Tutor HuntResources Elocution Resources

How Can Elocution Assist Singers?

Using your voice efficiently

Date : 06/03/2019

Author Information

Pauline

Uploaded by : Pauline
Uploaded on : 06/03/2019
Subject : Elocution

As an Elocution tutor, I have worked with people aged from five to ninety-five, from every corner of the globe and from all walks of life. People come to me to help them neutralise their accent, to speak English more clearly, to use correct Grammar and to be better understood.

Alongside this, I teach people how to care for their voice. This is where I can make the biggest difference in the shortest time and I am going to share some of my tips and techniques with you now.

I teach them simple but effective breathing exercises, essential to production of a strong voice. We learn to breathe in through the nose, pulling in enough air to fill our lungs. We count as we breathe in to give a rough measure of our capacity. Did you know that one of the reasons that we breathe in through our nose is millions of years old? As primitive man, at rest we would breathe through our nose. The breath inhaled in this way is deeper and more relaxed, so it relaxes the brain and body as it enters the body in this way. When we were chasing down prey then we moved to breathing through our mouth, this tends to make us gulp air so I don t advise it to my students for their initial breath. What do I mean by the initial breath? This is the first breath you take before your first line on stage, the first note in the song, the first word shouted out, the first line in the presentation, audition or interview. Get this breath deep and gently inhaled and your body will help your brain and nerves relax. With a more relaxed body and brain your voice will be stronger, freer and more impressive.

After some breathing work we move onto a warm up. My Elocution warm up is probably very similar to that which you do as singers. I encourage my students to hum gently, then more forcefully. I ask them to make their lips buzz and tingle with the force of their voice passing their lips. This helps them understand forward voice - essential to the production of most English sounds. Once the lips (and nose!) are tingling we open the lips and set the voice free. Sometimes my students suffer a lack of confidence at this point and their volume drops, so I repeat the process to encourage them to maintain the volume. Then we just make a nice open Aaaahhhh sound - keeping the tongue flat inside the mouth. This practices the forward voice without the humming. Then we alternate humming and ahhh-ing. This is all done on one pitch - a comfortable pitch for the student.

Next we go on to my favourite exercise - this has many names across the internet and youtube, but I use the term flutters. You blow through your lips, keeping them as relaxed as possible, to make a sound like a car engine, as if you were playing with a toddler. It s very silly and great fun. Once you have mastered the movement you add sound behind it - now you sound like a telephone! The rapid movement of the lips provides resistance to the airflow, so this exercise is like weight-lifting for your voice. Practice scales up and down, short tunes and time how long you can flutter for. Within weeks my students notice a positive change to the strength in their voice.

Once breathing, warming up and strengthening exercises have been completed, we move on to articulation. Articulation in singing is so important to make sure people understand you and your lyrics correctly. My six year old daughter thought that the chorus in Cats Mr Mistoffelees said a castle clever - instead of a cat so clever . A very popular indie band from the 90s (M**ic Str**t Pr**ch**s) always sounded, to me, as though they were singing in gibberish as their articulation was so unclear! YouTube has some very funny examples of misheard lyrics, but I am sure we would all prefer to be heard and understood than misheard and the butt of jokes. Practice by using long vowel sounds and adding consonants. Add them before and after the vowels, sharpen up the consonants and lean on the vowels. Work the tongue and teeth hard to make the sounds as clear as possible. Make sure voiceless consonants and voiced consonants are not muddled up - check online which is which. Use the full range of your voice to practice these sounds to ensure your strength in articulation is not just in the strongest part of your voice.

My final tip is to use tongue twisters and poems as they are easy to find and so much fun to use. Find easy ones and take them slow, then speed them up. Use classic poetry as well as contemporary to practice as many different styles of sentence construction as you can.

Practice your articulation exercises regularly in order to maintain good clarity in your singing voice. And if you lose your voice? Well, I always recommend Vocalzones to my students This resource was uploaded by: Pauline