voice – Page 6 – Being in Voice

Knight-Thompson Speechworks Rocks My World

Flloyd with Mary McDonald-Lewis and Mendy McMasters at “Speaking with Skill” workshop

Two weeks training in Knight-Thompson Speech and Accents was intense, challenging and unbelievably satisfying. I feel like a newly repotted plant, a bit wobbly above ground, checking out how much room my roots now have to spread out into, and seeing the world from a whole new perspective – albeit one with a familiar quality and a recognisable contour.

The training is deeply practical and intellectually demanding, and I love that combination. It’s all about awareness, in that you must give your full attention to what is actually happening inside your body, how it moves and is moved by your breath, your thoughts, your needs or desires. That, as such, is what I’ve been working on for many years. The difference here, the extension, stretching of the process, is the level of detailed attention to what is actually going on inside the vocal tract in the process of speaking, and WHY!

Knight-Thompson Speechworks is a relatively new player on the block. Dudley Knight, who sadly passed away a few weeks ago, developed this approach over many years, aided by his one time student and long time colleague Phil Thompson. Phil is a remarkable teacher (and actor), deeply insightful and compassionate, with a wealth of experience across disciplines and exceedingly modest. In the world wide community of voice and speech and accent and dialect teachers we have an uncommonly high percentage of warm and generous creative spirits, and Phil exemplifies these qualities in abundance. On this occasion, he shared the teaching with Andrea Caban and Erik Singer, each of whom brought their own unique flavour and experience to the work.

Oral Posture

I aim to deepen and extend my understanding and expertise in this particular approach to speech and accents over the coming months and years. With that in mind, I’m offering a free workshop after I return to Brisbane in late September to anyone who would like to experiment with some joyful gurning, phthonging, speaking in Outlandish, Omnish and perhaps even Somenish for a few hours. There may, or may not be phonetics involved. Don’t be scared, I promise to be gentle with you!

Let me know in the comments section below if you are interested, and I will send you details as the time draws nearer.

ps – I’ve also come away with lots of ideas for more voice training Apps!

To Pic or to Stick, that is the question.

Flloyd Kennedy 31 July 2013 Performance Skills Training, Voice Being in Voice, iPhone App, vocal health, voice, voice training, warmup

Here is the latest review to pop on iTunes for the Being in Voice warmup app:

Fantastic, well explained, fun to use ★★★★ by superhevs – Version 1.03 – Jul 27, 2013

My partner and I went through the mini vocal warm up together while making breakfast. It certainly relaxed us both, noticeably improved our voices and made us laugh. If there is one thing I would suggest to improve the app, it would be visual references. Having an illustration or photo to check against as you complete the exercises would be helpful especially if the user is new to these sort of exercises.The Capital Yoga apps I feel have achieved this well and maybe a useful reference.

I love it when I get suggestions from people who have used the app. Version 1 inspired one of its users to suggest I should include a “How to use this app” page, so I did. I also added an extra, bonus warmup, the Humming Warmup, which is one of my all time favourites. I learnt it at a workshop in Scotland in 1990, from a Hungarian theatre director whose name escapes me now, but in the best Eastern European tradition, he was deeply committed to the all-in-one approach to actor training and preparation for performance.

As for including some visual references, I can see how these would be useful for the Stand Easy and Breathe Easy sections. I looked at the Capital Yoga apps suggested in the review, and their visuals are indeed very clear and helpful.

This is not something I could organise at short notice, but I could very quickly and easily produce some stick figure images, such as these below, demonstrating the stretches that I include in my Mega Full-On Warmup (not yet in the app!)

I can see that the Humming Warmup would also benefit from the inclusions of some visuals, even a video demonstration. The problem with this is that is makes the App a very large file to download, and I’d rather keep it smaller and easier to work with for the moment, until I can afford to get some whizz-bang developer/designer to figure out how to keep the audio and video files small and easily accessible. So I am thinking of putting a video demo of the warmup on the website, here, and just adding in a link inside the app.

What do you think? Stick figures? Or photos? Video in the app? – which would definitely cost more, and make the price go up, or link to video on the website? Give me your thoughts here, in the comments. Let’s work together to make this the coolest, most fun, most do-able warmup app ever.

Performance Skills Training, Voice

To Pic or to Stick, that is the question. Read Post »