Vocal Cringe

I’m working with a truly magnificent actor at the moment. She’s making steady progress and all of the elements are coming together. Like most of my private students, she records our sessions to use later as a reference. I say:

- Hey, when you are listening back to that, I want you to specifically hear the difference in resonance between that first try and the second one.

I then see it. It’s the cringe - that shrinking down of the neck like a turtle withdrawing into a shell, that grimace, that tightening of the throat. I say:

- Don’t do that! I want you to listen purely for comparison of what those two different shapes achieve.

But it’s too late. The simple mention of listening back to her voice made her want to run from the room, screaming!

What is that?

VOICE LOVE VS. CRINGE

The first question I ask a new student is this:

- What do you love about your voice?

....followed by......

- What would you like to change about your voice?

Every time, I have to prod and poke to get an answer on the first question......while the answers to the second are usually numerous and (9/10 times) ridiculous things they have been told by past directors/acting coaches.

Why do we willingly hate the sound of our own voices?

Our voices reflect who we truly are - they’re like a passport covered in stamps of where we have been, both geographically and emotionally. This makes us vulnerable, it makes us compare them to other voices, it makes us undermine the confidence in the thing that is arguably the most expressive outlet we have.

And when this thing is criticised, we really take it to heart....we start to believe it. My voice is too high, my voice is squeaky, my accent is too strong.....the list could go on and on and on.......

STEPPING BACK FROM THE PRECIPICE OF VOCAL CRINGE:

It’s so important to give your voice some love, and here are some ways you might be able to change your view on the thing that is most reflective of you:

1. Sit down and write a list of 5 things you LOVE about your voice. NOW.

2. If you’re having voice doubts or a director/lecturer is giving you vague voice instruction, book a session with a voice professional - they’ll be able to put it into terms you understand and can act upon.

3. Examine your goals - beware of going for the 'voice beautiful' and steer towards the voice healthy, sustainable, open and flexible.

4. Your accent is part of who you are - don’t force another accent (this used to often be done at drama schools), head for a more open and flexible version of you, and a greater understanding of how your own accent is configured.

5. Find a POSITIVE voice mantra (it might be one of your points from the initial list) and write it down, repeat it, use it when facing someone critical.

6. Warm up your voice & support system daily and give it a fighting chance to be the very best it can be.

7. Examine other performers that have amazingly unique voices that have become their brand: Sean Connery, Bernadette Peters, Joan Rivers, Jane Horrocks, Michael Jackson, Bryan Brown, Fran Drescher, Alan Rickman......

If you have a story of voice love/cringe or can suggest an actor with a unique voice, add to comments......

Trust

The Mirror Cracked from Side to Side!

I meet many voices in my line of work. Tired ones, timid ones, exuberant ones. Voices that inflect upwards, pitch downwards and drive through. Every voice makes me so incredibly excited at the prospect of new possibilities, new explorations and new revelations.

Sometimes a voice makes me incredibly sad. It’s never the quality of the voice that does this - we all come to this work at different levels. 

This sadness comes from witnessing a speaker’s relationship with his voice.

The voice is a great revealer.

It is the first thing to indicate sickness, tension, excitement, background, confidence....the list could go on.......

It is also one of the first things we lose faith in.

How many times have I heard “I hate the sound of my voice”?

How many times have I heard “(Insert lecturer’s/director’s name here) says my voice should be more like (insert famous actor’s name here)”?

And where does this start?......:

How many times have I heard a mother say to a child

- Just sit there and be quiet. Shoosh!!?

I want to shout

-Lady! You’re undermining that child’s ability to connect with his voice

She'd think I was mad. I probably am.

Instead I turn to my daughter (Miss Pronunciation) and loudly request her to order her babycino in her best Dory-speaking-whale voice, sing with me as we walk down the supermarket aisle, or do Sarah Wilmot’s famous Snitchy Ladies voice exercise. I’m not having any of that silly quiet business. If I wanted quiet I wouldn’t have had a child.

That shooshy mother comes in a variety of forms causing us to doubt our voices: the poorly designed costumes that are so tight that the body loses trust in how we breathe; voices that are under-trained and overused so one cannot trust the little power they did have; actors that are so unused to being allowed to experiment with their voicesunder poor direction that they lose trust in their ability to vocally play......

Now I’m not one to oft quote pop-culture but Lady Gaga once said “Trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it's broken, but you can still see the crack in that mother fucker's reflection.”

Lady Gaga - you might be on crazy gal, but you’re right: that crack takes an awful lot of sealing/healing. Laying yourself bare to the truth in front of an audience is an awfully difficult thing to do if there is a fracture in your vocal trust.

Miss Pronunciation XI

Please don't hate me for this one.

It’s a pronunciation that simply polarises people.

LIBRARY.

The absolute correct pronunciation is ˈlai-brər-ɪ - that’s right - 3 syllables.

It is awkward to pronounce the two r sounds on either side of the ə in the second syllable which is unstressed and this makes us tend to drop the syllable completely, cutting straight to the third. Doing this IS NOT INCORRECT - it is what we call a reduced pronunciation.

Another thing that is confusing is that in Standard American English, the second syllable is stressed instead of the first (li-BRAR-i  - say it out loud and you’ll hear the difference) and this also tends to change the vowel sound from a schwa (ə) to ɛ or e.

So it’s all really a matter of stress and precision. Either pronunciation is fine for everyday use: as always, be sensitive to the text if you stumble across it and decide which version might be appropriate.