence is grammatically correct, yes.

In terms of how a native speaker would say it, 'soñaba' is closer to 'I was dreaming'. 'I always dreamed of' would be 'siempre soñé/he soñado con'.

As for your pronunciation, there are two words that sound markedly foreign: 'fidelidad' and 'tuya'. This is because you pronounce the consonants 'd' and 't' as in English, which sound weird to the Spanish ear. In English, the 'd' sound is pronounced with a sudden burst of air (a 'plosive consonant' in phoneticians' terms), but in Spanish it is (mostly) pronounced with a gradual flow of air, more like the English 'th' in 'they'. So, you should try to say something like 'fee - thelly - thahth' (/fiðeli'ðað/) to get closer to the Spanish way of saying it.

The 't' consonant in English, on the other hand, is pronounced with a noticeable puff of air ('aspiration') at the onset, which is lacking in Spanish. The Spanish 't' is a plosive, but unaspirated, consonant, articulated very similarly to the English 'd'. So, if you say 'dooya' for 'tuya' (and then try to make it a bit like 't' to make it voiceless), you will get it more similar to what a Spanish speaker would say.

Note that these remarks for the d/t pair of consonants also apply to two other pairs: b/p and g/k, but the difference is a tad less noticeable for Spanish speakers in those cases.

Answer 2

I would use fidelidad for "faithfulness". I would use Fé for "faith".