Just as you work on content, honing your skills to carry your message as effectively as possible, so too, you can work on voice.

Transcription

1 1 Voice Matters Introduction A speech only becomes a speech once it is voiced or delivered. Just as you work on content, honing your skills to carry your message as effectively as possible, so too, you can work on voice. Voice matters. To make an impact you need great content AND good delivery. The three elements underpinning delivery are conscious awareness of: 1. body 2. breath and 3. vocalisation This workshop is a 'once-over-very-lightly' introduction to developing a flexible, responsive voice. Rag Dolls Body Warm ups Stand with your feet a shoulder width apart, breathe in through the nose and bending from the waist allow yourself to flop like a rag doll while breathing out through your mouth. Shake any tension out of your arms, neck, shoulders and allow yourself to literally hang loose. And then breathing in through your nose very gently and slowly bring yourself upright and breathe out through your mouth. Repeat several times. Shake Outs Shake out your arms and hands until you feel them warm and relaxed. Do the same for your legs. Shoulder Hunches Hunch them as high as your ears and then let go. Repeat until they are at ease. Neck Rolls Do these very smoothly and gently. Let your head flop foward and then slowly roll it up and around to the right and then back. Repeat for the left side.

2 2 Voice Matters Face Scrunch Screw your face up. Scrunch it as tight as you can and then release. Jaw Yawns Yawn widely, dropping your jaw, letting all the tension it might hold go. Repeat. Massage any points of residual tension. Mouth Stretch Smile as widely as you can. Hold, and relax. Repeat. Tongue Drills Extend your tongue as far as you can and now sweep it around the outside of your mouth - a complete rotation to the left and then another to the right. Repeat with your mouth closed, running your tongue around the outside of your teeth. Once to the left and then another to the right. Flick your tongue like a lizard - in and out as rapidly as you can. Breathing Exercises Good breathing underpins good delivery and deals to anxiety. Being anxious directly impacts on the the quality of your voice. Shallow breathing means you restrict the fullness of sound and range your voice might have. It will sound squeezed or strained because you are talking off the top of your lungs with a tight throat, jaw, mouth and face. Forcing your voice to over-ride the restrictions is not an answer. Stand with your feet a comfortable shoulder width apart. Support the weight of your body through your hips and legs rather than locking your knees. Consciously release and relax your shoulders. If you're holding your stomach in, let it go. Place your hands on your stomach. Breathe in through your nose to the count of four. Count slowly. As you inhale feel your diaphragm rising. Breathe out through your mouth to the count of four and now feel your diaphragm expanding. Do three rounds of inhale and exhale to a slow four count ( ) while making sure you keep your shoulders, stomach and legs relaxed. Once you have mastered the four count, increase it. Through regular practice you will soon be able to extend it for an eight or even ten count.

3 3 Voice Matters Variations 1. Lie on the floor or sit in a chair. (Either way, make sure your legs are uncrossed.) 2. Use the out breath to hum quietly. Increase the intensity and volume as you go through each round. 3. Use the out breath to sound each of the vowel sounds in turn. Let each go without force, flowing smoothly from your relaxed throat. For example: 'A' is going to become ahhhhhhh... as in 'are' 'E' is Eeeeeeeeeeeee... as in 'easy' 'I' is Iiiiiiii...as in 'eye' 'O' is Ooooooo...as in 'Oh' 'U' is Uuuuuuuu...as in 'you' 4. Talk quietly for as long as you can about anything at all on a single breath without forcing Diction Exercises & Tongue-Twisters Exercises for Consonants High roller, low roller, lower roller. I need a box of biscuits, a box of mixed biscuits, and a biscuit mixer. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked? He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts. Friday's Five Fresh Fish Specials. Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie. The Leith police dismisseth us. Twixt this and six thick thistle sticks. Red leather, yellow leather.

