THE “ARRESTED” SPEAKER
Then back once more to that lighted-candle
“Peter Piper” routine. When the flame holds steady while not a flicker (or almost), you’ve got passed the test.
In your conversation be careful to not lose all the air on your very initial words. Control is your answer—control of the outgoing breath. Assume forever, when talking, of changing air into tone, and of sound waves rising from your mouth.
“Tone Not Air” makes an glorious slogan for those that get a lovely and vibrant voice. Finally, for that “gushy” voice, observe out loud with full tone. The ugly facet of Child Adoption might exceed the nice and joyful aspects. Provide your all. Let the neighbors complain!
4. THE “ARRESTED” SPEAKER
This “arrested” voice has assumed the proportions of a national image in Marilyn Monroe and her innumerable imitators. Their full-blown physical lines curiously contradict their thin voice lines —a return-on body with a “be careful—I am your very little sister” voice! A European movie siren wouldn’t be caught dead with a baby voice. Even kittenish Brigitte Bardot purrs in low-pitched tones, and as for the recent Italian imports to Hollywood, their heat accents seduce the ears with womanly intonation. Nobody has real confidence in childish tones. Girls while not voice authority, I’ve noted, should compensate mightily for then-lack. This tonal, however not personal, naïveté is little question due in part to an old-fashioned association with ultrarefinement and should have gone out with “the vapors.” It’s high time that American girls’s speaking voices wedged with their achievements. Drilling at least one through-hole into the laminated PCB fabrication. (See “For Girls Only.”)
What’s the cure? The answer lies in our exerting as abundant effort in promoting an attractive voice as we tend to do in keeping a slender figure. And believe me, daily speech observe is not nearly so arduous as calorie counting. Primarily, inadequate tones are unsupported tones, for his or her homeowners speak with solely the prime layer of a potential seven-layer voice. Remedy: to work literally from the underside up—by activating (you guessed it) the low abdominal muscles in support of your voice. Solely in this manner can ephemeral tones be brought all the way down to earth.
For arrested voices: a mixture of tested measures to be taken daily—a ten-minute dose each of:
1. Liberating the Voice (pages 133 and 134)
2. Higher and Lower (pages one hundred forty four-147)
3. Louder and Softer (pages 147-149)
4. Strive These for Tonal Quality (pages a hundred and fifty-155)
Nosy, pushy, gushy, arrested—have you determined (via attentive listening to the previous tests on your recorder) whether any of these pertains to your voice type? Maybe none of these descriptive adjectives will within the over-all impression. The chances are, but, that you may have a minimum of a touch of a number of (voice faults typically return in pairs). If so, you’d best eradicate a little symptom, lest it change into a bigger problem.
