Our first voice lesson consisted of exploring our own voices. I identified that I have good articulation and pronunciation of words. I also identified that my weakness spots of my voice is breath control, because I know I almost forget to breathe when I am nerves, specifically on stage. Another weakness, one I was already aware of, is voice projection. This has been something I have been working on improving for a while and I feel I am improving, but I do know because I have a soft, quiet voice I am regularly misheard on stage. This lesson proved as a good starter lesson because it highlighted to all of us our weaknesses which meant that we can immediately begin to focus on for our play, '13'.For the following lesson we focused on respiration and getting to know our voices. From previous lessons at school, I had learnt bits about Respiration however they were never aimed for voice and voice production. So when we were taught about it here, I learnt a lot more than before. We were taught the respiratory system and all bodily parts that involved in this process such as the sinuses, larynx, trachea and bronchial tubes; all things I've never heard about before. This subject really interested me because, one I had not covered any of this before and it was focussed on voice which is something that I am interested in, being an actor etc. And secondly because it briefly covers the heart condition that I have; being a mild Pulmonary Stenosis. This is the thinning of a heart valve which means that my heart has to pump harder to get the blood through the valve.
I imagine it like a pea stuck in a straw; you have to blow harder to remove the pea, although in my case, there isn't something stuck. The conclusion that led me to this was being taught about Pulmonary ventilation. Pulmonary ventilation is the rate in which air is pumped in and out of the heart, my pulmonary ventilation is higher than most others. So, this lesson intrigued me into going on to research about my condition as it's never occurred to me that I didn't know much about it before now.
We then went on to talk about posture. As my mum is a trained yoga teacher, I was brought up doing yoga and yoga classes so I know about good postures etc. But again this teaching was focussed on how a good posture allows the actor to project their voice and speak clearly. The spine is connected to almost everything in our bodies so slouching is something actors don't want to be doing on stage as this can affect your voice and even your stage presence. A good posture on stage automatically makes you look more confident and you will appear to have a much bigger stage presence and will attract the audiences attention quicker. We were taught the Alexander Technique which is something completely new to me, and the after effects of it that the tension in my shoulders had disappeared and my headache also. I found this technique really worked on me, but I would prefer doing this at home where I know I can fully relax. After trying this at home, again I felt that it really worked and I know this is something I will keep up.
The vocal chords and organs, again, was a really interesting topic to cover. I knew a few brief points about the voice box but nothing more. What really interested me is the vocal chords as they are two bands of muscle that vibrate when we speak, inhale and exhale; allowing us to create different sounds with our voices. And that we also have fake vocal chords which don't have any contribution towards creating sounds but they do help the process of swallowing. The vocal folds are similar, but almost like a door in your throat. They open when breathing in and out to allow the air to enter or escape. Males and females have different sized vocal folds due to the natural pitch of their voices. Men's are usually thicker, due to a deeper sounding voice. A females, thinner with a higher pitched voice.My favourite subject that was covered in voice has to be Articulation. This was my favourite because it interests me how other people pronounce words. This sounds strange but because I know I have good articulation skills, I can identify those who perhaps are not as strong at it. I tend to notice this in small school plays for example and it is often hard to understand. So being able to identify those who don't articulate properly stand out to me, and from experience as an audience member, you tend to switch off when you've given up trying hard to understand them which leads to not enjoying the play. I discovered that the skill of good articulation is a good skill to have as an actor,I discovered it especially in '13' because Karen was often correcting some people on pronunciation and articulation of words. And in contrast I didn't enjoy the resonators as much because we didn't cover them in too much depth. But I did learn what each one was: the chest, head and nasal voices are all resonators each allowing you to access different notes and pitches in our voices. We did a small exercise focussing on this and helping us to access each resonator ('why fly so high?')
For our final session of voice this term, we discussed ways to keep our voices healthy. After discussing this our task was to go away and create a poster for actors, telling them about ways to keep their voice healthy and ways that are damaging their voice: Shouting, drugs, alcohol, dairy products, smoking, sugar can all seriously damage your voice, especially being an actor; being in a profession which we use our voices a lot.
Things to improve your voice: Honey and lemon, steam, hot salt water, vocal warm-ups, drinking lots of water, a good diet and the most effective is rest. I enjoyed making this poster because it sort of summarised everything that we've done in voice into one small poster explaining to actors the things you should and shouldn't do to keep your voice healthy.
To conclude Voice has been a really interesting lesson for me this term because it fitted in really well with what we were doing with '13'. Due to this, we had the opportunities to include work from voice into rehearsals of '13' and vice versa. This became really handy for me because I was able to go home and focus on things we learnt in voice such as exercises to warm up our voices, and transfer this onto my line learning at home. I tried out the moving of the larynx at home as well as the Alexander technique as this also relaxes your voice as well as your body. This entire technique of learning lines really helped me and I will definitely use this strategy again. I have learnt so much about my voice and my body and also everything that helps me breathe and speak that I know now how important it is that I look after it all, especially being an actor.
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