Bouncing the Lips

In this step of the Speech Warm-up Series, we look at the lips, and explore warming them up for a
certain kind of sound: stop-plosives. We'll get to fricative sounds later in the series.
The lips are important in the formation of 9 English consonants and up to 5 English vowels, depending
on your accent. The consonants are /m, p, b/ which are made with both lips, /f, v/, which are made with
the upper teeth and lower lip, /w, , , /, which are made with at least some deree of lip rounding in
most speakers, dependin on accent. For example, you can hear those consonants in the words "Mom,
pop, bob," "fife, Viv," "wow, shush, rouge." Most of these consonants are what are called
continuantsthat is, sounds that continue. Two of them are what are called plosiveswhich are
sounds that explode or pop: /p/ and /b/. Start by feeling your way through the difference between
plosive sounds and continuants by saying a bunch of them together: "puh-buh-puh-buh-puh-buh" vs.
"fuh-vuh-fuh-vuh-fuh-vuh."
Part of what makes a plosive stand out in our speech is actually not its sound, but the moment of
silence that precedes it. Final plosives are, in some cases at least, perhaps better known as stops
because they stop the sound that precedes it, chopping off the stream of sound, and then not necessarily
releasing it again. (In the IPA, we represent that unreleased nature with a diacritic mark: [ pp].)
Especially at the ends of expressions, stop consonants in mainstream North American English generally
just STOP. This works very well for everyday speech and for naturalistic performance on tv, film or in
very intimate theatres. But in larger settings, like a big theatre or outdoors, or when we're trying to be
super clear with someone who doesn't understand what we're saying, we need to release those final
consonants. Try this little experiment. Say "stop" to yourselfmaybe even whisper it. I would imagine
that most readers would stop the sound of the /p/ without any kind of release. Now, try overenunciating it, being very emphatic with it, or imagine saying it to someone what can't hear you. In this
setting, it is more likely that you will release that final sound with a big puff of air. (In phonetics, this
puff of air is called "aspiration," and we represent it with another diacritic, a superscript "h": [p ]. Try
feeling the stop nature of a final /p/, hold onto that stop closure for a second and then release it with lots
of aspiration with the word "up": [pp p, pp p , pp p ]. Feel how much air it takes to make that fully
aspirated final /p/? Now try making that final /p/ louder: what happens? Generally people feel that the
air-pressure behind the stop is more intense, so that when the aspiration is released, it makes more noise
as it escapes. You may be able to feel the effort off that build of air pressure in your breathing.
As I said earlier, /p/ and /b/ are the two stop-plosive consonants made with the lips. The difference
between the two sounds is that /p/ is made "voicelessly" and while /b/ is "voiced". Initial /b/ in English
has little to no voicing on it however, while initial /p/ is mostly different because it has aspiration (the
puff of air). Try making a stream of p's and b's in order to feel that difference: "p-p-p-p-p" vs. "b-b-b-bb," [pi pi pi pi pi bi bi bi bi bi]. There may be a tiny amount of voicing on the /b/, but the main
difference between the two consonants is the aspiration.

Actors need to be able to do different kinds of initial /p/ and /b/ for different settings: in many foreign
accents, /p/ isn't aspirated, and /b/ is said with some voicing. Adding voicing to initial /b/ is fairly easy.
In a way, adding that voicing is similar to /mb/, in that you are making voiced sound with your lips
together first, and then popping your lips open for the release of the /b/. However, the difference is that
on /m/ your soft palate drops, so that air can escape out your nose. To fully voice a /b/, you must lift
your soft palate, so that the sound of the /b/ is trapped in your mouth. If you try this, you will find that
there is a limit to how long your voiced initial /b/ can be, because the air that makes the sound behind
your closed lips can only fill up your mouth. Once your mouth is full, you can no longer make any
sound. Try making a string of voiced /b/ sounds you may feel like you sound very Eastern European
when you make this sound as it is very much a part of languages from that area (the diacritic mark for a
voiced consonant is a subscript "v" as in [bb]: [bbi bbi bbi bbi bbi]. Go slowly, to be sure that your getting
the voicing you want. Now, contrast that sound with a voiceless, but unaspirated /p/. [pi pi pi pi pi].
There is no diacritic mark, because the sound is, by default, unaspirated and unvoiced. It may feel a
little like you're saying "bee" rather than "pee".
Now for the bouncing part. I find that when I energize my lips to make loud, powerful /p/ or /b/, my
lips feel like they're bouncing, especially if I do a long string of them. Try whispering loudly a stream
of "pee" sounds, as if you're spraying the sound across the room. As you do it, feel the compression of
your lips, in order to build up enough pressure to before you pop off the sound. Now try it with a series
of "bee" sounds, building the pressure behind the lips to energize it: [bi bi bi bi bi]. Finally, try it with
this classic phrase for practising initial /b/: "Benny bought a bunch of beautiful bananas." Try saying it
with a range of qualities, from small and voiceless, to loud and fully voiced.
Our last part of this step in your warm-up is to bounce your /p/ sound on a set of words. The classic
tongue twister is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," the full text of which is below. Try it
out the way you would normally say it. Then, try it with a lot of aspiration, spitting your /p/ sound
across the room. Finally, try the sequence with as little aspiration as possible, almost as if you were
replacing the initial /p/ sound with a /b/.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,

A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

Endings
Final consonants deserve a fair bit of attention in a speech warm-up. Thats because there is a range of
articulations available to the actor that are, for most people, beyond what we do in everyday speech. As
contemporary everyday speech tends to be informal and personal, rather than the more formal and
public style often called for in classical texts, or the demands of a large playing space, it makes sense
that actors have to put some effort into making the adjustment. As Ive discussed in "Bouncing the
Lips," there is an articulation form called unreleased where the final stop consonants, /p t k, b d g/ just
stopthe arent released at the end of a phrase, or going into another sound. This is the default for
many speakers. Of course, the other option is to release these consonants, and for the voiceless
consonants, that means releasing them with aspiration. (The range of possibilities of voiced and
voiceless consonants was discussed in the "Beginnings" step.)

Voiceless Consonant Endings

Think of saying "Id like you to stop." In informal speech, most English speakers will not release the
final /p/ (thats [p p ] in IPA). Theyll make the /p/, that is theyll stop the sound with the action of
closing the lips, but they wont release the /p/ in a puff of aspiration [a d la k ju t st pp]. However, for
the stage, that final release is important. Try saying that phrase again with a final /p/ that includes
aspiration (thats [p] in IPA) [ad lak ju t stp p]. That puff of air demands a greater commitment to
the final /p/. Now, try it with a phrase ending in /t/: "It doesnt fit," first with a stop, with no audible
release [t p ], and then aspirated, [t]. Note that the other word-final /t/s dont get the release, here,
though they could if you were being really emphatic. Lets try that: [t dznt ft]. See how the
aspiration takes time, slowing it down while emphasizing the words? Finally, lets look at an example
with a final /k/ sound: "Pick up the slack, Jack." The /k/ at the end of "pick" must release into the vowel
of "up," but it isnt necessarily very aspirated because "up" is unstressed. The /k/ at the end of "slack"
doesnt have to be released, especially in casual speech, nor does the /k/ at the end of "Jack." Try
aspirating both slack and Jack, and you might even try really overdoing the /k/ at the end of Pick, too:
[pk p slk dk]. Fully aspirated releases on all the final /k/ sounds is totally appropriate for a
large theatre, though for those who are unfamiliar with playing at that scale, it often feels too
extravagant. You have to work on this to get to the point where youre more comfortable.

Voiced Consonant Endings

When a phrase ends in a voiced stop consonant, speakers are inclined to not release the sound. In the
phrase "Bob is a slob," the /b/ in Bob releases into the following vowel. But the final /b/ in slob can
easily be unreleased: [slb p]. To release that final /b/ may make it feel like youre putting a tiny schwa
[] at the end: [slb]. Thats too much! Find the version where you release the /b/, but only just.

