Archive for category basic

Body Alignment

Posted by earmstro in Voice, Warm-ups, basic on April 21st, 2009

Alignment is something that has been part of Actor training for a very, very long time. In old days, it was called Posture, or sometimes Deportment, and it was about how to hold your body so that it looked the way you wanted it to. Today, we use the term Alignment, which has come to the Actor Trainers' vocabulary by way of the Alexander Technique. First created by an Australian, F.M. Alexander (1869-1955) in the 1890s, Alexander Technique (or A.T. as its proponents call it) is a hands-on means of exploring and balancing the tensions in the body necessary to do anything. I am by no means a trained Alexander teacher, but I highly recommend that actors-in-training seek out an Alexander teacher, so that you can begin to explore how your own use of your body helps and hinders your work. Teachers can be found throught the Alexander Technique website, at www.alexandertechnique.com

Here I hope to guide you toward some simple suggestions about how to approach standing, sitting and lying down when working on voice. These are merely guidelines, and not hard and fast rules. If it doesn't feel comfortable, you may want to shift out of the position for a while. However, our habits often tell us that something new is "not natural", when really, it's merely new, and therefore we are not yet habituated to it. Learning to feel comfortable in any new mode of doing takes time, practice and patience. If you always give in to the voice in your head that says "that's uncomfortable" and resort to slouching, you'll struggle to change your pattern. For more on how to change your pattern, you might investigate The Performance School , an online self-study guide to the Alexander Technique. They have a very helpful experiment page that specifically addresses Slumping.

STANDING
Stand with your feet in parallel. For some people, this feels as if they are "toeing in," because they are used to standing with their feet turned out. Stand with your feet, knees and hips aligned, stacking your leg joints vertically as best you can. Because you may have knock-knees or bow legs, you can only do this as best you can, but that should be your guideline. Your knees should be somewhat bouncy, not locked or hyper-extended. It helps to think of length in your legs, rather than feeling compression in your joints. Be sure to avoid standing with your feet together, or with your feet to wide apart.

Your lower back should neither be flat nor too deeply curved. You want to feel as if your shoulders are wide in both the front and the back. Often people pinch their shoulder blades together in order to compensate for collapsed shoulders. You want to feel both wide and opening in the front AND in the back. Your head should be balanced on your neck, not thrusting forward, pulled too far back, and your gaze should be ahead, not down toward the floor or up at the ceiling. Let your head float up toward the ceiling, so the neck feels long and easy, rather than collapsed. Again, finding the right balance of all your body parts takes a lot of experimentation and exploration, and the best way to find that is with a teacher, rather than on your own.

SITTING
Sitting in a chair is very similar to standing, in terms of alignment. You want to allow your torso to be balanced on your "sitting bones" (iscial tuberosity), so you can stack your spine up, letting your head float up. Let your hands rest on your thighs, with your shoulders wide across the front and back. For people with shorter legs, be sure to sit forward in your chair far enough so that you can sit with your feet comfortably on the floor. You might also put a phone book under your feet, so that you don't have your feet dangling over the edge of the chair.

Your feet, knees, hips should be aligned, so that each joint is roughly hip width apart. Don't cross your legs. For those who have studied musical instruments, you may be familiar with this form of sitting from band or orchestra practice.

LYING DOWN
Lying down is pretty easy, or so we all think. But lying down mindfully takes some care. Again, you want to align your legs so that you are roughly lying as you would be when you're standing, with feet, knees and hips in alignment. Your feet can fall open here, into a more "turned out" manner, if that's comfortable, though I would avoid allowing your toes to turn in. Your arms should be down by your sides, with your hands at roughly hip level. You can let your palms turn up to the ceiling, if that is comfortable, but it's not required.

The place that probably deserves extra attention in lying down is how to put your head. Most of us are used to lying on a bed, often lying on our sides or on our fronts, rather than squarely on our backs. To align your head, you want to be sure that you can keep your head in an alignment similar to what you might have when you're standing, floating your head up to the ceiling. For some, this requires a small book be placed under the head in order for the head and neck to be in a comfortable position.

alignment, basic, easy, voice, warm-up

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Basic Warm-up Series Playlist

Posted by earmstro in Warm-ups, basic on April 21st, 2009

VoiceGuy Playlist

The Basic Warm-up Series includes audio for each of the exercises outlined in the blog. These audio files can be downloaded here as a single file, compressed in .zip format, or individually as separate .mp3’s. As the VoiceGuy develops, you will have the opportunity to download more steps in other series and you’ll be able to pick and choose the components you’d like to use for your warm-up.

