Freeing the Natural Voice Chapters 1-4 Flashcard Example #14196

Vibrating Agent- Guitar String

Force to strike Vibrating Agent- Fingers

Amplification Chamber- body of guitar

1. Vocal Folds

2. Exhaled Breath

3. Resonating Zones; Chest, Throat, Mouth, Sinus cavities, Cranium

Chest Breathing

Shoulder Breathing

Belly Breathing

– Blocked emotions are the fundamental obstacle to a free voice

-Muddy thinking is a fundamental obstacle to clear articulation

– Life or Death; breath gives life

-‘ The Pang’ signals the need for sustenance

-Breath and voice deployed for survival

– Need-Pang-Voice-Response-Survival

-Life or death need for cookie(breath)

-Punished for demanding the cookie

-Communicate “the pang” and you might die

-Pang is suppressed; breath is detached

-THE MESSAGE:
The child follows secondary neurophysiological impulse routes in order to survive.
-Defensive neuromuscular programming develops habits of mind and muscle that cut us off from instinctual connection between emotion and breath.

The voice CANNOT work to it’s true potential if it’s basic energy is not FREE breath

People must want to reveal themselves, be unafraid of openness, and believe that vulnerability in communication is strength.

1. The need to communicate

2. The breath response to that impulse

3. The play of breath on the vocal folds

4. The vibrations are then amplified by resonators

5. Articulation: the rich stream of vibrations formed into words

-Breathing…. Emotions tighten our breath

-Bad posture limits are breath

-Large abdominal muscles we’ve learned to squeeze and hold, limit our breath

-If you value truthful expression, breathing control must be diverted from muscle into IMPULSE

– The ultimate controls are imagination and emotion

-The aim is to remove your habitual muscular controls and allow involuntary processes to take over.

‘Impulse dispatcher’

‘Impulse reciever’

Upward through your rib cage

Drops downward opening the lungs.

– Tightening breath

-Racing Heart

-Sweaty Palms

-Higher Pitch

-Unstable Voice

-Dry Mouth

-Racing Pace

-Mind Suddenly Blank

-Drop in confidence.

Holistic Approach

1. Intellectually
– One to one communication
-Prep= comfortable confidence
-Story-tell from the heart
-Reflective practioner (adjust)
-Be genuine

2.Emotionally
-Know yourself
-Recognize your inner child
-Only you can bring shame

3.Physically
-What is sound?
-Gain understanding of your vocal anatomy
-Learn that breath is life (3 breath centres, chest, shoulders, belly)
-Vocal exercises

1. I want to hear you, not your voice.
(wants to hear the real you, not the voice you’re currently using)

2. Your voice must learn to be dissolved by the impulses of thought and feeling.

3. If voice is limited by habit & tension, it will limit the transmission of imagination.
(physical tension, and bad habits EX: bad posture, breathing limited to you chest, will limit the potential of your voice)

4. How do you teach relaxation?

5. How do you induce a new use of the voice?

6. This is difficult because it requires dealing with cause rather than effect.

7. Exercises are concerned more with rethinking usage than with redoing sound.

1. The need to communicate

2. The breath response to that impulse

3. The play of breath on the vocal folds

4. The vibrations that occur re-sound off the nearest sounding board

5. Those vibrations are then amplified by resonators

6. Articulation: the rich stream of vibrations are formed into words

Throat Tension
– tight abdomen shifts breathing responsibility to throat

-constricts free play of vocal folds

-limits range and exhale

Resonating System
-Tension in the throat blocks voice from throat and chest resonators

-tension in back of tongue and neck hinders free use of head resonators

Articulation system
-If breath not free, tongue provides compensatory strength

-Habitual psychological tensions often reflected in tight lips and jaw

– The best artists are RELAXED in performance

-Maximum effect w/ MINIMUM effort

-Great art is rooted in TRUTH

-The voice will reveal truths most AUTHENTICALLY with certain effortless ease (when relaxed)

The spine drop let’s us

-Relax all of our tension out

-Picture our skeletal anatomy

-Focus on our deep breathing

-Helps us discover our natural belly breathing

– Conscious mind has an alarming capacity for subverting new experiences
–Confuses new with familiar or safe
-Or leaps to the end result by-passing the process

-Overall aim: to develop PHYSICAL AWARENESS through specific relaxation

Efficiency of your vocal apparatus depends on:
-Alignment of the body
-A strong flexible and well aligned spine is the essential starting point for free breathing and a free voice.

