This blog will be based on my vocal work during the project of Restoration theatre. I will be discussing topics such as specific exercises I have put in practice, techniques I have used to adapt to my character and how my vocal work has contrasted to work I have done in the past. Restoration has been challenging but also interesting to experience as the weeks went on.
What are the characteristics of my voice?
My voice has a number of characteristics. I have been told my voice is smooth and clear, which comes across with good clarity. I struggle with diction sometimes, but this is only a slight disadvantage. I think I would benefit from an extra vocal warm up before a performance. Sometimes my voice can be quiet in volume and people have to ask twice to hear what I say. I think my neutral tone is quite naturally low in volume, however I have a good power behind my voice when I project and actually use it to its best, I have used this especially for my role as Lady Touchwood. This is because Lady Touchwood is very emotional and over the top. I feel like I've used my chest voice as well as my head voice as her emotions are all over the place and I think this mirrors how she uses the voice to put across these. For example when she is hysterical, her voice is using the top register, when she is angry I use more of a deep manipulated furious tone.
Nasal Tone:
I think I may have a slight nasal tone to my voice, as I think I must talk out of my resonators, and have tension around this area.
In what ways do these qualities benefit or hinder you as a performer?
Having a quiet volume when speaking may hinder my performance as an actor if I don't project clearly, as this can cause words to be lost to the audience, and they may not understand what I am performing or speaking about. Especially with restoration when the language is harder to understand. Loss of diction would weaken my performance if I were to stumble on a few words.
What vocal exercise might strengthen your performance?
Other techniques to help improve? why?
Other techniques that helped me improve where repeating my lines in a different accent, singing my lines and tongue twisters. I did tongue twisters such as, "Betty Bought A Bit Of Butter" "What A Ta Do To Die Today" and 'She Sells Seashells". I read my lines in Australian, Russian, American, Irish, Northern and French the most, mainly because I'm better at these accents, but it allowed me to articulate differently and get used to how I was to deliver a line.
Exercises
in what ways were these suitable for the development of performance vocals?
I think other vocal exercises such as breathing exercises are important for improving your technique. Breathing is something we do every day but I never knew that a lot of us aren’t actually breathing properly, and fully. It’s important to breathe correctly in order to sustain breath control. Breathe control is very important for radio, as you are being picked up through a microphone which picks up everything around you including your breathing, and the last things you want is to run out of breathe and listen to yourself breathe in the middle of a phrase and break your flow.
what other techniques might be suitable for this task?
Evaluation
My vocals with the Restoration project overall i believe were good. After the show I would get good feedback on my diction and emotion, i think the main piece of constructive criticism was that i needed to slow down what i was saying in order for everyone to hear the importance of it. Restoration is different to anything I have done before, and it was a challenge vocally and physically. It was a challenge because of the difficult language, it became easier to understand the longer I worked on it and studied about it, but at the beginning i never thought i was going to be able to go on the stage and know exactly what i was talking about, but i did it and i believe that helped me perform better. You can't go on stage not knowing what you are talking about and expect to hit the right emotions behind a character, especially not for this play. I think over the last two years my voice has strengthened incredibly and can now benefit from realising this. Lady Touchwood has been the hardest role i've ever had to get to grips around so far, but I like a challenge.
My strengths were being able to get on with it and focus and actually enjoy doing this programme. I saw improvements as I went along but obviously improvements take time and doesn’t happen overnight. This is why I was pleased when I saw an improvement in each aspect of the programme because it shows that I was working hard to improve and adapt my vocal strengths. I could see specific improvement by the final performance since the first day we to our characters for restoration. I feel I am more confident when I am speaking, and have a better projection, and feel I can deliver what I have to say with clarity and diction. I know this because I don’t strain my voice, and people are able to understand what I am saying clearly. I think it’s important for the person or the audience at the receiving end to understand what you are saying.My weaknesses were more on the nasal aspect. This has changed the least since I began my programme. I think I will set this as more of a target to focus on, as I still really want to be more versatile with the way I speak. I don’t think this is a huge issue, as everyone has personal aspects in the way they speak and it makes me who I am however it would be interesting to experiment with different exercises targeting this to see if I can ease it in anyway. I think I still need to work on my breathing and be able to de stress and be more relaxed. I think this will then improve the pace of which I speak and also improve my posture. I think although I have better diction, there was at least a couple of times where I didn't deliver the line fluently, but I think this is because of the language and we are not used to speaking like this usually. I’d also still like to develop my range. I‘d like to be able to have more of a wider range or pitch and help budge the notes either side of my break. I think my targets for the future include being able to relax into my posture, and voice, to be not so anxious, being able to have a wider range, and to have clearer diction.
