Drama Benchmark

### Voice and Articulation Study Guide

Aspirate:

- Refers to a soft, breathy quality of voice. This occurs when there is excess air passing through the vocal cords without enough vocal fold closure.

- Example: Whispering or breathy speech.

Respiration:

- The process of inhaling and exhaling air; it's the foundation of voice production, as breath supports vocalization.

- Example: Proper breath control is crucial for maintaining long, steady phrases in speech or singing.

Orotund:

- A voice quality that is full, round, and resonant. It is often associated with clear and powerful projection.

- Example: The voice of a classical stage actor delivering lines with strong resonance.

Guttural:

- Refers to sounds that are produced deep in the throat, often rough or harsh in quality.

- Example: The growling sound often used in certain vocal styles or emotional performances.

Oral:

- This term refers to sounds that resonate primarily in the mouth. Oral resonance typically produces clear, crisp sounds.

- Example: Standard speaking voice that is well-modulated and not nasal or guttural.

Nasal:

- A voice quality where the sound primarily resonates in the nasal cavity, giving it a somewhat "twangy" or stuffy quality.

- Example: Speaking with a cold often results in nasal resonance.

Clavicular vs. Diaphragmatic Breathing:

- Clavicular Breathing: Involves raising the shoulders and collarbones during inhalation, resulting in shallow breaths. This type of breathing can lead to vocal strain.

- Diaphragmatic Breathing: Involves the diaphragm expanding and contracting, allowing for deep, efficient breaths and greater control of the voice. This is the preferred method for vocal work.

- Example: Singers and actors use diaphragmatic breathing to support sustained vocalization.

Articulation:

- The clarity and precision with which sounds are produced, involving the movement of the tongue, lips, jaw, and soft palate.

- Example: Clear articulation is essential for stage actors to ensure their speech is understood by the audience.

Structural Action:

- Refers to the physical movement and positioning of speech organs (like the tongue, lips, and jaw) that shape sound.

- Example: The way the tongue moves when forming certain consonants, such as "t" or "d".

Phonation:

- The process by which the vocal cords produce sound as air passes through them and they vibrate.

- Example: Speaking or singing involves phonation when the vocal cords come together to produce sound.

Resonation:

- The amplification and enhancement of sound as it passes through the cavities of the throat, mouth, and nose.

- Example: The difference in sound when an actor speaks with strong throat and chest resonance versus weak resonance.

Consonant Action:

- The specific articulation of consonant sounds, which requires distinct placement and movement of speech organs.

- Example: Crisp pronunciation of "p," "t," and "k" helps ensure intelligibility in speech.

Pitch:

- The perceived highness or lowness of a sound, which depends on the frequency of the vocal folds' vibration.

- Example: A higher pitch is typically used for excitement, while a lower pitch may indicate authority or calmness.

Inflection:

- The variation of pitch within speech to convey meaning, emotion, or emphasis.

- Example: Rising inflection at the end of a sentence can signal a question, while falling inflection can indicate a statement.

Nodules:

- Callous-like growths on the vocal cords caused by vocal strain, overuse, or misuse. They can impair voice quality and make speaking or singing painful or difficult.

- Example: Singers or teachers who frequently overuse their voice may develop nodules if they don’t use proper technique.

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Speech is often referred to as an "overlaid" function because it uses organs and systems in the body that originally evolved for other primary biological functions, such as breathing and eating, rather than for speech production. The organs involved in speech, like the lungs, vocal cords, tongue, lips, and jaw, are primarily responsible for respiration, swallowing, and chewing. However, they are "overlaid" with the secondary function of producing speech sounds.

- Lungs: Primarily used for breathing, but they also provide the airflow necessary for phonation (sound production).

- Vocal cords: Primarily protect the airway during swallowing, but they vibrate to create sound when speaking.

- Tongue, lips, and jaw: Essential for chewing and swallowing food, but they shape and articulate sounds to form speech.

This dual-purpose use of the body's systems is why speech is considered an "overlaid" function.

The four properties of tone in voice production are:

1. Pitch: The highness or lowness of a sound, determined by the frequency of vocal fold vibrations.

2. Volume (or Intensity): The loudness or softness of the sound, influenced by the amount of airflow and the force with which the vocal folds come together.

3. Quality (or Timbre): The characteristic or texture of the voice that makes it unique, often described as clear, breathy, nasal, or harsh.

