Vocal development programme: 1

D1: Analyse own vocal characteristics and plan a carefully considered and well structured individual vocal development programme.

D2: Carry out an individual vocal development programme, with full commitment and analyse progress made. 

Introduction:
To begin this project, I would like to introduce you to my voice, its characteristics and features that I have slowly begun to uncover through the means of performance, class work and independent research. To start, the features that I have identified for my voice consist of: fast paced, quiet, low pitched and has a smooth quality to it. I have been made aware of the fact that I talk quickly, it’s definitely something I wasn’t aware of before recently but it’s been known to make my diction weak. Despite talking fast, I am quietly spoken; which is something that lowers my vocal abilities on stage, as well as the fault in me talking so quickly. I certainly don’t have the stereotypical girly-voice, but naturally have quite a low pitched voice. It’s not something that is incredibly obvious to the ear, but it makes my voice unique in a sense. But, overall, the quality of my voice is smooth. In a more detailed approach to my voice, I have pinpointed sections of my voice that I have identified to be (some) areas of the voice that I will focus my project upon: Posture, Articulation/Pace and Projection. (I have linked articulation to pace purely because where I talk quickly, I don't give myself time to properly articulate.)  And although these words aren't any that I have listed above, they are things that are important to the characterisation of my voice. 


Posture:
 Posture is a huge part of our vocal delivery. "If the bones of the skeleton are stacked correctly, the body is in its most architecturally sound configuration." ~ Sean Mcarther. This quote says it all, if the body is not in the correct alignment, our bodily functions are not going to work correctly, and so this applies heavily to our voices. In terms of voice, good posture opens up your chest and allows the diaphragm to be clear, with the chin pushed back slightly the vocal chords will also be aligned, and all these attributes help to improve the voice in general. In terms of my own posture, I was brought up very much surrounded by yoga and dance. Both of these things have a special focus on your posture, as does the likes of singing and acting. Yoga helps to realign your body, by straightening your back, planting your feet properly and simply just standing neutrally. Dance being similar, but I found with ballet especially, it taught me a lot about how I should hold myself, which was very much linked to the balance of the particular dance. There have been many times that people have noticed how well I hold myself and very often I am linked to being a dancer. And so I think its fairly clear that my posture is of a good level, however more recently I have been noticing how bad its become. The things I've noticed now I've been paying more attention to my posture is that I carry my satchel like bag on the same shoulder, and this is something I do daily. I often find that this is the shoulder that tends to ache everynow and then. I use my phone a lot, and its the typical bent neck posture, and although this isn't something that causes pain to me, it shows my bad posture. Sitting, I notice I never sit up straight, and even if I remind myself, 10 minutes later I'll be back into a more slumped over position. My posture seems to be at its best when I'm at work: when I'm sat on a checkout I sit up straight, making myself look more approachable if I can be seen over the till etc. 
All of the above points have been made when I am in a seated position, this is because I find my standing posture slightly better than the seated. Although people have told me I stand well, I've noticed that I bring my shoulders forward and they rest slightly closer to my neck than they should. I also always, always tilt my head slightly to the right!  

During my time at college, I've begun to realise the importance of posture in terms of simply the aesthetic of a character. In our first performance, '13' by Mike Bartlett, we had characters in the role of the Prime Minister etc, and it really lowered her status because the actor to this character had a bad posture. But other characters that featured in our performances such as 'ROAD' by Jim Cartwright, whom had bad postures, I noticed, it just seem to lower there stage presence, and although all the characters were meant to be poor and unhappy, it made them look even worse because they weren't holding themselves well. Shakespeare changed this for us all a little bit, because I think as soon as we knew it was Shakespeare we put on posh voices and held ourselves well, and automatically this just made the presence some people had on stage 10 times stronger. Our physical theatre piece inbetween all of our other performances also helped on our postures because it was all based on how we were using our bodies to tell a story, so any climatic scenes we might have started off with a slumped posture but as it reached the climax, our postures would improve and the tallness of our bodies would grow also. And finally in our restoration of Man Of Mode by George Etherege, my posture is something I really want to make perfect, hence why I'am making it something to work on during this year.