Try the same on the phrases, for /d/ and /g/ respectively:
"Brad is glad to see Fred."
"The rag is in the big bag."
These two sentences both feature linking stops (that release), stops before other stops (in glad_to and
big_bag) where there is no release, and final stops that have optional releases. Some theatre voice
people would insist on having a release in glad_to and big_bag though this sometimes gives it the
sound of [ldtu] or [bb] if overdone. Try those phrases with a very subtle release, and see if
you can do it. Then try the sentence with releases on those words and on the final words, Fred and bag.
You really need to relish those sounds, indulge in them. Make a choice to justify why you would be so
extravagant with those sounds. Sometimes people find that if they mouthe the words, as if they were
trying to be heard through 3 in. of glass, that they are inclined to fully commit to those sounds. I
suppose that one could think of reaching the aging audience of many classical theatre companies,
whose hearing is beginning to go, as try to talk to them through sound proof glass. You really have to
try hard!
Its worth noting that most speakers devoice their final stops, so that "Brad is glad to see Fred" could
essentially sound like "Brad is glad to see Fret," except that the vowel of Fred is sustained longer than
it is in Fret. Try that outcompare "Slob-slop, Fred-Fret, Bag-back," but dont release the final
consonants. Notice how the second words have significantly shorter vowels, while the final consonant
is pretty much the same? Committing to releasing final consonants helps to enhance the difference
between the ends of these words, which is one of the principal justifications voice and speech coaches
have for defending their preference for final releases. Try those comparisons again, but this time release
the final consonants: "Slob-slop, Fred-Fret, Bag-back." Likely this feels a bit much wherever you are
right now, but in a large theatre, it really pays off.

Continuants
Continuants are the opposite of stops (affricates, like "ch" /t/, are combos of stops and continuants):
they continue. Final continuants at the end of phrases often have a tendency to not continue very long.
Really committing to them takes time and energy. Try this phrase: "Sing the hymn, Tom." To take the
time for those final nasal consonants demands a certain relish. Final voiceless fricative continuants,
including /, f, s, / in English are often very short, and final voiced fricatives, which include /, v, z, /,
also have a tendency to devoice. Apart from the length of vowel that precedes them, the final consonant
in believe-belief is frequently very similar. Especially at the end of phrases, like "I dont know what to
believe," these final fricates can devoice strongly enough that theyre very similar to the sound at the
end of a phrase like "Thats beyond belief." By choosing to commit to the voicing and the length of
these final consonants /, v, z, /, we can make that contrast greater, which theoretically should make
the meaning slightly clearer.

Consider the ends of lines in Shakespeares Sonnet 17:

Who will believe my verse in time to come
If it were filled with your most high deserts?
Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts:
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say this poet lies,
Such heavenly touches neer touched earthly faces.
So should my papers (yellowed with their age)
Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be termed a poets rage,
And stretched metre of an antique song.
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice in it, and in my rhyme.
We encounter a variety of endings worth playing. Ill go through the lines, one by one, to discuss the
choices we have.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

come: take the time to fully voice the /m/.

deserts: the /ts/ needs to be crisp and quick.
tomb: relish the /m/ and recognize the rhyme with line 1.
parts: check off the /ts/ sharply.
eyes: the final /s/ of this word should be a voiced [z] sound.
graces: again, final /s/ needs to be [z]; its debatable whether it should be preceded by a schwa
[] or a small-cap I [].
7. lies: needs a final [z].
8. faces: make it match the [z] on graces.
9. age: be sure that the [d] doesnt go to [t].
10.tongue: take the time to really make the //. Some people choose to release this sound with a
tiny release; I think this is inappropriate.
11.rage: the same as age.
12.song: of course this doesnt rhyme with tongue anymore, but the final consonant needs the
length to really be heard.
13.time: again, give the final /m/ its due, let time take time!
14.rhyme: of course rhyme must rhyme with time; indulge that /m/ just like in time.
Taking the time to indulge your endings gives you a chance to relish the substance of the words. Its the sound of
words that carries their meaning in a large theatre, and committing to the sounds also requires a huge emotional
commitment to match the scale of the words. Often we get emotional and take it personal and small. In the
theatre we have to take the emotion and support it, share it and make it public. Giving vocally means sharing
whats on the inside with the ouside world, and that happens vocally more than anywhere else.

Energized, De-Energized and Over-Energized

Performing requires a balance of a huge number of factors that can make or break your ability to
communicate effectively. Breath and sound, thought and emotion, action and reaction, ease and effort.
As you perform, you release energy through your nervous system into action. Finding the right balance
is hugely challenging. How much energy is needed to reach your acting partner and your audience? Too
much, and you appear false and pushed; too little, and you cant be heard, and your action/reaction
cant be seen. How do you find that balance?
Imagine a tightrope walker, working her way across the rope, carefully judging each step. Better yet,
imagine yourself as the tightrope walker. Visualize what you would see, but more importantly what you
would feel. In imagining this myself, my attention is first drawn to the idea of focus: this is a life-ordeath activity. I must pay attention to all that I can in order to stay on that line. Where does my focus
lie? In my feet, and their connection to the floor; in my alignment, sensing my body in space, adjusting
to the sensations around me; in the moment, in moving my feet forward, in getting to my goal at the
end of the rope. Im not thinking about what Im going to be making for dinner. Im tuned into this
place, this time, this activity: my life depends on it. Is it hard physical work? No. But it requires all my
attention.
Acting is like that: it requires all your attention. And yet, it requires a sense of ease: its not a tense
activity, but one where you are responsive to your environment, which includes your acting partner and
the audience. That sense of ease demands a certain confidence. Its a belief that you are worthy of being
seen and heard, that your goal is achievable, that you dare to share your what scares you, that you allow
your body/mind to respond "truthfully" to stimulus in the moment, without judgment, without scripting.
Unfortunately, we dont always find ourselves in the place where we have that confidence. Our fears of
failure lead to second guessing, to planning the moment in order to get it "right," to limiting our
responses to what we imagine before we start. And what so often happens is we fall into two ways of
hiding that lack of confidence: we compensate by over-energizing, or by de-energizing.
Patsy Rodenburg, one of the most influetial voice teachers in the world, has taught, written and lead
workshops around this idea a great deal. She uses the terms Bluff and Deny to describe these
states. Bluffing is when you push vocally, you force your way through your argument, you demand
attention without earning it. Its a great term to describe the action the actor is using in their
performance. They are playing at their objective, faking their way through it by insisting that this work.
Denying is when you dont give enough to the action youre playing, you speak to quietly, you dont
commit to the demands of the language youre speaking. Because you dont believe that you can do it,
you either pretend you can and bluff, or you admit defeat and deny. And though Antony is lying in
Julius Caesar when he says "I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,/ Action, nor utterance, nor the
powers of speech/ To stir mens blood; I only speak right on," we must embrace his idea: that in
speaking right on, we find ways to not to bluff through wit or words, but to simply put our focus into
the language for all were worth.

So how do we practise this ideal, of speaking right on? Rodenburg suggests we start simply, and feel
our way through the via negativa ("to describe God by describing what He is not"), to explore the idea
and sensation of Bluff and Deny, and then try to find the middle road that is neither over-doing or
under-doing. Balance is that state where one is neither falling off the rope to the left, nor falling off to
the right it is a constant state of adjustment, not a single thing, but a process.
So lets take a simple phrase, a kind of affirmation, the kind of thing that is easy to not believe in, to
force it, or pull back from because we all struggle with our self-worth, just like Al Frankens Stuart
Smalley. I am worthy. Its nothing magic, its just a simple phrase about being good enough. It
could be very funny; it could be deadly serious: it all depends on your point of view. For the sake of
this experiment, lets play with it as being deadly serious.
Heres the experiment: Bluff your way through the phrase I am worthy in as many different ways as
possible. Go to extremes. This is about falling off that balance point. Then begin to find the edge:
where does it become questionable whether Im pushing or not? Can you bluff physically, vocally,
intellectually, emotionally?
Now try the opposite experiment: Deny your way through the phrase I am worthy in as many ways as
you can. How small can you go? What pulls it "off" the balance? What does truth have to do with this?
Can you find the place where its not clear whether youre Denying or not? What happens physically,
vocally, intellectually, emotionally, as you Deny?
You might now take a passage from something you know: a monologue, a poem, a song lyric. Try to
work your way through the text, neither falling to left or right, but walking the tightrope of the
language. If nothing comes to mind, try working your way across this tightrope of poetry by Lawrence
Ferlinghetti:
Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrachats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking

