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All professional speakers must “reawaken” their voice and exercise it as a muscle.
 There are four basic parts to the voice:
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The Motor
The Vibrators
The Resonators
The Articulators

 THE LUNGS provided force and energy for your voice.
 Breath-support is poor for most people; we run out of breath easily.
 Strengthening breath-support help give us a more flexible and usable voice!

 Energy from the lungs transfers to the
VOCAL CHORDS.
 Air vibrates the vocal chords as air passes through them and this creates sound.
 Muscle tension in the neck makes it harder to produce sound.
 Getting rid of this tension will improve your sound.

 Sound from the vocal chords resonates in your vocal “cavities”: your mouth, nose, chest, and your ear cavity.
 These cavities amplify sound.
 Open these cavities for a rich and powerful voice.
 You can change the quality of your sound by controlling where it resonates.


The voice separates and “shapes” into sounds with meaning by the articulators: the lips, tongue, and teeth.
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
Most do not fully exercises the articulators.
We suffer from “lazy lips.”
 Tongue twisters are the best workout for your articulators.

 Motor = The Fingers
 Vibrators = The Strings
 Resonators = The Body
 Articulators = The Frets

 Articulation: lack of this usually occurs because your mouth is not open far enough.
 Say: Peter Piper picked a peck of Pickled
Peppers…

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If your jaw was wired shut
With normal lip/jaw movement
With exaggerated lip/jaw activity
 Speaking should occur in between 2 and 3.

 Fricatives: Sounds caused by gradual escape of air through constriction in the mouth or vocal tract.
 f, v, th, s, z, sh, zh, h
 Plostives and Stops: Sounds caused by an explosion of air or sudden stop of air flow.
 p, b, t, d, k, g
 Frictionless Consonants: semivowels, nasals, and laterals.

 Semivowels: Continuous, vowel-like quality.
 w, r, y
 Laterals: Similar, but the breath exits from the side of the mouth rather than the front.
 l
 Nasals: Similar to laterals but with a nasal
Resonator.
 n, m, ng


A simple vocal warm up…
 Find a partner and try the rest!
 When you are done, wait for the rest to finish.
 Try some for the class and reflect.
 Turn in the sheet!

 Phrasing: Also known as breath groups.

Dictated by announcer’s desire to be understood
 Has little to do with pronunciation
 Allows for logical pausing
 There are two types of phrases:
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
Main Ideas: Uses key words that are more important to stress.
Secondary Ideas: Additional information that qualifies the main idea.
 Key words get greater Stress or EMPHASIS!

 There are four different forms of emphasis:
PITCH RATE
VOLUME QUALITY


The “musical” tone of a voice.
 Key Shifts: differs between main and subordinate phrases, denotes new ideas, begins new ideas at a new pitch.
 Upward v. Downward Phrasing
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Upward Inflection: Incomplete thought, unsure.
Downward Inflection: Completion, authority.
 Downward pitch is important to give complete emphasis to an idea.

 Emphasis can be achieved by variations in loudness.
 This can be sudden or gradual.
 Volume use depends on three things:

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What you’re saying (emotions)
Where you’re saying it (auditorium v. classroom)
 The size of your audience (large, small, spread out, close together, etc.)

 The speed, pace, or tempo of a voice.
 PAUSE before a key phrase to indicate its importance.
 This is the most effective tool an announcer can use!
 Speed up or slow down for a similar effect.
 When reading your script, mark these element of emphasis. (We will read this in
Chap. 3).

 The timbre of your voice; how it sounds:
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Whisper
Breathiness
Huskiness/Harshness
Nasally
 You can change the shape of your voice depending on the purpose of your presentation:
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Commercials
Acting
 News reporting