Saturday, December 04, 2004

Voice & Speech Class Overview

Last Monday night was my last Voice & Speech class but now is when I have time to write about it. The class turned out to be slightly different than I had imagined, but I was very happy with it overall. Prof. Sussel (visiting from U.C. Berkeley) was a lot of fun. I think I have a somewhat better understanding of how the voice works now, and I listen to speech and song entirely differently, which is fun. I've also notice that I can speak or sing for a long time and have it be a lot easier on my throat than it used to be.

I would have liked to learn more about the International Phonetic Alphabet and how to use it for things like learning different dialects, since that seemed really interesting. Our professor does a lot of that kind of work with actors, but this class was more oriented towards "speaking as yourself" the best you can. We also didn't specifically address singing at all, so I didn't get any clever tips on how to be more of a bass. (And there certainly wasn't any throat-singing, but I didn't expect that. :-) Still, everything we did was really good and useful, though I wish I hadn't been so busy the last month so I could have practiced my presentations more.

Anyway, I was quite pleased with the class, so I'm glad I put myself on the wait list back in September and lucked into it. The Continuing Studies Catalog for next quarter just arrived the other day, so I get to look through it sometime soon to pick what I want to take next.

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