4. Duration: The length of time a sound or tone is sustained, which can affect rhythm and emphasis in speech.

These properties collectively shape the overall sound and expression of the voice.

An actor has only two tools with which to reach the audience: body and voice. It's imperative that both be trained to be flexible and strong, able to fulfill the demands of any director and any role. This chapter will give you a basic understanding of how the voice is produced and examine the range of possibilities in vocal characterization open to the actor.

How the Voice Works

The ability to speak, and to express such a wide range of ideas through speech, is a distinctly human characteristic. The speech mechanism itself, though, is composed of various parts of our bodies which have other uses.

These other uses are actually more important to our physical survival than speech. Our diaphragm, lungs, and nasal passages are vital for • breathing. Our teeth, lips, and tongue are important for eating and swallow-ing. This is why speech is often called an overlaid function: the use of our lips, teeth, lungs, and so on for speech is laid over their primary functions.

Proper appreciation of our vocal instrument begins with learning the physical mechanisms by which it is produced. Discovering how our voice works will allow us to exercise it more effectively, extending its range without damaging it,

The Four Processes of Speech

Four steps are involved in the production of speech: respiration, phonation, resonation, and articulation. Let's take a look at the parts of our bodies needed for each process.

Respiration, or breathing, is something that we all do. As a matter of fact, we're all pretty good at it, or we wouldn't be here! Breathing is so natural that most people never think about it, but student actors can't afford not to think about it.

In its simplest terms, breathing is the process by which air is taken into the lungs so that our blood can receive the oxygen we need to live. The lungs are not muscles, and there are no muscles attached to them, so how, you may ask, is the air "taken in"?

Our lungs rest inside our chest cavity, or thorax, surrounded by the ilb cage and bounded at the bottom by the diaphragm. (The diaphragm is a large, strong muscle that separates the thorax from the abdomen.) Air is drawn into the lungs by increasing the size of the chest cavity, which reduces the relative air pressure inside the thorax and causes air from outside to rush in until the pressure is equalized.

There are three ways to increase the size of the chest cavity.

1. The clavicles (collar bones) can be elevated, which usually causes a corresponding elevation of the shoulders.

2. The rib cage can be expanded, rather like an old-fashioned bellows,

3. The diaphragm can be contracted, forcing the abdominal organs downward and/or outward.

Clavicular breathing works wonderfully well— if all you need to do is stay alive. But the actor needs a large supply of air for making long speeches, and the limited movement of the clavicles means that only a small amount of air is taken into the top part of the lungs.

Rib-cage breathing is more efficient than clavicular breathing, because the rib cage can be expanded more than the clavicles can be raised. This draws a greater amount of air into the lungs, but not as much or as deeply as the third alternative, diaphragmatic breathing.

Contracting the diaphragm draws a large quantity of air deep into the lungs. This provides an actor (or a singer, or a clarinetist, etc.) with a large supply of air. This air, supported on exhalation by the strength of the dia-phragm, enables the actor to make long speeches without gasping for breath.

It is a sad fact that although everyone is born a natural diaphragmatic breather, most of us seem to forget how to do it — at least while we're awake and verticall To test yourself for diaphragmatic breathing, place the palm of your hand over your stomach with your thumb resting just below your stemum (breastbone). When you inhale (breathe in), your hand should be pushed out, and when you exhale (breathe out), your hand should move in towards your spine.

If your diaphragm doesn't seem to work, don't despair. Try this: lie down on your back with a heavy book on your stomach. As you relax, the book should begin a slow rise and fall, in time with your breathing. Carefully remove the book, replacing it with your hand. Allow your hand to rise and fall several times, then — slowly and carefully — try standing up while keeping the movement of your diaphragm the same.

If even that doesn't seem to work, then it's worth trying this "psycho-logical trick." All of us breathe diaphragmatically when we sleep, so perhaps we can fool our subconscious into thinking that what we were going to do anyway is really practice for drama class!

After you go to bed at night, just before you drift off to sleep, lie on your back and get your diaphragmatic breathing started. Then tell yourself something like this: "Now I'm going to practice breathing

with my diaphragm for eight hours, and when I wake up

- and get out of bed it will be easier to breathe diaphragmatically than it was today." This is one of those efforts to harness the power of the subconscious mind; if it works, great! And if it doesn't, nothing has been lost.