Articulation/Pace: I understand that my articulation is said to be good but I've figured that's only down to sounding posh when speaking, my articulation itself is rather weak. Well, its a mixture of both articulation and diction which makes my speech in general a lot weaker than it could be. I pronounce things well, such as my 'th' sounds, 'f' sounds and 's' sounds. However, with the speed at which I sometimes speak my articulation of some sounds and words becomes unclear. I find, a lot of the time, people ask me to repeat what I've said, and I gather that's because As said above, I have linked articulation and pace together because I figure I would have good articulation if I didn't rush through what I say. So if I slowed down, as well as worked on my articulation, both would be improved during this project. My pace was something that I really need to keep on top of during 'ROAD'. We all worked on Northern accents, and to master the accent we needed to speak relatively quickly, however, where I speak quickly already, a lot of my words were becoming inaudible (you see where articulation fits in now?) Especially with the accent alongside it. This is also becoming a problem for me in Man Of Mode. At the moment, we are all working off scripts, so in rehearsal's its very much just us reading from our scripts. This is where I seem to mess up, I read it at about 70mph so it's pretty much completely inaudible to the audience, and because I read it so quickly, I stumble over a lot of words and I tend to ignore everything I have learnt about articulation and just whizz through my lines. This is definitely a confidence thing for me, but it knocks my confidence more when I realise how quickly I've said my lines.

On many, many occasions I have been reminded to slow down during performances, for example in our Shakespeare performance (Much Ado About Nothing). The key to Shakespeare, which I have now learnt, is the Iambic Pentameter, which is all about emphasis on words. Emphasis on words can only be succeeded when you slow down your speech enough to concentrate on emphasising. Where I was speaking so quickly, I was missing out on the correct emphasis points; making what I was saying confusing and unclear. Articulation was something incredibly key during our radio show, 'The Far Side Of The Moor'. This was a BBC Radio show set in 1950's England, so the language was very much British RP, so articualtion was key for two reasons, one being that it was set as a radio show, and radio announcers have to be well spoken and articulated, and two because of the era it was set in and my character was in her 60's so naturally a bit better.

Projection has always, always been something I have struggled with and its always been something that I have been noted on...literally for every performance I have done. I naturally have a quiet voice, I can be loud but on stage I tend to loose any volume to my voice. Confidence is probably the biggest reason I don't project well, but it knocks my confidence when I know I need to project much, much more to even remotely improve when on-stage. This has to be my main reason as to choosing to work on my projection throughout the course of this project. I want to be able to slip into a well projected voice both naturally but more importantly when on stage, I don't want it to be something I always have to be reminded of, and I feel that with my character I am working on currently (Man Of Mode-Mrs Loveit) this is the perfect time to really improve, and hopefully myself and my peers and lecturers will be able to notice the significant difference come to the end of my course here at South Downs.
Projection is possibly the main important aspect to performing, if your audience can't hear you, you really have no luck whatsoever in being able to pull off a well-liked performance. I have seen a few actors on stage with poor articulation, and its crazy how much you loose your likeness towards them as you begin to understand less and less of what they are saying. I would like to talk to you about specifics as to where projection was key for me, but it has been such an important throughout the performances I have done. It's been something I have always needed, and something I have always lacked. I have come to notice, that its not something of an issue inside the rehearsal rooms, its only when we get into our theatre space in preparation. I think my voice gets drowned out in the larger performance space. http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/clips/zgxfgk7 This link provided me with more reasons as to why projection is so important and it also gave me some tips on how to improve my pronounciation; in which I hope to cover under my 'articulation/pace' heading. 