any thing
for what it may not be
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind. 1958
In both Bluff and Deny, we discover symptoms that keep coming up. Signs that can be read by the
audience or your scene partner that in many ways call you a liar. That announce that youre not
speaking right on. Many times, there are vocal signals: not enough or too much breath energy, vocal
energy, pitch, melody, phrasing, breathiness, vocal press, manipulated diction, that doesnt suit the
space or the relationship. Each of us have our favourites, our habits that we go to by default, that we
must overcome in order to go from where we left off in order to be right on. We must not
"mistake / any thing / for what it may not be."
There is no one right way to speakright on. There are a million ways, each in response to the
moment, the given circumstances, and your personal state-of-being. And there are infinite ways of
losing that balance, and falling into bluff or deny. Sometimes the demands of a theatre require a scale
that, if we were not acting but merely living real life, would feel as though we were bluffing.
Sometimes the demands of a film scene, with the camera in a tight close-up, that would seem like
denying in real life. But neither theatre nor film are real. They are a version of reality, shaped for the
audience, filtered by the actor, the director and the crew. Truth is not a single thing, it is many things in
response to the changing world around us. And speech is often about feeling out the world around us,
sensing out our place in it, and speaking appropriately. We all have the tools to feel that. We must all
embrace the world, and our place in it, to find that balance.
We are all worthy.

Tempo: Dragging, Slow, Medium, Fast, and

Rushing
Faster, Louder, Funnier: Actors often joke about how directors of comedies really only have one
note. And part of that note has to do with tempo, the rate at which the actors speak. And more often
than not, the demand is for actors to increase that rate. Faster dialogue, snappier dialogue tells the story
more quickly, moves the story along, and drives the show toward the moments of tension and release,
which in comedy means the laugh lines. But speed isnt just something demanded of comedic actors. In
classical plays, especially very long ones, like Hamlet, the need for speed is a large part of getting
through the play and not losing the audiences attention. Often the issue with speed doesnt have to do
with the tempo of speaking, but more with the tempo of thinking. Getting from one line to the next,
picking up ones cues, shifting from beat to beat, all require a dexterity of thought, nimble thinking.
The drive to get what you want has to be tied to getting it now, and actors who wallow in their
emotional states are usually seen as being self-indulgent.
Of course in rehearsal, we need to take the time to be a little indulgent as part of the process of figuring
out what is needed. In fact, its very important to find a balance of slow, medium and fast, all in
response to the appropriate play of action and reaction. Also, some characters have different internal
tempos, and a dramatic contrast can be created by playing with a different internal clock than that of a
scene partner.
Lets discuss tempo as part of the range of skills that all actors come to integrate into their performance,
and well explore the types of demands placed upon the performer by each speed.

Slow
Going slowly is often very difficult for some actors, as they are tempted to rush through their
performance. Going slowly through the language, finding the time for thought on the words, rather than
between them, demands a certain kind of relish. You need to lengthen vowels and continuant
consonants, so that you can stretch things out. In slowing down, you need to work with the smallest
chunk of language possible, the word, and, in some cases, the syllable. It gives you a chance to really
feel the substance of the language, its sounds, its links, its stops. Well use the following passage today
for our exploration. Take it for a spin, going very slowly, but being sure to link the words together,
rather than putting. extra space between the words
To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison with a lifelong lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block.
Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado, "I am so Proud", 1885.

Dragging
Of course, there is always too slow. When one is reluctantly changing tactics, one might drag ones
feet verbally to indicate that reluctance. But often, actors drag because of an issue, and its my
experience that they either has to do with poor preparationthey just dont know what comes next and
are desperately searching for the words, or with slow thinking. Both are fixed with focus on why you
say what you say, rather than just drilling the words over and over. What is the connection between this
idea and the next? More importantly, how does the thought that goes before move you toward the
thought that comes after. For instance, if you could get through the first two lines of the above Mikado
text, but blanked before Awaiting the sensation, you would need to figure out why lifelong lock
would inspire Awaiting If lifelong makes you wait for a lifetime, then awaiting is a logical next
word. Making that kind of linkage makes it for easier to remember the text.
To explore the idea of draggin intensionally, work your way thrugh the Mikado text as if you didnt
know what to say next. Hesitate in mid-word, on vowels and on continuant consonants like final "m, n,
l, etc."

Medium
Finding a happy balance between too slow and too fast isnt easy, and certainly we dont want
everything to have too even a tempo. But compared to going Slow, Medium speed is where you play
the sentence more than the word. In verse, such as the Mikado text were using here, its about playing
the line. You need to find the operative words, and play them, but let the unimportant ones be just that:
unimportant! Ill put the Mikado text in again here so you dont have to scroll up to see it, and try
speaking it again, play one or two important words per line, but generally thinking your way through
the thoughts.
To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison with a lifelong lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block.
This is the kind of text that is meant to be spoken quickly; thats a big part of the fun of Gilbert and
Sullivan. But when you limit your operative words, youll find yourself playing things like nouns and
verbs over modifiers like adjectives or adverbs. (If youre like me and grew up without a solid
grounding in grammar, you might want to read up on parts of speech, now known as "word classes".)

Monotonous Pace
Speaking monotonously doesnt just mean speaking on a single pitch. An overly even pace an can also
be flat, dull, and unappealing to the listener. It can indicate a certain sense of boredom on the part of the
speaker. Rhythmic text, as we see in the lyric above, when spoken out of the context of the song, can be
"sung" as if it were following the rhythm of the song. This is to be avoided, unless, of course, youre
doing it for a reason. Try speaking the text through and see if you can feel the potential for a
monotonous pace. (Hint: be boring!)

Fast
If a medium pace demands an awareness of the sentence, then faster pace puts our focus on the
paragraph, and its underlying argument. Sentences form steps towards our goal, while the paragraph
covers the whole thing. Playing our way through this kind of language forces us to drive through the
language, finding momentum to move from phrase to phrase, thought to thought, sentence to sentence,
toward the conclusion of our argument. Speed requires agility to move the articulators faster than our
habitual tempo, and that demands a sense of lightness or deftness so that we do not trip over complex
combinations and alternations of consonants that are made in opposing manners and places in the
mouth.
Fast text also demands some awareness of the breath requirements of the text. As we move quickly we
want to pause less, for a shorter time, in order to move on with the ideas of the text. Less time to
breathe means we have to get that breath in quickly without a build-up of unnecessary tension. Try the
Mikado text again, but this time work your way through it quicklyas fast as you possibly can:

To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,

In a pestilential prison with a lifelong lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block.

I find that switching from the /s/ sound of "sensation" to the / / sound of "short, sharp shock" is a a
challenge. So Ill loop the second phrase several times (at least 3) in order to imprint its action into
muscle memory. Work your way through it, and any time you trip up, try looping a 3 or 4 word-long
group in order to increase your ability to do the text at high speed.

Rushing
This is what happens to an actor who is skipping over the moment, not trusting it or her partner.
Sometimes when an actor gets caught up in playing words at the expense of thought or emotion, this
can also happen. Rushing is often a symptom of fear, in my mind. There is a disconnect that is occuring
in order to get past something terrifying. As the cliche says, you must "feel the fear and do it anyway."
Embrace those feelings and pour them through the language, rather than trying to get it done, over, on
to the next thing.
[Probably the fastest voiceover work going these days is for the disclaimer text one finds at the ends of
commercials for drugs. In recent years, pharmaceutical companies have begun to rewrite these
disclaimers so they are more intelligible, so there is less of a sense the theyre trying to hide something.
However, its worth noting that many of those supersonic speed deliveries are done using sophisticated
audio editing software, in order to speed up the audio without raising the pitch, and to allow voiceover
actors to do the clips one piece at a time in order to get the fastest clearest takes.]