Phonation, making a sound, is the second process in speaking. Sound is created by vibration, but what part of our speech mechanism provides the vibration?

The air taken into our lungs is pushed out through the bronchial tubes and trachea. As it passes through the larynx, or voice box (or Adam's apple), the vocal folds are brought close enough together that the passing stream of air causes them to vibrate. This vibration is a sound, just as the vibrating of Everything About Theatre

a trumpet player's lips, or a guitar string, or even a plucked rubber band is a The larynx is a small bundle of cartilage, muscles, tendons, and other tissues, including the vocal folds. It is really a marvel of miniaturization, the they the tiny pieces of cartilage pivot, stretching the vocal folds and bringing them close together, then regulating the amount of tension to create high pitches and low pitches. But the sound it creates is very soft and quiet, it can hardly be heard unless the room is very quiet.

Resonation is the third process of speaking. Just as a trumpeter's lips need a trumpet and a guitar string needs a sound box or electronic pick-up, the sound created by the vocal folds needs to be made louder and stronger.

This function is served by three parts of our speech mechanism: the pharynx, the oral cavity, and the nasal cavity.

The pharynx is the large open area at the back of your mouth (or the top of your throat, depending on how you want to look at it). The oral cavity is the mouth, and the nasal cavity is the air passage from the pharynx to the nose.

The size and shape of these open spaces provides each of us with a unique "voice print." They are what gives us recognizably different voices.

And what does this mean for actors? How can we take advantage of this fact to acquire a rich and resonant voice?

Generally speaking, the larger the resonator, the larger and more resonant will be the sound. Although we are born with our hard and soft palates, and the size and shape of our pharynx and nasal cavity are genetically deter-mined, knowledge and training can make a difference. The pharynx can be made larger (more resonant) by learning to relax the muscles of the throat.

The oral cavity can be made larger by simply opening the mouth wider when speaking, avoiding the most common American speech problem, tight jaw.

Articulation is the firal process of speaking. Through the processes of respiration, phonation, and resonation, we have created a sound loud enough to be heard. But without articulation, breaking the sound into meaningful units and patterns, we would only be able to utter grunts and shouts.

The seven articulators (teeth, lips, tongue, lower jaw, hard palate, soft palate, and epiglottis) shape the sound into syllables and words that enable us to convey a tride range of thoughts and emotions to our audience; whether in the theatre or in our living room.

The articulators are used in various combinations. The tongue and lower jaw are responsible for most of the vowel sounds. Try saying the vowels sounds in beet, bit, bet, bat for example, and notice how your mouth opens wider and your tongue moves from high to low in the front of your mouth. The lips form the plosives b and p, teeth and lower lip combine for the fricatives fand v, tongue and teeth are responsible for the sounds of th in think and breathe. The tongue and the hard palate get together on t and d (and come close fors and z), and the soft palate kisses the back of the tongue for k and g.

The Four Properties of Tone

The sound of our voice can be altered at our discretion in four different ways: strength, pitch, time, and quality. An actor must have a wide range of choices in each category to provide the widest range of characterizations.

Strength

"Project!" shouts the director.

"Remember the deaf old lady in the back row!" The property of voice commonly referred to as loudness or volume is better described by the term strength. How much sound we produce is governed by the amount of air we push past our vocal folds, and the support of the diaphragm is essential. It is very important to keep

in mind that our goal is Strength Without Strain. Proper relaxation of the throat muscles combined with support from the diaphragm will permit us to have a very strong voice without getting hoarse — as we tend to do when we yell for victory at a football game, A convenient system for measuring

strength is important, because it will allow us to understand each other when we talk about how strongly a particular line should be delivered. The system of numbers used is not scientific — we won't need an audiometer or decibel meter

(the decibel is the unit of loudness) — but it has worked well in many classes and rehearsals over the years.

The projection line represents the level of strength below which the actor can't be heard. Because theatres vary in size, shape, and other acoustical properties, the projection line will differ from one theatre to another.

Even the same theatre is different acoustically when it's full of people: the people and their clothing absorb more sound waves, and they make more noise just shifting in their seats, sniffling, sneezing, and coughing. For these reasons, it's important for an actor to test each theatre under varying conditions by having a rellable listener (a drama teacher or director, for example) sit near the back of the house while the actor speaks from the stage. Most of us understand that pitch is associated with music — that a flute is higher pitched than a tuba, and that singing requires close attention to pitch. Although most people make use of only a small part of it, the human voice is capable of a wide range of pitches, The pitch of a sound is determined by the speed of the vibration producing the sound — the faster the vibration, the higher the pitch.

