Total Voice
Express Your Truest Self
by Kate DeVore
Filed Under: Being Heard, Breath Support, Powerful Speaking, Professional Speaking, Stage Fright, Voice for Stage
You: Saying anything at all
Them: What was that?
Them: (Quizzical look)
Them: I didn’t catch what you said
Them: (pause, then) Oh, ok I got you
If these responses are familiar to you, you just might mumble!
Mumbling is basically speaking in a way that is so soft, fast, or indistinct that people have a hard time understanding your words.
continue readingby Kate DeVore
Filed Under: Dialects for Stage, Professional Speaking, Voice for Stage
I was surprised by how many people asked this question when I told them about an upcoming vocal coaching gig. So let’s break these concepts down!
continue readingby Kate DeVore
Filed Under: Accent Modification, Being Heard, Myth Busters, Powerful Speaking, Professional Speaking
One of the keys to sounding natural in any language is rhythm. Emphasis and stress are often at least as important as getting the correct speech sounds. The five common words below have special pronunciation rules that affect the whole rhythm of a sentence, and make a huge different in the way a speaker’s accent/speech is perceived. The words are:
continue readingby Kate DeVore
Filed Under: Accent Modification, Being Heard, Dialects for Stage, Professional Speaking
Many of my clients work to sound natural when speaking English. This list of the 100 most common words of English (according to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th edition) makes great practice material.
continue readingby Kate DeVore
Filed Under: Myth Busters, Vocal health, Vocal Injury, Voice for Stage, Voice Therapy
When a pro athlete has a knee injury, fans don’t jump to the conclusion that they must have poor running technique. Yet when a professional singer gets a vocal cord injury, it’s a different matter. Let’s shed a little light about what a vocal injury does and doesn’t mean.
contine readingby Kate DeVore
Filed Under: Accent Modification, Dialects for Stage, Myth Busters, Powerful Speaking, Professional Speaking
Everyone has an accent. Or more specifically, everyone has a dialect. In teaching accents to actors for several decades, I often hear people say they “don’t have an accent”. I think this means they believe they don’t have a dialect that makes them readily identifiable as being from a particular geographic region. But there’s more to a dialect than just geography.
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