Tuesday, 21 October 2014

Voice portfolio: Articulation


Articulation

Articulators are parts of the mouth which the actor should experiment such as the energy, precision and quality of action. The articulators are the lips, the tongue, the jaw, the soft palate, the uvula, the pharynx, and the glottis.

The jaw is one of the strongest muscles in the body. It is known as the Masseter. The stability in the jaw is the foundation for speech production. Movements in the jaw are linked to speech clarity.

The tongue is one of the hardest work muscles that a human uses. The tongue is a vital instrument that gives everyone the ability to speak. To get the tongue moving it is always good to practice tongue twisters to open your mouth more and pronounce every word right. Also a great exercise to do is to poke your tongue out like a lion and slowly bring it back in to your mouth. This is show that you are controlling your tongue. As an actor this is an important skill to have because you need to be aware of the tongue in plays etc.

The soft palate is located at the back of the roof of the mouth. There is also a hard palate which is located at the front of the roof of the mouth. You can tell where the soft palate and the hard palate is because the hard palate is more bony and hard compared to the soft palate. The soft palate is made up of muscle that allows to press down as part of swallowing and to rise up creating space for yawns and bright open sounds. The tensor and levator palate muscles form a sling lifting the soft palate up and backwards closing off the entrance of the nasal cavities. A experiment to do for the soft palate is to say “hit” without releasing the final “t” sound. Make the “t” sound but don’t let the tongue release the air. You may feel the air pressure pushing towards the top of the tongue and you may feel a gentle pressure at the back of the roof of your mouth as the air pushes against your closed velum or soft palate.

Resonation

There are three resonators that actors use in daily life.

They are:

The head voice

The nasal voice

The chest voice

The head voice is associated with a high pitch. The nasal voice is at medium pitch. The chest voice is the low/deep pitch of the voice.

1 comment:

  1. Good work Sophie, please now relate the work to exercises you have carried out in class and what you understand about voice production relating to your personal developement.

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