Day 15: Articulation Exercises

Today I focused on working on Skinner's many exercises on articulation. The focus of this is repeating for clarity. You want to work for precision without tension. After you have worked through clarity, you should work on speed.

The exercises are as follows: "puh,puh,PAH" which is repeated with (B, T, D, K, and G). She then has you goes through quite a few tongue twisters, emphasizing different syllables. After that she has you work through some phrases -such as giggle gaggle and the famous red leather, yellow leather.

Reflection: Once again I was a little turned off by doing articulation work because I thought it was silly to do for stage management. However, I realize it is important to be able to articulate, especially while on headset. Board operators and ASM's need to be able to understand what I am saying over because if they cannot a cue may G-O early, which in some situations can be extremely dangerous. What was most unique for me was the idea of adding speed to articulation. Most of my previous work with articulation was focused on breaking down the words and going through things slowly. However, Skinner also had us repeat everything speedily as well. This was beneficial because once you can do it in a row fast you can do it any time.

Overall, I wish Skinner had more exercises in her book because I thoroughly enjoyed the exercises she did include. She did have a lot of information on the International Phonetic Alphabet and this is something I found little interest (or understanding) in.

I think Linklater was the technique I found most helpful because I was building off of information I spent all last semester studying. Next was Skinner because her work was so similar to Kristin Linklater's technique. Cicely Berry's technique was the least useful for me personally. However, I am looking forward to taking all of what I have learned and incorporating bits and pieces of each technique into my daily practice and training.