4 4 Voice Matters She sells seashells by the seashore, and the shells she sells are seashells. The sixth Sikh Sheik's sixth sheep's sick. A cheep chick sleeps in cheap sheets. Three free thugs set three thugs free. Charles deftly switched straight flange strips. Gwen glowered and grimaced at Glen's gleaming greens. Exercises for Vowels Fancy! That fascinating character Harry McCann married Anne Hammond. Lot lost his hot chocolate at the loft. Snoring Norris was marring the aria. Exercises for Everything Eleven benevolent elephants. Girl gargoyle, guy gargoyle. She stood on the balcony inexplicably mimicking him hiccupping and amicably welcoming him in. Six sick slick slim sycamore saplings. Repeaters These tongue twisters become more challenging the more you say them. So if you don't find each one hard to say at first, just keep repeating it until you do! You know you need unique New York. Toy boat. Lemon liniment. Three free throws. Blue black bugs blood. Red lorry, yellow lorry. Giggle gaggle gurgle.

5 5 Voice Matters And one more for good measure! This comes from Gilbert and Sullivan's light opera 'The Pirates of Penzance'. It's guaranteed to make you work as it's the tongue's equivalent of a triathlon! It includes many difficult combinations impossible to get right unless you articulate clearly. 'I am the very pattern of a modern Major-General; I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral; I know the Kings of England, and I quote the fights historical, From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical; I'm very well acquainted too with matters mathematical, I understand equations, both simple and quadratical, About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news, With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse. I'm very good at integral and differential calculus, I know the scientific names of beings animalculous, In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-General.' Vocal Variety Vocal variety is achieved through combining pitch, tone, volume and rate. Pitch To understand pitch, think of music. It has high and low notes as do voices. Everyone's voice has a natural pitch. Women's tend to be higher than men's and everybody has a pitch range: the number of notes we habitually use. When that range is very small, the effect is monotonous. Tone Tone refers to the emotional content carried by our voices. It is not the words themselves, but 'how' we say them. To speak expressively, is to fill or energize our

6 6 Voice Matters words appropriately. For example: a person who puts very little energy into their speech, no matter what they are saying, is often described as being 'flat'. By contrast someone who fills their speech to overflowing with energy is described as being 'exuberant' or 'enthusiastic'. If you think of a word as a basket carrying its meaning along, you'll get the idea. Some people put very little in their word baskets. Others stuff them so full they almost burst. Volume How loudly or quietly you speak is called volume. Some people are habitually loud and others,quiet.the tips and exercises below will help you consciously play with your volume control. Rate The term 'rate' refers to speaking pace. How fast or slow do you speak? Can you vary the rate? Do you know the effect of slowing deliberately? Speaking rate matters because how fast or how slow you speak alters the listener's perception of your topic. The goal for every speaker is: to find the most appropriate expression to meet the audience's needs And to match those needs with the content of the speech. to have a range of vocal varieties to select the most appropriate from. This gives you flexibility. Exercises for PITCH One Note Charlie: Take a deep breath in and begin speaking on whatever topic you choose until you run out of breath. It could be what is front of you in the room, or out the window, what you had for breakfast...anything. Remain on the SAME note all the time. When you have finished, choose another note. It could be higher or lower and repeat. Pay careful attention to the effect it has on you! Notice the difference when you pitch your voice higher and then lower. You should feel a physical difference as well as an emotional one.

7 7 Voice Matters See-Saw, Up-down: Practice swinging between your upper and lower range. Using any piece of text from a newspaper, magazine...,and read aloud. The first sentence is up, the next is down. Continue see-sawing for at least a minute. Now make the see-saw work faster. Read the same passage but this time it is three words up and three words down. Continue to play with variations! (It will sound ridiculous but it doesn't matter. We're not going for meaning. This is flexibility practice for range!) Pitch Experimentation: Say the sentences below in your high, middle and low pitch range. Note what happens to the intensity and the way you perceive the emotional content of the sentences. There will be a distinct variation between each. Her Grandmother died yesterday. I want a new car. This dinner is delicious. People should love their neighbors as themselves. Exercises for TONE The Ham Sandwich Exercise: Repeat the words 'Ham Sandwich' in as many varying ways as you can. For example say it angrily, happily, sadly, lovingly, despairingly, laughingly, importantly, slyly, snidely, shyly... This is a fantastic exercise to share with a partner. Take turn about giving each other the way to say the phrase. Repeat until you run out of variations and remember to listen for emotional truth or believability! Extension Ham Sandwich: Use the phrase to 'converse'. Take an emotional state and build a whole conversation around the phrase 'Ham Sandwich'. For example: Imagine you've just seen the most exciting thing. You want to share that experience with a friend. You ring to tell them. The catch is you must use the words 'Ham Sandwich' to convey your feeling and NO others. Try consoling using 'Ham Sandwich' or congratulating. Experiment with as many different ways as you can.

