Throughout my work I refer a great deal to the 'natural' as opposed to the 'habitual'. The meanings are simple and clear enough.
The n a t u r a l voice and its potential are what we came into the world with at birth. It is our basic vocal equipment that matures and flourishes (barring sickness) as we age. Our first experience of natural voice was in that initial gasping primal scream, that first chance we were given to 'catch our breath'.
Life and our subsequent experiences should ideally enrich and broaden the natural voice, transforming it into a powerful instrument of self-expression.
But life batters and restricts us in such ways that most of us settle into what I term an h a b i t u a l voice: a voice encrusted with restrictive tendencies that only awareness and exercise can undo and counteract. The natural voice (or what others term a 'free' or 'centred' voice) is quite simply an unblocked voice that is unhampered by debilitating habits.
Habits physically manifest themselves as holds or barriers to the sounds we make. They take many forms and shapes.
We all have euphemistic sayings to describe this sensation:
'I had a lump in my throat', 'I was so petrified no sound came out' or 'I was lost for words'. Without habitual blocks, however, the natural voice rarely tires and is never damaged.
Remember my gospel-singing friend? I think the key to her success was freedom from the tyranny of habits. The rest of us are not so lucky.
Habits are also something you can hear or actually feel if
you know what to listen for and where to probe. As we move along we shall be troubleshooting the voice for habits so that you can detect them on your own. There is nothing mysterious about this process. In fact once found or recognised, a habit of a lifetime can sometimes be eradicated quickly. It can be that easy. In many instances, however, the roots of habits run deep.
Physical Interrelations
Where do habits often begin? In the body.
Any voice, in order to make and project the appropriate sounds, requires the full use of a set of interrelated physical acts. The very sound we make is a result of physical exertion:
sometimes it is as tender as in a barely voiced whisper, some-times as strenuous as an alarming shout for help. Any useless tension, anywhere in the body, can constrict the freedom of the voice. The way we stand or sit, for instance, the ways our heads, necks or spines are correctly or incorrectly aligned, the carriage of our shoulders, upper chest and torso, the habitual set of our mouth and jaw - all of these influence the balance and functioning of our voice. Any one of these can be the land-mine sitting in the path of the voice's free passage. Breath, vocal release, range, 'placing' (or vocal focusing), resonance and speech are equally interrelated. So when I speak of the voice I am really speaking of an entire physical network.
Everything is connected to everything else; everything works with everything else.
The voice is really like a physical jigsaw puzzle: any missing or damaged pieces leave gaps and make the picture incomplete.
Some pieces have more weight and importance than others but each part, no matter where it sits within the total scheme, is relevant and locks into the other. Locked knees, for example, prevent the voice from breaking free. A slumped spine or a ramrod one means the breath cannot pass easily up the
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body and work sufficiently to give the voice the ballast it so desperately needs for extended speaking.
The problems or weaknesses inherent in one part of the body are the source of what I call the 'physical domino effect'.
It works like this: a physical barrier to the breath means that the voice cannot be supported, which means it cannot be freed or placed, which means its range is cut down, the resonances halved, the jaw tightens, the speech slurs . . . and so on down the line of falling dominoes. There are many other examples of this same toppling physical pattern.
Part of the troubleshooting we do in voice work is to trace back along this line of falling pieces to isolate the habits that caused the fall initially. You cannot release the natural voice until you've singled out that one flaw, the personal physical trap that triggered the chain reaction. A n d we all have them to one degree or another. Each time we speak that trap may be preventing us from doing it with ease.
There are many misconceptions about what constitutes the 'natural' when it comes to those habits which afflict the voice.
Students stand slumped in front of me and say, 'Look, this is my natural way of standing.' It is not natural to slump. It is habitual. Or people might say, ' M y natural speaking voice hurts' or 'I naturally clench my jaw.' Both these are acquired physical habits. The body does not naturally hurt or clench itself. Other common complaints I hear from professional voice users are: 'It's natural for me to lose my voice after I sing'; 'I never breathe naturally when I go on-stage'; 'I am never heard at board meetings.' Again, all of these are habits we impose on ourselves. It is natural to make sound, to breathe and be clear in speech when we need to communicate. Only habits prevent us from taking any of these rights freely.
Most habits are not mortally wrong. I am not saying that slumping is wrong. It is only unwholesome when there is no other choice. So slump, through choice; mutter, through choice; be inaudible, through choice. By understanding and sensing the natural - being able to distinguish the way it feels
from the habitual - all physical choices should be available to us. A n d choice includes habits of all sorts. But take care when a habit leaves you with no choice whatsoever. Beware if it has started to control the way you speak.
Restrictive Habits
Our habits, when done without choice, cut us off from our potential voice and immediately restrict all other areas of our communication.