The speed of vibration is largely determined by the thickness, ten-sion, and length of the vibrating body. In a stringed instrument, for example, an "open" string vibrates at a pitch determined by its length, thickness and how tightly it is stretched. When the string is

"shortened" by holding it down to the fingerboard, the pitch rises. The thickness of our vocal folds is determined by genetics and gender. We control the length and

"tightness" by making tiny adjustments in the larynx. Inflection is the word we use to describe the variations in pitch during speech, most commonly during one sentence or one word. A sentence or a word can have a rising inflection, a falling inflection, or a circumflex inflection. The voice of a person with a limited pitch range, unable to use a wide variety of inflections, is

often described as a monotone.

As an aspiring actor, you should work to develop your total pitch range until you are able to be expressive (not monotonous) in each of three mini-ranges: high, medium, and low. One of tie best ways to extend your range is by studying singing. Private lessons are excellent, but a school or church choir is a good substitute, offering both a low price and performance opportunities.

Time

The two parts of our speech that can be timed are the sounds and the silences — the spaces between the sounds. Each of these contributes to the

•total effect our speech has on the listener. Short sounds combined with short silences creates a very rapid speech, giving our articulators a workout. Long sounds separated by short silences creates a very musical sound, appropriate for classical drama, or any poetic speech. Sometimes, using a long silence places extra emphasis on the sound(s) that follow. It's important to remember that the audience's perception of how fast an actor speaks is just that: a perception. It often bears little relationship to the actual number of words per minute being spoken. An actor with sloppy articulation or a weak voice will be perceived as "speaking too fast" even when the actual speed is fairly slow.

Quality

We've all experimented with changing our vocal quality - when we make our voices sound "spooky" to play Halloween ghosts, for example.

Even whispering is a change in the quality of our vocal tone. The human voice can achieve an infinite number of slightly diffetent qualities, as we know from listening to the wide variety of voices around us, but we will deal with only six basic ones.

The normal quality is the one most untrained speakers use in their daily Lives. Relatively few people make the best possible use of their resonators for a full, rich voice, and few people sustain the exaggerated use of one tone quality necessary to make them stand out in a crowd.

The nasal quality is created by allowing more air than normal to escape through the nose during speech. Spoken English has only three completely nasal sounds: m, n, and -ng. Most other speech sounds, however, allow a small portion of air (and sound) to escape through the nose. That's why a person's voice sounds different when his nose is plugged (or pinched shut), even when he's not trying to say, "T'b goig dowd towd, Bob. (Im going downtown, Mom.)"

A nasal quality is generally associated with unpleasant characters, but

Shouts across long distances. The amount of air and sound escaping through nous cra longi cance. The to cat of at ond soft coin to out a

the nose is regulated by the placement of the velum, the back part of the soft palate. If the velum is raised until it touches the back of the throat, it seals off the nasal passages. On the other hand, if it is lowered farther than normal, it creates a nasal tone quality.

The oral quality produces a very "light" sound, and is associated with most on, very old people, and some foreign dialects. It is produced when

most of the resonance of the pharynx is bypassed, allowing almost all resonance to come from the oral cavity. Although it is physiologically incorrect, many actors trying to produce the oral quality find it useful to think of the voice as being "placed" in the front part.of the mouth, just behind the teeth.

A guttural voice is often described as throaty, raspy, or gravelly. If the : oral "voice" is placed in the front of the mouth, then the guttural voice is placed deep in the pharynx. It is often associated with rough-and-tough characters, and certain old men. Care must be taken not to strain the voice when using the guttural quality. The tension in the throat muscles necessary for an extremely guttural quality can result in hoarseness and damage to the vocal folds.

The aspirate quality is almost always used in combination with another quality for stage work. A pure aspirate quality requires that phonation not take place, producing a true whisper that is difficult to project to the front rows, let alone to the deaf old lady in the back row! A stage whisper uses another quality, but allows plenty of air to escape "around the edges" of the voice. This creates the psychological effect of a whisper — the need for quiet

— but can be heard by the whole audience. An aspirate quality is also useful for playing ghosts and ghouls, as well as certain female roles (such as Hollywood starlet of the 'SOs or '60s). Because of the amount of air being expended without creating extra strength, actors find that using an aspirate quality requires them to breathe more frequently.

