Miss Pronunciation XVII

Miss Pronunciation on Tenderness.....

Nothing like being treated tenderly, but if someone is keeping you on ‘tenderhooks’ they’ve got the wrong end of the stick.

The word is 'tenterhooks' (with a 't') and they are frames for stretching fabric out to stop it from shrinking or creasing while it dries. The meaning, of course, is to be left in a state of agitation while waiting for something uncertain.

To brighten your day - here is a great treatment of tenderness, by Electric Mayhem with the ever magnificent front man, Dr. Teeth.

Muscle Memory Part 1

Last week I wept for an actor I know very well. I wept for her as she performed. I wept because a year previously she had had technique, power and connection. I wept because she had lost it. I wept because we had worked so hard together.

Let’s face it: a lot of voice work is about repetition.

Voice training..... we’re trying to unlock muscle memory, to increase muscularity, to encourage muscles to engage automatically to serve impulse, instead of cerebral will.

This takes time, patience and repetition.

How often do you hear me say “Nothing in voice ever happened fast”?

I’ve been shocked lately by the amount of actors I’ve had through my studio who have lost their technique because they don’t have me on their back for a weekly class....even after giving them an easier and less time consuming way to do things (see Beating Voice Guilt).

Laziness is laziness folks, let’s call it what it is.

Equally shocking are the amount of actors coming through who have had so long to prepare auditions and dare to assume that one voice lesson will provide their magic pill. I can give you some useful advice - you might retain 50% of this in your audition. You won’t be any better at your craft in the long term.

This vocation is labelled a ‘discipline’ for a reason.

You can sense something is wrong: the voice is not responding to situations as it used to.

You wouldn’t walk into a gym after a six month break and expect to leg-press your best ever weight. Voice is no different.

If you’re living under the pressures of everyday life, you can in fact, expect an unchecked voice to regress.

You can have oodles of talent and all the cerebral knowledge in the world, but unless the voice and movement technique is part of your fibre, it will let you down, it will not respond to impulse and it will strangle the truth that might otherwise flourish.

A knowledge of this work is simply not enough. I’ve given you the tools you need.

Please don’t make me weep.

(To be Continued.....)

Miss Pronunciation XVI

Miss Pronunciation Prefers Salads Un-tossed

With so much Margaret Fulton love floating in the air, you may have noticed Miss Pronunciation has a little fixation on food.....

But keeping it healthy, today we're talking salads.

Summer's coming up, and there's nothing nicer that a fresh Niçoise salad ......... there's also nothing nicer than hearing it pronounced correctly: nɪː swɑːz (nee-swaahz).

It can be difficult to adopt words of French origin into an English sentence without sounding a little bit like a tosser..... so go easy on the accent.

Oh, and to avoid toss-dom: book tickets to Margaret Fulton: Queen of the Dessert, or miss out on some really amazing voice work, as well as a look at one amazing trail-blazing woman.

Ripe Nuts......

“Words of no beauty, interest, or significance themselves, it will be conceded, but now so plumped out with meaning that they fell like ripe nuts from a tree.......”  from Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Why are we shy when it comes to owning our language in this country?

Sure, we make shapes that are flatter in the tongue, more strained at the lips, dropped of soft palate......

But why be ashamed? .....even after training to open our sound up for maximum resonance and volume, are we afraid of investing in our language in a more visceral manner?

I’ll explain: I’ve attended several plays lately in which the actors take on multiple accents. They switch from a standard clear Australian to a light Received Pronunciation (that’s an open English sound in which the vowels very individually shaped).

During the Australian parts, how can I put it? I was bored. Bored out of my wits. And frustrated.

“What are these actors not using their language? Why are they not connecting with breath? Opening their mouths? Letting me into this amazing text?”.

They then changed to RP.

Surprise!

All of a sudden jaws flew open, pitches became flexible, resonances were present, breath was connected.

How incredibly frustrating.

Do we have so little faith in the sounds of our own accent that we have to take on another to really let the voice fly?

No. No. NO!

Take the language. Own the language. It may be called “English” but it is not the possession of that nationality.

Don’t shy away from your sounds. Connect with the richness and, indeed, take advantage of our lovely flat tongued sound for optimum resonance.

Shakespeare was never originally performed in RP - RP never existed at that point. It was performed in the local dialects of the time (you can find some great information here) and those actors had to REALLY OWN it to compete in their own theatre space with the rabble below.

Stop apologising for your sounds, folks. Open your mouths in the way you’ve all been trained to and let those Aussie vowels pour forth......

Miss Pronunciation XV

Not only has the accepted pronunciation of this word changed over the years, so too has the usage.

We're talking AMATEUR.

It should be pronounced as follows in the most correct form: am-e-te; or (easier to get onto the page in phonetics) æmətə.

Although this is the most correct pronunciation, it certainly would not be incorrect to pronounce it as amat-yure (æmətjə) or if you have a particularly lazy articulators, ama-chure (æmətʃə).

I've often heard the word used as some kind of insult - especially in this industry - however, always remember that the true meaning is that of someone who engages in a pursuit on an unpaid basis and even for the enjoyment and love of said pursuit.

That's pretty much all of us from time to time, no?

Miss Pronunciation XIV

Miss Pronunciation Bakes Up A Storm

 Things are hotting up in the kitchen for the opening of Margaret Fulton: Queen of the Dessert and Miss Pronunciation is sticking to the theme.

Her lovely friend and favourite artist, Ms. Lamb - of American-Australian heritage, has queried the following:

Scone - does it rhyme with Joan or John?
 

Both are deemed acceptable; however (yes, there is always an however), were I to be quite precise, in a 1998 poll 65% of British English speakers preferred the John version, with the rest preferring Joan.

Take your pick, Ms. Lamb! Just remember to follow Margaret Fulton’s advice “For soft scones, wrap in a tea towel as soon as they come from oven. For crusty scones, do not wrap, cool slightly on a wire rack”.

Don't miss out on tickets for this stunning show opening soon at Theatre Works. Book Here.

Miss Pronunciation XIII

With Compliments from Miss P.

 

This pronunciation quite often crosses my threshold.

It’s one of those tricky American English v. British English pronunciations. A simply four letter word:

WITH

Gen. American prefers wɪθ (unsounded at the end) whilst British English favours carrying the vibe all the way through the word.

For mine, unless you’re playing an American, stick to the vibration (wɪð) especially if you’re just starting to experiment with your voice, as this will assist in maintaining your underpinning resonance.