Latest / Gabi’s Speech and Drama Podcast / Voice Workshop from Imogen Read

Transcript

Voice Workshop from Imogen Read · Gabi’s Speech and Drama Podcast

• 0:03
  Hello,
• 0:03
  everyone,
• 0:04
  and welcome to the April meetup for Gabby's speech and drama
• 0:08
  community.
• 0:08
  And this is a really exciting one because we have a special
• 0:11
  guest speaker.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Imogen Reid is the voice coach at Royal Welsh.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: But what is special about Imogen is that she...
• 0:21
  used to be a Lambda teacher before doing her MA in voice at
• 0:24
  Central,
• 0:25
  she was teaching Lambda.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: So she knows what we all go through and what we experience.
• 0:29
  So there really couldn't be anyone better placed to help us
• 0:34
  support our students
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: with their vocal health,
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: their vocal technique and useful warmups and exercises for us to use.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I am now going to hand over to Imogen and she can take over.
• 0:51
  welcome hello everybody thank you Gabby um just a couple of
• 0:57
  housekeeping things I
• 0:58
  know we're all muted now but let's stay muted um until the end
• 1:02
  I'll have some time
• 1:03
  for questions at the end so save all of those up um but if
• 1:07
  there's something that's
• 1:08
  like there's a a word that you don't understand during um me
• 1:13
  talking then then just
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: put hand up and I'll I'll
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to answer those in the moment,
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: but that's just to keep out extra noise for the recording.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: There will be a couple of practical exercises that I'll talk you through.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: You are welcome to join in or not.
• 1:30
  I'd say it's quite helpful to join in so that you get to feel
• 1:33
  it in your own body.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's your invitation.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: So let me get my PowerPoint up and I can share my screen.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Can you give me a thumbs up if you can see this?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, good.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: So this is teaching voice to young actors.
• 2:03
  And I'm going to start by talking you through the principles of
• 2:07
  safe voice use.
• 2:10
  I don't know if some of you are actors and you've done some
• 2:12
  vocal training.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: If so, these will be familiar to you.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: We start with a free body.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now, a free body is an aligned body.
• 2:26
  So we're using our body ergonomically and we're not introducing
• 2:29
  any extra tension
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: that we don't need.
• 2:33
  A phrase that Kristin Linklater,
• 2:35
  a very prolific voice coach,
• 2:37
  uses is tension murders vibration.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it's quite a strong use of the word murder's vibration.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: But it's true.
• 2:47
  When we're tense in our bodies,
• 2:49
  it translates into our voice and we hold our voice back.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: We're not as loud, we're not as resonant and we're not as clear.
• 2:57
  But also we can start to do damage when we're holding tension
• 3:01
  in our bodies.
• 3:02
  So that's one that we really need to look out for as a baseline
• 3:05
  for looking after
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: people's voices when they're using them.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: The second is free breath.
• 3:14
  I know it's our grade six Lambda theory question about how we
• 3:18
  breathe for speech.
• 3:20
  But what is a free breath and how do we make sure that people's
• 3:23
  breath is free for voice?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'll talk you through that a little bit later.
• 3:28
  phonation fancy word for vibration it's that moment where the
• 3:33
  vocal folds come
• 3:34
  together and what we really want is a smooth phonation so where
• 3:39
  the voice and the
• 3:40
  breath come together at the same time um to produce sound um
• 3:45
  rather than having
• 3:47
  something hard like uh oh uh oh at the beginning of sounding or
• 3:53
  something really
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: breathy like
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, hello, coming off voice here.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Those two types of use of vibration can do damage to the voice.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we want something really nice and smooth.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Then resonance.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: We want people to have a resonant voice.
• 4:14
  Resonance is vibrations of your voice multiplying in different
• 4:18
  cavities of your body.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: And we want that to happen as much as possible.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Vibrations love having attention paid to them.
• 4:26
  So waking up those resonating chambers are a really good way to
• 4:30
  have full,
• 4:31
  easy,
• 4:32
  clear voices.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'll talk you through some resonance exercises later too.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then the final thing is muscularity.
• 4:43
  When we talk about muscularity,
• 4:45
  really we're talking about the muscles of articulation.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: So the lips,
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: the tongue,
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: the soft palate,
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: the cheeks,
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: and making sure that these are strong enough
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: to be clear without feeling like we have to power through