If your lower spine is weak…
-Abdominal Muscles provide substitute strength for the torso
-If they aren’t free, not able to respond to breathing needs

IF your upper spine abandons its job of carrying the rib cage and shoulder girdle…
-Your rib muscles take on responsibility of holding the chest up high
-So it’s unavailable for intercostal breathing
(Intercostal breathing= breathing into the upper third of your lungs, and then into the middle of your lungs, often seen in the midst of competition/sport)

If your Vertebrae of spine are not well aligned,
-The whole channel your voice travels through is distorted

-With a weak neck, jaw muscles, tongue, throat muscles, lips and eyebrows become supporters of the head..

-very little chance for a free passage for free BREATH.

-Skeletal Structure
-should counteract pull of gravity leaving muscles free fro movement

-What is the Impetus(force, energy with which the body moves) for SOUND= Impulse ( why speak?)

-Raw material for sound= BREATH

-You must remove EFFORT from the THROAT

– Helps to imagine sound and breath start from the MIDDLE of your BODY

-You are conditioned to believe you communicate from just behind the face

-Unconscious visualization of the passage way for the voice going simply from throat to jaw
(You are now challenged to drop it 50cm)

Antonio Damasio- Core Consciousness

-There is no elsewhere, there is no before, there is no after. Focus on the NOW

-First problem of consciousness: how we get ‘the movie in the brain’

-The business of making images never stops

• You cannot imitate a reflex action
• Natural breathing is reflexive
• To restore its reflexive potential, all you can do is remove restrictive tensions & provide a diversity of stimuli
• Can you observe without controlling?

• Your breathing habits have developed as you developed into the character you are now

• As long your breathing patterns are inflexibly held in habitual muscle usage, the hoped for transformation will only be skin deep.

• You must be able to let go of deeply ingrained breathing patterns & allow new behavior to govern breathing musculature.

• Outgoing breath is complete inner relaxation

• Incoming breath will happen automatically if you wait

• Relax- wait let the breath be replaced

• Breathing exercises should be done with the mouth open

• It’s important to focus on the casual, release point

• And merely observe the resultant, arrival point

• As you release breath you diaphragm releases upward through your rib cage

• As your breath is renewed, your diaphragm drops downward, opening the lungs

• ‘For the actor who wants a voice that will reveal thoughts and feelings rather than merely describing them, exercising the sigh of relief means exercising the sigh of relief means exercising the connection between thinking and feeling, breath and voice.”

• “The sigh of relief is the first key to unlocking the doors to those primal impulse centres and reopening the primary neuro-physiological routes between brain and body.”

• “The force of gravity is one of the best allies we have for finding out what ‘letting go’ is.”

• ” this exercise begins reconditioning the body-mind to experience communication as release.

• & communication as a by-product of a need to speak that has freedom to do so.”

• Extremely important to be able to return at will to your relaxed natural breathing rhythm.

1) “Until you can remove all controls, there is no way of choosing controls when necessary; you are still prey to unconscious habitual controls”

2) “Observe that the impulse moves the breath and the breath moves the body”.
– The ultimate controls for the breath are thought and feelings

– Breathe in, breathe out

– Take a breath

– Inhale; exhale

– Allow the breath in;/ let the breath out

– Let the breath in; let the breath out

As you drop you jaw open, pull the bottom jaw IN

Most people try to force the lower jaw OUT

Also try to LIFT THE TOP JAW off the bottom, activating your neck muscles relieving your lower jaw muscles

to disguise fear

to disguise pleasure

to preserve the impression one always know what’s going on

one who fears the strength of their own and other’s rage

the jaw hinge

a way to avoid opening mouth for a scream

an iron gate to shut down emotions

Jaw loses elasticity and strength

the danger of emotional expression

the tongue

It is not as convincing as the story told by BREATH, and EMOTIONALLY connected VIBRATION

tension in the tongue

tongue pulls back, flattens or bunches up in the throat

muscles highly sensitive to the psychological condition

impulses that should be travelling directly to the diapraghm

tongue will kick in to provide COMPENSATORY strength

your throat tightens

When your mouth goes dry with stage fright

your breath may start to take on it’s TRUE function again

remove the tongue from the basic SOUND MAKING process

chew food + open WIDE to EXPRESS

the muscles of the jaw, tongue, throat provide support for sound

to articulate vowels and consonants

soft palate

free speaking voice

restore its natural ability to RESPOND on involuntary level

in response to the THOUGHT of a sung high note

the movement occurs naturally on the INVOLUNTARY level of the nervous system

hangs like a heavy curtain absorbing and MUFFLING VIBRATIONS

nasal montonous voice

expressive integrity of the natural voice

from the throat to the mouth

leading up into the middle and upper resonators

a shorter uvula and a clear passageway

Good Acting

you do not necessarily need volume

let it simply MONITOR your natural sound

the by-product of DESIRE and FREEDOM

it is more likely you will have the precision to think each WORD in a line of text