The Women AKA Fast-talkers

Greetings.

We've started watching the movie "The Women" [the 1939 version]. It's freaking awesome. I mean, I liked black and white movies. But now I absolutely love this!! We have to write a three page analysis on a specific character's voice. I thought it would be simple. But boy did I have another thing coming.

See:

 Just listen to them babble! They talk so darned fast it's a wonder their speeds didn't pitch like a high frequecy and ruin the film camera. Like old hens! And most of them aren't that old! Sigh. Good thing this plot is so enticing and interesting or else my  brain would be fried. Wish me luck. I got the dvd recently I'm goingt to finish watching on my own at home tonight.

Cherrio, dahhling. ;)

Wednesday 9/19/12

Greetings.

These are the notes taken today with my wonderful awesome app called Handrite. It's pretty cool. I can write with my finger and take notes just as fast as she's talking. And we save the trees!! Woot! Win-win. :D

Accents, Mate

Greetin's.

That's a bad typing example of my poor British accent. ;) It sounds much better than it looks I swear. And it's so darn fun to do.



Today, a few classmates and I started goofing off with different Brittish accents and we found out some pretty cool things. First off, we didn't know how we sounded. We must have sounded funny because we made Sally laugh a few times. She proceeded to tell us that if we did go to the UK and decided to try and speak [the way we'd spoken today] people there probably would ask:

"Where exactly are you from?" with a skeptical expression on their face.



Are you sure yoor from round 'ere?


And beacuse we'd never actually been to the UK [Sally has and her husband is from Wales!] we'd not have a clue as to how to answer. But it's the same thing here in America funnily. We could just as easily tell if someone were not originally from the States.

She eventually found a way to tie it into our having to learn IPA. Because she's rather brilliant. You see, IPA is all about sound, not spelling, so it can help with pronunciation of accents as well as names and foreign words. It's bloody brilliant if you ask me!

These are the IPA notes from the second half of class. :D

Toodles.

Wednesday Class

Greetings!

Guess what?

We made it to four repititions of Sun Salutation!!

(Which actually means eight...)

Well, beacuse like balance and equalization in Yoga, we do left and right which is [one] salutation. Lovely isn't it? Once we stopped struggling to meet every pose and took mind not to contort our face in pain or displeasure at downward facing dog, we got better at them. We seemed to achieve a sort of flow from one post another. Each of us understood what positions our bodies needed to linger on, what stretches we needed to deepen [or which ones Sally would want us to deepe]. And it all became very fluid. I enjoyed reaching that equillibrium. It made me feel accomplished.

Toward the second half of the class, it truly did affect the way I spoke. We did some more work with the cork. Some peple forgot theirs and had to borrow. Poor souls. :P Anyway. Having been fully physically and mentally calmed and relaxed, everything was easier to do. I know I keep saying the same things, but they bear repetition. The stretching works!!




Don't hurt your eyes there.... lol


Ciao!

First IPA Lesson

Greetings.

Today I was really looking forward to the yoga part because I seriously needed to relax.

However, our lovely instructor had other things in mind. ;)

We started in on the basics of IPA. For those of you who don't know what that is, refer to back to this post: http://voiceandarticulation.blogspot.com/2012/08/yog.html .

So here are the notes from that session (which turned out to be less scary than I thought, and overall interesting) :)

So, as you can see, we've only scratched the surface. I'm actually really excited to find a way that will enable me to pronouce (properly) words and phrases from all over. Not just English. We didn't go into the advanced stuff yet, beacuse she didn't want to blow our heads off. :P

Expect to see some notes on dipthongs and such though, pretty soon.

After a session of IPA tutorial, we got into my favorite part: the yoga and breathing exercises.

New Favorite/Most difficult Exercise:

1. Lying flat on back
2. Hoisting legs up into air over your head
3. Possibly until feet touch ground above your head
4. Breathing into back and sides
5. Trying not to crush your neck and head with your enormous lower half...

And I'll close on that note.

Words to Contemplate:

Dipthong

Ampersand

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Greetings.

On a personal note: I really need to start taking notes in class so I can remember all of the awesome points I want to bring to my posts here. Ugh. That would seriously help.

Anyway.

Last Thursday, we did most of our basic warm-up work which included, but was not entirely limited to:

1. Sun Salutations
2. Warrior's Pose (one of my faves)
3. Breath work

• Timing the intake and release of breath
• Ululating (yes like a native)

    4.   Meditation

After we were completely and totally zen, we were instructed to choose three triggers that would, no matter what the circumstance, return us to this present state. They could be sights, sounds, smells, feelings, or people.

I'll tell you one of my three: Rolling in freshly washed white linens, straight out the dryer with  lavender dryer sheets!  ^_^ Heavenly.

The other two are private. >_>

Anywhoose.

The next thing we did was to stand slowly and try to recite a segment of a famous sililoquy from Macbeth by Shakespeare.





 Spoken by Macbeth after he has lost his wife.


"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
creeps in the petty pace
from day to day
to the last syllable of recorded time..."

Gloomy, eh?

Well. We had to recite that under different breathing patterns and see the results. One thing I noted with this particular exercise was that saying the lines became easier when you spaced the breaths closer, rather than father away. For instance:

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow (breathe)
creeps in the petty pace
from day to day (breathe)
to the last syllable of recorded time..."

Was easier than, say:

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

creeps in the petty pace

from day to day (breathe)

to the last syllable of recorded time..." (breathe)

Get it?

Then we broke off into groups of two (or three in my case) and said the lines to each other with feeling. The main point of this exercise was to find the "yips" in each other.

Yip: a tick, or nervous jump which moves about the body once it's been pinpointed, due to an actor trying to feel  the lines.

 (Correct me through comments if you have a better definition).

Some people flicked their middle finger against their thighs, others blinked excessively, still other tapped their toes incessantly. It varied, and then miraculously it changed once we identified it. It was the darndst thing. But it also showed us how we expend some of that valuable energy that we need to harness for our performance. If we could isolate and completely vanish that yip , we could use that energy to better portray our character...

But yeah. That's just words. Let's see if I can do all this in class huh...? :D

Words to Ponder:

carmel vs. caramel....

hey did I already say this???

Toodles!