8 8 Voice Matters And yet Another Ham Sandwich: This time take two opposite emotions, for example: happy - sad or angry - contented... Start with one and gradually switch to the other. Make sure you grade the switch. Unless we're very, very excitable emotionally, we seldom alter suddenly from one to the other. Don't worry if you feel silly ie. several sandwiches short of a picnic! Let go and have fun. Telephone Book Readings: Open the telephone book at any page. Select a style* or emotion and read aloud whatever is there. Sustain each feeling state for at least a minute. This gives you time to get into it. Listen to yourself to make sure you are filling those words with the appropriate emotion. * Style? For fun and variation read your page in the style of a newsreader, a race commentator, a preacher, Marilyn Munroe... Reading Children's Stories: Take a familiar story and read aloud. As you do make sure your voice carries the meaning of the words. If a scary voice is asked for, use one. If somebody is bossy, sound bossy. If someone is teasing, put a teasing tone in your voice. If there's a beat to the words, go with it. Find and emphasize it. Children's stories are often written to be read aloud. The way to communicate their message fully is to live into them. This a great exercise to record. When you listen to yourself, be alert for areas to improve. Record it again with the changes. Listen to Recordings of Novels, Short Stories, Autobiographies... Many of these are read by highly skilled actors. Apart from enjoying the story, you will learn a great deal about expression. You can find audio tapes or CD's at your local library or download from the net. Many are free! Exercises for VOLUME Use the following exercises if you decide not to use a microphone and want to project your voice naturally. The skill involved with getting louder (or softer) is to maintain tone and pitch while altering

9 9 Voice Matters the sound level. Many people lose them both, particularly when they get louder. Shouting may guarantee you get heard but it doesn't usually mean heard with pleasure. And the other down-side to shouting is straining your voice. Good breath control is one of major keys to upping the volume while maintaining tone and pitch. Practice Breathing Using your Diaphragm: Stand in front of a mirror. Make sure your feet are a comfortable shoulder width apart. Pull yourself up straight and let your head sit square on your neck. Place one hand on your stomach. Breathe in. You should feel your stomach rising and then breathe out. This time your stomach falls. Watch your shoulders. If they rise and fall noticeably you are most likely breathing off the top of your lungs! Try until you can feel a definite rise and fall of your stomach. Keep relaxed. Distancing Technique for Projection: Maintain the breathing technique outlined above while adding voice. While watching yourself to check for tension, (tightening of muscles), practice greeting yourself at ever increasing distances from a mirror. If your room is small, do the exercise outside and imagine the mirror! It remains in the same place all the time. 'Hello Bob', is right up close. Take two steps back and repeat. Now take more steps back and so on. If you feel any tension in your throat or chest from forcing the sound, stop. Breathe and begin again. It helps to imagine the sound arcing through the air, in a concentrated focused stream to reach its target. The further away you get the more control you need to have over the outflow of air carrying your words. When you think you have a neutral 'Hello Bob' mastered, add emotional color. Say 'Hello Bob', nastily, lovingly, sweetly... while keeping relaxed. Laugh Out Loud: Stand in front of your mirror breathing easily. On your out breath begin a series of Ha-ha-ha-ha's until all your breath is used. Take an in breath and start again. Vary your laughter. Make it louder, make it quiet and then build it up again. Repeat until you are laughing loudly and easily without any strain. Read Out Loud: Make sure your stance and breathing is good. Pin point a place at the far end of

