Author name: Flloyd Kennedy

Voice IS Movement

    Performance Skills Training, Voice   , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A week or so ago I ran into a young woman who had taken part in some short classes I once ran for a group of performance studies students. There were five hour long classes, not compulsory. Some students came to all five, some would arrive late, others would leave early to finish assignments or attend rehearsals. As far as I am aware, this was their only opportunity for voice training. The young woman apologised that she hadn’t followed up on the voice work because she had spent the past six years “working on my body instead”.

I was so shocked in that moment that I had absolutely nothing to say. Thoughts like “I’ve failed!” “I must be a dreadfully bad teacher” floated through my head like rats in a flood.

Then I came across this video. It’s a gorgeous short film, created by master film maker Jon M. Chu (Never Say Never, Step Up 2: The Streets and Step Up 3D, illustrating the power of the body to communicate and move us.  It’s inspiring, and I love it.

Here is a reminder of how it is introduced:

“This is what we believe…There are things in this world more powerful than words… movement is the most basic form of communication for every single human being on the planet, expresses what a whole bunch of words never can… It’s not about how many flips, or turns, or how straight. It’s about how far you can stretch the soul.”

Wonderful, isn’t it? Who would disagree with this? I certainly don’t. The problem I have with it is not the way it promotes all forms of dance movement, it’s that its makers forget, or ignore, or are totally ignorant of the fact that voice is part of human movement.

When we make vocal sound, our bodies are also in movement and our voices, just like our hands, or hips, or any other visible part of our beings, express our human ways of being, our culture, and our souls. The only difference is that the voice is not visible.

Voice is not just the words it speaks. Words are concepts, ideas, thoughts made audible so that they can be communicated. Voice is more than the words it speaks.

Words require a mind in order to be spoken.
What is a mind?
What is speaking?

Speaking is the act of giving voice to words.
What are words?
What is a voice?

Voice is the body within the words
Voice is the soul reaching out to touch your body.

We don’t see voices with our eyes, but we don’t just hear them with our ears either. Sound waves do not flow directly out of our mouths and only land in the listener’s inner ear, thence to be translated into signals that the brain interprets. Of course that is part of the process, but there is also the part where sound waves impact upon the listener’s body. The listener is, literally, moved, in subtle but profound ways by the sound of the voice they are also hearing.

So when we train our bodies to be more expressive and communicative, please don’t forget to keep training our voices as part of that process. Give your voice a good stretch each morning, take it for a jog along its length and breadth, challenge it to leap higher, flow longer, dive deeper, twist and flip, bend and straighten. Move your voice to stretch your soul.

Do you agree?  Do you have a regular physical training regime that includes vocal stretches or resistance work? Voice trainers, do you encourage your students to move around the room as they do their vocal exercises? Share your thoughts below in the comments box.

Performance Skills Training, Voice

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Put Your Best Pitch Forward

    Performance Skills Training, Voice   , , , , , , ,

When you only have 5 minutes to make your presentation, to persuade busy, influential people that your idea is the best, the only entrepreneurial idea worth supporting, you’d better sound as good as you believe your idea is.

Five Minute Pitch Competitions are a great opportunity for would be entrepreneurs to be heard by a venture capitalist who might be willing to fund their startup. So let’s think about what needs to be heard, and why.

1) Your passion.  You need to be heard as a professional entrepreneur who cares about your potential company, and your product.

2) Your conviction. You need to persuade the audience that you are convinced your idea, or product is excellent because you have done the homework, and your research is thoroughly tested.

3) Your commitment. You need to convince everybody that you are in this for the long haul, and that you have the courage to make it your first priority.

4) Your understanding. You need to share the specifics of your product or idea clearly, succinctly and entertainingly.

Now, you might be forgiven for thinking that if you just write it all down, memorise it, and then speak it out loud, that you will be doing all you need to do.  And you would be wrong, very wrong. Because in the words of the song: “It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it”.

Sounding genuinely passionate and dedicated with conviction is not as easy as it… sounds.  It is easy to sound like an infomercial salesperson, because we hear them on the telly and we know how to imitate them.  However, pretending to sell something, over-enthusing about it is a real turnoff, and many a brilliant potential entrepreneur has disappeared over the horizon as a result of a poorly presented pitch. At the other extreme are the “um-mers” and “er-ers”, who may be very passionate and well-prepared, but who simply do not hear themselves accurately, or do not have enough innate confidence in themselves to allow their speech to flow naturally and easily.

For a thoroughly excellent run down of the kind of things you need to include in your presentation, check out this blog posting by Bill Cunningham, “The Pitch Doctor”.

Then think about your voice, the physical means by which you will share those excellent facts and that passionate conviction.

You ARE your voice.  The you that exists in the moment of speaking is the one that is heard. So if you are tense, nervous, aggressive, shy, arrogant, insecure or a combination of some of all of these, that is what your audience hears. Your words may be full of confidence, but if your voice is apprehensive then that is what the audience perceives.

And that is one extremely vital element that stands between you and the fulfilment of your entrepreneurial dream.

Have you ever taken part in a Pitch Competition? Are you comfortable with the sound of your own voice? When you are irritated by a particular speaker, are you aware how much the sound of his or her voice contributes to your response?

Join the conversation, and leave a comment below. I’d love to hear your views on this topic. And please share with your friends and colleagues.

Performance Skills Training, Voice

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