I did some reading this morning on the subject of elocution. Man, I wish I'd gotten some of that when I was in grade school. Imagine being able to talk like Darth Vader or Winston Churchill or...Ian McKellen.
Here's a clip from a comedy sketch where Ian McKellen attempts to teach Ricky Gervais how to act. I love the way McKellen varies his pace and emphasis: "Not....much....theaterworkoflate." Then he asks, "How...do I ACT......sowell? What I do is...I...PRETEND...to BE....the PERSONI'mportraying." Wow, very nice! He breaks the sentences down into individual words and word groups and then gives each a special treatment.
In a general way the actor's job is to artistically vary the pace and emphasis of a sentence without diluting it's dramatic force. That's hard to do. Most of us can do either variety or dramatic truth one at a time, but to do them simultaneously, and still give the illusion of spontaneity...well, that takes a lot of practice.
Then there's the matter of tone.
It's important to have a good tone when you speak. I like the smooth-as-satin tone of Vincent Price reading Tim Burton's "Vincent." I like the gravel in Johnny Cash's voice. Now how do I acquire a tone like that?
An awful lot of elocution teachers seem to be frustrated yoga instructors. They put a lot of emphasis on standing and bending correctly when you speak. That doesn't feel right to me. That's only for professionals. And I don't like my instruction books to have trendy titles like "Your Right to Speak." My right? You mean "the man" wants me to speak badly?
I like what the girl above is doing. It centers on things that are more intuitively right like forming the word in back of the mouth where it resonates more. The problem here is that the girl's own voice needs work, and I had trouble imagining some of the vibration she's talking about. I guess that's why personal instruction is so useful. One book said it takes 7 hours a week of live instruction for a period of about a year to get the voice working right. Geez, I'll bet that's not cheap.
Vocal instructors are always obsessing over the diaphragm. After doing a little research, I finally understand why. The lungs rest on the diaphragm, which is just underneath them. If you breath the wrong way the lungs have nowhere to expand to because they're blocked on the bottom by the diaphragm. They only fill up to only half of their capacity.
If you want to increase the lungs' capacity, you have to breathe the right way... which is to expand the stomach outward when you breathe. This causes the diaphragm to drop, and give the lungs a lot more room. Nifty, huh? Of course it makes you look fat.
If I ever take voice lessons it'll have to be from people who know how to speak themselves, like Ted Williams, the famous homeless radio announcer (above).
Maybe CD courses are the way to go. In the car I could mimic the speaker and do lots of variations. I could lengthen the vowels and add my own pauses. I could inflect the end of a sentence up or down. I could savor so-called "glottal" words that begin with abrupt, soft vowels like "absolutely," "amenities" and "accent."
But how would I know what the good CDs are?
