Weekly account of class:
For this session, we started off with a new game – “whoosh” game and this game focused on how we can make an impact with our voice. The game was carried out in a circle, and we had to pass on the “whoosh” to the person beside us, or change the direction with a “wow”. Through the activity, I observed that there were a few individuals we had very loud and impactful voice and this was due to a few reasons.
1. Body Physique: One good example was Leon. Many of us had a good impression of Leon’s performance during the game and one of the contributing factor was due to his height. Given that he was tall in size, whenever he turned towards the person next to him and “whoosh” her, it had a lot more impact as compared to when someone smaller eg. Ben did it. Furthermore, with his height, it allowed him to feel more authoritative, much more ‘powerful’ and this captured the attention of everyone else.
2. Making use of body actions: When Claire demonstrated the game, she made use of her arms (opened them wide towards the person she was ‘whoosh’ing to) and she took a step forward towards them as well. Her loud voice accompanied with the hands actions really did gave off a very strong and impactful feeling.
3. Overtime excitement. One example was Wani, who got louder over the course of the game and started raising her voice at the end and at times where the people between her kept going back and forth. There was quite an evident difference in her tone and the impact it had as well. She started off speaking quite softly and hence it went unnoticed at times. However, when she raised her voice in the midst of excitement/ annoyance, it did catch my attention which I thought was a good example of how some people may come off as quiet and reserved, but when the situation calls for it, they are able to speak up and be loud and impactful as well.
After the usual warm up games, we then went on to the breathing exercises. For this session, I could feel that I was doing better at the exercises than the previous session. I was able to inhale and exhale for 8 seconds which lesser difficulty. This may be due to the fact that I did not have a blocked nose this session. Furthermore, I felt more accustomed to breathing through my nose and hence it may the entire exercise much more relaxing.
This time, on top of the usual breathing exercises we did, Claire introduced to us breathing and humming techniques that worked our different body parts resonance – chest, abdomen, top of the head, cheeks, lips. We were to feel the vibration coming from these parts as we hummed and breathed out at the same time. At the start, it was a little hard to get used to given that many a times we rely on our chest to produce the sound and hence using the other parts was a little challenging. For me, I thought that feeling the vibration at the top of the head was the hardest. Hopefully in the weeks to come, I will be able to feel a stronger vibration at the top of my head.
The main activity we did for this session was having each person to go up and read a passage, and then having to see how our voice projection was like. In this activity, Claire had us describe the voice projection of each speaker in a shape. This shape was a description of how far and wide our voice could travel. According to my classmates, mine was an inverted triangle which stretched slightly above my head. I presume that this meant that my voice was slightly louder (as compared to those whose voice was trapped in a small circle at their mouth). However, my voice could not reach the audience at the side much – not wide enough.
Takeaway from this session/Research findings:
I have learnt that the human body is fully of hollow, air-filled cavities that resonate when we speak and the main resonating chambers are – chest cavity, throat and the nasal cavities. While researching, I found out that if an individual’s voice is projected via the sinuses, this will result in a brighter, higher pitched and more nasal sound. On the other hand, voice produced from the chest cavity will be much deeper, rounded and resonant simply because the chest cavity is bigger. However, the tone of an individual is not fixed as it can be vary by simply changing the resonating chamber they are focusing on. This is where the breathing and humming exercises Claire had us do come in useful!
Meikle, G. (2016, April 25). Developing an awareness and flexibility as to where in your body your project your voice from can help you develop a more interesting and powerful voice. Retrieved February 01, 2017, from https://www.inter-activ.co.uk/presentation-skills/voice/
