|
Monday, May 13, 2002 Voices Reading aloud is a dual art: the voice and the words. For the voice, the speaker must get his intonation just right or everything will fall apart. The trick is to sound so effortless that the listener will stop listening to the speaker as an individual and start listening to the words. A special trick is involved in speaking the words. Enunciation and elocution. You want the words, not the tongue. The precise voice is that of the documentarian. It has none of the red-faced rhetoric of the impassioned public speaker. Instead, it is calm and almost emotionless. Accentless. And it flows through words like water through a seive. Some people are graced with sonorous voices that come from their throats (not their noses) and could make the telephone book sound like a recitation of the Illiad. So many other people have flawed voices. Some are intriguing. Some just sound like an imitation of scratching nails on chalkboards. Some people sound breathy as if they're imitating Marilyn Monroe or have just sprinted the 800 meters. Others have a rough edge to them, perhaps from smoking. And yet others for some reason sound like they've pinched their nose and turned up the pitch on a synthesizer. On long passages of prose, they trip over every four words or so. William Shatner on speed. But is there a perfect voice? I don't know. If it exists, I haven't heard it yet. Even if it does have the precision of a machine, it should never be heartless. The perfect voice, I would imagine, would have an emotional warmth to make it the aural equivalent of a Monet. Another online test: Goddess Archetype Quiz. (via Sasha) I am the Artemis archetype. Considering the mythology surrounding her, just tragic. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:56 PM : ]
Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post: |
