Dramatics Magazine, March 2002
Voice Magic:
Learning the secrets of vocal variety
By
Lissa Tyler Renaud
Voices
have a kind of magic in them. In live theatre or storytelling, a voice can
transport you to times that are long past, and to places that have never
existed. In a horror movie, a scream recorded fifty years ago can make the back
of your neck bristle today. In a comedy club, a single sound—even a silence
between sounds—can make a hundred people laugh off a month’s fatigue in
an instant.
For someone working in the performing arts, vocal
variety is a cornerstone of the magic that can be done with the voice. For
anyone who wants to work in the field, then, it is a priority to learn how to
use the voice both efficiently and expressively. Training the voice for variety
involves educating the ear and the breath and learning practical skills for
keeping the voice interesting.
This article contains exercises and suggestions for
making magic with your voice.
Speaking for animated characters
At
the start, it is important to develop a heightened awareness of how actors
actually use their voices. Training the ear through careful listening is an
integral part of training the voice. Listening to actors’ voices in animated
films can be an excellent way to begin focusing on how critical the voice is to
creating a dramatic character.
It is interesting to note that for all of the ways
that technology has changed the entertainment industry, there is still no
electronic substitute for the richness of expression in the human voice. The film industry is now producing more
feature-length animated films than ever before, and for these they need sets,
bodies to occupy the sets, and voices to occupy the bodies. Exciting virtual
sets can be created through 3-D computer imaging technology. Virtual
reality software can analyze and create an engaging sense of the body’s
motion in space. But for the character’s voices that will, well, animate the
listener, the industry still turns to the human voice of the actor.
AT&T Labs and others have been working at full
tilt to create what they call “realistic, human-sounding synthetic speech”—that
is, computerized voices. You can judge for yourself how far they’ve gotten by
listening to the samples online at www.naturalvoices.att.com/demos. (They tell
me they did not consult a voice teacher.) Then rent some of your favorite
animated movies and hear the power and tenderness the voice can have.
Ideas for listening: There are some older films that feature the
aristocracy of Hollywood voice talent: Eva Gabor, Maurice Chevalier, and
Scatman Crothers in Aristocats,
Sebastian Cabot and Sterling Holloway in the Pooh movies, Martin Landau in Pinocchio. Today the landscape of mainstream animation is filled with gifted stars
who use their voices alone to create unforgettable characters: Robin Williams’s
Genie in Aladdin, Meg Ryan’s Anastasia,
James Woods’s Hades in Hercules, and
Eddie Murphy’s Donkey in Shrek. In these
films, each of these actors’ voices performs the mysterious alchemy of changing
moving lines and colors on a screen into complex passions in the viewer.
Taking notes: Create a system of notation for keeping track of
what you hear voices do. Consider vocal components such as pitch,
emphasis, rhythm, volume, and inflection. Musical notation or your own system
of slashes and squiggles can work well for this.
Introductory experiment: Read the Sunday comics aloud, imagining that you are
on the radio.
The thought-breath
When we want to master the actual components of an
expressive voice, it turns out to be useful to look at the breath we take even
before we start to speak. I call this the thought-breath.
Sometimes when we are first learning to use the voice artistically, we focus on
the breathing itself—How much breath can I take in? Will I have enough?—when of
course it makes more sense to focus on what we are about to say or sing. When
we isolate the preparatory breath, we can practice coordinating or suffusing the in-path of the breath with
the idea or feeling we are about to express. The exercise below will help you
become aware of how much expression
there is on your natural breath before you say anything.
Sentences
for practice:
1. You’re not going to like this, but…
2. Just what I always wanted!
3. Not that
story again.
4. You should have seen her drunk!
5. You poor thing.
Ideas
for experimenting: Say the sentences, paying particular attention to
the natural way we communicate a thought on the intake of breath before speaking. This is the thought-breath. Now isolate the intake of breath,
sustaining it for three counts. See what happens if you let the breath become a
sound before you speak the sentence.
You may find
that opening or releasing the forehead—especially the muscles over the
eyebrows—and gently tugging the hair along your hairline will help your
breathing become more expressive.
