Video transcript
The Arts Unit @home Art Bites – Radio play – 1. Preparing your voice

[musing playing]

GENEVIEVE DE SOUZA: Hi, I'm Gen. I am a drama teacher at Epping Boys High School and the Year 8 Ensemble Tutor at The Arts Unit.

Today, I'm going to be teaching you a little bit about how to put together your own radio play and looking at some basic vocal techniques for breathing and for using our voices to make different characters. This video is particularly aimed at students between the ages of Year 5 and Year 8 but can be used by anyone who is interested in learning a little bit more about voice, vocal skills, and anyone who's looking to be a little bit creative, and perhaps make their own radio drama. So let's see how we go.

[music playing]

[LESSON 1: Learning to Control Your Voice]

So you may not realise or even ever have thought about it, but our voice and our vocal skills, especially for actors, doesn't actually start with our voice box. Have you got any ideas about where your voice might actually start? Hmm. Any ideas? OK, well, our voice actually starts with our breath.

It's something we do every day to stay alive, obviously. But we have to think about how we're actually using our breath to support our voice. Whenever you've been asked to maybe project, or to talk louder, or to be more articulate, those things don't only come from the things that we're using to create our sound. They also come from the thing that we're using to support the sound and that is our diaphragm.

Now, the first thing that I want you to do is to imagine that you have a beautiful rose in your hand, a beautiful, beautiful scented rose. It's giving off beautiful delicious smells and you are going to breathe through your nose and just give a gentle smell. [gentle inhale]

What did you notice about the breath? You may not have been aware of where that breath was going. But let's try it again, rose in front of you, OK? [gentle inhale] Did you notice that your shoulders didn't move at all because we're not sniffing it like [strong inhale] and making all of our chest lift, are we?

Have another go. Where does it go? [gentle inhale] If you're anything like me, you'll notice that that breath isn't actually going anywhere near our chest, where you might imagine your lungs to be. The breath is actually going down further somewhere around this area here in our stomach, and that's because all of our breath is actually controlled by this area here, and this is called the 'Diaphragm'.

So to find where your diaphragm is, the easiest way is to look for four squishy parts, lots of squishy parts. The first one is just below that big bone in your chest called your sternum, that little squishy part there, and then just below your belly button, that squishy part there. They are the two, the top and the bottom points of our diamond. The next two points are just under the ribs, if you feel where your ribs are, and then underneath that squishy part, there are the other two points of our diamond, and we're going to imagine this as the four points of our diaphragm.

So when you breathe in this time with a smell, [gentle inhale] see if you can imagine that diamond expanding, and that's called a 'Diaphragmatic Breath'. Now, you don't have to remember that, but basically, this kind of breath is going to allow you to control your voice much better than just breathing into our chest or taking a really shallow breath.

So it's something we don't even think about, but it's actually really important when we're starting to look at how we can use our voice to create character.

[music playing]

[LESSON 2: Warming Up The Breath]

So I'm going to teach you a very, very simple way to connect with your breath and to prepare for any voice work, and this is a really quick warm-up. I actually do it in the car on the way to school because, as teachers, we use our voice a lot, and we have to protect it. So I really want to stress that any time you are going to do any acting work, any vocal work in particular, it's important to actually warm up not only your voice but your breath. It sounds super weird, but believe me, it really helps.

So we're going to imagine again that diamond expanding as we breathe in and we want to take a diaphragmatic breath to fill that space. So we're going to make that diamond expand. [gentle inhale] And you might even notice, if you've got your hand on your stomach, that your stomach is going to move out and expand with that breath. And once we've taken that breath, we're then going to go out on a 'shh' sound for as long as you can.

Let's see if you can beat me, I haven't really warmed up, so we'll see how I go. OK ready? 'Shhhhhhh'.

[sighs]

I'm not very-- that wasn't a very long breath because I'm not warmed up. I'm not connected with my breath. So let's see if we can go for longer for the second one. And this time, we're going to go out on a 'fff' sound, the letter F, 'fff'. And we're going to see how long we can go. And as you're doing this, I want you to notice your stomach muscles start to contract as you control that breath and let it out because this is actually where we should be controlling our voice from, from our breath and from our diaphragm. All of these muscles here are really, really important, which is why we're warming them up.

So breathing in, [gentle inhale] 'Ffffffffff'.

If I'm not mistaken, I think that was a much longer breath than the other one, but who knows? So let's see, again, if we can do it just a little bit longer, and start to really control those muscles, and warm up our breath. And this time, we're going to go out on a 'sss' sound, the letter S. You might feel a little bit strange doing this, but trust me, everything will work out.

So starting again, [gentle inhale] 'Sssssssss'.

How'd you go? It might seem really super strange, it feels very strange to be doing it just to a camera, but I hope that you're having a go at it, and don't worry if there's a little bit of spit, just make sure that you're not near anyone while you're practicing it.

[music playing]

[LESSON 3: Warming Up The Voice]

So the three that we've just done, the 'shh', 'fff' and 'sss', these are all 'unvoiced', which means that, if you put your two fingers to your throat there, and make a 'shh', 'sss', 'fff', you should feel that there's nothing vibrating here. But if we put our two fingers here, and we go 'shjjj' or 'zzz', or 'vvv'. You'll feel this vibrating and that's because we are engaging our vocal cords.

