#is it a resonance exercise or is it just vocal stimming?

[yawpyawp]

i really hope nobody else in my building works from home during the day cuz i don’t have a way to excuse repeatedly singing ‘all i wanted’ by paramore at full volume AS MISS PIGGY at 1pm

[princessnijireiki]

weirdest casualty of long Covid (besides. yk. the Incurable Disability) is in terms of linguistic processing I can truly no longer talk or sing as fast as I used to

not that I was super fast before, but one of the days I was sickest, words actually stopped... meaning anything? like I was at work, I was hitting my DT script, but was pushing through on pure muscle memory phonetically. I could process what I was hearing or reading just fine, but could not talk outside of this heavily repetitive workplace script, which is actually very dystopian now that I think about it. virus hitting the brain means I'm a zombie that can't speak except to say, "HIII :) whatcanIgetstartedferyouthismorning?"

anyway, thought it was just fatigue, but went to my car on my break, watched a trending video of people trying to rap along to Fergalicious at double speed. I could LIP SYNC to it just fine. I tested my theory. but I could NOT get my mouth and voice to work at the same time to actually sing/rap it. even now, tbh, I have to make myself NOT think about it while rapping it to get the words to flow out or I get stuck. like it's truly something in the brain for where you process speech, but not where you process just lyrical phonics like music. I have to consciously make a REAL effort to turn off the "word" part of my brain to be fast again.

I speak perfectly legibly, I can genuinely get up to decently fast normal talking speeds, just not Northeastern fast-fast. but it comes up in music a surprising amount, and it's kind of annoying to have lost as a skill.

[ev-bell-logbook]

Voice // Skills // Sem 1 // Week 2

09/10/24

First thing first, we needed to warm-up our bodies to warm up our voices. Then we were working on our actual voice this lesson and learning the foundations of how to get out of our 'acting/narrator' voice. We were given a speech to read aloud thrice. After we had read it to ourselves we sat down and talking about how the voice works physically. Sounds are vibrations to put it simply. The sound of our voice comes from vibrating our vocal cords and pushing the air out of our lungs to carry those vibrations. If there's any tension then the sound is stifled (which isn't always healthy). We have no control over the diaphragm when we're speaking/breathing, but we do have control over the transverse abdominous. If there's no tension there then we can move our ribs and speak freely.

We then worked on a release exercise. Lying on the floor and doing a body scan to remove any unneeded tension from our bodies. I tend to hold my jaw and tongue. My shoulders are quite often raised. Doing a body scan makes me aware of this and can I can focus on relaxing those parts of my body. We then also did some light stretches to work on relaxing our muscles that little bit extra. After our release work we read the speech again. I noticed a very clear difference in my delivery. I was firmly planted and grounded compared to my first speech where I swayed from side-to-side stimming.

Then we did some breath support exercises. We lay on the floor once again (I love drama school). The aim of these exercises was to get us to breathe naturally. When we breathe in we expand to let in as much air as possible, and our tummy goes outwards. For some reason, at some point in our lives we reverse this, so the exercise focused on getting us to undo that. The next part of our breath training was to breathe intuitively, just let the air come and go. Our bodies need air/oxygen so we have to trust that it will inhale and exhale on it's own. The final part to was to focus specifically on our breathe support. On the exhale we had to control how much air we were letting out of our lungs, doing things like, blowing an imaginary ping pong ball into the air, humming, or hissing. Then we read the speech for the third and final time. This time I noticed I wasn't resonating or holding my voice in my throat it was somewhere else. I'm not entirely sure where myself, but probably in my chest. I think that's where I want it to be anyway, to sound more androgenous and to have better technique.