47 Expert Advice on the Voice from an Acting Instructor

When I teach voice, I never talk about volume. I talk about breath sup- port. When I tell a student to make something louder or softer, it teaches them to push or hold back without breath or body connection, so it’s all in their throats. What I want them to think about is directing the breath energy around the sound/voicing. When I teach Acting, I talk about making something more urgent or important, and that will naturally increase or decrease the volume. The damage done to a voice comes directly from sound that is not supported by breath. The breath should be doing all the work, and the voice should be doing the articulating. An example might be if I grip the heavy bar for 100-pound weight with my just fingers, I am going to damage them. My hands supported by my biceps and triceps should be doing the heavy lifting. Another example might be, the breath is get- ting the sound out there, while the voice is doing the communicating. The increase or decrease of volume should come as a byproduct of more or less breath energy and the urgency of the message.

Breath and voice connection comes directly from a consistent practice, which involves warming up and exercising the voice. This work should involve the whole body: First finding where tension is living within the body, then releasing that tension through breathing, stretching, and the creation of sound. Tension is an enemy to the voice, so this work is doubly important to novice speakers because of nerves and inexperience.

Here is a warm-up exercise I use in the classroom.

1. Find a spot in the room where they have enough room to extend their arms out to the side without touching anyone else.
2. Find a neutral stance, with feet parallel, about shoulder width apart, and knees should not be locked.
3. At your own pace, close the eyes and let your attention drift inward. Rock forward onto the toes, then back onto the heels finding the sweet spot in the middle where they are not using much muscular control to keep themselves upright; the skeleton should be doing the supporting. This is the point where the awareness starts to come into the breathing. I think terminology is important, so I never say take a breath, I say allow the breath to drop in, and allow the breath fall out, continuously reminding the students throughout the course of the warmup. They are not vocalizing at this point, it is all just focusing on the breath.
4. Slowly let the head drop over, chin to chest, and roll down the spine one vertebrae at a time, on a ten count.
5. At this point they are hanging over like a rag doll, knees are slightly bent, neck is released, and arms are released and flopped over. This is not as much of a stretch as it is a release. (The weight should still be in the middle of the feet; I tell students to imagine the feet are like hands gripping the floor.)
6. While dropped over, make sure they are not holding on with the neck, shake the head no and nod the head yes to facilitate the release. The head should be floppy, and eyes should be looking at shins not the ground. If you are looking at the ground, then there is tension
7. After three breaths dropped over, they should begin to roll up the spine on a ten count, all while continuing to check in with the breath. Once they reach the top of the spine, the head should remain dropped over. Once here, use the hands to place the head back on top of the neck, giving it an extra gentle lift. You want them to think about extending the neck opening the channel and making more room for breath. Ask speakers to check in with their bodies and try to find out where the movement is happening when they breathe. Most will be in the shoulders, but you want to get them to try and have this breath movement happening in the lower ribs and the belly. (If the movement with the breath is happening in the shoulders, then there is still tension and they are not going to be fully utilizing the breath)
8. Have them bring the focus back inward, closing eyes if they want, and begin touching sound. Like I said before, it is just a gentle tap of sound; “huh”. The first “H” of “huh” is very lightly tapped. If they come in too strong with this initial sound it is going to create a glottal stop, which can cause tension in the vocal folds. In order to counteract this, that initial “h” sound must be almost inaudible.
9. Students go up to the balls of their feet, then extend out through the arms, making themselves as tall and wide as possible, all while touching the “huh” sound. They stay extending for three breaths, continuing to touch sound.
10. Release the arms then the feet, leaving the neck extended. At this point, the feet are flat on the floor, but the neck is fully ex- tended. They continue the “huh’ sound, extending it more and more for each breath, until it is extending out to the end of their breath. Ex: Huh… Huuuh… Huuuuuh… Huuuuuuuuuuuh…Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh… (the length of the word gets bigger, not the energy exerted on it. In other words, it doesn’t get louder, just longer.) All of this done while continuously reminding them to sup- port with breath, so the more sound that comes out, the more breath should be behind it. Vocalization should never be unsupported.
11. At this point, students should pick a spot somewhere in the room, and send their “huhs” to that spot. Imagine that your sound is a laser beam, and you are drilling a hole in the wall with it. Then imagine that the sound is something soft like a pillow, and throw pillows at the wall with the sound. Then imagine it is something else and send that to the wall. (The location that they are sending the sound to should be at 10 – 15 feet away)
12. Once the student has practiced sending sound out for a bit, have them drop their chin to their chest, hold it for a breath, then roll the right ear over the right shoulder, hold it for a breath, then left ear over left shoulder, hold it for a breath, and finally back to chin to chest, all of this while touching sound. Have them hold the ridge of the jawline using only the thumb and forefinger, waggle the jaw up and down (never side to side) and put some voice behind that. If they are having trouble moving the jaw up and down, it means there is tension in the jaw muscles. Next have them hold the bottom jaw in place and lift the top jaw off of the bottom, then bring bottom to the top, bottom off top, bottom to top, all the way until their mouths and throats (channels) are wide open, and they are facing the ceil- ing. Send the sound to the ceiling. After sending sound, bring head forward leaving the channel open and send sound to wall, bring head down leaving channel open and send sound to the floor, then come back to center. (This helps them to open their soft palates and throats, to fully resonate the sound out)
13. At this point, have them use their hands and place it on a certain spot on their bodies, like a hand on the belly, and send the sound from that spot. (This is all imagination work, but it is really effective. Let them know that they are not really sending sound from that spot, but it should feel like they are.)
14. Have them come to a neutral stance, close the eyes again, and imagine that their body is a big empty vessel with a little bowl at the bottom, right about where their pelvis is, and each time the breath comes in, it scoops into that bowl and comes back out. This is about making lots of room for breath. They should be ready to start giving lines from their speeches with the breath. So, instead of “huh” They would say a word or two from their speeches. Ask them to think up theme words from their speeches and put those with the breath. This will start to facilitate the connection of mind, breath, and voice.)
15. Lastly have them move around the room communicating that word with other members of the group, as they pass each other.

This is a lot of information, but this warm up only takes about 10 minutes at the most. Pitch and Volume should both be a byproduct of urgency of message. If you connect the speech with the breath, and know what you specifically want to do with your speech, then volume and pitch can hap- pen spontaneously, and there will be no need to plan these elements out.

Conclusion

Good delivery is meant to augment your speech and help convey your information to the audience. Anything that potentially distracts your audience means that fewer people will be informed, persuaded, or entertained by what you have said. Practicing your speech in an environment that closely resembles the actual situation that you will be speaking in will better prepare you for what to do and how to deliver your speech when it really counts.

Something to Think About

Each of us struggles with a certain aspect of delivery: voice, posture, eye contact, distracting movement, vocalized pauses, etc. What is yours? Based on this chapter and what you have already experienced in class, what is your biggest takeaway about improving delivery?