When someone starts voice lessons with me one of their first and most telling comments usually includes: ' M y voice doesn't reflect me, my thinking, feeling or imagination.' The speaker's creativity is restricted most often, it turns out, by a nagging habit. Their voice has inevitably become less flexible.
Natural personality has been masked by one or a series of alien habits. Gradually these habits, which we take to be natural, enslave us. We become restricted in what we can say and how we say it.
Have you ever noticed how people who speak inaudibly or with unusually low voices seem blankly inexpressive all over? Their eyes and faces are lacking in expression in direct proportion to their voices. Just a habit like the lack of vocal power and resonance, just not being heard, can make us seem practically invisible.
At their worst, habits can seriously damage a voice. Some habits like pushing the voice, for instance, put enormous pressure on the vocal cords. For some reason speakers will happily risk serious vocal damage long before they would hurt themselves in other ways physically. It happens time and again, especially to young and untrained singers. Surely no actor, if asked, would dive from a ladder head first onto a concrete floor! However they would freely push and strain their voices, risking permanent damage. To take another example, many a school teacher takes it for granted that their voice will hurt
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over the weekend after five solid days of teaching. There is no reason why it should. A habit is compounding the hurt day by day.
If your voice hurts your body is simply saying 'stop'. Pain is a warning. Observe the warning always. Stop and troubleshoot the problem. It is important to point out here that the full range of vocal qualities and tasks that a voice needs to do -like acting every night or teaching five days a week - can be performed safely with technique and training. In Part Two of this book I will go into all that in greater detail. Short cuts, however, can be dangerous and damaging.
The Birth of Habits
Just as we need reminding about how easy it is to damage the voice through thoughtless habits, we must also remind ourselves of the voice's natural resilience. Imagine a baby playfully cooing, laughing, crying and eventually screaming;
tiny vocal cords producing an enormous sound and never seeming to tire until they are out of breath from body fatigue.
Babies also display an extraordinary variety in vocal range, pitch and rhythm. Their breath is free and their body unheld.
No useless tensions are evident. The natural voice of birth is still theirs.
As life and its pressures infiltrate the infant and then the child, habits grow and take control. The natural voice begins to slip away and is only sometimes rediscovered and remembered in heightened moments - often either perilous or hilarious ones - when we really need emotional release or when our need to speak overrides our restrictions or self-consciousness.
I believe that everybody retains some memory of a free, natural voice. It usually releases when the defence system of our habits is momentarily dropped. Many people I work with bear witness to hearing a sound escaping from them, not feeling it contained or held within them: a cry for help, a really loud belly laugh or suddenly being powerfully articulate in a
critical argument. The sound we make in these instances is so clear and loud that only after a few seconds do we realise it is our very own voice!
Sudden Freedom of Heightened Moments
A common experience underscoring the free, clear voice in action is a heightened moment when clarity of communication is so vital that we actually reach out with our voices and words and bypass all restrictive habits. As a child starts to run out in front of a truck after a ball we don't mumble 'Be careful', we yell 'Stop!' The vocal release is free and clear. The words have to save a loved one or stop an object. We don't find ourselves in this kind of heightened situation often, but when we do the voice really does come into its own as an instrument of power and the body springs to its aid, helping it to manufacture the appropriate sound.
I will frequently refer to these heightened moments. I simply mean those times when we have a sudden need to communicate and find the best way to say it. We usually break all restrictive habits in order to arrive at this release.
Most of our daily speech transactions are either unnecessary or, more precisely, are only uttered to pass the time of day, done to accomplish some prosaic business or discuss trivia. We usually speak in diminished moments not heightened ones.
Often our words do not confront a situation directly. They either deflect it or circle around it. This evasion of the straight and narrow can often be vigorous, especially as our voice and speech habitually manufacture devious, entwining twists of phrase. Many of us take pride in our ability to be subtle and speak as if we are in a play by Harold Pinter. But more often this habit engenders a flabbiness in communication that comes from neither the desire, need, care nor passion to touch someone with words. Why bother to speak clearly if it does not really matter? But then try listening to a speaker who suddenly makes it matter; a great orator like the late Martin Luther
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K i n g , for instance. They are clear, defined and infused with energy. They hit points squarely on the head. They are also wholesomely direct. Their communication only deals with the essential. A l l the tangled bits have been straightened out. Well, I claim we can all capture this same heightened, declarative, verbal energy for ourselves.
