DEVELOPING YOUR VOICE SKILLS

Voice skills are those more advanced abilities required by speakers who want to develop a truly effective speaking voice. This section will provide an insight into the features of a good voice and will suggest a range of techniques and exercises to limber up your vocal apparatus. We all have the potential for a stronger, richer, more interesting voice; one that conveys that magical mixture of confidence, vitality and ease.

Features of a good voice

What, technically, makes for a good voice? A good voice is the result of the following features:

• Breathing support for the voice is adequate for fluent, clear expression.
• Jaw and throat are open so that there is no hard edge or blocked tone to the voice.
• Articulation of speech sounds is clear and precise, any national or regional accent being irrelevant.
• Pitch is suitable for the speaker, given their age and gender, and a variety in intonation is included to give life and energy to the tone of the voice.
• Resonance is balanced: the tone of the voice is not nasal, chesty, plummy or thin.
• Projection and volume are adequate for the size of room and audience, without being monotonously loud or forced.
• Speed and rhythm are appropriate for the material, and pauses are used meaningfully.

FOLLOWING THE 28-DAY VOICE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME

You will be amazed how your voice can be transformed in just one month. Practising the following exercises at least five times a week during the run-up to the wedding will make your voice stronger and more open and flexible. But any section can be done on its own, once you decide what could be improved in your voice. If even that’s too much for you, at least sing in the bath or join in a few Saturday afternoon soccer chants. When it comes to the voice, it is a case of use it or lose it.

Breathing

Most of us breathe with only the top part of our body which means we are not fully lowering the diaphragm or expanding the lungs. This kind of restricted breathing stifles emotional expression and can result in tension in the neck, throat and voice.

To find out whether you are breathing correctly, try these two simple exercises:

• Put one hand on the upper part of your chest and the other on the top of the abdomen (the top of the bulge below your chest). Establish a regular pattern of slow, deep breathing. As you inhale, which hand rises first? It should be your lower hand. If it is not, you are not making use of the lungs’ full capacity.
• Place your hands across your stomach with just the tips of your fingers touching. Bell out the stomach as you inhale. As you exhale, press your fingers down onto the now flattened stomach. As it bells out again, are your fingers being separated and drawn apart, and do they come together again as you breathe out? They should do.

If you are not breathing correctly, perform this exercise regularly until you have learned to breathe deeply, using your abdomen as well as your chest:

• Rest your hands on your rib cage at the sides, just above the waist. Breathe out completely. Inhale gently through the nose, allowing your abdomen to swell. Breathe in more air, this time allowing your ribs and then your chest to expand but making sure that your shoulders do not raise during the process. Hold your breath for a couple more seconds before exhaling all the air slowly through the mouth. Notice how your rib cage shrinks beneath your hands as your abdomen is pulled in. Repeat 10 times.

Any physical exercise which has an aerobic benefit will also help you breathe correctly. It takes time for the body to change its ingrained breathing habits. But it’s well worth persevering, as lower chest deep breathing is much better for voice and general health.

Jaw and throat exercises

Let your jaw drop comfortably and as wide as you can. Imagine how many fingers you could place horizontally between your teeth. Most people think three or four. Try it. There’s probably room for just one or two. We think we open our mouths – and thereby free our jaws – far more than we really do. And as voice trainer Christina Schule puts it: ‘You can’t sing Wall’s Cornetto, or speak in a mock Italian accent, or speak well with a tight jaw.’

• Stand up and stretch. Yawn loudly and feel the deep hollow sound as your throat opens. Yawn again, this time pushing your tongue out and feeling the stretch. Breathe in while your tongue is still out, feeling the cool air in the space at the back of your mouth.
• Chew an imaginery piece of chewing-gum with big open-mouthed movements. Feel the stretching of your cheeks, jaw and mouth. Repeat the months of the year as you chew: January, February, March ...
• Hum – mmmmmmmm – on to gently closed lips. Feel a tickly, tingling sensation in your lips. This means the sound is ‘placed’ forward in the mouth, rather than tightly pushed in the throat, or held at the back of the mouth. Repeat 5 times. Then open your mouth, with the hum still going, into a wide, clear mmmmmmmm aaaaaaaah. Feel the sound streaming out. Sing mmmmmmmm aaaaaaaah 1-2-3-4-5. Now, with the same ‘forward’ sensation, speak on one breath the days of the week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday ...

