I promise this will only take a minute:
Grab your iPhone, computer or any semi-decent recording device, head to a quiet corner, and record yourself saying the following words. Speak them as you normally would…just be sure to take your time and leave some space in between each of the words. (Read aloud the titles of each list too.)
Something — Some King — Something — Some King
Nothing — A Thing — Nothing — A Thing
Humming — It’s a Ming — Humming — It’s a Ming
Mooning — Mood Ring — Mooning — Mood Ring
Drawing– A Wing — Drawing– A Wing
Fleece — Fleas — Fleece — Fleas
decrease — decrees– decrease — decrees
faces — phases — faces — phases
peace — peas — peace — peas
Slaw — slot — Slavic
Walk — Wok — Wasabi
Sawed — Sod — Facade
Tall — Tom — Taco
Excellent! If you’ve recorded these, I invite you to read on. If you haven’t recorded these yet, then I invite you to stop reading now and do so. I know it’s hard to resist reading onward, but trust me, it’ll be worth it to wait until you’ve recorded the word lists.
(No peeking if you haven’t finished recording the lists…)
Once you’ve recorded these lists, the next step is to play the recordings you just made and listen for the specific sounds I suggest here:
For List One — Close your eyes and listen. Do all of the words that happen to be spelled with an -ing sound the same during the -ing part? Or for you is there a slight difference between the way you pronounced the ‘ing in ‘something‘ vs. the way you pronounced it in ‘some king‘? If so, what is that difference? How are you physically creating that sound difference? What is your tongue doing? Which part of your tongue is doing it? The front? Middle? Back? If you happened to pronounce all of these words using the same final sound, can you remember hearing someone else pronounce these word sets using two different pronunciations for the -ing parts? Can you smoothly copy that way of speaking? Make it your own? If you used two different sounds, what would it be like to apply one of those sounds to both words in each set? And then apply the other sound?
For List Two — Pay particular attention to the way you pronounced the final sounds of these words. Do all of the words on the list end with the same sound? Or is something else happening? Can you find a pattern? Does the first word in each pair end with an ‘s’ sort of sound, and the second word in each pair end with a ‘z’ sort of sound? If so, is the ‘z’ fully voiced and really buzzing or is it kind of a soft ‘z’ sound? What happens if you play around with the amount of voicing you give to the final s/z sound in ‘fleas’ ‘decrees’ ‘fazes’ and ‘peas’? How many subtle variations can you find in there?
For List Three — Closing your eyes may really help with this one– For this list, I want you to focus on listening carefully to the vowel sounds in each of the words. When you said ‘slaw’ did it have the exact same vowel sound as when you said ‘slot’? How about when you said ‘Slavic?’ Do all of these words contain the same vowel sound? Or for you are there 3 different vowel sounds in these sets? Are there two? Can you figure out how you are actually creating each of those sounds? During each of these vowel sounds, what is your tongue doing? Your jaw? Your lips? If you used more than one vowel sound for these words, see what happens if you try saying all of the words using only the vowel sound you used in ‘Slavic’ and ‘Facade.’
At this point I’m getting the feeling that you might want me to quit yakking and just get to the point and tell you which way is the ‘right’ way of speaking each of these word sets, so you can get to work ‘fixing’ any problems.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the desire. After all, most of us would like the security of being ‘right’–it feels good. Keep in mind though, that as an actor, it is more useful to you to adopt the mindset that there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way of speaking. Leave all general judgements aside. As an actor, how ‘best’ to speak a word will be entirely dependent on the project you are in and on the character you are playing. (Remember a while back I mentioned that good speech is simply speech that gets you what you want?)
Exercises such as the one above are not intended to endorse a particular way of speaking, but rather to sharpen your observational skills so that when you are called upon to speak in a manner other than your own, the path from where you are to where you want to be will be easy to see and enjoyable to traverse.
Questions? Send ’em in. I’m here to help!