Follow-up: Write down
ten examples of thought-breaths you observe, first in yourself and then in
other people. Practice making these breaths last longer and longer before you
begin to speak.
The
music of the part
To further understand the vocal tools an expressive
actor uses, we can turn to the British, who have a long history of articulating
their process. The legendary director
Sir Tyrone Guthrie spoke inspiringly on the voice in a 1952 London
lecture, reprinted in the book Directors
on Directing:
…Actors invent
the music of their parts to a very great extent. In an operatic score, the
composer’s intention is made extraordinarily clear. The rhythm, the inflection,
the loudness and softness, the pitch and the pace at which the idea is
conveyed, are all clearly defined in the score... The actor has to find nearly
all those things for himself… That is, in fact, very highly creative.
Working on a creative project requires actors to
bring all of their physical, emotional, aesthetic, and intellectual skills to
bear on their roles. That, of course, includes taking note of what Sir John
Gielgud called “the underlying musical score of a part.” This vocal score is important, of course,
whether the piece is classical or contemporary.
When asked to
describe the basic requirements for a stage or film actor for the book Actors Talk About Acting, Gielgud
replied:
Voice, of course, I think is wildly important. And to
have a good ear… I mean an ear for tempo, for rhythm, for musical quality, and
for being able to hear when they’ve done one thing and to be able to change it
and go on to another, you know—variety… With modern works I think you need more tipping, more
variety, more tone interest. You cannot
sit the whole evening listening to someone speaking in monosyllables in the
same tone of voice… You feel the actor is so limited… He doesn’t create
anything.
Taking
Sir John’s remarks as a point of departure, let us explore some guidelines that
enhance the vocal interest of your acting work for auditions and performance in
all media.
‘More tipping’
The
expressive voice is found at the intersection of three basic components. The
first is pitch, which refers to how high or low the voice is. The second is
pace, which refers to how fast or slow the speech is. The third is volume,
which means how loudly or softly one is speaking.
In everyday speech, we tend to use all three of these
elements within a rather narrow range. The conversational voice typically
hovers around pitches in the middle of the voice, at medium speed and loudness.
When we feel extremes of emotion, though, our voices move to the extremes of
pitch, pace, and volume. We also shift quickly from one extreme to the other.
Both drama and music express heightened emotions and are best served by voices
that move freely out of the midrange and into louder, softer, higher, lower,
faster, slower. This free movement is related to what Gielgud called “tipping.”
Sentences
for practice:
1. How can you say that; I wasn’t even there.
2. How come she gets to go and I don’t?
3. Honey, I’m home, just like I promised.
4. I just heard: the circus is coming to town!
5. I don’t think they can ask you to do that.
Ideas
for experimenting with pitch: Say each sentence in a moderate pitch range.
Repeat the “melody” of the sentence without using any words. Listen for the
highest pitch in the melody of the sentence and then make it higher; listen for
the lowest pitch, then make it lower. Speak the sentences on the new pitches.
Repeat several times, working the high and low points apart until each sentence
moves through your entire range.
Ideas
for experimenting with pace and volume: Say each sentence at a moderate
pace and volume. Say each one again, getting gradually faster, then gradually slower.
Try each one louder and softer. See how the sentences change if you get slower and faster within each one. Try them
with louder and softer parts in the same sentence. Make these changes
gradually, then suddenly. How does the meaning change as you alter your
delivery? Which combinations give you an interesting or surprising meaning, and
which ones distract you from the meaning?
Notes: Always speak
on an exhale, not holding your breath. Make sure you are allowing space between
your side and back teeth—not holding the teeth together—so you will have
as much space in your mouth to work as possible.
Follow-up: Listen to the intonation pattern or “melody” of
ten sentences you say, and then ten that you overhear other people say. Write
them down, using your notation system to remember what you heard. This provides
further ear training and gives you a springboard for working with dramatic
language in the future.