[I'll be using this icon in future posts to indicate when a playlist is available.]

basic, easy, playlist, voice, warm-up

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The Basic Warm-up Series Conclusion

Posted by earmstro in Voice, Warm-ups, basic on April 21st, 2009

Now that we've worked our way through the first series of Voice warm-up exercises, we've got some basic tools to create a regular warm-up with. Warming up only works if you're diligent enough to warm-up on a regular basis. The goal is not only to prepare yourself for the day, but also to build skills through your warm-up. So over time, this warm-up will become far too simple, too easy for an actor to find particularly useful. You'll need to update your warm-up by adding new exercises from the VoiceGuy, and from other teachers and resources, like books on voice and/or speech.

The entire Basic Warm-up Series is available as audio files from the Playlist page.

The VoiceGuy aims to put the tools in your hands to enable you to maintain your practice, without a teacher to constantly guide you. Look for more advanced series of warm-ups, podcasts and playlists in future postings of the blog. As those elements are added, I'll update this page with links to those resources. Starting tomorrow I'll begin the Intermediate Warm-up Series, with another ten step process through the voice work.

If you're finding these tools make you want to explore more voice work, please seek out a trained voice professional in your area. The Voice and Speech Trainers Association (VASTA) has a list of trainers, also listed by Country/State, that you can contact to find more information on further training. There is nothing like having a teacher to guide your learning!

basic, conclusion, easy, warm-up

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Taking it to Text Basics

Posted by earmstro in Voice, Warm-ups, basic on April 21st, 2009

This post is available for download as an audio file, so you can do the work along with the recording.

Now that you've warmed-up your voice and your articulators are going, now's the time to apply this new-found sound/sensation awareness to some language, the text of some play or poem. What you speak at this point doesn't matter too much, but why work on poor quality text, when you can work on the best?

For this example, I'll use a portion of William Shakespeare'e Henry V, the very beginning of the first Chorus speech, The Prologue, however you should feel free to use any text that you feel is worthy of your exploration (and that you have memorized). If you don't have anything memorized, you could always learn this one! It begins:

O For a Muse of Fire, that would ascend
The brightest Heaven of Invention:
A Kingdom for a Stage, Princes to Act,
And Monarchs to behold the swelling Scene.
Then should the Warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the Port of Mars, and at his heels
(Leasht in, like Hounds) should Famine, Sword, and Fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, Gentles all:
The flat unraysed Spirits, that hath dar'd,
On this unworthy Scaffold, to bring forth
So great an Object. Can this Cock-Pit hold
The vastie fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this Wooden O. the very Casks
That did affright the Air at Agincourt?
O pardon: since a crooked Figure may
Attest in little place a Million,
And let us, Cyphers to this great Accompt,
On your imaginarie Forces worke.

I've taken the liberty of changing some of the more obscure spelling and typographical conventions in the Folio text, and converted those to modern spellings.

So, now we have a text to work on, let's begin by either reading it through aloud or speaking it, also aloud. I cannot stress enough the need to do voice work out loud, that is "on one's voice" and not in your head or in a whisper. The number of times I find students working on an exercise or a text and they're doing it sotto voce or off their voice, would astound you! As you work, give yourself permission to play with your voice, to let the feel of your voice guide you to go beyond your preconceived notions of your voice, and into a new place of discovery and exploration.

FuFFing the Text

As we so often do, I'd invite you to take time with your text to notice your breath. That's how this Basic Warm-up Series began, and it's good to return to that now. Speak the text, and allow your breath impulse to guide you when to breathe. See whether you can breathe based on the "chunks of thought" in the text. Perhaps they will be broken up by the line structure of the text, as the thought process is often revealed in the verse structure of a classical text. Perhaps the punctuation will guide you. Whatever happens, allow yourself to feel your way through the text. Take your time! There is no need to rush your way through.

Now, take some time to let your breath connect with the rhythm and thoughts of the text. Speak the text, but instead of saying the text, replace each syllable with /f/, letting the stresses fall on the important words. Let the /f/ sound be fluffy and fairly noisy (as /f/'s go!), and allow your breath to come as it's needed. Perhaps it will be connected to the thought chunks that you explored above; don't be surprised if this /f/-based version demands more breaths of you, so you're allowing breath more often. Once you've "fuffed" your way through the entire text, now try speaking the text, and see whether the breath connection has had an impact.

Hummming the Text

Finally, let's explore the sound of your voice through the text. Though you don't want to LISTEN to your voice as you're doing this, we do want to explore opening up the possibilities of your voice, and the sound it makes. In the same way that we just explored breath with the "fuffing," Hum your way through the text, replacing every syllable with /m/. It's really important to focus on the ideas of the language, and not worry too much about the sound. Instead, worry about how the ideas create buzziness in your teeth, lips, face and hard palate. How do your ideas get buzzed out? Once you spoken the text through on /m/, immediately speak the text again seeing whether there is a connection between the buzziness and the language.

