Breathing Techniques Flashcards
What is the generic INTRO for breathing techniques?
In order to act well we have to warm up well and this is achieved by having a clear understanding of what breathing techniques are and how we use our articulation and resonators.
What is sound, the pharynx and the mouth?
Sound is produced when air travels through the vocal chords causing them to vibrate and create sound waves in the pharynx, nose and mouth. The pharynx can change its shape and size, which affects the quality of the sound produced. It increases in size during a yawn and decreases in size during a yawn and decreases in size when the throat or neck are tense. The mouth is very important as it allows how much sound is coming out. The lower jaw forms the floor of the oral resonator and is attached to the facial bones by hinge joints. The jaw can manipulate the sound that comes out and change the tone ever so slightly as it can change the pitch and volume.
What is clavicular breathing?
Clavicular breathing relies on the muscles of the shoulders, chest, upper back, and neck to life the rib cage and chest for each inhalation. This causes upper chest and lungs to expand, resulting in inhalation. It is more spontaneous than relaxed breathing.
What is diaphragmatic breathing?
Diaphragmatic breathing is where you fully engage the stomach, abdominal muscles, and diaphragm when breathing. This means actively pulling the diaphragm down with each inward breath.
What is the Alexander technique?
I did a few breathing techniques, for example, I pretended to blow out all the candles on an imaginary birthday cake making sure I was completely breathless. I have to control my breathing and the way I did this, in the workshop, was by using the Alexander technique. The Alexander technique was developed by Australian actor Frederick Alexander to improve voice and poise. This is where you lay on the floor and put one hand on the ribs with the other on your side. You rest your head on a small stack of books and you do it to elongate your back and release tension. You do this for 10-15 minutes or longer depending how long it takes to completely release all tension from the body. It relaxes the body, and reduces effort levels and from my personal experience I felt a lot of stress leave my body as I became focused on my body.
What are nasal resonators for?
There are two types of nasal resonance and I will be utilising both in both my pieces, especially the Shakespearean piece which needs Received Pronunciation:
- When the vibrating column of air passes directly through the open soft palate to the nasal cavity. In English, this only happens in 3 sounds - ‘m’, ‘n’, and ‘ng’.
- When the vibrating column of air does not pass directly into the nasal cavity, but instead pitches onto the hard palate just behind the upper teeth, and the sound vibrations are carried through the bones of the hard palate to the nasal cavities. This type of nasal resonance can be heard in vowel sounds.
Specific
The mouth and pharynx are especially important as Iago speaks in Received Pronunciation and he must be clear in general, but particularly here because he is giving instructions to Rodrigo. He must seem genuine even though he doesn’t care much about Rodrigo’s need. In order to keep this false concern at the start I must use diaphragmatic breathing so I maintain my ability to convince and control the situation by creating a cavity that is filled with air. This gives me the ability to talk in long sentences and emphasise the right words especially since Rodrigo is hanging onto my every word. During casualty the character is asking a series of questions and is progressively getting more and more impatient. Because of the nature of the scene, the breathing can be difficult. I have to fully utilise both clavicular breathing and diaphragmatic breathing to convey the right sound, tone and pitch. I need to use clavicular breathing because there are phrases that Peter jumps on to question Emma further and allow for more of an answer. I also used clavicular breathing during a diaphragmatic-heavy part of the scene during the monologue section. The primary breathing here is diaphragmatic as I need to be clear because I need to get through to Emma, but because it’s very emotional for Peter, the quality of the sound is reduced as the neck and throat area need to be tense in order to convey this because he is essentially talking about his suffering, something he definitely doesn’t do often. To achieve clavicular breathing I inhaled fully expanding the rib cage. When the ribs were fully expanded, I inhaled a little bit more until expansion was felt in the upper portion of the lungs around the base of the neck. The shoulders and collar bone should also move up slightly. I then exhaled slowly, first releasing the lower neck and upper chest, then relaxing the rest of the rib cage back to its starting position. There’s a lot of pauses between phrases and moments of thinking. There are lots of rhetorical questions and he is clearly quite riled up and so to capture this I have to make sure that the pitch and tone are clear because I need her to understand my frustration and realise what she’s doing.
At the beginning in Othello, Iago’s tone is demanding and reassuring. His pitch is edging on loud and is frustrated in tone, because Rodrigo’s claims are behind ridiculous. He is collected with his words but needs Rodrigo to listen to him. His pitch turns from loud to almost whispery as he is giving Rodrigo the details of his ‘plan’. However, the pitch must remain clear because he doesn’t want Rodrigo to get confused and he’s talking in RP. The tone will quickly become ‘friendly’ as he knows Rodrigo is hanging onto every word he says. To achieve all this I need to be aware of the movement of my ribs being pulled outwards and upwards by the intercostal muscles, which is then followed by the movement of the diaphragm going down which subsequently will make the upper middle part of the abdomen swell. This, again, creates a cavity filled with air.
