0255 – Intonation Definitions

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’. Audio recording script and show notes (c) 2021 Peter Stewart 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 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/7012-bleeping-demo License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license "Beauty Flow" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5025-beauty-flow License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license "Envision" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4706-envision License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license "Limit 70" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5710-limit-70 License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license "Rising Tide" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5027-rising-tide License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license "Wholesome" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5050-wholesome License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license