Learning to articulate

Articulation is the production of different sounds. There are more than 50 different sounds in English and when you produce any of them you are articulating. Repeat each of these exercises 10 times:

• Open your mouth very wide and then close it.
• Round your lips and protrude them as far as you can and practise the sound oooooooo.
• Spread your lips back in a big smile. Feel the muscles pulling around your chin and neck area. Practise the sound eeee. Then make the sound eeoo.
• Thrust your upper lip forward; thrust your lower lip forward.
• Stretch your upper lip down; stretch your lower lip up.
• Raise the right side of your mouth; raise the left side of your mouth. Be sure the whole of your face is involved in the movement. It is necessary to have the muscles in your face moving freely for expression.
• Protrude your tongue without touching your upper or lower lip. This will be helpful for production of sounds like th.
• Point the tip of your tongue up and touch your top lip, then the right corner of your mouth, then the left, then point it down towards your chin.
• Rotate your tongue around your mouth over your upper teeth, then your lower teeth.
• Raise the tip of your tongue and touch the gum ridge behind your upper teeth, slowly bringing it back towards your palate.
• Let the tip of your tongue touch the roof of your mouth. Flap it up and produce a strong lah lah lah nah nah nah.
• Open your mouth as wide as you can and say: aeiou.
• Say: I want to go to Ward 10 (not ‘I wanna go t’ Ward N’) and: Give me the hat (not ‘Gimme the ‘at).
• Now say: childhood, witchcraft, brightness (not ‘chilhood, witcraft, brighness).
• Practise saying these tongue twisters:

The sixth sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick.

She sells sea–shells on the sea–shore.

The Leith police dismisseth us.

Pitch

Pitch is the musical note of the voice.

• Yawn, sliding your voiced yawn down from the highest to the lowest note you can make. Yawn again, this time sliding your voiced yawn from your lowest to highest note. Repeat 5 times.
• Speak the sentence:
  • I don’t think we should go this week.
  • on 5 different pitches:
  • high
  • medium high middle medium low
  • low
  • Listen to their different effects on the sound of the sentence.
• Choose one of the model speeches in Chapter 8 (a different one each time you do this exercise). Tape record yourself presenting it, letting your voice go up and down in pitch when it feels appropriate. Play it back. Does it sound lively and energetic? Or too much like a child’s bedtime story? Or the latest news report from Moscow? Record other versions until you are satisfied with your rendition.

Resonance

Hum out a loud mmmmmmmm, imagining the sound going up into your nose and forehead. Say, meemeemeemeemee. Say, This nasal twang sounds horrible. Now hum again. This time, imagine the sound is echoing in your chest. Beat your upper and lower chest with your hand, as you hum, feeling the vibrations. Say, maamaamaamaamaa. Say, I can feel the booming chest quality of my voice. Now hum so you feel the tingle on your lips. Open the sound into mmm aaaaw. Hear the loud, open quality. Imagine a balance of head and chest tone; a balance that feels just right for your voice.

Speak about today’s weather with that same balanced voice and clear forward sound.

Projection and volume

Being able to project your voice comes with mastery of correct breathing and self–confidence.

• Take a deep breath into the diaphragm and try ‘sending’ your voice to a different place: the other side of the room, the next room, the next floor. Speak this sentence:
  • I am delighted to be here today.
  • Say it 5 times. Imagine the sound streaming to:
  • 1 person
  • 10 people
  • 50 people
  • 100 people
  • 500 people.
• Choose another model speech and perform it to an imaginery audience of approximately the same size as will be at the wedding reception. Speak one sentence loud, one soft, and so on. Experiment with volume.

Speed and rhythm

Speaking with a ‘machine–gun’ delivery, placing equal emphasis on each word and without pause, sounds very monotonous. Read these two sentences:

Becky lives in Bath.
Rebecca resides in Somerset.

Same girl; same place; different descriptions. How long did it take to recite each sentence? More-or-less the same, with the second taking just a little longer? The first sentence has four syllables, whilst the second has nine, yet you probably spoke each word in the second sentence much more quickly than die words in the first, with emphasis on certain syllables only: Rebecca resides in Somerset This highlights the danger of reading scripts. It is all too easy to machine–gun your delivery and lose the natural rise and fall of your voice.

Say the following out loud, first without and then with pauses:

[pause] Today we look back at the single lives of Mark and Cleo, [pause] and also look forward into the crystal ball to see what lies ahead for Mr and Mrs Antony, [pause] Well you don’t need to be a Mystic Meg to know their future, [pause] It’s going to be more, [pause] much more of the same.

I’m sure you will agree that the second version was much better. Did you notice how pausing also caused you to vary your speed and rhythm? How long did it take you to say it? At 100wpm it should have been about 30 seconds.

A FINAL WORD ...

Concentrate on your voice development during the run-up to the wedding, but then forget all about it on the big day. Your voice will have improved dramatically over the last month, and it is now time to simply relax and be yourself. As actors are taught, you must:

‘Dig deep to fly high and then throw it all away.’