Chopping and Linking

Chopping and Linking
Words that begin with vowels pose a challenge to actors. How to speak these sounds? When anything
begins with a vowel, there is a tendency to initiate the sound with a glottal attack. This is done by
closing the vocal folds together, and then building up pressure, and then blasting the folds into motion.
Lets try an experiment, so you can see what I mean. Say the first 4 vowel letters of the alphabet: A, E,
I, O. (We dont use "U" because its name actually begins with a consonant sound, which makes it much
less likely to begin with a glottal.) Now, try it again, but this time, I want you to hesitate before each
letter. .AEIO. Can you feel how you close off the folds, much like holding your breath,
before each of those letters? When we encounter words that begin with vowel sounds, some people put
this kind of glottal sound in front of each one them.
When I was first training as an actor, I was taught that glottaling a word that begins with a vowel was a
very bad idea. Since that time, Ive come to realize that glottaling isnt the end of the world, and that, in
some cases, using an occasional glottal sound can actually make your use of language clearer, more
intelligible. An example of glottal attacks used in everyday speech is in the expression "Uh-uhn,"
meaning "NO." In IPA wed transcribe that with the symbol for the glottal, which looks like a question
mark without a dot. [ ]. However, I am convinced that most of us dont need to use the glottal
attack very often, and that most of the time, what we really need is to link to the word beginning with a
vowel from the sound that comes before, whether thats a consonant or a vowel.
Glottal attacks put a certain "punch" on the language, emphasizing those words that begin with a
vowel. Sometimes this is necessary, but often, its not. We need to learn to use the whole word to catch
the audiences ear, rather than punching the word with a glottal. We need to embrace the thought that
the idea and emotion behind a word is carried on the open sound as much as on the staccatto of the
initial consonants.
Well look at a passage from Henry IV, part one, as he foreshadows his eventual betrayal of Falstaff,
and reveals to the audience his duplicitous nature.
I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyokd humour of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the Sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonderd at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But, when they seldom come, they wishd-for come,

And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.

So when this loose behaviour I throw off,
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify mens hopes;
And, like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittring oer my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
Ill so offend to make offense a skill,
Redeeming time when men think least I will.
I love this speech. Its one of my most favourite plays, and this speech is the first I ever fell in love
with. Ive gone through and put an asterisk in front of every word that begins with a vowel. I want you
to go through and punch, via a glottal, everyone of the them. Im sure youll find that some of them are
not so bad, if you punch them, and others will leave you wishing you didnt punch them. Have a go
with the first part of the speech:

*I know you *all, *and will *awhile *uphold

The *unyokd humour *of your *idleness.
Yet herein will *I *imitate the Sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother *up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please *again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonderd *at,
By breaking through the foul *and *ugly mists
*Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.

Of course, thats not the only way to play it! In fact, Id say that thats a rather odd way of playing it.
The opposite way of doing it is to link the initial vowels with the sound that precedes it. So, words like
you all will link together. In this case, it feels almost as if there was a little linking w between the two
words. In other cases, like in I imitate it feels as if there was a little linking y (IPA [j]) between the
vowels. Of course, words that begin phrases that begin with a vowel are a different breed. They need to
begin with a simultaneous attack, where the breath and the folds come together at the same time. In the
passage below, Ive linked the words with vowels, and Ive put a tiny h before words that need a
simultaneous onset. (This is just a code they dont need a big "h" sound!). Try reading that passage
again, trying to link as best you can.

I know you all, and will awhile uphold

The unyokd humour of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the Sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonderd at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.

Ive made a list of all the linked words, including those with vowel links that come through w-ish and
y-ish sounding links (Ive used a superscript to denote those). Try them out of context of the speech:
oo-wall, l-awhile, l-uphold, ee-yunyoked, r-of, r-idleness, l-I, I-yimitate, r-up, z-again, d-at, l-and, dugly, s-of.
Now you might thy the whole speech again. If theres a word that you particularly want to emphasized
really strongly, you can skip my linking advice and CHOP at it vigourously with a glottal. But I think
you should be able to do the speech with no glottals whatsoever first, and then try it a final time
allowing a few glottals where you believe youve earned them.
I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyokd humour of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the Sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonderd at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But, when they seldom come, they wishd-for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So when this loose behaviour I throw off,
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify mens hopes;
And, like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittring oer my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
Ill so offend to make offense a skill,
Redeeming time when men think least I will.

Lists of words beginning with vowels are particularly hard, as it very possible, if there is any hesitation
on your part, to glottalize them all. Try reading this list of words (that feature just about every vowel
sound in English) without glottalizing any of them:
Easter eggs,
Itching powder,
Acorns
Elephants,
Apples,
Underwear,
Urchins,
Udon noodles,
Oak trees,
Awnings,
Olives,
Angels,
Eiderdowns,
Oil paintings,
Oceans,
Outdoor lighting,
Earmuffs,
Airports,
Oarlocks,
Artists.
Its a very difficult list. But there is a trick to learning to do this: breathe in, and imagine breathing in
the shape of the vowel you are about to say. Then, without hesitating, go straight into the word. Take a
tiny breath to prep for the next words in the shape of its vowel sound, and on you go! Its remarkable
how well this works. If you dont really need to breathe in, make sure your throat is open before you go
on to the next word. Hesitating and closing your folds before you begin a word is death here. You need
to keep that channel open so that you dont close down

Really Larry: R and L

/r/ and /l/ are two of the more difficult consonants in English. Many non-native speakers struggle
with these sounds, as they are not part of their first language. There are many variations of these
sounds, so in this step well explore these possibilities, and try some drills. Though they are made in
areas of the mouth that are near one another, the action of the tongue on these sounds is fairly different.
First, let me explain that there are two significantly different ways in which /r/ in North American
English is made. The first manner involves the action of the front of the tongue beginning to curl up
and back, the start of a retroflexion or backward flip. The second manner bunches up the tongue at the
back of the mouth. Similarly there are two /l/ sounds used in most forms of English around the world.
The first manner involves the action of the front of the tongue, while the second manner raises the back
of the tongue in the back of the mouth. So in these ways, /r/ and /l/ have a parallel pattern, though the
way each one handles their two versions is quite different.
Lets start by examining /l/. The two versions of /l/ exist in most speakers speech, though some accents
of English, like Irish for instance, have only one. The first version arises when /l/ is at the beginning of
a word or syllable when we get what is commonly called a light L, while the second /l/ appears at the
end of a word or syllable, the so-called dark L. The main difference between the way these sounds
are made has to do with the back of the tongue: its raised for the dark L, and not raised for the light L.
In both light and dark L, the front of the tongue is doing a similar action: the tip of the tongue is behind
the upper front teeth, while the sides of the tongue pull in, narrowing the body of the tongue. This
lateral action gives /l/ its linguistic name, lateral.
To explore this narrowing action, start by making an /n/ sound, relaxing your jaw so that your tongue
reaches up to seal off the oral cavity at the alveolar ridge. This upward reach is very similar to the
action of /l/, except that it lacks the lateral narrowing. Feel the action of your tongue by going back and
forth between /n/ and /l/, spending a few seconds on each sound: [nnnnnllllllnnnnnnllllllnnnnnnllllllll].
You should be able to feel that narrowing pretty dramatically.
The initial /l/ or light L is primarily a flap-like action, with the tongue moving up and down between
that /l/ action and the open sound of a vowel. Try a series of luh syllables (IPA [l ]), tryin hard to
feel the action of the tonue slappin down into the bottom of your mouth. Now, compare that to the
action of the tongue on nuh (IPA [n]). Now, alternate them: [n l n l n l n l n l ].
Leaving your jaw dropped will help to make this action clearer, and help to isolate the tongue action.
Finally, make a series of "luh"s, going up and down a five note scale, as classical singers have done for
generations, isolating your tongue from your jaw.
Feeling the difference between the light L and the dark L can be hard for some of us because the
action that makes the /l/ dark is a raising or arching of the back of the tongue near the soft palate, what
linguists call palatalization". This action is very similar to the action that makes the ng (IPA []),
where the back of the tongue rises and touches the soft palate; the palatalized /l/ doesnt go so far as to
touch the soft palate, and the soft palate stays raised so that the sound isnt nasalized. The IPA symbol
for dark L is an /l/ symbol with a palatalization symbol over top: [].