10 10 Voice Matters your room to talk to. For example, I used a painting on the back wall of the rehearsal hall. Read aloud from your text, making sure you maintain your relaxed state while using as much vocal variety as you can. A good way to test you're working as you should is to do this exercise with a partner. Have them stand at the far end of the room you're practicing in. Give instructions to give you feedback on clarity, variety and pitch. If you find yourself rising in pitch, check your breathing. When we tense, we strain the throat and when that happens our vocal chords are restricted. The result is we force the pitch up and limit the range or color we can put into our words. If you haven't got a partner available, be very aware of the changes in your body as you tighten. You will feel the strain in your upper chest and throat. In addition your shoulders will lift and you will run yourself out of breath easily. Excercises for Rate (Pace) Too fast or too slow If you've ever been called a motor-mouth, you'll know it's because the words rocket out of your mouth. That may be fun and exciting to listen to for a while but too much speed is dangerous. It can kill your speech as the people listening get tired. You may be asking them to work too hard. When your speech stops being stimulating and starts being uncomfortable, ears switch off. And exactly the same thing happens at the other end of the spectrum. Slow word-by-veryslow-word turns ears off just as fast. Now people are waiting-and-waiting for you to get on with it and your lack of speed causes them to lose interest. The answer is variety The solution to the too fast-too slow problem is not the middle ground. Rather it is to vary our speaking rate in direct response to our audience's and our content's need. Picture in your mind the the layout of your speech. You'll have an introduction, followed by a series of main ideas with supporting examples or illustrations. To finish there'll be a conclusion. Now think of the thread (theme, main idea) linking it altogether. It is similar to a road. You are taking your audience on a journey. Your speech is the vehicle carrying them along and your mouth is the driver. As the driver you make choices. You can whirl them through so fast the scenery blurs.

11 11 Voice Matters While you're busy negotiating a series of complicated hair pin bends at full throttle, they're gazing out out the back window trying to work out what they've missed and where they are. One by one your listeners get dizzy. Then they close off their ears and sit quietly waiting for the ride to stop. Or by contrast you can proceed so cautiously your passengers want to get out and walk. If you were a responsive driver you would be continually adjusting your speed to meet the road conditions and the needs of your passengers. There would be places to slow and perhaps even stop for the audience to catch their breath. There would also be places where a quick burst of acceleration would give an exciting thrill. How is speech pace interpreted? Generally a FASTER speaking speed signals urgency, excitement, passion or raw emotion. It can lead the audience to expect something thrilling is going to occur. They hold their breaths and go for the ride with you. In contrast a SLOWER speaking rate signals importance, seriousness, or significant ideas. Slow says: 'LISTEN UP! YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS.' A new concept or new and perhaps, complex sequential information may need to be delivered slowly so the audience has time to grasp all of the ideas and their consequences before moving on. 'Slow' is also useful for summarizing material. The combination of slow, fast, slow, and medium speed adds interest to your speech making it easier to listen to. 6 exercises to develop flexible speaking rate 1. Read or recite part of a text you know and love quickly. If you can record yourself, do so. If not, listen and note the effect it has on you. If you've recorded yourself, play it back. Ask yourself where was the speed effective? Where was it detrimental? Mark those places on your script. (Use a highlighter: red for fast, blue for go slower) Read again incorporating your changes. 2. Read a children's story silently several times to familiarize yourself with the flow. Go through it again noting which passages would suit taking more quickly and which should be slower. Read aloud listen carefully.