Week 1:

The exercises I focused my project on this week consisted of:

• Actors Neutral
• Reading a loud ('Like A Virgin' by Gordon Steele)
• Mrs Loveit (Man Of Mode by George Etherege)

Posture

Posture, being the first on my list, is a tricky one to begin with I think. But I've settled on the fact that in the early days of working on it, I shall purely focus on improving it, and then as it begins to improve, I will begin to link it in with my voice. And similarly for this beginning week, I've looked more into the actors neutral, and note down differences in my voice when sat in the natural (bent back, squished stomach muscle position)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCwyrA7G_0A 

This link took me through the process of improving your posture, but mainly focussing on the neutral effect you can create for your body. Throughout the video, he talks you through various body positions,one being just a simple 'neutral spine' position, and a neutral spine in the seated position. The video talks you through all of these positions and I thought I could try them all out, photographing both positions, and then I would be able to compare later on during this project. But as I said, I practised both these with texts in order to be able to identify what effects on the voice it has, so I would be able to compare this with others later on. The piece of text I used was a short monologue from 'ROAD' by Jim Cartwright. I chose this because it's one I know off by heart, which means I could fully focus on the voice and not the lines. https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130429125935AA3ThL5  

     In the seated neutral position, I felt comfy and it felt natural to be speaking in this position. It felt very much as though I was performing, however my neck felt awkward. For the neutral position, you have to line it up with your spine, so to me it felt a little bit out of place but apart from that it felt like a nice position. In terms of voice, I felt my voice was clear. There was nothing trapping the voice, not that that is something you can notice in your own voice anyways. I tried projecting and then whispering my lines in this position, and again it felt easy enough for my voice to do so. 

    In the standing position, it felt a little more forced. I find it tricky to remain with slightly bent knees as I tend to lock my knees, and I found  holding them unlocked for this amount of time, meant my lower back began to ache. I tried to keep my arms dangling down in a neutral and relaxed position but I found I wanted to use them as a gesture type thing; but I think I can be lenient with small aspects like so. I felt like my voice was getting lost somewhere when reciting my monologue laying down, but I think that was more to do with the power I have in my diaphragm (another thing I would want to work on if I could.) 

Articulation/Pace
With this, I really wanted to be able to read off a script, read it well with good articulation at a good pace which both are clear and audible for the audience. This week I wanted to start with simply just reading aloud, a piece of text in which I was familiar with in order to see where the real weaknesses lay. In weeks to come, I will get a friend or relative to listen in on me reading new or already known pieces of texts, and asking where my faults lay, if they could understand everything, if my articulation was clear, if I was slow enough etc. http://kirstybrownbtecdrama.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/angelas-monologue.html
    When reading this, I know I read it too quickly. Before I have timed it and its hit about 3minutes, which when adding all the right pauses and emotions into it, is about right. But this time it hit a bit over 2minutes. I spoke far too quickly in all the sections in which fall as rhetorical questions, for example "how would you like it if you were going to die?" "come on, its not easy is it?" Admittedly they are both said angrily, but I do them too quickly, which makes them more cross than a passive anger which I think might be the real emotion Angela is experiencing. "YOU ARE GOING TO DIE" I find this bit really tricky because if I try it well articulated, it sounds far too planned, but then if I do it without articulating (the 'going' changes to 'gonna') it sounds a lot more informal, but is obviously less well-articulated. "Sometimes I feel as though I should have some dignity" this is a bit of a mouth full for me, its one that I always stumble over. mainly being the 'f' straight into the 'th' sound. So this was interesting as this was definitely not something I realised I struggled with. This is definitely something I will be looking into when furthering my work on this project. "Look at you, stood there, pathetic, not wanting to say anything incase you hurt my feelings" I have a big tendency to say this line quickly, I think I get so into the monologue that I start making the emotions real inside of me. So by the end, I am whizzing through the lines because I've worked myself up throughout the piece, with all the anger Angela is portraying to us. I also know that if this wasn't anything to do with the stage, and it was just a part of an ordinary argument, it would definitely be said quickly; and if not the meaning of the line would be pointless. But I suppose on stage, its all about marrying both the realism to the stage performance itself.
This exercise really highlighted to me how quickly I speak, and this was with a piece of text I knew, so I can imagine I speak quicker with a piece of unknown text because it's unknown to me; so I'd prefer to rush through it and get it over and done with. Once again, this was a really simply exercise but I needed to begin with something like this in order to be able to be fully aware of how quickly spoken I am, also in order to then start from now, introducing my voice to ways to slow down.