To try to feel the difference between light and dark we start with the word all, [ ] . Because we
anticipate the dark L, the vowel is made further back than in other contexts, like in odd [ d]. You
may be able to feel the this contrast if you go to say odd and then switch to all half way through,
that is, make the [] and then go to the [] . Now try saying [l ] repeatedly, making sure to put a
little pause between each repetition, so that you dont hang onto the palatalization for the initial L. Can
you feel the contrast? Now, consciouly keep the palatalization on the first sound, saying [ ] over
and over you should be able to feel the dark quality through the whole sound, affecting both the
/l/s and the vowels.
Can you now make the light L in both the initial and final position? [l l] . You have to keep the
vowels light, and just use the action of front of the tongue exclusively, not letting the back of tongue
rise. To most English speaker, the second syllable wont sound like the word all, unless you normally
speak in that manner (e.g. if you are Irish.)
Now, lets explore the /r/ sound. In English, there are two general types of /r/. Initial /r/, alone or in a
consonant cluster like /br/, the /r/ is a true consonant. When /r/ is at the end of a syllable, after the
vowel, the /r/ is what we call a "vowel /r/." English accents can be broken into two groups, ones where
the vowel /r/ is spoken, known as rhotic accents, and ones where they are not, or non-rhotic accents.
For the most part, accents in North America are generally rhotic (with a few exceptions, particularly in
Deep South, and in parts of New England), while accents in Britain are non-rhotic (with many
exceptions, of course: Cornwall, Ireland, etc.). The lexical sets in which vowel /r/ may appear include
nurse, Letter, near, square, cure, force/north, start. For speakers of rhotic accents, the /r/ is not made
much differently in either vowel /r/ or consonant /r/, though the energy of an intial or intervocalic /r/ is
more forceful than a final /r/.
The /r/ sound is what linguists call an approximant, a sound where the tongue is near the roof of the
mouth, but not so close as to create turbulence (so it isnt a fricative sound). Its as if the tongue bends
the sound a little, and in so doing it modifies one of the formant energies of the vowel sound. Well
look at the two primary ways that rhotic speakers make their /r/ sounds. The first is made with the
tongue tip primarily, so Ill call this version the apical /r/ (apical meaning that the sound is made with
the front "apex" of the tongue.) In this version, well start by putting our tongues in the /n/ position
again, and then well slowly drag our tongue tip back along the roof of the mouth, as if we were
scraping peanut butter off the roof of our mouths. If we keep our tongues glued to the roof of the
mouth, well stay in a nasal position. For the sound to turn into an /r/ sound, we have to move the front
edge of the tongue off the roof of our mouths, say a few millimetres (1/8"). If you merely pull your
tongue off the alveolar ridge, as if you were just beginning to curl it back, you should get a very
lightly /r/ coloured vowel sound. The IPA has two symbols for the vowel were dealing with here, a
stressed one, and an unstressed one heard in words like nurse and better. When they are not r-coloured,
the symbol is : [ ]; with r-colouring, those symbols have a little diacritic hooked on the upper right
hand corner of the symbol: [ ]. It looks a little like a wing, so I call them "Flying Three" and
"Flying Schwa." The non-rhotic sounds are essentially schwa [], though the stressed version, used in

the nurse lexical set, // is slihtly more open. If you need to clarify what schwa is, check out my post
on it and its neighbour, [], heard in the strut lexical set.
The bunched /r/ is made with the body of the tongue balled up near the back of the mouth. The upper
surface of the tongue is close to the roof of the mouth. Many speakers who bunch their /r/ sounds tend
to round their lips. This makes the vocal tract longer, which modifies the sound of the /r/, so its more
like the unbunched, apical /r/.
For speakers who need/want to have a strong sounding /r/, the bunched /r/ creates a very rich sound, but
it is very much a back of the mouth kind of sound. Unfortunately, it is my experience that speakers who
use a bunched /r/ find it more difficult to make a more subtle /r/, and variations with almost no /r/
colouring are a challenge. Also, when using a bunched /r/ for an intervocalic /r/, e.g. in words like
Harry in an R.P. accent, it is harder to do a bunched /r/ as quickly and delicately as an apical /r/. Also,
because the back of the tongue moves slowly, we often anticipate the bunched /r/, which colours the
vowel that precedes it. This is appropriate for, say, a Texas accent, but not appropriate for others, such
as GenAm or R.P. Bunched /r/ affects the preceding vowel the most in Centering Diphthongs, heard in
the lexical sets near, square, cure, force/north, and start.
As I often do, I would argue that speakers who have one form of /r/ should train themselves to be able
to make the alternate form of /r/. I believe that this makes accent acquisition much easier, and allows
for greater accuracy when taking on an accent that features a different /r/ from your own. I believe that
it generally easier to learn to do the bunched /r/ if youre an apical /r/ speaker than it is for a bunched /r/
speaker to learn an apical /r/, based upon my experience of teaching both kinds of speaker since 1992.
Your mileage may vary.

Bunched /r/
To learn to bunch your /r/, you need to make that /r/ sound as far back in your mouth as you can. I think
the quickest way to learn this is to do a good Pirate ARRRR! sound. Most people know what this
sounds like and can do it easily and feel how their tongue bunches up in the back. Once youve got that,
try using that /r/ to initiate a word, such as red. The challenge, I find, for speakers new to the bunching
is in doing it quickly enough. Try this little phrase, applying the bunched /r/ to the sound:
Red roses for Rhoda.
Now, well try to apply this bunched /r/ to some vowels. Well start with a list of nurse words:
curb, turn, shirt, irk, firm, girl, twerp, verb, term, certain, heard, rehearsal, work, worst, scourge,
attorney
Begin by saying the list of words as you would say them. Then, after saying a good Pirate ARRR, say
each word in turn, lingering on the bunched /r/. Then, try making a more normal bunched /r/ (i.e. not
quite so extreme) as you work your way through the list of words. As were easing off the intensity of
the bunched /r/, do a variation where there is as little bunched /r/ sound as possiblethat is, it still
sounds like there is /r/ colouring, but its only slight. Finally, say these words with no bunching, just a
central, non-rhotic // vowel (like you might hear in an R.P. accent.)

Now try applying that bunched /r/ sound to these words list of the lexical set words for the centering
diphthongs. Some some or all of the following:
near: deer, here, interfere, cashier, fear, fierce, weird, beard, period, hero, dreary, weary
square: care, fair, bear, their, where, prayer, scarce, vary, Mary, various, area
cure*: poor, tour, allure, assure, demure, endure, lure, manure, mature, obscure, pure, bourgeois,
gourmet
north/force: for, war, form, morn, important, torso, warn, aura, deplore, more, boar, floor, pork, court,
Nora
start: star, part, arch, scarf, harsh, garb, large, carve, farm, barn, snarl, party, marvellous, heart, safari
* note that many speakers say all or some of these words as part of the north/force lex set, or as part of
the nurse set.

Apical /r/
Now that we have the bunched /r/ out of the way, we can dig into the apical /r/. First, lets make a
heavily retroflexed /r/, where the tip of the tongue points back toward the uvula. Scrape the tongue
along the roof of your mouth until the point is near where the hard palate meets the soft palate, which is
about as far back as my tongue likes to go! Then peel the tongue off the roof of the mouth just slightly,
so that there is about a millimetre of space between the roof of the mouth and the underside of your
tongue (which is now up, because your tongue is flipped back.) Make a vowel sound here, and you
should have a strongly /r/ coloured or rhotic vowel, [] (thats a flying 3 with 3 rhotic hook diacritic
marks). Try making this vowel with those nurse words from earlier:
curb, turn, shirt, irk, firm, girl, twerp, verb, term, certain, heard, rehearsal, work, worst, scourge,
attorney
Now try them with the tongue not quite so far back, [], then just the "regular" amount, [], with the
tonue tip curlin back to just behind the alveolar ride. Now try to do it with just a tiny amount of /r/,
barely rhotic at all. Finally, do a non-rhotic [], as you might hear in R.P.
Next lets try that apical /r/ on the centering diphthongs. Try varying your degree of rhoticity on the
following word lists:
near: deer, here, interfere, cashier, fear, fierce, weird, beard, period, hero, dreary, weary
square: care, fair, bear, their, where, prayer, scarce, vary, Mary, various, area
cure: poor, tour, allure, assure, demure, endure, lure, manure, mature, obscure, pure, bourgeois,
gourmet
north/force: for, war, form, morn, important, torso, warn, aura, deplore, more, boar, floor, pork, court,
Nora
start: star, part, arch, scarf, harsh, garb, large, carve, farm, barn, snarl, party, marvellous, heart, safari

Really Larry Tongue Twister

So weve made it through the difference between bunched and apical /r/, and light and dark /l/. Now
were on to a little tongue twister to tie the two sounds together. Well try a few variations, to try to
compare and contrast dark /l/ with bunched /r/ and light /l/ with apical /r/. Well begin by going the
backway round: using bunched /r/ and dark /l/ in all settings. Really Larry. Now try it with apical /r/
and a light /l/. Really Larry. Now try an apical /r/ with a dark /l/ on Really, and a light /l/ and a bunched
/r/ on Larry. If you try to do a bunched /r/ and a light /l/ on Really with a dark /l/ and an apical /r/ on
Larry, I think youll find that its extremely hard to do. Not impossible, but a real oral jungle gym to get
around!