This is the final step in the Basic Warm-up Series. For suggestions on where to go next, check out the Basic Warm-up Series Conclusion.

basic, easy, text, voice, warm-up

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Articulator Basics

Posted by earmstro in Voice, Warm-ups, basic on April 21st, 2009

This post is available for download as an audio file, so you can do the work along with the recording.

To see the phonetic symbols in this post, please make sure that you have installed a Unicode font that includes all the IPA symbols, for example Charis SIL.

Browsers: Some older versions of Internet Explorer and Safari have bugs that prevent the proper display of certain phonetic symbols. If you’re experiencing problems, I recommend you try the free browsers Firefox or Opera.

Warming up your articulators is often what people, even the most uninformed, know about voice work. Good Diction, as many people will tell you, means being able to speak clearly, to articulate, using "the jaw, the lips, the tip of the tongue." In this brief articulator warm-up, we'll focus on energizing the tongue for plosive consonants, namely /p, t, k/ and /b, d, g/.

Pop Your P's!

Plosives are consonants that stop the airflow of the voice and may or may not release it with a puff of air or voice. Put the palm of your hand in front of your mouth and say "pop!" You should feel the puff of air that both begins and ends that word, though it is possible that you might make that word with only one explosion, and merely stop the air for the final /p/. If that was the case on your first attempt, try again, but this time make a point of popping both p's with a puff of air.

You might notice that /p, t, k/ are voiceless consonants, that is they are ones that are made without vibration of your vocal folds. Each of those consonants has a corresponding voiced consonant, /b, d, g/ respectively. Try whispering the consoant sounds of /b, d, g/ as in "bad, dad, gad." You'll notice that they aren't exactly the same as the sounds in a whispered "pad, tad, cad"—that's because initial /p, t, k/ in English have a very strong puff of air, or aspiration, associated with them, while /b, d, g/ do not. Those three pairs, /p, b/, /t, d/, and /k, g/ are known as "cognate pairs," because each pair is made in the same place in the mouth, and they're both plosive sounds, and all that is different between them is their voicing. The three places in the mouth are the lips, aka bilabial, the tongue tip on the gum ridge, aka alveolar, and the back of the tongue and the soft palate, aka velar.

To warm-up your articulators, one of the primary tricks we use is to drill quick alternations between consonant or vowel and another in rapid succession. That's what well do here. We'll start with the lips and the front of the tongue, using voiceless consonants. The vowel we’ll use is the neutral “huh” vowel, which the IPA represents with the symbol [ʌ], which I call “hut” (because that word has the sound “uh” in it, and I imagine the symbol like the peaked roof of a small hut!) Try repeating the following phrase (an mp3 of me doing this exercise can be heard here):

|: pʌ — tʌ, pʌ — tʌ, pʌ — tʌ :|

Now try the voiced version:

|: bʌ — dʌ, bʌ — dʌ, bʌ — dʌ :|

Now, we’ll alternate the gum ridge sounds with the soft palate sounds—first with voiceless sounds /t, k/:

|: tʌ — kʌ, tʌ — kʌ, tʌ — kʌ, :|

And now, with the voiced sound /d, g/:

|: dʌ — ɡʌ, dʌ — ɡʌ, dʌ — ɡʌ, :|

Now, we’ll put all three sounds together in a single drill:

|: pʌ–tʌ–kʌ–tʌ, pʌ–tʌ–kʌ–tʌ, pʌ–tʌ–kʌ–tʌ, :|

|: bʌ–dʌ–ɡʌ–dʌ, bʌ–dʌ–ɡʌ–dʌ, bʌ–dʌ–ɡʌ–dʌ, :|

Finally, to combine these exercises into a single drill, try these:

|: pʌ–tʌ–kʌ–tʌ, kʌ–tʌ–pʌ–tʌ pʌ–tʌ–kʌ–tʌ, kʌ–tʌ–pʌ–tʌ pʌ–tʌ–kʌ–tʌ, kʌ–tʌ–pʌ–tʌ :|

|: bʌ–dʌ–ɡʌ–dʌ, ɡʌ–dʌ–bʌ–dʌ bʌ–dʌ–ɡʌ–dʌ, ɡʌ–dʌ–bʌ–dʌ bʌ–dʌ–ɡʌ–dʌ, ɡʌ–dʌ–bʌ–dʌ :|

You should be able to do this quickly, and with great ease. Try not to belabour it, or work to hard; let your jaw relax, and make sure to energize your lips so that the /p/ and /b/ really make your lips MOVE, while your jaw stays still.

NEXT STEP: Taking it to Text Basics

articulator, basic, easy, voice, warm-up

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