Today’s fun search phrase that will lead you to my blog: “I don’t experience guilt.” Sociopaths of the world unite! Somewhere down the hall, if you don’t mind.
I had a lazy weekend, reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Northanger Abbey once again and otherwise slackin’ like a kraken. This week I’ll kick off my fiction fiesta, which I hope will produce about six stories before Christmas, so I did a little preliminary planning as well. Given the non-urgency of my existential scripting, I even went so far as to skip shaving my head, which means I’m looking a little like like Woodstock (the bird, not the lovefest). I’ll spruce up before class, but in the interim I’m going to enjoy the semblance of slackerdom.
On the way home from the gym I conceived of my obsession du jour: the challenge of reading aloud. I’m preparing for a late October reading of my fiction, and I’ve got two very readable pieces to work with–one is something like a fairy tale, and the other features a speaker who (for reasons the story implies) seems to be caught in a state of arrested development. In theory, it should be easy-peasey. Since the plan was hatched, however, I’ve been listening much more attentively to speakers of all shapes and sizes, and that purposive eavesdropping has me a bit fretful.
A local advertiser, for example, does not seem to realize that his normal speaking voice sounds like that of Droopy Dog, so much so that I initially thought the commercial was a lark. The news reader for an area radio station cannot make it through words over three syllables without garbling them; her botched readings and re-readings were so infuriating that I actually changed the station. And at Friday’s department meeting I found myself catching “ums” and other verbal interference much more often than I usually do. I’m no toastmaster myself, but I work at a reasonably polished, seamless delivery. I had the good fortune to teach speech classes a couple gigs ago, and it’s helped me to monitor my own articulatory tics when I’m lecturing and improvising. Reading expressively from the page, however, strikes me as a little more daunting.
My apprehension was exacerbated when I scared up some clips of some poets and authors reading their work. Some, of course, are old pros, and they deliver their lines with lively inflection and expert pacing. Quite a few, however, exhibit all the habits that worry me in my own presentation. Some stumble over their own difficult words; others settle into a neatly clipped monotone, which is great for catching line breaks but not so great at conveying rhythm or tenor; still others mumble or sprint, which always strikes me as the reading syndrome suffered by those who would rather be anywhere except behind the mic (we call this “projection,” my Freudian friends). I don’t know where I fall on this continuum–some people quite like my voice, but it sounds terribly odd to my own ears. When I read aloud at the computer to pick up my own rhythms, I also tend to use a softer speaking voice, one I don’t often use in public. Accordingly, I think I’m going to have to log quite a few rehearsal hours before I take the stage.
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Speaking of which, I just timed out the two stories I plan to read; they weigh in at 23 total minutes, so apparently I’m going to need to mix in a third piece. One of my stories is quite literally unreadable–it’s predicated on a word that no one can actually articulate, so I’m thinking I’ll have to rule that one out. That means I’ll have to match for tone or else pick for range; ah, the many delights. Perhaps a nice Lovecraftian rant to show off my range? If nothing else, I deliver crazy talk with conviction.
Still, my lower reading register isn’t too bad, and with a few practice runs I trust I’ll be able to jazz up the inflections. I got by without too many gaffes, so there’s some hope for me yet.
But if I crack under the pressure, I’ll put James Earl Jones on speed-dial, just in case.
Dropped by to thank you for the comment. But here you are writing about speechifying, one of my favorite activities, so I feel compelled to share a Big Useful Notion.
You’ve picked up a great key by noticing that your quiet voice is the good one. But you may have realized that when you try to go with that voice from the platform, there’s a big risk of coming off like a child molester, plus it’s a soft voice, so you risk clinging to the microphone.
There’s an easy way to open up this part of your voice and figure out how to bring it up on command: standing there at home, talk a little that way to get ready, and then seamlessly and using the same vocal structures start singing in the same voice. Don’t shift your posture or use a different part of your throad or put your belly into singing…just let the sounds you make shift over into musical shape– longer vowels, softer transitions, changing pitch, etc.
It may feel silly, but once you’ve got it going, start putting some volume to it. Adding the volume and naturally rounding the tone will pull your vocal structures to where they need to be. Keep doing that and take note of how you’re getting the richness and the volume. Once you’ve got the timber and volume going, shift from singing the song’s lyrics to speaking them– again, trying not to make a big shift in the mechanics of your voice…just drop the long vowels and the song-ish shifts in pitch… and then switch from the lyrics to natural conversation or to reading your work. You won’t have to do this too many times before your body will learn how to pull in the anatomy it needs to give you a good reading tone.
Thank you for the advice. The reading should be a weird one–I’ve got two first-person fictions featuring very different speakers, and a third piece that’s essentially a dark fairy tale–so I’m probably looking at multiple voices rather than my late-night smooth jazz baritone. I’ll try out your technique nonetheless and see where my voicebox takes me.