I think the show as a whole went really well in the end, everyone relaxed into it and were able to enjoy putting it on and i really think people received the play well too! I don't think all of them understood what it was about all the time, but i think they had a laugh.
My voice has a number of characteristics. I have been told my voice is smooth and clear, which comes across with good clarity. I struggle with diction sometimes, but this is only a slight disadvantage. I think I would benefit from an extra vocal warm up before a performance. Sometimes my voice can be quiet in volume and people have to ask twice to hear what I say. I think my neutral tone is quite naturally low in volume, however I have a good power behind my voice when I project and actually use it to its best, I have used this especially for my role as Lady Touchwood. This is because Lady Touchwood is very emotional and over the top. I feel like I've used my chest voice as well as my head voice as her emotions are all over the place and I think this mirrors how she uses the voice to put across these. For example when she is hysterical, her voice is using the top register, when she is angry I use more of a deep manipulated furious tone.
Nasal Tone:
I think I may have a slight nasal tone to my voice, as I think I must talk out of my resonators, and have tension around this area.
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In what ways do these qualities benefit or hinder you as a performer?
Having a quiet volume when speaking may hinder my performance as an actor if I don't project clearly, as this can cause words to be lost to the audience, and they may not understand what I am performing or speaking about. Especially with restoration when the language is harder to understand. Loss of diction would weaken my performance if I were to stumble on a few words.
Advantages:
Having
a clear voice helps me to deliver a performance that a audience can
understand. It’s important to be able to commutate with the voice because the voice helps tell the story, emotion and character. Your voice is one of the most important instruments as an actor. Feedback I have had in the past is that I have quite a smooth
and relaxing voice, it’s something people like listening to. I think this is
definitely an advantage as someone is not going to be entertained if they don’t
like the voice. I think my voice is quite versatile in the fact I can adapt
it to a specific character, as I did for my group radio project and my solo
projects and for Lady Touchwood as she had many tones to her voice. For example I adapted my voice to sound like an owl in one of my
solo projects, by adding a sort of operatic effect, as if I’m nearly singing
the lines. I think having a good range from head voice, to mask, to chest,
allows more versatility when it comes to playing characters. This could allow
me to have more choices in radio plays, or adverts, or comedies.This is because Lady Touchwood is very emotional and over the top. I feel like I've used my chest voice as well as my head voice as her emotions are all over the place and I think this mirrors how she uses the voice to put across these. For example when she is hysterical, her voice is using the top register, when she is angry I use more of a deep manipulated furious tone.
Disadvantages:
Sometimes
I can be quite nasal toned at times which doesn’t give a real disadvantage as
this is just a tone that I have always had. The only disadvantage I can think
of is it could stop me connecting into another character to the best of my
ability. As a new character, being able to adopt a new way of speaking is
quite essential to create a believable performance. Having a detached voice
can be quite a setback because I tend to breathe in the middle of sentence or
in an inappropriate place to breathe, because I run out of breath easily. This would be a problem for restoration as it is fast and the pace needs to be there for comedy, obviously not too fast you don't deliver the lines appropriately.I think I speak fast paced
because I worry easily and get anxious. This doesn’t help restoration because
it could result to being out of time or lacking in the right tempo, or having words that are not easy to understand lost. This is
why I have added a de stressing and calming exercise into my vocal warm up
routine. My right lip goes up slightly, and this could be because of tension in that side of my jaw.
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- -breathing exercises:
- Focusing on the breath, breathing correctly and strengthening breath capacity.
- -Whole body:
- Getting the whole body working, and your blood flowing, making sure all of you is warmed up not just the voice.
- -Neck and tounge:
- Helps to get the words out, when they are in they're but just don't want to come out. Releases tension.
- -Soft pallete and hard pallete: Focusing on specific areas of the mouth, to know your placement of words.
- -Voice (singing)
- Gets all of your vocals, articulators, resonators working, warmed up and plus its fun.
- -Back and shoulders.
- To release tension which could be holding you back from your best performance.
Other techniques to help improve? why?
Other techniques that helped me improve where repeating my lines in a different accent, singing my lines and tongue twisters. I did tongue twisters such as, "Betty Bought A Bit Of Butter" "What A Ta Do To Die Today" and 'She Sells Seashells". I read my lines in Australian, Russian, American, Irish, Northern and French the most, mainly because I'm better at these accents, but it allowed me to articulate differently and get used to how I was to deliver a line.
