Liberate Your Voice!
Towards a new approach to voice development
“Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you.”
- Richard Bach, Illusions, The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah.
I think, for too long, voice coaches and teachers of “elocution” have been shoving modulation, diction, intonation, rhythm, et al. down people’s throats. Guess what? That’s why people don’t like to work on their voices. The whole process is so darn boring, one wants to be done with it and leave it alone as soon as possible.
Out with the old methods
So let’s dump that old process. Let’s begin with the premise that we all have good voices already. Rather, let’s begin with the premise that we are all born with good voices, barring those with congenital medical problems of the throat or lungs.
This premise is not illogical at all. Think about it. A child can be the most persuasive creature on earth. Observe how children negotiate – especially with other children – when they want something. Salespersons would do well to just observe children at play and see how they convince other children to give them a toy or let them bat.
Somewhere along the way, however, we lose those skills of negotiation. Our voices become shrill and strident, or whiny and complaining, or diffident and mousy. One reason for this is that children, naturally, imitate their parents and teachers. If a parent is strident, chances are, the child’s going to become like that too. And so it becomes a never-ending cycle of converting every new generation into a world of whiners or shriekers.
Break the shackles
A process of training the voice, therefore, needs to be one that breaks the shackles of the past; shows people how to reclaim their once-golden articulation and empowers them to work continually on the development of their voices.
When a person learns just what she can do with her voice, you can literally see magic happen. I’ve seen it time and again. One young actor, for example, was actually open-mouthed in awe when he heard himself speak at a pitch he didn’t usually use. “My God!” he said, “I sound so confident!” Another broke into a victory dance at the rehearsal venue when I showed him the secret to good vocal expression. “I got it!” he exulted as he grabbed another actor and waltzed her around the room, “I can express. I can express!”
Increase delight – and learning increases
When the student delights in the result, the desire to learn more and the motivation to actually go through the process is virtually guaranteed. This is not “making learning fun”. It’s showing that learning is fun and that the results of learning are delightful.
And finally – liberating the voice
I believe, therefore, that the process of voice coaching should not be an adding of knowledge and techniques, but a liberating of the voice from its old shackles. The student must experience a drastic change in the very first session and in every session thereafter.
I recently took on, for personal coaching, a man who wants to become a voice-over artiste. He’s 57 and was diffident about learning a new “skill” so late in life. In the very first session, ignoring traditional voice inputs like breathing techniques and modulation, I got him to read a paragraph from the newspaper. Then I asked him to visualise the audience. To whom was the paragraph aimed? What was their cultural, educational and religious make-up? What was the author trying to tell that audience? His subsequent recital of the paragraph was 1000 percent better than the first – and he himself heard the change in his voice.
Sure, he still has to work on technicalities like pronunciation and projection, but now he knows he has a good voice and you can bet he’s going to work on it like crazy.
“Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you.”
- Richard Bach, Illusions, The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah.
I think, for too long, voice coaches and teachers of “elocution” have been shoving modulation, diction, intonation, rhythm, et al. down people’s throats. Guess what? That’s why people don’t like to work on their voices. The whole process is so darn boring, one wants to be done with it and leave it alone as soon as possible.
Out with the old methods
So let’s dump that old process. Let’s begin with the premise that we all have good voices already. Rather, let’s begin with the premise that we are all born with good voices, barring those with congenital medical problems of the throat or lungs.
This premise is not illogical at all. Think about it. A child can be the most persuasive creature on earth. Observe how children negotiate – especially with other children – when they want something. Salespersons would do well to just observe children at play and see how they convince other children to give them a toy or let them bat.
Somewhere along the way, however, we lose those skills of negotiation. Our voices become shrill and strident, or whiny and complaining, or diffident and mousy. One reason for this is that children, naturally, imitate their parents and teachers. If a parent is strident, chances are, the child’s going to become like that too. And so it becomes a never-ending cycle of converting every new generation into a world of whiners or shriekers.
Break the shackles
A process of training the voice, therefore, needs to be one that breaks the shackles of the past; shows people how to reclaim their once-golden articulation and empowers them to work continually on the development of their voices.
When a person learns just what she can do with her voice, you can literally see magic happen. I’ve seen it time and again. One young actor, for example, was actually open-mouthed in awe when he heard himself speak at a pitch he didn’t usually use. “My God!” he said, “I sound so confident!” Another broke into a victory dance at the rehearsal venue when I showed him the secret to good vocal expression. “I got it!” he exulted as he grabbed another actor and waltzed her around the room, “I can express. I can express!”
Increase delight – and learning increases
When the student delights in the result, the desire to learn more and the motivation to actually go through the process is virtually guaranteed. This is not “making learning fun”. It’s showing that learning is fun and that the results of learning are delightful.
And finally – liberating the voice
I believe, therefore, that the process of voice coaching should not be an adding of knowledge and techniques, but a liberating of the voice from its old shackles. The student must experience a drastic change in the very first session and in every session thereafter.
I recently took on, for personal coaching, a man who wants to become a voice-over artiste. He’s 57 and was diffident about learning a new “skill” so late in life. In the very first session, ignoring traditional voice inputs like breathing techniques and modulation, I got him to read a paragraph from the newspaper. Then I asked him to visualise the audience. To whom was the paragraph aimed? What was their cultural, educational and religious make-up? What was the author trying to tell that audience? His subsequent recital of the paragraph was 1000 percent better than the first – and he himself heard the change in his voice.
Sure, he still has to work on technicalities like pronunciation and projection, but now he knows he has a good voice and you can bet he’s going to work on it like crazy.
posted by Deepak Morris at 10:53 PM
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