Bouncing the Lips

In this step of the Speech Warm-up Series, we look at the lips, and explore warming them up for a
certain kind of sound: stop-plosives. We'll get to fricative sounds later in the series.
The lips are important in the formation of 9 English consonants and up to 5 English vowels, depending
on your accent. The consonants are /m, p, b/ which are made with both lips, /f, v/, which are made with
the upper teeth and lower lip, /w, , , /, which are made with at least some deree of lip rounding in
most speakers, dependin on accent. For example, you can hear those consonants in the words "Mom,
pop, bob," "fife, Viv," "wow, shush, rouge." Most of these consonants are what are called
continuantsthat is, sounds that continue. Two of them are what are called plosiveswhich are
sounds that explode or pop: /p/ and /b/. Start by feeling your way through the difference between
plosive sounds and continuants by saying a bunch of them together: "puh-buh-puh-buh-puh-buh" vs.
"fuh-vuh-fuh-vuh-fuh-vuh."
Part of what makes a plosive stand out in our speech is actually not its sound, but the moment of
silence that precedes it. Final plosives are, in some cases at least, perhaps better known as stops
because they stop the sound that precedes it, chopping off the stream of sound, and then not necessarily
releasing it again. (In the IPA, we represent that unreleased nature with a diacritic mark: [ pp].)
Especially at the ends of expressions, stop consonants in mainstream North American English generally
just STOP. This works very well for everyday speech and for naturalistic performance on tv, film or in
very intimate theatres. But in larger settings, like a big theatre or outdoors, or when we're trying to be
super clear with someone who doesn't understand what we're saying, we need to release those final
consonants. Try this little experiment. Say "stop" to yourselfmaybe even whisper it. I would imagine
that most readers would stop the sound of the /p/ without any kind of release. Now, try overenunciating it, being very emphatic with it, or imagine saying it to someone what can't hear you. In this
setting, it is more likely that you will release that final sound with a big puff of air. (In phonetics, this
puff of air is called "aspiration," and we represent it with another diacritic, a superscript "h": [p ]. Try
feeling the stop nature of a final /p/, hold onto that stop closure for a second and then release it with lots
of aspiration with the word "up": [pp p, pp p , pp p ]. Feel how much air it takes to make that fully
aspirated final /p/? Now try making that final /p/ louder: what happens? Generally people feel that the
air-pressure behind the stop is more intense, so that when the aspiration is released, it makes more noise
as it escapes. You may be able to feel the effort off that build of air pressure in your breathing.
As I said earlier, /p/ and /b/ are the two stop-plosive consonants made with the lips. The difference
between the two sounds is that /p/ is made "voicelessly" and while /b/ is "voiced". Initial /b/ in English
has little to no voicing on it however, while initial /p/ is mostly different because it has aspiration (the
puff of air). Try making a stream of p's and b's in order to feel that difference: "p-p-p-p-p" vs. "b-b-b-bb," [pi pi pi pi pi bi bi bi bi bi]. There may be a tiny amount of voicing on the /b/, but the main
difference between the two consonants is the aspiration.
Actors need to be able to do different kinds of initial /p/ and /b/ for different settings: in many foreign
accents, /p/ isn't aspirated, and /b/ is said with some voicing. Adding voicing to initial /b/ is fairly easy.

In a way, adding that voicing is similar to /mb/, in that you are making voiced sound with your lips
together first, and then popping your lips open for the release of the /b/. However, the difference is that
on /m/ your soft palate drops, so that air can escape out your nose. To fully voice a /b/, you must lift
your soft palate, so that the sound of the /b/ is trapped in your mouth. If you try this, you will find that
there is a limit to how long your voiced initial /b/ can be, because the air that makes the sound behind
your closed lips can only fill up your mouth. Once your mouth is full, you can no longer make any
sound. Try making a string of voiced /b/ sounds you may feel like you sound very Eastern European
when you make this sound as it is very much a part of languages from that area (the diacritic mark for a
voiced consonant is a subscript "v" as in [bb]: [bbi bbi bbi bbi bbi]. Go slowly, to be sure that your getting
the voicing you want. Now, contrast that sound with a voiceless, but unaspirated /p/. [pi pi pi pi pi].
There is no diacritic mark, because the sound is, by default, unaspirated and unvoiced. It may feel a
little like you're saying "bee" rather than "pee".
Now for the bouncing part. I find that when I energize my lips to make loud, powerful /p/ or /b/, my
lips feel like they're bouncing, especially if I do a long string of them. Try whispering loudly a stream
of "pee" sounds, as if you're spraying the sound across the room. As you do it, feel the compression of
your lips, in order to build up enough pressure to before you pop off the sound. Now try it with a series
of "bee" sounds, building the pressure behind the lips to energize it: [bi bi bi bi bi]. Finally, try it with
this classic phrase for practising initial /b/: "Benny bought a bunch of beautiful bananas." Try saying it
with a range of qualities, from small and voiceless, to loud and fully voiced.
Our last part of this step in your warm-up is to bounce your /p/ sound on a set of words. The classic
tongue twister is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," the full text of which is below. Try it
out the way you would normally say it. Then, try it with a lot of aspiration, spitting your /p/ sound
across the room. Finally, try the sequence with as little aspiration as possible, almost as if you were
replacing the initial /p/ sound with a /b/.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,

A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

Stretching the Soft Palate

So far, in the three Voice Warm-up Series (basic, intermediate, advanced), we have looked at the soft
palate 3 times, once in each series. Hopefully you can use those warm-up steps (basic, intermediate,
advanced) to learn about the soft palate. Here, we want to quickly get the soft palate energized, and
articulating.
In English, there are 3 consonant sounds made with the soft palate: two stop-plosives (see the lips step
for more on this kind of sound), /k/ and /g/, and a "nasal" consonant, //. In other languages, there are
many other consonant sounds made with the soft palate, or "velum" (from whence they get their name,
velar consonants). For example, there is the sound in German words like "ach", represented in the IPA
as [x]. This voiceless fricative sound is made with the back of the tongue against the soft palate, and is
also heard in many Yiddish load words to English, such as "chutzpah."
To begin, let's sensitize the soft palate with a series of /x/ sounds. Try a bunch of triplet rhythms: [xxxxxx-xxx-x], and repeat. Swallow after you've done this, as it often releases mucous from the back of
the soft palate.
Swallowing contracts some of the soft palate muscles, and stretches others. Yawning is its opposite. To
wake up the soft palate, we're going to alternate the two actions. Start with a modified yawn by
relaxing your jaw, and leaving your tongue tip behind your lower front teeth, and engage in a voiceless
yawn. Then, close your mouth and swallow. Repeat this 3 or 4 times.
Our last step is to wake up the soft palate with a little drill of those English sounds. The pattern of
sounds is [k ], or "kuh-guh nguh-guh". Repeat that in clusters of 4, slowly trying to go faster.
(If you find the sequence "nguh-guh" difficult, you could try this reversal: "kung-uh gung-uh" [k
].

Separating the Actions of the Jaw and Tongue

There are two preparatory parts to this step in the warm-up, and then the "exercise" that brings those
two components together. [Because the prep portions are so long, I'm going to post this as two separate
posts.] To separate the actions of the jaw and tongue, first we're going to isolate the jaw, and then we'll
isolate the tongue's actions, and finally, we'll marry the two into one complex exercise. We've already
visited the action of the jaw elsewhere on the voiceguy, in the basic, intermediate, and advanced warmup series. To jog your memory, or guide you to your first exposure to these posts, we did jaw basics,
jaw swinging, and head and jaw isolating.