So this time, we're going to do the exact same thing, but instead of going 'shh', 'fff', 'sss', we're going to do the 'voiced sounds'. So we're going to go 'shjjj' and then 'vvv', and then 'zzz', yeah? So remember that you need to take that diaphragmatic breath first.

Are you ready? OK breathing in, [gentle inhale] 'Shjjjjjjj'.

How did you go? Don't forget that you need to keep the sound as smooth and controlled as possible because that's actually starting to work our diaphragm and to connect it to warm up our bodies so that we're ready for our voice work.

Let's move on to the 'vvv'. Ready? [gentle inhale] 'Vvvvvvvv'.

Did you imagine that diamond contracting? It can be a really helpful visual for actually thinking about, are we breathing properly? Or are we going up here and breathing here? [strong inhale] (LOUDLY) 'vvvvv.' That doesn't last as long when we breathe just shallowly in our chest area. So use that diamond to help you keep remembering. Also notice your shoulders. You don't really want your shoulders to be going up and down when you're breathing in. You want to control it from your tummy area, from your muscles down here. That's the diaphragmatic breath. Diaphragmatic, wow, diaphragmatic is a really hard word to say.

So we're going to do the same thing again but on a 'zzz' sound. Are you ready? OK, breathing in, [gentle inhale] 'Zzzzzzz'.

Don't push it too far, obviously. You don't want to get the zzz, zz, zz at the end. But see if you can take it longer than I can. I bet with some practise that you'd be much better than me.

So now that we've got our breathing under control, and we've also started to bring in some of those voiced sounds to start warming up our vocal cords, we're now going to move into some more vocal warm-ups. Really, really easy vocal warm-ups that you can do at home that help to prepare your voice for any vocal work, particularly if you're doing vocal work around creating character.

So one of these is really, really simple. It's called a siren, where you just move and slide up and down the notes, and we're going to do this on an N-G. Ooh, I'm going to have to draw it backwards. N, no, that wasn't right, N-G. I might just write it on the screen. Shall we do that? So you have to write-- you have to make an N-G sound. So it sounds like this 'nnng' 'nnng'. And the more nasally you can make that and send it really nasally, nasally, the better it is because it's just getting everything vibrating.

So just on an 'nnng' sound, N-G, you're going to go (CHANGING PITCH) 'nnng', just up and down. And don't go too high or too low too quickly. Just start in the middle of your range where it's comfortable, (CHANGING PITCH) 'nnng'.

And as you start to feel that warm up, you can go up higher and lower, (CHANGING PITCH) 'nnng'. As I said, the more nasal, the better. We're just starting to warm it up. If you're not comfortable using the N-G sound, the 'nnng', you can also do this on a hum, (CHANGING PITCH) 'mmm'. And that's just helping to slide up and down and warm up those vocal chords very gently. And when we're doing this, we don't want to be going full volume. You're not going, (LOUDLY, CHANGING PITCH) 'nnng'. You just want to be gently, gently, gently humming and warming up those vocal chords, getting them to slowly vibrate so that you are warming them up, a bit like rubbing your hands together, OK?

Another really great way of warming up our voice is just to do a couple of big yawning sounds. A big yawn [yawns] actually helps to open all the back of our throat and all of the places that we need to use to create our maximum vocal capacity, so big yawn sound, opening all of this up, relaxing the jaw, [yawns]. And this time, rubbing hands together, we're going to melt our hands down our face as we give a big yawn, ready? 3, 2, 1 [yawns] again 3, 2, 1, [yawns] really, really easy way to warm up and prepare your throat. We're also going to just massage our cheeks. Massage everything, all this, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap along. Wake everything up, ready to use our voices.

I've left the best vocal warm-up till last. This is a vocal warm-up that was actually taught to me by my very good friend Zara Stanton. She is an amazing music director and teaching artist. She taught me this warm-up and I really, really love it, and I think it's a lot of fun, very funny to watch other people do it as well. So you might want to do this with a family member.

We're going to do 'The Alien'. Now, we are going to make a UFO with our hand, so somewhere up here. And we're going to shake that UFO down as we crouch down, ready to open our spaceship with sound effects, 'shh'. And then we're going to reveal the alien inside the spaceship. However, we need to add some sounds to this. So as we shake our UFO down, we're actually going to make a UFO sound using the letter E. So starting again at the top of our range, wherever is highest or most comfortable and near the top of your range, we're going to go (PITCH DESCENDING) 'eee', and shake that E sound all the way down, like a creepy UFO landing down.

I'm going to show you that one more time. UFO is at the ready, (PITCH DESCENDING) 'eee'. And then we're going to open our spaceship, 'shh'. And then reveal your ugliest alien face that you can possibly make.

Ready? You're going to do it with me this time. I actually can't tell if you're doing it with me. But I'm just going to imagine that you are. Are you ready? UFO at the ready 3, 2, 1, (PITCH DESCENDING) 'eee'. Spaceship opens, 'ssh'. Alien face! 'nng'.

[growling slow motion]

Hmm, things you never think that you're going to put on film to release to all the students in the state and possibly nationally.

Cool, we're going to move on. We are going to now look at some ideas about creating our radio play.

[music playing]

Tune in next time for tips on planning and rehearsing.