Loud and Clear

John Gill offers some help with voice production

“Could you find someone to help my new curate with his voice production?” asked the Vicar, addressing the secretary of the local Amateur Repertory Society. She remembered a retired member who had been persistently aggravating the current committee with complaints about the lack of audibility from young performers in recent plays – and passed the message on to me.

To reinforce our practice sessions, I gave Mark a single sheet of written advice, which has since been shared with preachers in our circuit. It may be helpful to others, so here it is:

Aim (Romans 10:17)
Consequently faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.

You have received the call of God to serve the church in the ministry of the Word. The Word is to be spoken by you, and if faith is to come, it will come, as Paul writes, through hearing the message. It is therefore of the utmost importance that as leader of liturgy and as preacher you are heard. The word is not to be whispered or murmured but to be proclaimed!

Breathing     
The breath in the lungs as well as the wind of the Holy Spirit is needed to carry the word to the worshipper at the back of the church. Deep breathing exercises in the study and perhaps in the vestry will both steady the nerves and prepare the body for the needed projection of voice.

The lungs need to be filled from the very bottom to the top.

Exercise: put both hands on your hips with the thumbs above the hip bone and the fingers as far across the abdomen as they will go (to the epigastrum). Breathe in deeply starting with the diaphragm and filling the lungs progressively upwards until you are conscious that they are pressing on the collar bones. Breathe out steadily, again starting by compressing the abdomen and continuing until your shoulders fall slightly. Continue this exercise daily for five minutes (while meditating?)

Lip Mobility    
Some of your congregation will be deaf and may be lip-readers. All will benefit from consonants clearly expressed. Practise five minutes daily mouthing sentences while using exaggerated lip and tongue movement and emphasising the sharp edges of the voice. Do not be woolly in your sound.

The following exercise was a favourite with my drama coach:
Who’s to know small frogs creep up where landsmen wade in reeds?

Projection
We all hear too much TV drama nowadays, where people speak to each other conversationally, that is with little attempt to project the sound into the distance or to adopt the pace necessary for the many to hear and comprehend. If you remember the mannered dramatic style of stage drama in the past, you will recollect that it was spoken with emphasis, an ear for audibility and slowly. You would not do so in a drawing room unless you spoke with malice or to the deaf, but in a large room or to a large number of people it is absolutely necessary. The provision of a microphone may enable you to reduce the volume used, though this is only true of a mike that has a big range, some only receive from a short distance. So with a microphone it is still necessary to project with emphasis, keep up the volume, and to adopt a measured pace.

Never be boring    
To hold the attention of your hearers, you must adopt a variety of tone, pitch and pace. There should be some flexibility about your measured tones, as appropriate to the importance of the matter to your main sermon or liturgical structure. Pay special attention to your consonants. Avoid monotony, and abjure for ever a traditional holy voice!

Never drop off the end of your sentences    
How often does one miss the punch line of a joke because the teller loses it in a guffaw, or drops the vocal level on the last word? So always keep some breath for the last words and raise the pitch or keep it on the level. This is something worth practising with a tape recorder. It does not only apply to sermons. I have heard preachers who were delightfully audible in the sermon and then adopted an altogether quieter level and almost silent endings to the sentences of the prayers. Let us be able to say AMEN to petitions we have heard right through.

My own early experience of voice production started with the ordeal of weekly verse repetition at preparatory school, followed by amateur theatricals at grammar school and university. But it was when I had been selected for the Colonial Service and posted to Nigeria as a civil engineer that I was really thrown in at the deep end. Not two months after arriving in Lagos and taking up again my accustomed task of leading the Young People’s section of a Methodist Sunday School, the MMS Committee Representative pressed me in 1952 into writing and broadcasting evening services over Nigerian National Radio. A baptism of fire, indeed, which led logically into joining a training class for Local Preaching and serving on the preaching strength of seven circuits since. I am to receive my 50-year certificate this year.

John Gill is a Local Preacher from the Newcastle West Circuit