Isolating the Jaw

Our first prep step is to very gently work the jaw hinge. The idea here is to appreciate the complexity of
the jaw, and to try to move it with ease and respect, not jamming it or forcing it to do anything
untowards. Seduce it into loosening up a little. Begin by letting it drop, as best you can toward the
floor, with your tongue relaxed in the bottom of your mouth. Sigh out on breath, and see whether it can
release further, with your tongue tip touching the back of the lower front teeth. Begin to move your jaw
up and down in very small amounts. Your mouth should stay almost completely open, so that your only
beginning to close your mouth by a few millimeters, and then you open it again. (This action reminds
me of when I've witnessed a dog place her mouth on a puppy to warn it to behavenot really biting,
but warning that "hey, my teeth are hereyou had better behave!") From the action, you want to
slowly but surely increase the range of motion of your jaw on each little "nibble" to go a little further
toward bringing your teeth together. Each time you open your mouth again, try to let your jaw drop,
rather than pulling it open.
As your swinging your jaw, it is important to attend to your breath, making sure to breathe as you
swing the jaw, and not holding your breath while making the movements. This is difficult, I grant you,
but it's worth it. As the range of the swinging action gets to the full range of its motion, you should be
moving slowly and carefully; only go to the point where your lower teeth are near your upper teeth:
they should not touch. Once you've gotten to the full-swing action, begin to limit the range of motion
on how far you drop your jaw, so that slowly but surely you are making the "chewing action" smaller,
until it's as if you are "nibbling" a very small seed. Then from there you should slowly expand the
range of motion once again until you're back a the full range of motion. The final phase is to slowly
reduce the amount you are closing, so that you eventually are making small movements with your jaw
open.

This graphic should hopefully explain the range of motion used in the exercise:

Though I am not certain about this, I believe that this exercise is similar to the work of Moshe
Feldenkrais, and its biggest proponent in voice circles, William Weiss, from the University of Ottawa.
(Note: I have not trained formally with the Feldenkrais technique, nor in any way with Weiss. I am
sharing this because I believe that this exercise's approach is similar to the techniques presented by
Weiss; I am not attempting to replicate or represent that work in any way.)

Tongue Possibilities

There are basically two major types of action for the tongue: arching up and reaching up. The first take
the middle or back of the tongue to arches it up to ward the roof of the mouth, whether that be the
pharynx, the uvula, the soft palate, or the hard palate. For these actions, the tongue tip stays down
behind the lower front teeth while the body of the tongue arches up. The other tongue actions involve
the front edge or tip of the tongue reaching up, either to the gum (aka "alveolar") ridge, or to other
points like the back of the teeth upper front teeth, curling back to the hard palate, or reaching forward
to the edge of the upper front teeth. We're doing to do a little drill of all these action/places, from the
back to the front, and back again. We'll work our way through the arching actions first, and then we'll
do the reaching actions, and then we'll reverse it.

Drop your jaw to begin with so you're doing all this with just your tongue. With your tongue tip behind
your lower front teeth, arch your tongue back toward the pharyngeal wall, and then relax it back into
the middle of your mouth. Do that twice. Then arch the tongue back toward your uvula (as if you were
going to make a French trilled "r"), and then relax it back. Do that twice, also. Now we need to arch up
to the soft palate, like you were going to make an 'ng' sound, and then relax. Again, do it twice. Finally,
arch the tongue body up to the hard palate, as if you were about to say "ya ya" [j j]. Finally, arch
your tongue up, again, with the tongue tip down, to the gum ridge, as if your were about to tease
someone with "nya nya." (Do this 2X too.) Now, try to do the sequence from back to front, with lots of
breath, as if you were whispering it: back-back, velum-velum,velum-velum, palate-palate, gumridgegumridge. And now front to back: gumridge-gumridge, palate-palate, velum-velum, velum-velum,
back-back. With breath, this sounds like you're doing a series of variations on "hyuh" or "huh".
Next step is to do the tongue reaching series. The places the tongue will reach to are as follows:

edge of the teeth as in "th" [, ] (interdental)

back of the upper front teeth as in a dentalized "t" or "d" [tt, dt ] (dental)
the um ride as in "t" or "d" [t d] (alveolar)
just behind the um ride as in "sh" or "zh"[ ] (post-alveolar)
curling backwards, or "retroflex" (as heard in some foreign accents). (retroflex)

Whisper all these placements without making the sound associated with them. After each sound, try to
release your tongue down, into the bottom of your mouth, behind your lower front teeth. This may be
quite tricky, but it's really important in improving your awareness of your tongue and your jaw. I'll use
those adjectives I put at the end of each of those bullet points above as reference points as we sequence
them into a chain of sounds: do each one twice, as if you were saying "thuh-thuh, tuh-duh," etc.
Interdental, dental, alveolar, post-alveolar, retroflex.
And back the other way:
Retroflex, post-alveolar, alveolar, dental, interdental

Separating the Actions of the Jaw and Tongue

Part 2
We've just isolated both the jaw and tongue. Now we need to combine the jaw and tongue. The sounds
that are probably the most difficult to do with tongue alone (read impossible to do without the jaw)
are /s/ and // sounds. You can try to do them without the jaw, but it isn't really possible. (If you can do
it without movement of your jaw, I say "yeah!" But most of us can't.) I'm going to offer you a chance to
work on the sound "suh" [s s], allowing your jaw to move with the action of the tongue. Try to take
time to let your tongue relax with it sitting inside your mouth. See if you can relax your jaw somewhat
by making a /s/ sound, and carefully opening your mouth very slightly, trying to maintain a good /s/
quality.
The challenge for [s s] is in opening on to vowel. So we'll practice it here: make your open /s/ sound
and then drop your jaw into the [] vowel. "sssss (drop) uh" [ssssss ].
As you can feel, the jaw drop is an important part of the release into the vowel. Take a moment to leave
the sound out of it and explore the action of the jaw as if you were chewing a cloud. This image is
designed to make the action of the opening and closing as light and easy as possible. Now, with the
image firmly planted in your mind's eye, make your /s/ on a light cloud of action, integrating the jaw
movement with the tongue.
Keeping the very light, easy chewing action sensation, and imagining a cloud of /s/, go back to halfwhispering, half-speaking "suh suh suh suh suh," with an easy, almost lazy feel to it. Then add more
voice to it, and kick the /s/ energy up a notch by making it /z/, so you're sighing on voice "zuh zuh zuh
zuh zuh," [z z z z z]. Try to find some pleasure in the sensation of an easy correlation between
jaw and tongue, letting the sound out gently and playfully.
Finally, let's work on the jaw drop action on a tongue twister with lots of /s/ sounds in it.
Singing Sammy sung songs on sinking sand.
Each word (except "on") begins with an /s/, so there are lots of opportunities to work on the jaw drop
on the vowel that follows. After quick exploration, you'll probably realise that the words with "close"
vowels, like "Singing Sammy" and "sinking sand" require very little jaw drop, while the more open
vowels, on "sung songs" demand more room, and allow you to drop your jaw more dramatically. See if
you can say the tongue twister and really feel that jaw action in the middle of it. Keep imaging that
"cloud" feeling we were working on before. Now, try this tongue twister, which has much more room
for opening throughout:
Sounding by sound is a sound method of sounding sounds.
Each "sound" word affords you the opportunity to drop your jaw in order to get that "ou" [a] sound
out. Let your tongue tip shape the /s/, and your jaw jumps you to the vowel placement.

