0255 – Intonation Definitions - (Get A Better Broadcast, Podcast and Voice-Over Voice) Podcast Details

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2021.09.12-0255 – Intonation Definitions

Intonation – is the subtle combination of tone, pitch and volume that you give to individual words or phrases as part of your overall musicality of inflection – and that’s the point of this chapter.

Therefore, I will refer to intonation rather than inflection as the way to read conversationally and with meaning.

I shall be careful not to use ‘stress’ as the word can also be used to mean ‘physical or mental stress’ (causing tension in the body and leading to a change of voice).

I dislike using ‘emphasis’ too much as I feel that this often gives the impression that a word needs to be ‘punched’ with increased energy and associated volume, where invariably to add significance to a word or phrase it simply needs to be slightly ‘lifted’ or ‘lowered’ in pitch, perhaps depending on whether it’s a question or a statement.

Additionally, we have seen already that ‘pitch’ and ‘tone’ are different things. ‘Pitch’ is the register of the voice (simply put, ‘high’ or ‘low’). I use ‘tone’ for the overall sound that a story or script may be read in (‘concerned’, ‘serious’, ‘light-hearted’).

Similarly, there is a subtle difference between ‘volume’ and ‘projection’, where the former is a basic increase in loudness or noise along the path to shouting (or ‘raising one’s voice’) and the latter is a more nuanced way of ‘throwing one’s voice’ when speaking on mic in a studio to ‘reach out’ to those who you cannot see. Projection is a close-cousin of lifting and emphasising a word.

Of course, all of these elements are interrelated: intonation itself may involve a subtle nuanced combination of tone (as its name might suggest: in-tone-ation), volume, pitch and ‘punch’.

Through these around-5-minute episodes, you can build your

confidence and competence with advice on breathing and reading, inflection and

projection, the roles played by better scripting and better sitting, mic

techniques and voice care tips... with exercises and anecdotes from a career

spent in TV and radio studios. If you're wondering about how to start a

podcast, or have had one for a while - download every episode!

And as themes develop over the weeks (that is, they are not

random topics day-by-day), this is a free, course to help you GET A BETTER

BROADCAST, PODCAST AND VIDEO VOICE.

Look out for more details of the book during 2021.

Contacts: https://linktr.ee/Peter_Stewart

Peter has been around voice and audio all his working life and

has trained hundreds of broadcasters in all styles of radio from pop music

stations such as Capital FM and BBC Radio 1 to Heart FM, the classical music

station BBC Radio 3 and regional BBC stations. He’s trained news presenters on

regional TV, the BBC News Channel and on flagship programmes such as the BBC’s

Panorama. Other trainees have been music presenters, breakfast show hosts,

travel news presenters and voice-over artists.

He has written a number of books on audio and video presentation

and production (“Essential Radio Journalism”, “JournoLists”, two editions of

“Essential Radio Skills” and three editions of “Broadcast Journalism”) and has

written on voice and presentation skills in the BBC’s in-house newspaper

“Ariel”.

Peter has presented hundreds of radio shows (you may have heard

him on BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 4, Virgin Radio or Kiss, as well as BBC regional

radio) with formats as diverse as music-presentation, interview shows,

‘special’ programmes for elections and budgets, live outside broadcasts and

commentaries and even the occasional sports, gardening and dedication

programmes. He has read several thousand news bulletins, and hosted nearly

2,000 podcast episodes, and is a vocal image consultant advising in all aspects

of voice and speech training for presenters on radio and TV, podcasts and

YouTube, voiceovers and videocalls.

The podcast title refers to those who may wish to change their

speaking voice in some way. It is not a suggestion that anyone should, or be

pressured into needing to. We love accents and dialects, and are well aware

that how we speak changes over time. The key is: is your voice successfully

communicating your message, so it is being understood (and potentially being

acted upon) by your target audience?

This podcast is London-based and examples are spoken in the RP

(Received Pronunciation) / standard-English / BBC English pronunciation,

although invariably applicable to other languages, accents and dialects.

Music credits:

"Bleeping Demo" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License