Okay
@pickledylans ! so a few tips that might help (hopefully!! :0 ) :
0 Troubleshooting: in terms of breaking it up into "3" sounds or w/e, are you using the lyric bar? bc honestly I just double click on each note and type in the syllable I want, since english has some symbols that utau wants to break up into separate pieces.
0 Tuning/spacing: don't be afraid to tweak the length of the ending consonants (the VCs and etc.) until things are intuitively sounding right. And sometimes less is more -- ie the word "just" I often use "je es" and make sure the s is held out a bit instead of "ju us st".
shinamiEBA has a tutorial on "specific pitchbends". (
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUK5HXPAMUI) I think having different pitchbends in your toolbelt and using them as needed is a pretty fundamental part of emotive, effective tuning. Honestly having an arsenal of pitchbends to use gets you like 75% of the way there in terms of tuning.
0 Song writing: Honestly, I've done every approach and I think its just about finding which workflows work best for you. I've literally sung a melody then put chords over it, started with chords and put a melody over them, started with drums etc...they're all valid. I think it's fun to mix it up, but maybe that's just me!
But for fitting lyrics to a melody, understanding the idea behind meter is essential. Meaning, in words certain syllables are stressed (for example, its "ME-lo-dy" not "me-LO-dy"). The rhythm of the melody should fit the natural stressors of the words you're trying to sing. And phonetically complex words can be hard to come through clearly in a very fast melody section, so that's something to be mindful of as well.
[also
@Kiyoteru I love Andrew Huangs videos!! They're always either super helpful or super interesting to me xD]