‘More
variety’
One way to create more variety in a piece is to
take care that the stress patterns—rhythmic patterns—of a text are not overly
emphatic. To a large extent, the rhythms are created by the pattern of words
you are emphasizing from line to line. If you emphasize too many words, you
achieve what I call “the sledgehammer effect”—tiring the listeners’ ears
without helping them hear which ideas are the most important. In Donald Spoto’s
1992 biography of Sir Laurence Olivier, he writes that Olivier was enormously
influenced by a technique that John Barrymore used for creating variety through
rhythm: “[Barrymore] seemed to select a single word from each line for
emphasis, and this he uttered with a great ring of passion; the result was a
rhythm of alternating stresses and varied volume that kept the audience bound
to him.”
Ideas for experimenting: Select a
newspaper article. Read it in a monotone, without any emphasis. Next read while
emphasizing each word. Then read it without any special emphasis, marking in
pencil all the words you find yourself stressing. Erase the marks from any
words you can de-emphasize without losing the meaning. Organize the remaining
stresses into “primary” and “secondary” stresses—that is, heavier and lighter.
Notes: Find
different ways—other than by simply going up in pitch or volume—to give
emphasis to stressed words. Slow the words down, speed them up, or put pauses
around them. Discover your own ways of drawing our attention to exactly what
you want us most to hear. Two actors who are endlessly resourceful in varying
their stresses are Vanessa Redgrave and Garrison Keillor. Pay attention to
their work.
Jay Rose, a
Clio- and Emmy-winning sound designer, offers this guideline for which words to
stress: “In general, the most important words in a sentence are the ones that
don't repeat what came before. ‘Take some shallots,
chop the shallots, and then sauté the
shallots in butter,’ sounds like
you're talking to an idiot. But read it as, ‘Take some shallots, chop the
shallots, and then sauté the shallots in butter,’
and you'll really cook.”
To demonstrate
his excellent point that “it's almost never appropriate to stress prepositions
or conjunctions,” Rose has posted on his website (www.dplay.com) an audio file
of outtakes from a hilarious but painful recording session with Orson Welles.
It is highly instructive.
Follow-up: Listen to
readings by skilled speakers. The best way to do this is to read the text while
you listen, marking the stresses. For political speeches, I recommend
Winston Churchill and Bill Clinton; for poetry and drama, Maya Angelou (who
studied voice), Sidney Poitier and Richard Burton. For religious speaking, Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Pope John Paul II (who studied theatre).
‘More
tone interest’
Tone interest—also called “tonal shift”—refers to
the quality of thought or feeling expressed in the voice. When the voice is
free, it acts like a litmus paper in registering the subtlest shift in our
attitude towards the words we are speaking. Wonderful speakers are extremely
vocally sensitive to the essence and connotations of their language, and their
voices shift rapidly throughout a sentence.
Pairs
of practice words:
1. cupcake, storm
2. wicked, brave
3. flying, gobbling
4. cave, daisy
5. tiara, gunboat
Ideas
for experimenting: Say the first two words with a vastly different
quality to your voice. Then reverse the words, so you are saying “storm” as you
would normally say “cupcake,” and vice versa. Repeat with the other pairs. What
vocal qualities are associated with specific connotations or moods? Under what
circumstances might you use an unexpected reading?
Follow-up: Make your own
pairs of practice words. Keep listening to good voices, live and recorded,
increasing your awareness of natural tonal shifting. Listen in languages you
don’t know. Explain tonal shift to someone.
* * *
Everyone who knows something about vocal delivery
will tell you that expressivity is not simply a talent one is born with. The
vocal artistry that an actor brings to a dramatic text is not mysterious but is
mastered like any other skill or sensibility. For marvelous, practical reading
on melody in speech, rhythm, and tonal expressivity, I recommend: Jon
Eisenson’s Voice and Diction: A Program
for Improvement; Cicero’s On Oratory
and Orators; Robert Pinsky’s The
Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide; Reynaldo Hahn’s On Singers and Singing. Pursue their suggestions.
Then perform
your own vocal magic and let the world say that your voice is just your
"natural talent."
Lissa Tyler Renaud, a director and award-winning actress, is program director
and teacher of InterArts Training for Acting, Voice and Movement in Oakland,
California (www.interarts-training.org) [510] 653-8395).
This article
appeared in somewhat different form as “An Actor’s Vocal Score” in the January
2002 issue of Callboard, published by Theatre Bay Area in San
Francisco.