Sound and the Voice

The Transversus Abdominis muscles:

The transversus abdominis muscles, or the TVA for short, are a deep muscle layer of the front and side abdominal wall. The TVA is layered below the internal oblique muscle and is a significant component of the core muscle group of the body that provides stability in movement. It also happens to be one of the main muscle groups involved in breath management for singing and speaking, helping to slow the process of the front torso collapse.

The Oblique muscles:

The oblique muscles are the second of the lateral abdominal muscle groups after the transversus abdominal muscles. There are two bundles of oblique muscles, the external and the internal oblique muscles. These muscles contract to twist the spine or to increase intra-abdominal pressure for functions such as child birth, defecation and other activities.

The Rectus Abdominis muscle:

The rectus abdominis are important postural muscles, they are the six-pack. Beginning at the cartilage of the fifth through seventh ribs and running down the front of the body, ending at the pubic bone.

The rectus abdominis muscles should be relaxed during inhalation. Locking or tightening these muscles while breathing will counteract the coordination necessary for good inhalation. Trying to breathe while singing while the rectus abdominis muscles are flexed is much harder than when they are relaxed. The rectus abdominis muscles should activate only at the very end of a long musical phrase. As the singer uses the last of the inhaled air, the lower section of the rectus abdominis muscles may lift the lower abdomen to assist the transverse abdominis, oblique, and intercostal muscles in delaying the collapse of the torso.

Identifying Voice Problems

There are things I like about my voice and there are things I don’t like about my voice. One of the things I like about my voice is my ability to portray characters, especially cartoony type characters. I am able to portray quite a variety of characters, some being raspy, or squeaky, high pitched or even low pitched. One of the problems I have though, with doing the low pitch, is that I struggle to sustain my breath whilst speaking in a lower pitch. I also have the tendency to wear my voice out quicker when doing a really low pitched voice. 

When I was around 4 or 5 I ended up biting my tongue whilst running up the stairs, putting a hole in my tongue. This affected my speaking for years after, making it more difficult for me to speak clearly, making me mumble and speak quieter. I ended up having to relearn how to talk properly and I do speak much better than what I used to, but I still have problems sometimes with properly articulating everything I say. To help with this I can practice my articulation by doing tongue twisters and practicing by overly enunciating words.

One of the things I’ve consistently had a problem with is with my projection. Which started when I was younger having a hole in my tongue. Growing up being quieter than most people has meant that my voice hasn’t learnt how to project properly. One of the ways I can improve my projection is with the ‘ha’ exercise. To do this you’ve got to breathe from your diaphragm. Basically you just take a big breath in expanding your lungs down and your abdomen out and then you force all that air out saying “ha”.

Vocal Warm up

Step 1: Stretch Your Body

Side stretches are a great way to expand your rib cage and to help your lungs feel like they are full of air.

Take a deep breath and raise your arms up to the sky. Exhale and slightly lean to the left, lengthening in your side body. Hold it there for just a couple of seconds before you inhale to centre, and then exhale over to the right.

Next, stand with your feet hip-width apart. Inhale your arms up to the sky, then slowly bend at your waist on the exhale and take your hands toward the ground. It doesn’t matter how far you can go, the action of bending over is enough to give you a nice, warm stretch! Stay there for a couple of breaths, and then on an inhale slowly come back up to a standing position.

Step 2: Breathing Exercises

Breathing exercises are a great way to relax your vocal folds, especially before a big recording and they will help to expand your vocal range.

The straw trick - Practice humming, or simply inhaling and exhaling, slowly with a straw in your mouth. When your lips are closed around a straw, you’ll automatically focus all of your attention on your breathing, while keeping your face and body still.

Lay on the floor - If you lie on the floor whilst breathing or singing a vocal piece and rest your hands on your stomach and concentrate, you’ll be able to feel your diaphragm move. This technique is an easy way to zero in on your breathing.

The hissing exhale - Start by inhaling for an amount of time you feel comfortable with, and then when you exhale, produce an “sss” hissing sound. Each time you do the hissing exhale, switch up the amount of time that you’re inhaling and hissing, aiming to go longer with each hiss until you find yourself beginning to run out of breath.

Step 3: Humming and Lip Trills

Performing a loose and gentle modulating hum is a nice way to ease in your facial muscles, as well as create space for resonant sound. Humming and lip trills get your resonators going, which in turn helps restore your vocal tone quality after sleeping for several hours. These are ideal to carry out as you start your day. Lip trills and flutters will also help loosen facial muscles and get your vocal folds warmed up.

Professional Vocal Warmup 1 - "Opening Up The Voice" (youtube.com) 

Step 4: Descending on Nasal Consonants

A useful trick that any singer or voice actor should have in their toolbox is the ability to open up passages to descend on a nasal consonant sound. The English word ‘onion.’ is quite nasal sounding particularly its second syllable, which makes the ‘gn’ sound. Take that ‘gn’ sound and lovingly stretch it, slide it and descend glissando style. Another favourite vocal warm up for many voice actors involves reciting any word or phrase that ends in a Z, for example, ‘buzz’ or ‘fuzz.’ Linger on the Z to get resonating.

Step 5: Fricatives

Fricatives are consonants that are formed by impeding the flow of air so that a friction sound is produced. Some of the most common consonants include Fs, Ths, and Vs. They are great for warming up the voice and help to develop a smooth and connected sound in your singing.

