Comments on: The Vocal Yokel http://williamhwandless.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/the-vocal-yokel/ Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:22:55 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: williamhwandless http://williamhwandless.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/the-vocal-yokel/#comment-137 williamhwandless Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:23:48 +0000 http://williamhwandless.wordpress.com/?p=146#comment-137 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. 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.

]]> By: full grown single http://williamhwandless.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/the-vocal-yokel/#comment-136 full grown single Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:31:00 +0000 http://williamhwandless.wordpress.com/?p=146#comment-136 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. 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.

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