The orotund quality is defined as the quality which is the richest, fullest, most resonant that the individual can produce. Each person's vocal equipment is determined in large measure by genetics. While there may be some changes through procedures such as orthodontia, improving your tone quality is basically a matter of training the vocal mechanism: learning to relax the throat muscles, loosening and strengthening the jaw muscles, and learning to regulate the placement of the soft palate. A rich and resonant voice is possible for everyone, and it is an asset not only for actors but for people in all walks of life. Many people have experienced meeting a person new to their town and noticing that the newcomer has an accent. If you live in Tucson or San Francisco or Seattle, you will notice the accents of people who grew up in Alabama, Maine, Brooklyn, or Virginia - not to mention those from Australia, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Mexico, Italy...and so on. Even those who have never met somebody with an accent have heard them many times in the movies and on television.

We seldom recognize, however, that everybody speaks with an accent!

Even though we don't hear ourselves speak with an accent, a person who moves from Tucson to New Orleans or Tallahassee or Montpelier will be recognized as a newcomer as soon as he or she begins to speak. By the same token, residents of Dublin, Ireland, don't hear themselves speaking with an accent or dialect, but would quickly recognize as a newcomer any American speaker.

Our modern age of radio, television, and movies has partially eradicated American regional dialecis. Most radio and television newscasters, announcers, and actors speak with a nonregional dialect — you can't tell where they came from. People eager to expand their businesses into other parts of the country or the world can even take classes to get rid of their regional dialects!

Many parts in plays require that the actor speak with a convincing and believable accent other than his or her own. Actors need to be able to sound as if they come from Ireland for plays such as Brian Friel's Philadelphia, Here I Come, from London (upper class, Cockney, and one Hungarian, too!) for George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, and from New Hampshire for Wilder's Our Town. Actors also need to sound like they are from nowhere in particular (called standard stage diction) for roles in Chekhov's The Three Sisters, Ibsen's The Wild Duck, Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac and many others. Plays originally written in another language such as the last three mentioned above are performed without foreign accents, unless one of the characters in the play is supposed to be a foreigner. That is to say, Carlo Goldoni's plays, originally written in Italian, are not done with an Italian accent. Iis original audience heard the characters speak without accent, so our audiences should, too. Of course, the part of a Frenchman in one of Goldoni's plays would require the use of a French accent now as it did originally. Some lucky actors have a good ear" for dialects. They can learn a new accent or dialect just by listening to and imitating a person from the same part of the world as the character the actor wants to play. One of the advantages of the revolution in movies and television is that it is quite simple to purchase or rent a video copy of a film whose characters use the dialect in question. Large cities often have diverse populations, making it possible to find and converse with one or more individuals who can serve as models for the appropriate dialect or accent.

For those without such a good ear, or without access to a speaker of the particular dialect or accent they need, there are other ways to learn. Several publishers offer dialect books, and some of them include cassette tapes so that you can hear and repeat individually the specific sound changes required in your new dialect. Whatever the method you use, you will need to master each of these five elements: vowel changes, consonant changes, inflection patterns, stress patterns, and word choices.

. Changes in the sounds of vowels and consonants are important. For example, a British dialect changes the sound of our "can't" into something that sounds as though it would be spelled "cahn't." A German or French accent changes our "this" into something like "zis" or "dis." Each accent or dialect has its own lilt, or common inflection pattern. A Frenchman speaking English, for example, is apt to bring to English his custom of ending statements with a rising inflection, making it sound like a question to our ears. Stress patterns vary, too. We say laboratory as "labratory," while a Londoner might say "laboratry." British speakers use secondary stress in long words much more frequently than their American counterparts Word choice is important if you plan to use the accent or dialect for anything other than memorized dialog where a playwight has chosen the words for you. Otherwise you'll need to know whether to call it a gully, a ravine, or ari arroyo. Do you greet people with, "Top o' the momin' to you," or "ow's yer poor old feet?" Is it a bag or a sack? A wallet or a billfold? A sofa, a couch, a davenport, or a settee? Learning and using different accents and dialects can make your performance more believable and interesting. It can also be great fun.