Voice Works: Enhancing Vocal Control, Communication & Care

This practical skills-based workshop aims to provide teachers, professionals and anyone else who would like to use their voice more effectively with the fundamentals of how the voice works, how to use it better and how to look after it. It will also benefit students whose career path requires confident vocal use.

One in three of the working population are considered professional voice users who need their voices to work effectively. Healthy, efficient and enduring vocal use is based on practical techniques that are common to both good speaking and singing.

Voice Works teaches the basics of vocal anatomy and function using spoken and pitched exercises. Topics include posture, breathing, phonation and pitch, resonance, articulation and vocal health. All the workshop material is based on current voice research. This group workshop is for anyone interested in improving vocal quality, vocal confidence and endurance, and overall vocal care.

What will be covered:

• Posture: Using elements from the somatic disciplines of the Alexander Technique, the Feldenkreis Method and Body Mapping explore how body balance and alignment can be achieved and its effect on the voice.

• Breathing: Projected and sustained speaking requires active breath use. Explore how the body and voice work most easily and efficiently through active recoil inhalation and active exhalation using elements from Accent Method Breathing.

• Phonation: Making sound and how the voice changes pitch is directly connected to body and breath use. Sounds made instinctively, like laughing and groaning, co-ordinate holistic vocal use and can lead to finding the most comfortable speaking pitch, more expressive intonation choices and the possibility of increased vocal range.

• Resonance: Exploring the many adjustments that are possible in the vocal tract and the techniques that enhance and maximise vocal projection and timbre.

• Articulation: Learning how and where vowels and consonants are shaped enables clearer, more precise and efficient diction and exploring how language and expressive communication is the end point of human sound.

• Vocal health: Looking at how to take care of the voice through a summary of healthy vocal use, personal health and voice care, to include physical and vocal warmups and general vocal hygiene.

Please note: Teachers may be able submit this course as NESA Elective PD. For more info please click here: https://www.educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/teacher-accreditation/professional-development/pd-requirements