Fricative Vocal Warmups (youtube.com) 

Step 6: Tongue Twisters

In the voice over business, being able to distinctly enunciate your speech is by far one of the most important aspects of your performance. If you don’t articulate or enunciate clearly, no one is going to understand a word of what you are saying. There are several troublesome consonants that you’ll want to master before you step up to the microphone. Speaking each of these tongue twisters out loud serves as a fantastic pre-recording warm up:

1. Unique New York, unique New York, unique New York.

2. A big black bug bit a big black bear.

3. She sells seashells by the seashore.

4. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

5. How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

6. What time does the wristwatch strap shop shut?

7. A skunk sat on a stump and thunk the stump stunk, but the stump thunk the skunk stunk.

8. No need to light a nightlight on a light night like tonight.

9. My cutlery cuts keenly and cleanly.

10. Four furious friends fought for the phone.

11. Reading and writing are richly rewarding.

12. Any noise annoys an oyster, but a noisy noise annoys an oyster most.

13. I saw a kitten eating chicken in the kitchen.

14. He threw three free throws.

15. Three free thugs set three thugs free. 

16. If you stick a stock of liquor in your locker, It is slick to stick a lock upon your stock, Or some joker who is slicker, Is going to trick you of your liquor, If you fail to lock your liquor with a lock.

17. Someone said something simple, A simple something said to me, Simply simple someone said, A simple something said to me.

Step 7: Yawn

Yawning naturally relaxes, drops your jaw and regulates oxygen while extending your soft palate. If you’re looking to improve the sound of your voice, yawn a lot. It helps to relax your throat muscles. It relaxes your vocal cords. And as soon as they relax, the tone drops. The lower your voice is, the better you sound.

Learning how to properly do a yawn-sigh can be a wonderful trick to add to your vocal warm up toolbox.

Step 1: Open your mouth as if to yawn.

Step 2: Slide all the way down from the top of your vocal range to the lowest grumble you can muster.

Step 3: You’ll know when you bottom out.

However, you should only do this exercise a few times as a part of each warm up. You should never start with this one, and it’s often best to leave it until the end when you have already exercised your voice.

Link to website I used to help me with this vocal warm up: What Are The Best Vocal Warm Ups for Voice Actors? | Voices | Voices

Ryan's Readings

The Ghost Hunters Adventure Club:

Evaluation:

The first thing I noticed when watching it back, is that the pace of my reading was quite quick, which for a comedic book isn’t far off from the pace I think it should have but it was probably too quick and in the future I would work to control the pacing a bit more. I also found that my voices for Valentine and J.J. weren’t massively different from each other, apart from the tone of their voices they sound very much alike. What I did like about the voices I gave them was that they acted differently, in the sense that Valentine was focused and thinking about the mystery that was going on and J.J. was more focused on his breakfast and I feel I was able to portray that effectively. Though I think I would try and give them more distinct voices in the future. During this I learned that my voice can work well with comedic material like this, with my voice being softer it helps to keep the text light-hearted.

I'd say one of my strengths when it came to this material was that I was able to convey the characters and their thoughts and emotions through my acting.

One of my weaknesses in this piece is what I that I brought up previously that being my articulation. My speech wasn't the clearest during this, which is something I am continuing to work on by practicing my speech and using tongue twisters.

The Chalk Man:

Evaluation:

Watching this back the first thing I noticed that I could improve on was the clarity of my voice. Although I could understand what I said, I feel as though I could’ve spoken clearer as some words melded together. The tone and pacing of my reading I feel is very fitting for the genre of the book, The tone was serious and pacing was slow as the scene was taking place at a funeral. My characterisation of the main character was that at this point in the book they were quite depressed, sad and somewhat bored, as  it seems they are being forced to be at the funeral but didn’t really want to be there. This piece helped me to discover that my voice can work quite well with the more serious and some what depressing tone of books like this one. With the quiet and sadder tone of my voice, it helps to make the character seem like they are going through more than they are letting on.

A strength of mine in this piece is the tone of my voice. In this one I decided to take a more serious direction with it, which included my voice. My voice being more serious and yet some what sad, I feel helped to articulate the tone of the book.

A weakness of mine in this piece would be that my reading was quite stuttery, in that I would pause and stutter on some lines. This could result in anyone who was immersed in listening to the reading, to no longer be immersed. To help with this in the future I can become more confident in the lines I'll be reading first and also practise reading more out loud and continuing to practise tongue twisters, as they will help me to articulate better.

Ryan's Recordings

Duck Dodgers - Marvin The Martian

Evaluation:

I feel the performance I gave for Marvin the Martian fit the style of the cartoon it was from, when recording I found it was a little difficult to convey emotions that weren't excited or happy whilst doing the voice for Marvin. Which was actually very fitting as Marvin's voice doesn’t easily convey negative emotions whilst also sounding like Marvin, which I think adds to his otherworldly presence. Although Marvin doesn’t have a physical mouth he expresses what he says with his eyes and his movements, which I feel I was able to keep the timing of his words accurately in time with his movements. I’m happy that my voice for Marvin is quite clear, in that you can understand what he is saying. With a better microphone and more practice doing it I could improve my voice for Marvin and hopefully I might be able to get the voice clearer and more versatile. During this I discovered that I can and am actually quite good at voice acting and doing "cartoon" voices. I had a lot if fun doing this piece as well, as it gave me the freedom to be silly and cartoony and just have fun with the voice and the material.

One of my strengths during this was my characterisation of Marvin the Martian. It's cartoony and silly, it even works comedically. I believe it fits in with the material and that the performance works very well.

One of the weaknesses of my performance or even just this piece is that it's a very short performance. It was only three lines long which didn't give me much opportunity to give a varied and nuanced performance. If the piece was longer it would've given me the opportunity to play with the voice and stretch it so I could use it with more control and in more scenarios. To help with this I could practise different lines and phases whilst speaking in the voice