Exercises
- i like the flowers
- neck roles
- chair game
- neck roles
- tounge twisters, tounge stretch
- running on the spot
- massages
Vocal exercises such as,
singing “I like the flowers, breathing exercises and focusing on the expansion
of my diaphragm, looking at diction by targeting T’s and D’s. Warming up the
nasal cavity in order to be rid of some of the nasal quality. De stressing, by
doing yoga positions and focusing on deep breathing which targets my loss of
breath and stress I do this alongside listening to relaxing music. I think what
I was worried about the most was slipping up on words due to diction, and so I
would make sure that I worked on particular lines and letters. In my group
piece there was a line at the end that I needed to say a little faster in order
to attain the correct mood behind it. The problem was, I found it hard to say
faster and clearer, and so I needed to work on my diction so I didn’t lose what
I was saying. I think working on T’s and D’s exercise really helped with this,
also warming up the mouth showed a significant difference, since when I didn’t
really warm up.
in what ways were these suitable for the development of performance vocals?
I think other vocal exercises such as breathing exercises are important for improving your technique. Breathing is something we do every day but I never knew that a lot of us aren’t actually breathing properly, and fully. It’s important to breathe correctly in order to sustain breath control. Breathe control is very important for radio, as you are being picked up through a microphone which picks up everything around you including your breathing, and the last things you want is to run out of breathe and listen to yourself breathe in the middle of a phrase and break your flow.
- helped with breath capacity
- helped with projection
- helped with character
- helped with diction
what other techniques might be suitable for this task?
Other exercises that could help my
technique could be, warming up the resonators. This could help get rid of my
nasal tone, which I sometimes pick up. We can do this by tapping the nose
area, and rubbing the face, giving the nose, head, and cheeks a gentle
massage.I think regularly
speaking on a day-to-day basis helps our voices anyway, if you look at it as
warming up, however I think doing little hums during the day like humming your
favourite song is a good and efficient way to warm up.
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My vocals with the Restoration project overall i believe were good. After the show I would get good feedback on my diction and emotion, i think the main piece of constructive criticism was that i needed to slow down what i was saying in order for everyone to hear the importance of it. Restoration is different to anything I have done before, and it was a challenge vocally and physically. It was a challenge because of the difficult language, it became easier to understand the longer I worked on it and studied about it, but at the beginning i never thought i was going to be able to go on the stage and know exactly what i was talking about, but i did it and i believe that helped me perform better. You can't go on stage not knowing what you are talking about and expect to hit the right emotions behind a character, especially not for this play. I think over the last two years my voice has strengthened incredibly and can now benefit from realising this. Lady Touchwood has been the hardest role i've ever had to get to grips around so far, but I like a challenge.
My strengths were being able to get on with it and focus and actually enjoy doing this programme. I saw improvements as I went along but obviously improvements take time and doesn’t happen overnight. This is why I was pleased when I saw an improvement in each aspect of the programme because it shows that I was working hard to improve and adapt my vocal strengths. I could see specific improvement by the final performance since the first day we to our characters for restoration. I feel I am more confident when I am speaking, and have a better projection, and feel I can deliver what I have to say with clarity and diction. I know this because I don’t strain my voice, and people are able to understand what I am saying clearly. I think it’s important for the person or the audience at the receiving end to understand what you are saying.My weaknesses were more on the nasal aspect. This has changed the least since I began my programme. I think I will set this as more of a target to focus on, as I still really want to be more versatile with the way I speak. I don’t think this is a huge issue, as everyone has personal aspects in the way they speak and it makes me who I am however it would be interesting to experiment with different exercises targeting this to see if I can ease it in anyway. I think I still need to work on my breathing and be able to de stress and be more relaxed. I think this will then improve the pace of which I speak and also improve my posture. I think although I have better diction, there was at least a couple of times where I didn't deliver the line fluently, but I think this is because of the language and we are not used to speaking like this usually. I’d also still like to develop my range. I‘d like to be able to have more of a wider range or pitch and help budge the notes either side of my break. I think my targets for the future include being able to relax into my posture, and voice, to be not so anxious, being able to have a wider range, and to have clearer diction.
I think the show as a whole went really well in the end, everyone relaxed into it and were able to enjoy putting it on and i really think people received the play well too! I don't think all of them understood what it was about all the time, but i think they had a laugh.
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