I'm done kvetching about Rodenburg. I
promise. I have finished reading her book and I will use the
exercises in “Part Two: Working with the Voice” to improve the
physicality and physiology of my storytelling. As is no doubt obvious
– to anyone who has read my previous posts – Part One has been an
area for growth for me.
I wanted to “end” my discussions of
Rodenburg by saying something nice about her writing. On page
forty-one, she relates the all-too familiar situation of people
saying they are “tone deaf.” As a former musician, married to a
middle school band director, this hits very close to home for me.
Rodenburg nails it! She writes: “Tone deafness is, in fact, very
rare . . . In talking to ear, nose and throat specialists and
physicians in general none has ever come across a clear condition
that one could radically term 'tone deafness'” (41).
That being said, there are a fair
number of storytellers out there singing who probably shouldn't be.
Think about how many hours we had to spend in our infancy learning to
use our voice. It took years and we didn't get it right for a long,
long time. The tonal voice is the same way. We can't just expect to
a) learn it on our own or b) do it well without practice.
Rather than a binary of singers and
non-singers we are again looking at a spectrum of varying degrees of
who has practiced and/or been taught. Thoughts?
-Bob
I agree with you---there is such a thing as tone deafness (ask any audiologist). And likewise, there is such a thing as a person not being able to "hit" the right notes musically because of the limitations of their own physiology.
ReplyDeleteAlso, on page 81, she addresses stuttering---and states that the "first step in the cure is to take the pressure off the child." Ask any speech pathologist about this---and they will disagree with her.
Joy