Voice Reflection Essay

When I started this course, I thought my voice was all right. I had done drama in school and been given advice from my parents who are dramatically experienced on how to project my voice and articulate my words. They also taught me to use my diaphragm and a few voice exercises. Although I knew the tongue twisters such as “red lorry, yellow lorry” my dad so often used, I still became tongue tied quite often while reading aloud or rehearsing new lines and speak from the back of my throat.
I expected my voice to become more tonal and clear. I now know that my voice is naturally resonant but I find it difficult to be exciting and creative with my voice. Like I said previously, I also used the back of my throat often instead of using the resonance of my mouth. In one of the first practicals, we learnt the four pillars of warm up; body, breath, voice and articulation. We would warm up our body with stretching to a yawn or playing a game to get us moving. After this we would focus on breathing with a variety of warm ups such as: “smelling the flower” and breathing in, holding it and letting out our breath for a set number of seconds. Warm ups for our voice included humming while changing the way in which we position our tongue and opened our mouth in different ways. We would hum an “n,” “m” and “ng” sound. For articulation warm ups we said tongue twisters.
Some of the exercises I have enjoyed are related to breath. I like the imaginative exercise in which we are talked through an adventure of smells. I noticed how my breathing changes in depth and pace when smelling different things. It speeds up but decreases in length, taking shallow breaths mainly through my mouth when imagining smelling something unpleasant and slows down but increases in depth, filling my lungs when imagining smelling something pleasant. I enjoyed it because I found it easy to do and relaxing. Another breathing exercise I enjoyed involved us chanting “one by one and two by two and three by three