Chapter - 19

A Body With A Voice

Over the past few weeks you've flexed your mental muscles and had a good physical workout. You've explored the resources of the mind for tools of acting. You are able to make your body serve you expressively. You can apply the mechanics of timing through proper use of mind and body.

You've accomplished a lot

But as yet we've done nothing about your voice. And acting is composed of three basic elements—the voice, the body and the mind. It's time to take up voice and diction.

Every normal person is born with an instrument that can be used to produce a good voice. But only a few learn to use that instrument right. Wrong use builds up a system of tensions that keep the voice instrument from functioning properly to the best advantage.

Voice is sound produced by air passing through the larynx and made audible by vibrations of the vocal cords.

You may have heard that your voice is produced in the mask of your face, in some spot in the sinus region or in the throat. None of that is true. The only place you can produce a vocal sound or make a vocal noise is in your Adam's apple.

That projection, called the Adam's apple, is formed by thyroid cartilage, and is part of the larynx. Inside the Adam's apple are two small bands of membrane, the vocal cords. They come together with a slightly downward motion and vibrate by means of compressed air to produce the sound called voice.

When you've had a sore throat, have you ever had a sore Adam's apple? Of course not. If you've ever suffered from laryngitis, you will remember that your throat was not noticeably sore. You just couldn't talk.

The sound produced by the vibrations of the vocal cords down in the Adam's apple is not very big. But that sound is enlarged and enriched by overtones produced by a series of "echoes" in the various nasal, oral and chest chambers.

There is no actual sound originating in the sinus cavities, the nasal cavities, the mouth or the chest. There are only sympathetic air and sound vibrations, which are set into motion by the vibrations of the vocal cords.

The combination of sympathetic air and sound vibrations disturbs the air like ripples in a pool when a pebble has been tossed into the water. The disturbed air, which we call sound waves, passes out into the atmosphere. It is picked up by the "receiving set" in our ears, or other ears, living or mechanical, and is reconverted into sound as we hear it.

If you put too much uncontrolled power behind your voice, the "ripples" will be distorted, destroying the rhythmic sound patterns, just as heaving a big rock into a pool would cause distorted ripples that pile up and overlap each other. Control of possible distortion is becoming more and more important as microphones, tape and speakers are improved electronically.

Through exercises you can develop the affinity of your echo chambers (nasal, oral and chest) for the sympathetic air and sound vibrations set into motion by the vibrating vocal cords.

The mouth and throat, besides acting as resonating chambers, have sympathetic air and sound vibrations of their own. They also act like the bell of a trumpet or megaphone to project these combined vibrations into space. A variety of noises can be made by the vibrations of the vocal cords. These noises, blended together and chopped up by mechanical movements of the lips and tongue, become speech.

The simple vocal sounds made by the vocal cords are known as vowels.

The mechanical actions made by the lips and tongue are called consonants.

Some consonants are silent; others have vibrations. These are called voiceless and voiced—sonants and surds. In English, when a voiceless consonant ends a syllable, it should be followed by a slight puff of air.

Voiced consonants should have the same vibrations, whether used at the beginning or the end of a syllable.

A tight throat stifles the vowel sounds and causes the consonants to be tense and strained, or to be left out altogether. It also distorts the rhythmic sound pattern.

Sit in front of a mirror. Lift your tongue and look at the under side of it. You can see that it's one mass of muscle. Tighten the muscles as tight as you can and you'll find that your throat will become tight and rigid, too. Feel your throat with your fingers —notice how tense it is.

Next, relax the muscles under the tongue. Focus your con-scious-beam on your tongue and keep it relaxed. Letting the tongue remain relaxed, try to tighten any part of your throat Impossible. It can't be done.

You have reduced—to the simple training of the tongue —the entire rigmarole of keeping a relaxed throat.

The tongue has two sets of muscles, extrinsic and intrinsic. The set of muscles that you use both to tighten and relax your throat are the extrinsic muscles. They are used primarily for swallowing.

Usually through tensions and inhibitions, which bring about bad habits, a great many people use their set of extrinsic muscles for speaking as well as for swallowing. The results: tight throats, sluggish consonants and bad speech in general.

The intrinsic muscles are those which lengthen and shorten the tongue; flatten and thicken it. They are the muscles you use when you cleanly and clearly make the mechanical actions called consonants.

With a little concentration and well-directed application of effort, it's easy to train the extrinsic and intrinsic muscles to perform independently.

The next thing to find out is how to make the vocal cords vibrate. Somewhere in your anatomy you must produce the power to bring about the vibration.

Your production center is the diaphragm. Your breath brings about the vibrations.

Your mental command to produce a sound you can hear causes the vocal cords to click down together, closing the open passage in the larynx. The vocal cords act like two taut rubber bands placed side by side so their edges are in juxtaposition. The breath current then vibrates these two edges.

You created a similar effect as a youngster, when you put two blades of grass into your mouth and then blew, causing the blades to vibrate simultaneously.

You have learned that the little sound produced by the breath current vibrating the vocal cords is enlarged by means of sympathetic air and sound vibrations set up in the echo chambers of the head and chest. These head and chest echo chambers are cavities of different sizes. Echoes from the varisized chambers differ in tone, according to the length of the vibrations, just as the tone of a piano note depends, in part, on the length of its string. The longer the string, the slower the vibrations and the fuller and deeper the tone. The shorter strings bring about shorter, faster vibrations, producing a sharper, lighter tone.

Refer to the exercise poem in Chapter 8.

Keep the chest high; with no movement of the chest, and the tongue relaxed, leaving the throat open—whisper each line twice, then, take it aloud twice—WITHOUT CHANGING THE THROAT FROM THE WHISPERING POSITION.

Be careful not to change anything you have learned—keep the tongue relaxed. At this point don't worry about diction.

If your throat becomes tired, it's because you have tightened the extrinsic muscles of the tongue. Let those muscles remain relaxed and be sure that your chest does not move.

After doing this awhile, the quality of your speaking voice changes a great deal. The low frequencies begin to come into it. The voice becomes much richer and of a more solid texture.

Quality—like the "quality of mercy"—is no longer "strain'd."

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here...