Speech for Actors
By Lari Williams
Published: September 23, 2005
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The Nigerian Home Video Industry has offered a lot of stories covering various emotions, but the rate of sales has not gone beyond our shores or at most has ventured among our small communities in London and New York. None has sold a million copies yet we have produced so many 'films' telling so many stories.

Our films should exhibit our fashion, propagate our culture and inform the rest of the world about us. Well, with the number of Home Video Cassettes churned out we must have made enough attempts in the direction. Money can only be made if our viewing circles get wider and a lot more cassettes are sold.

What stops the sales growing wider, and the films getting popular? Communication. It is widely believed that our speech on screen is poor and cannot therefore attract enough audience. We therefore call on producers of Home Videos to pay more attention to diction and speech in general so we can reach a wider audience.

Today, we will endeavour to discuss an aspect of speech that needs to be attended to by our actors. To avoid monotony we need to 'Modulate' and 'pitch' as an element of variety in speech.

Modulation means the musical and variable qualities of the speaking voice, which includes pitch, pace, inflection, volume and intensity, with the use of pausing.

A well modulated voice will always score over a monotonous one and the speaker who varies his delivery must stand a much greater chance of getting a sympathetic hearing. Of course, the mood and style of what is being said will serve to indicate how it should be correctly modulated.

Pitch as an Element of Variety in speech

A ranging speech pitch, carrying words now high, now low, is an admirable attention-getter. In addition, it makes meanings clear. The statement "I shall go," pronounced with a positive downward inflection, is a clear statement of intention. Pronounced with a high-pitched shall, it declares action in the face of opposition. Pronounced with a high-pitched shall, it implies that I, not someone else, shall go. Pitch-change also carries with it strong overtones of emotion, high pitch suggesting rage or fear, low pitch calmness and confidence. As an actor, you should employ a great range of speaking pitch, from high to low, through as much as two octaves, to meet the varying needs of a scene.

Your voice at present may possess only a very narrow range of speech pitch, corresponding to perhaps eight or ten successive tones in the musical scale. Before attempting to increase this range, you must, understand the physiological basis of pitch change in speech. Next, you must develop sensitivity to the rise and 'fall of speech pitch in the voices of others. Then you should undertake the exercises for developing pitch range in this chapter. Finally, you should make a conscious effort to speak in ordinary conversation as well as in public with an expanded range of speech pitch, so that you may speak on the stage with the naturalness and vigor of vivid conversational inflections.

Change in speech pitch, like change in the pitch of a sung note, depends upon changes in the vocal cords, which cause tone when they vibrate. The mass and tension of the vocal cords may be varied by muscles which pull upon them when we want to change pitch. If the mass becomes greater and the tension less; the pitch given out by the vibrating cords, as from a loosened violin string, is lower. If the tension is increased, the tightened cords become thinner, losing mass per unit of length. The resulting pitch will be higher.

These changes are directed by the ear, which is a vital part of the singing and speaking mechanism. The muscle movements of pitch change are almost imperceptible kinaesthetically. They signify their occurrence 'through the ear; the singer hears the pitch of the note he sang returning to his own ears 'and recognizes it' as the one - he intended. Thus, as a child, you learned to match tones by listening to yourself through this built-in feedback system, comparing your own sung note with the note you were matching, correcting yourself as necessary. This sense of pitch discrimination develops earlier in life for some, later for others. Its development is too often hindered by singing teachers in elementary schools, who tell a child that he is a "listener," or a "monotone," meaning that he is tone-deaf. They may even request him not to sing with the others, thereby doing him a great wrong. The slow reader is not denied practice in reading because his reading readiness is behind that of his classmates. Likewise, the child slow to learn to carry a tune should be encouraged, not silenced. Pitch readiness, like reading readiness, almost always develops in the course of time if it is given a chance.

Singing tone and speech tone are alike in that the vowels and the continuant consonants of speech always occur momentarily in a certain musical pitch. They are different in two ways. First, the extreme brevity of speech sounds minimizes their musical quality; Second, they do not usually remain in one pitch but often slide up and down from it. Speech pitch 'is characterized by slides, whereas musical pitch moves in leaps are exact, in accordance with the fixed frequencies of the tones of the scale. Speech slides are free.

Any word may slide up or down on its vowel or continuant consonant, as in WE-Il!, or may even use a circumflex inflection, as in OoOOoh!.

The important fact is that the correspondence between speech pitch 'and musical pitch in a spoken vowel is normally of momentary duration. This duration may be lengthened when the speaker wishes. Intoning is an instance of lengthened duration of speech vowels, bringing -them close to sung vowels in quality.

The relationship of resonance to pitch must be briefly considered here. Certain vowels are not easy to utter in a high pitch because the frequency range of the mouth shape and pharynx-shape by which they are made may itself be low. This is the case especially with the vowe u. . In general, the round back vowels in ma, maw, mow, and moo, according to Alexander Wood in The' Physics of Music, - are made with mouth and pharynx shapes in which the lower - frequencies are more prominent. For each shorter vowel in the series- mat, met, maté, meet, two frequencies are prominent, one high and one low, Speech may, and sometimes does, force vowels out of their natural frequencies under stress of emotion: But the quality of the tone is likely to be impaired.

Keeping the vocal tract relaxed makes it possible, however, for you to maintain resonance under difficult conditions such as these. A steady, full breath stream likewise will improve your resonance at both higher and lower speech pitches. Each of the techniques of speech In fact, as you master it assists the other to function more perfectly.

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