I have worked with completely disconnected, incoherent speakers who suddenly come alive as they speak about a passionate hobby. Suddenly a heightened subject enthrals them. I recently had a meal in a London restaurant on a slow evening. The waiter was bored and uninterested, barely communicative. For some reason I commented on a nearby tank filled with tropical fish. The waiter came to life. He loved those fish and was responsible for them. He knew each of them and spoke with such precision and care about them. I found myself in the midst of an exciting and vigorous discussion - about fish. The man's voice became clear, focused and vital. A good note to any public speaker is always 'if it matters to you it will matter to us'. We all have the capacity to speak on the crest of heightened moments that rise above diminished ones.
The incident with the waiter and his fish might seem like a prosaic example. However when pain, loss, betrayal, love, joy or delight becomes so great to the point of bursting, we always break through to a heightened plateau of communication.
Suddenly we need a voice, we need a word and we find both.
We make contact. We can even surprise ourselves by our eloquence. Often, too, we find ourselves speaking a language we never usually experience. We leave the prosaic behind and will often become poetic. Speakers at weddings and funerals always captivate us in this way. None are usually professional speakers. The moment, however, imbues their voice with a compelling motive to be heard.
In these heightened moments, I will argue, people are at their most vocally clear and released. They are also at their most natural because they are most themselves. The
moment might not even be linked to a word or sentences but purely to a sound: a scream, a laugh, a wail, a groan, a whoop of delight. Those expressive sounds that signal an instant reaction to life and often result from pure heightened spontaneity.
I would also suggest that the great classical plays of all cultures that confront the universal issues of humankind are all exploring heightened moments. We have only to look at the plays of die Greeks to find example after example.
Shakespeare's writing could be described as life with all the boring bits cut out of it but all the thrilling bits left in. He might give us thirty seconds of normality in a character's life before plunging them and us into the terrible tests he imposes on them. Think of Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth or Othello:
all heightened plays full of heightened moments. Bearing this in mind it does seem stupid when actors try to impose their disconnected everyday reality and unfocused speech habits onto these heightened texts and then claim it is 'real' to mumble their way through K i n g L e a r . The heightened need to speak gives us the heightened right to speak. One without the other leaves the whole enterprise sorely out of joint.
Natural Release
We have to learn to release sound naturally in order to release ourselves. Then all that energy will flow into a word, a sentence and a need to reach out to the world, purely through a combination of sound and language.
I often speak about drunkenness when I do voice work.
Many people experience a free vocal position when their social and behavioural barriers have been dulled by drink.
They are also most physically relaxed. Suddenly someone who wouldn't dare sing sober, releases their voice completely as they become intoxicated. I am not advocating drink or alcoholism as an aid in vocal performance but the 'memory'
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of intoxication will often help liberate a voice from sobering habits.
In the West we Uve in such vocally and orally suppressed societies that the sudden experience of vocal freedom can severely shock anyone trying it out for the first time. By touching off our vocal power we begin to sense all sorts of other powers. Our society simply does not encourage us to be vocally free or expressive. You have to go to other areas of the world like the Mediterranean, Africa, the Orient or the Caribbean to experience genuine vocal freedom in action. Such a riot of sounds will often josde most Westeners.
Many of us have been taught not to feel easy about express-ing words and sounds openly. Our society likes to control the volume and keep us vocal hostages; it doesn't want to hear the thoughts and opinions of certain groups like children, women and minorities. Too often we only like to hear the voices of so-called 'first class citizens', well-bred and well-toned.
Ironically, it is usually the 'other' classes of citizens whose voices still retain the habits of natural release.
The natural voice is lost to too many of us as different fac-tors, oppressions and influences - often of the most mundane sorts, like conformity - erode our self-confidence. We first learn to shut down and then begin to shut up. Some of these factors are profound, others are banal. From class to fashion, environment, family, religion, peer pressure, sexual dilemmas, our work places, the state of our bodies, geography, dentistry, physical injury . . . well, you see how the list could go on and on. I will explore the purely physical factors later on. Suffice it to say that all of these pernicious influences, plus the ones I have yet to name, chip away at our natural voice and obstruct it with habits.
It is very useful to understand some of the ultimate causes of any debilitating or even mildly irritating habit, but often just releasing the physical tension that has found its way into the voice by whatever means will be sufficient. Perhaps we should not always have to talk about the source, but just
work the tension out! Just relaxing and taking your time, for instance, or just saying one word at a time are wonderful ways to start experiencing the right to speak.
Many voice teachers agree that our habits, the ones that directly affect the voice, take hold of us between the age of eight and our early teens. I don't have a hard and fast opinion about this because I have seen habits begin to influence the adult voice where there were none before or completely new habits appear. Divorce or the loss of a job, for instance, or the set-back in one's career that ignites a mid-life crisis can all lead to habits that suddenly smother the voice or compress speech.
A blow to our self-esteem or just an embarrassing moment can equally do the trick.
A blow to our self-esteem or just an embarrassing moment can equally do the trick.