Tapping the Tongue

In the Advanced Voice Series, in step called the Articulation of L and N on the Gum Ridge, we
explored the movement of the front edge of the tongue. Not only did we explore /l/ and /n/, we also
played with /t/ and /d/, the other two consonants where the front edge of the tongue touches the gum
ridge. Today, were going to warm that area up by tapping the the front of the tongue up and down in
the /n/ place, but with no sound. I suppose that, if you listen really carefully, you might be able to hear
the sound of your tongue slapping the bottom of your mouth, but its really faint
Start by dropping your jaw. Very lightly bring your tongue up to the place where it would make an /n/
sound, and then slap it down behind your lower front teeth. Then repeat that action, faster and faster,
tapping the gum ridge and slapping the tongue down. Be sure to keep your jaw still, and let the tongue
action move quickly and directly. Breathe both in and out, as youre flapping your tongue, and try to
have the action of the tongue be light and agile, as if its dancing inside your mouth.
A more challenging action is to retract your tongue about half and inch from behind your teeth and try
to continue the flapping action. Your tongue root will engage in order to pull the tongue back, so it will
be difficult to maintain the speed. Generally this is what we want to avoid, but its good to feel that
tension and understand how it works. And who knows: you could always use that quality for a
character voice in the future.
Finally, put your tongue on your lower lip and then do the tongue flapping process, tapping your upper
lip and your lower lip as quickly as you can. To most people, this looks quite graphically sexual, so if
you want to do this without feeling foolish, self-conscious, or perverse, merely cup your hands over
your mouth like youre doing a big yawn so that no one gets to watch your tongue technique. (Unless
you want them to Might work as a good pick up technique if you were particularly good at it, I
suppose)
As a bonus step, you an move your tongue back into your mouth and try the tapping action on /n/ or /l/,
trying to keep your jaw as relaxed as possible, and the speed of your tongue as quick as you can. Think
light and quick, and sigh the sound out on a huh sound.

Beginnings
Aspiration As Ive mentioned elsewhere, everything has a beginning, middle and end. In terms of
speech, awareness of beginnings and endings is helpful is varying your performance for different
settings, from the most intimate on-mic technique, to the most challenging outdoor amphitheatre. Both
vowels and consonants deserve some attention with regard to beginnings and endings, but well work
with consonants for now. Well start this exploration by focusing on Beginnings in this post, and
Endings in the next post.
In terms of diction, most people think of consonants as an important weapon in the battle to be heard
and understood. Learning to commit strongly to the actions that generate strong consonant sounds is a
hurdle that most theatre actors in training must overcome, whether in class or merely in production.
Teachers and directors for the theatre invariably must demand of their actors to "spit out the words" and
commit to the sounds of the language of the play. Of the consonant sounds, the stop-plosive sounds
have the greatest potential for impact in a large space, if theyre given the requisite energy to reach all
corners of the playing environment. However, this kind of choice is totally inappropriate for more
intimate theatre work, and so one must learn to be sensitive to the context in which you play, and how
those demands set up a new series of requirements of your speech. To do that well, it helps to
appreciate the options available, or the range of articulations, for a given sound.
Lets dig further into the stop-plosive sounds, /p b, t d, k g/. Each of these pairs has a voiceless partner (
/p t k/ ) and a voiced partner (/b d g/). In English, the voiceless consonants are aspirated at the
beginning of words and stressed syllables pin, tin, kin; appoint, attest, akin; thats to say that these
consonants are articulated with a puff of air. Ive written quite a lot about this and more recently in the
early steps of this series in "Bouncing the Lips," where we explored aspiration of the lip-based
(bilabial) consonant /p/. Because weve done /p b/ already, well focus on /t d/ and /k g/ in this post.
The release of these plosive consonants are goverened by something linguists call "Voice Onset Time"
(VOT for short)which is the length of time from when the consonant is released, and when voicing
begins. Generally, voiceless consonants have voicing begin after the release of the consonant (ie going
into the sound that follows), while voiced consonants have voicing begin on the release of the
consonant, or slightly before the release. Theres a lot of room for variation, and different languages
have different expectations. This is important because well need to be able to do different versions for

different accents. Aspirated voiceless consonants have the greatest delay between the release of the
consonant and voicing.
To learn how to appreciate this difference, were going to compare /d/ with /t/ and / / with /k/, working
our way through a variety of VOT possibilities, and learning the IPA symbols for these variations as we
go. Well start with the most voiced sounds, and work our way toward the most voiceless sounds.
1. Say dee [di] but stick on the voicing of the /d/ so that you make the place of the sound /d/
release the consonant only after youve made the sound for as long as possible. Im going to
transcribe this in IPA with a length mark, that looks like a colon made out of little trianles, on
the /d/ to indicate the length on the voicing: [di]. Repeat that at least 3 times: [di di di]
2. Now, do a dee with more voicing time than usual, but less than you just did. Ill use a halflong diacrictic to indicate this articulation: [di]. Again, repeast 3 times: [di di di]
3. Next, say dee with the usual amount of voicing for English: that is, with the voicing
beginning just as consonant releases. Ill just use a plain ol [d] for this, no diacritics at all: [di].
Repeat 3 times: [di di di]
You should know that initial /d/ in English is essentially the same as an unaspirated /t/ in many
languages.
4. Were now moving into the territory of voiceless consonants, so well use /t/ from here on out.
First well do a /t/ that has no aspiration, and essentially perhaps a slightly longer VOT than we
just did. Well just use a plain [t] for this, too. [ti]. Repeat that at least 3 times: [ti ti ti]
Without aspiration, this will sound a lot like an initial /d/ in English.
5. Now, lets add a little bit of aspiration. The diacritic mark in the IPA for aspiration is a tiny
superscript "h" that follows the symbol: [t]. Think of that little "h" representing the puff of air
escaping. Try it with [ti]. Now try it 3 times in a row: [ti ti ti]
6. To do more excessive aspiration, we want to draw out the puff of air, which well indicate with
several "h" diacritics. Be extravagant with this sound: [ti]. Now repeat 3 times: [ti ti
ti]

If we put all 6 steps together into a sequence from most voiced to most aspirated, this is what we get:

[di di di ti ti ti]

I find that Im inclined to get quieter in the middle, as I negotiate my way around the shift from /d/
into /t/.

Now we want to try the whole shebang again, but this time with / / and /k/. Im going to recommend
that you not say gee the way you normally do /di/ with a "soft G", but with a "hard G", which is the
sound of // [i], and then that you not say "K" the way we do in English, but as key, [ki], to rhyme
with [i].

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Lots of Pre-voicing: [i i i]
Some Pre-voicing: [i i i]
Voice on the Release: [i i i]
No Aspiration: [ki ki ki]
Some Aspiration: [ki ki ki]
Lots of Aspiration: [ki ki ki]

Finally, we want to string the 6 versions of velar stop-plosives into a single sequence:

[i i i ki ki ki]

Can you do this sequence with the bilabial stop-plosives, /b/ and /p/?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Lots of Pre-voicing: [bi bi bi]

Some Pre-voicing: [bi bi bi]
Voice on the Release: [bi bi bi]
No Aspiration: [pi pi pi]
Some Aspiration: [pi pi pi]
Lots of Aspiration: [pi pi pi]

And the string of bilabials:

[bi bi bi pi pi pi]

Having a sense of the variations if these beginnings can really help you to make subtle yet important
shifts between various accents and dialecs.

Try this tongue twister, focusing on the /t/, first with a lot of aspiration [t ]. (If youre a mainstream
North American, dont worry about the second /t/ in "totally".)
Two toads, totally tired.

If youve read many of the posts here on the site, youll know that Ill recommend that you try the
tongue twister now with less aspiration than normal, then with no aspiration, so its almost "Do dodes,
dodally dired". This very dry /t/ sound creates a very different sort of beginning than what you may be
useful, and that works for dialects and also for mic technique, as we dont want a lot of aspiration on
the mic.
Now for a /k/ sound. This tongue twister involves /k/ and /b/ focus on the former, and let the latter
take care of itself:
Pretty Kitty Creighton had a cotton batten cat.
The cotton batten cat was bitten by a rat.
The kitten that was bitten had a button for an eye,
And biting off the button made the cotton batten fly.
Start by making the very aspirated /k/ , then try the other versions, too: less aspirated and
unaspirated. Now try doing the same tongue twister but this time focusing on the /b/ sound, trying to
enhance its voicing: linger on the "b" this will slow things down, but emphasize the words.
Finally try the tongue twister, playing the intervocalic /t/ that is, the ones between vowels, as is Pretty
Kitty. (Note that many dialects would not aspirate the /t/ in words like "cotton batten", because it would
go into the /n/, either with a nasal plosion or with a glottal co-articulation. Put altogether, these changes
will emphasize the articulation of the beginnings of most of the syllables in the text. This might be
appropriate for an outdoor performance, or perhaps as a character of an actor, "playing" their
articulation.