Flloyd Kennedy – Page 35

Mumbler Jumbler Talk

Mumbling is just a way of describing unclear speech, or speech that cannot be easily heard or understood. It’s annoying if you are the listener, because it requires extra effort to translate the bits of information you can glean from what you hear into something wholly intelligible. It’s also annoying for the speaker, who is often asked to repeat what they have just said.

While it may be a mild annoyance in a social situation, it can be quite damaging in a professional situation. People who speak clearly and audibly are much more likely to get the job than those who don’t get their message across first time.

teacher chap — getting the message across

There are many, complex underlying causes for mumbling. In physical terms, the muscles involved in articulating, or shaping the speech sounds are simply not activated adequately. This could be because the speaker is tired, or holding back because of shyness, or insecurity about the situation.

Let’s look at the last one: insecurity. If you are not comfortable that you know what you are talking about, either because you haven’t done your homework, or because you don’t have faith that you have the right to be talking on this topic, it may well be that you are unconsciously restricting the muscular effort in an attempt (misguided!) to protect yourself from criticism.

Whatever the underlying reason, speaking is a physical act, involving muscles, and if the muscles are not positioning themselves accurately or powerfully enough, the speech will be unclear.

Now, let’s be very clear about which speech sounds we are talking about. The most popular remedy for mumbling is to do lots of tongue twisters. These are phrases involving complicated sequences of consonants, that require a relaxed jaw, an agile tongue and accurate placement. For example,

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers

Thirty thick thistle sticks

She sells sea shells by the sea shore.

In my opinion, heading straight to the tongue twisters is putting the cart before the horse. You Doing them does not address the underlying problem, which is a tense, immobile jaw and a tight, inflexible tongue. First you have to learn how to relax the jaw, creating more space in the mouth and providing more room for the tongue to be more flexible, and agile. A relaxed jaw also means relaxed facial , mouth and throat muscles, including the lips and the soft palate, so that they will be in a better position to allow for more accurate placement of the combinations of lips, tongue, teeth, jaw and palates.

So if you have a problem with mumbling, start working on relaxing your jaw. That means actually letting it go, letting it drop down until you can slip 2 fingertips between your teeth without straining. This takes time.

Be kind to your jaw. It’s been working hard all your life to keep you safe behind its guardrail. Give it a break. Send it to the Bahamas for a rest. It will thank you for it, eventually.

I’ll pop some jaw relaxation exercises online in a day or two, on the Products page.

Where Do You Start?

Flloyd Kennedy 11 November 2012 Voice presentation, voice training

The question “where do you start” with regard to training the voice, has to be preceded by another question, “why would you start?”

It’s a simple fact that nobody thinks about voice training unless something occurs to make them suspect their voice is inadequate, or unhealthy.

If there is any pain experienced while speaking, at all, the first step is not training, but some form of medical intervention. Get referred by the GP to a specialist, and make sure there is nothing physically amiss. If there is nothing actually wrong with the larynx (voice box) then therapy is usually advised to address the behaviour that is causing the pain.

Two common problems that bring people to the idea of voice training are quiet voice, and mumbling. While they are caused by specific and different behaviours, they also have much in common.

Someone who speaks so quietly that you have to constantly ask them to repeat what they are saying, is failing to apply adequate muscular effort to aspects of their voice, so that they create insufficient sound waves to be easily audible. It’s like trying to pick up an object with the hand, but leaving the fingers so floppy that the object slips through them. This is not because that person is lazy, or doesn’t care if you can hear them or not. It’s much more likely that they don’t have a strong physical sense of the energy needed to make themselves heard.

Often there’s a background of criticism, (possibly self criticism) in their lives that makes them reluctant to fully voice their thoughts. They may speak “off voice”, a kind of breathy sound such as we hear a lot in film and tv these days. That’s fine when there are powerful microphones and sound systems picking up and transmitting that soft sound – although I admit I find it intensely irritating and monotonous, even if I can make out what they are saying – but that’s another story.

When someone speaks consistently in this breathy, semi-whispered manner, not only do they fail to be heard properly, they are also potentially damaging their vocal apparatus.

Just speaking quietly is not dangerous to the voice, but it’s not good if you need people to hear you for your work. It’s a fairly simple matter to learn how to provide a more consistent supply of air pressure to the vocal folds, and to keep the upper chest, throat and neck muscles relaxed so that they don’t provide a barrier to sound waves leaving the body. Learning to relax the jaw, and open the throat more allows for more sound waves to be created for no more effort, and that means more volume.

Then, of course, the new behaviour patterns associated with making more sound have to be gotten used to. Learning to listen to oneself without judgement, observing the physical sensations of making a full-bodied sound, and being mindful of those sensations as well as the actual sound itself gives the speaker control over their means of vocal expression. When you know how to do it, you can modify your own behaviour, getting louder or softer at will.

Next time, I’ll talk about how to address mumbling.

Voice

Where Do You Start? Read Post »

Author name: Flloyd Kennedy

Mumbler Jumbler Talk

Where Do You Start?