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: 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, 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.
continue readingby Kate DeVore
Filed Under: Being Heard, Breath Support, Myth Busters, Owning the Room, Powerful Speaking, Professional Speaking, Vocal health, Vocal Injury, Voice for Stage, Voice Therapy
Being heard over background noise, or in a large or outdoor place, requires specific techniques. Surprisingly, loudness is only one component of projection. A well-placed voice can be heard better than you might think, with a couple extra tweaks.
continue readingby Kate DeVore
Filed Under: Being Heard, Breath Support, Myth Busters, Powerful Speaking, Vocal health, Vocal Injury, Voice Therapy
A friend recently messaged me saying her voice was changing, and had become raspy. She wanted to know if that was normal for someone in their mid-50s.
Nope.
continue readingby Kate DeVore
Filed Under: Being Heard, Myth Busters, Owning the Room, Powerful Speaking, Professional Speaking, Vocal health, Vocal Injury, Voice for Stage, Voice Therapy, Voiceover
It’s an old saw: Less is more. As with many clichés this one can sometimes be true, especially when it comes to how we use our voice.
Did you know it takes about 100 muscles to utter a phrase of speech? Given that many of these muscles are tiny and impossible to isolate, it’s shockingly easy to be using them with more tension than is necessary.
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