Week 4: Voice re-recording and reflection

Before recording my second attempt at the news reading which was previously recorded in Week 1, I employed several of the recommended warm up techniques to increase the resonance in my voice. Resonance, articulation and projection were all areas in which I felt I could have improved last time and after the completion of the lesson and suggested videos for Week 4, I realised it all had to do with my breathing.

For my warm up, I worked through the exercises outlined in the lesson in order to practice my volume and projection as well as relax my face. I believe that you can hear the difference in both my projection and resonance as a result although I felt like my voice sounded more powerful in person then it appears on the recording so it is obviously something I still need to improve on.

I also marked out spaces to breath/pause on a print out of the transcript before beginning and highlighted words on which to place emphasis. This helped to prevent me from speeding up and sounding boring. I also kept in mind what Piazza (2009) said in the video 'How to improve your voice'; "that if you think you are too slow or too loud, you are probably about right".

As I record my voice directly into my computer, I am sitting down when I do it. I took note of my posture before beginning this time and naturally I tend to slouch and sit with my neck slightly forward instead of keeping it over my spine. Videojug (2012) showed me that this works to cut of the voice and reduce the depth of the speaking sound. So I focused a lot on my posture this time. I believed this help to improve my speaking voice as well.

Overall I think that this attempt is significantly better than the first one and this is obviously due to the techniques I learnt in this week's lesson. I still have a tendency to trip over some words but I think that I am improving.

References
Videojug, 2012. 'How to have a deep voice', viewed 14th April 2016,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgo022I1FZQ

Piazza, F 2009. 'How to improve your voice', viewed 14th April 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAjKfL-upvo&feature=related