Projection
This beginning week was another simple introduction to the projection of my voice. But firstly, I want to introduce to my restoration character: Mrs Loveit. (Man Of Mode by George Etherege [1676]) Mrs Loveit is loud. So really quite out of my comfort zone. She is the definition of an attention seeker, and spends the majority of the play getting revenge on her lover Dorimant. Dorimant is a brave man to be Loveit's lover, to say the least. On each and every one of Loveit's scenes, she has to be loud, bitchy, over the top and simply to get all the attention she could possibly get (from both the other characters and the audience of course.) My least favourite scene being: Act 3 Scene 3. This entire scene is only done for Dorimant's ears (who she is very well aware is hovering in the back ground. Loveit, in this scene, is busy flirting with Sir Fopling Flutter in order to make Dorimant jealous.) ...So now you have got a feel for Loveit, you'll understand the utmost importance that I play her as this loud, feisty character; which is where projection comes in handy. The exercise I shall be taking part in is:

'1. Find a piece of text

2. In a room, pinpoint an object in which you will be addressing your text towards

3. Deliver your text to this object, begin with a whisper, and each time raising the volume/projection of your voice.'

The piece of text I chose to use here was the Act 3 Scene 3 from MOM. I chose this purely for the reason that during this entire scene, Loveit is so caught up in making Dorimant jealous. She spends the scene talking to Sir Fopling Flutter, and with Dorimant just across the room, she wastes her energy on ensuring Dorimant hears every last word...all for her revenge. 

So I began this simple projection exercise, with just the use of one line from this particular scene:  "You were very obliging Sir Fopling, the last time I saw you there." 
(This was one of the lines in which Dorimant and Medley reacts to: "She entertains as if she liked him.") So it is important that I say this line loud enough for them to react to.

I focused my voice to the other side of my room (bearing in mind it is a very small room!!) I stood by my door and projected to the far wall. I began with a whisper, making my words whispy and soft and quiet. I then took it to more of a 'stage' whisper, which is actually considerably different in volume. The stage whisper seemed harder to maintain throughout this line, purely because you have to put more vocal effort into the voice compared to just a normal whisper. I then spoke the line at my normal speaking voice, which is possibly quieter than perhaps what you could label a 'meduim volume'. This felt more than natural, as was expected. Although, I did notice I spoke slightly quicker than I had done for the whispered voice. I think this is because I had slipped into my normal speaking habit because I had reached my normal speaking volume. I couldn't label my next volume, but it was perhaps the preferred stage voice for me: think one up from my natural speaking volume. I found this one the trickiest because it felt so unnatural for me (I shall explain more when I get to the next 'volume') But it just felt weird for me to be speaking at a slightly more raised volume. I tried out more lines at this volume, to experiment a bit with it. My conclusion is that because I feel uncomfortable at this volume, I have yet to teach myself to slip into it whenever in rehearsals or on stage.
The final volume is the level I have to have Mrs Loveit at. Surprisingly, I find this easiest. Still stood at the other side of my room, focussing all my voice into the corner of my room, this felt quite natural to me. I have a feeling this is because every time I go in to play Loveit, I have to hype myself up a bit, and so then when I'm on stage, I can be really quite loud and silly, and for me that kind of knocks my low confidence out of the water. However in terms of voice, I think where I have been working a lot on my projection, for the above reasons, recently it suddenly felt really natural for me-despite the fact I was only doing this as a simple vocal exercise.
In terms of the actual exercise I was experimenting with, it was a clever way to help me vocally reach the volume that I needed to reach. It allowed me to observe my voice through my vocal range, and as I raised the volume it felt so much easier for my voice when I reached the preferred volume for Mrs Loveit. I did really like this exercise and I think it will be very useful for me in the future, as a really easy method for me to project better.




So my work for this project begins, this week was definitely a starter week but it will most definitely be interesting to see how my voice improves as the weeks unfold...