How To Do Accents. Jan Haydn Rowles
not respond easily to direct instructions. They are programmed as ‘mimicry’ muscles, and from an early age we all use them to learn how to recreate the sounds we hear around us. Be bold: dive into copying the sounds in this section and wake up your basic childhood skills of mimicry. Do this consciously and notice the results you get. This will increase your skill at zoning. Notice how the voice feels in the mouth and where you feel it is focused. In order to focus your voice into the specific zone for your accent, it helps to have a good visual image of the inside of your mouth and to picture the different zones you are aiming for.
As you can see in the illustration below there are seven zones.
These zones are focused on the following areas:
When you focus your voice into each of these zones, the quality of the sound will change.
| ● | In order to isolate the effect of changing the zone, listen to the voice being focused into each of the seven zones. |
| ● | Then listen to Jan as she tunes in and finds different accents lurking in each zone. |
Notice the way we ‘tune in’ to the zone and then keep the voice in that zone, counting on one note. By staying on one note you can hear that it is the resonance that changes from zone to zone, and not the actual pitch of the voice.
Listen to us a few times and then have a go yourself.
Pick a comfortable note of your own to use and stick to it. You can reverse the order if you find it easier. Sometimes the zones at the back of the mouth are easier to feel, as the vibrations are creating stronger sensations.
You may find it hard not to change accent: each zone may bring a different accent to your mouth. That’s the power of zoning!
Visualise the zones inside your mouth as you speak with us. See your voice travelling and hitting a specific target point in each zone. Do this a few times to get a good sense of each zone. Remember you are flexing those mimicry muscles and using your mind’s eye! The more you do it, the better you’ll get.
Feel the vibrations hitting the target points in each zone.
| 7 | Nasal cavity: Aim the voice right down the nose, and only the nose, and feel it vibrating. |
| 6 | Naso-pharynx: Aim the voice behind the soft palate, keep those vibrations at the back of the nose, not down it. |
| 5 | Pharynx: Aim the voice to the back of the mouth in the space behind the tongue. (You may need to think of a yawn to create more space.) |
| 4 | Soft palate and Uvula: Aim the voice onto the soft palate and uvula. Feel this soft tissue vibrating. |
| 3 | Hard palate: Aim the voice straight up into the roof of the mouth. Feel the vibrations driving up onto the hard palate and through the bone. |
| 2 | Gum-ridge: Aim the voice forward onto the gum-ridge. Feel the full effect of the vibrations in this area. Vibrations also pass through the gum-ridge and upper lip and vibrate in the nostrils. |
| 1 | Teeth and lips: Aim the voice onto the teeth and lips and into the open space beyond! This time you may not feel the vibrations very strongly as you are aiming right through and out of the mouth with the voice touching nothing else on the way. |
Some of the zones may be easier for you to feel and hear than others. Keep working on seeing, hearing, and feeling them to really develop sensitivity and flexibility.
TOP TIP
As the voice moves in the mouth you may think it sounds higher at the front and lower at the back. Don’t be tempted to change the pitch: let the zone do the work!
THE TONE
The second essential element in building the foundations of an accent is the ability to identify and sustain its specific tone.
Ever stop talking and think you can still hear the sound of your voice? Or maybe someone else stopped talking and you could still hear the sound of their voice? Listen to a person speak for a while, don’t listen to the words, but just listen to the tone of their voice. You can hear a tonal drone that underpins the voice no matter where the music or pitch may travel. Think of the way bagpipes sound, with the constant drone underneath the complex melody: that’s the kind of thing we mean.
Every accent has a tone of its own, and when you listen to all the examples on the downloadable tracks you can hear how different tones can be. Just as with the zone, the tone is created by small changes in the shaping of the throat and mouth, tongue and soft palate. The effect can be to give a sound greater depth or make it more lightweight; it may seem ‘harsher’ or ‘softer’. Think of the twang of Tennessee or the soft airy sound of upper-class Georgia. Think about how the Queen sounds, or David Beckham. We might use words such as ‘thin’ or ‘tight’ to describe the Queen’s sound. We might use words such as ‘light’ and ‘sweet’ to describe David Beckham’s. We use words like this all the time to describe voices: brassy, throaty, nasal, plummy, hoarse, squeaky, boomy, whiney, etc… It is not the pronunciation of words we are describing here, but rather the tone of the voice, the quality of the sound – in fact the balance of the tonal frequencies.
| ● | Listen to these speakers. Listen not to what they say, but only to the tone of their voices, the noise their voices make. (You can hear us in the background making this clearer!) |
| Manchester Cockney Standard English | |
| ● | Listen to the way we identify and tune in to the tone of each, and then sustain that tone as we count to ten. |
Now get those mimicry muscles working. Have a go yourself. Match your tone to the tonal quality of the speakers.
Of course, the zone and the tone are intrinsically connected: you can’t get one without the other! Identify which zone you feel the tone vibrating in. Feel the tone resonating in that zone.
Visualise the tone resonating in the specific zone you have identified.
Have a go with our other sample speakers (TRACKS 84-100) in this way in order to really exercise your zoning and toning skills. Don’t try to be subtle. Really try to mimic what you hear. Be playful and have fun.
THE SETTING
By layering the tone and zone together you are creating anchors for the foundations of the accent in your mouth. In order to move through the zones and find new tones, you will have had to change the position or shape of your tongue, mouth, soft palate, lips and/or jaw. You were changing your Setting.
Take a look at the active articulators in ‘Knowing your equipment’ (page 202). They are the cheeks, the lips, the jaw, the tongue and the