12 12 Voice Matters 3. Pick an information loaded report from a newspaper or magazine. Go through it to familiarize yourself with the flow of material and then read aloud. Make a note of which passages need careful or slow reading and which can be taken at a faster rate. Re-read aloud until you feel you have the mix of speeds right. As an extension exercise read the report as if you were reading for an audience who knew nothing about the subject. Note what changes you made and why. 4. Time yourself reading or saying your speech at your normal speaking rate. Note the time down. Now go through again having marked passages for slower or faster treatment. Note the new time. 5. Practice with a partner. Go through any of the exercises above. Explain what you doing and ask them to listen for effectiveness. Get them to note examples where you did well and where you needed to alter your rate and why. 6. Listen to speakers you admire. They could be radio presenters, preachers... anybody accustomed to speaking in public. Note the different rates of speech they use over the course of their presentation and the effectiveness of them. (Try to listen to a variety so you have a broad range to draw inspiration from.) Take elements of their rate changes and experiment with them for yourself. Exercises for pausing Let Punctuation Be Your Guide In printed text of any sort punctuation is used to separate words. The varying punctuation marks give information about how we should read and comprehend them. They arrange the words in parcels, separating one unit from the next, so we can easily unwrap/decode them one at a time. In short, punctuation allows us to make sequential sense of printed material. In speech, punctuation marks are implied in the way we deliver our words. Below is an excerpt from Martin Luther King Junior's famous 1963 speech: 'I Have a Dream' Read it through silently several times to get the flow of ideas. 'This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

13 13 Voice Matters Let freedom ring from the snow capped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. Now read the excerpt through out loud letting the punctuation dictate where to pause and for how long. Counting In my teaching I used a counting system to help people with pausing. Often I marked their text or called it out during rehearsals. For a full stop or period, the count was 1,2 For a comma, the count was 1 For a semi-colon, the count was 1 For a colon, the count was 1,2 Between the end of one paragraph and the start of the next the count was 1, 2, 3 If you're a musician think of the comma, fullstops/periods, colons and semi-colons as 'rests' of varying lengths. Try the sentences from the excerpt out loud again listening for right moment to add the next phrase. Use the count method to help you. Do use the fullstops/periods for breaths. They are the natural place to refuel. Running out in the middle of a phrase breaks the beat and the sense. Experiment with holding the silences until you feel you have the 'beat' you want. Have a friend listen to you trying variations and give you feedback. Note: Rate is the speed you say the words between the pauses/silences. Some phrases or sentences will naturally be faster or slower than others. The same flexibility applies to your silences. Some will be shorter than others. Experience will teach and refine your technique. Gradually your ears will take over and let you know when to start speaking again. Until then, count! If you are a new public speaker your judgment over the length of a pause may be unreliable. We're convinced we've said nothing for an age and rush to fill the vacuum. More Practice: This excerpt comes from 'David Copperfield' by Charles Dickens. It is the opening

14 14 Voice Matters paragraphs from Chapter One - 'I am Born'. The sentence structure is complex and requires careful thought to make it 'live' read aloud. Begin by reading the passage through silently, noting the natural places to pause and breath. Then read aloud using the counting method as a guide. Remember that although you have momentarily paused, the sense and forward movement of the passage must create a bridge over the gap. That means pitch, tone, volume and rate within your phrasing swings through the silence. You are not stopping to start an entirely new idea. When you begin again, you are building on what has gone before. Let the rich 19th century 'wordiness' of Dicken's prose shine through. 'Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously. In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighborhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.' And Another Piece: This time it's poetry; one of Shakespeare's Sonnets: 'Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?' Imagine when you read you're talking to the love of your life. The poem may not use words you would but it does express the power and depth of emotion associated with a very, very special person. Use the counting method to help you at first. Say it through several times to get the flow of ideas sorted and then play with variations. The central theme is that his lover is more beautiful than a Summer's day. Even though Summer is a delight, it has strong winds that blow blossoms around, it ends too soon, and the sun is sometimes too hot or clouded over. Shakespeare goes on to say that although everything beautiful (fair) ages either, as a result of an accident (chance) or because of its nature, the love he bears will be eternal. In his mind she will always have the qualities he cherishes, even when she is older and 'lines to time thou growest'. As long as he lives he will continue to see her this way and in doing so, will give her life. She will never die or diminish while he is there as her witness.

15 15 Voice Matters Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate; Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And Summer's lease hath all too short a date; Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; But thy eternal Summer will not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest; So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. Lastly: Practice on a wider range of ordinary material. Read recipes or instruction sheets aloud making sure you give time for the audience to understand the sequence of actions needed to complete the tasks. Try informative articles on subjects you're interested in.