Learning to use Orchestral Speech While Reading Aloud

The easiest way to get to grips with using it is to start to employ it while reading aloud.

Remember, the essential point of Orchestral Speech is that it forces you to give a higher priority to maintaining the forward flow of your speech than to its accuracy. To get you into the swing of this, we have created some texts to read aloud that have a forward-moving bold font to prompt you to keep moving forward. You can download these and play them on your computer. Your task, when reading these texts, is to make sure you keep up with the word that currently has a bold font, as it moves across the page.

For each of these reading passages, we have provided a demonstration video, and then there are slow, medium, and fast versions that you can try out. The faster you go, the more errors you will make. So, the faster versions give you plenty of opportunity to practice ignoring your errors!

Practice these exercises alone to begin with. But once you get the hang of them, you should try reading them to someone else (Click on the “reading to others” tab for tips on how to read to other people using Orchestral speech).

Don’t worry when you say some of the words wrongly. The point of this exercise is to enable you to feel comfortable with whatever unintended or wrong sounds come out of your mouth.  If you find yourself stammering a lot when doing these exercises, try silently mouthing or whispering your way through them a few times first. Most importantly, don’t slow down! Remember, you’re teaching yourself to keep going, no matter what… just like a player in an orchestra. It’s alright to make mistakes.

Keep going over these exercises until you no longer feel disturbed by the speech errors you make while reading and are no longer afraid that you might stammer while reading.

Also, for further detailed clarification of how to use Orchestral Speech read through the items in the Questions and Answers tab.

Practical exercise 1

In the first exercise the bold font moves forward at a rate of one or two words per beat (depending on the length of each word). This exercise is the most restrictive of the three and results in speech that sounds quite artificial. But it is a good way of getting you started off and getting you into the habit of continuing to move forward.

Here are the important points to remember while you read this first text…

• The key thing is to read the words that are highlightedwhile they are highlighted.
• Don’t allow yourself to fall behind the highlighted word(s)
• Don’t allow yourself to rush ahead of the highlighted word(s).
• Don’t worry if some words come out wrong, or if you have to miss a word or two to keep up.
• If you find yourself getting stuck on a word, just abandon it and carry on with the next word (or with whichever word is currently highlighted by the bold font.
• Speak very gently, using minimum effort
• If you find yourself blocking a lot, try silently mouthing and then whispering the exercises the first few times. Don’t slow down.
• Start with the slowest text, and then try the faster speeds. Allow yourself to make mistakes freely.  If a text moves too fast for you to read, then stick with a version that proceeds at a slower speed. But whatever you do, don’t slow down when you sense difficulty ahead. Keep going at the same speed regardless.

           text1demo              text1slow                text1medium                    text1fast

Practical exercise 2

This second exercise is only suitable for relatively fast readers as it puts you under a lot of time-pressure. So if you are slow at reading, then there is no need to try and master it (just continue on to Practical exercise 3 instead).

In this exercise, only the more important words are highlighted by the moving bold font. This allows you more flexibility, with the timing of the other words. The most important thing is to  keep up with the moving bold font and not to fall behind. Fit in the words in-between as best you can, but feel free to abandon some of them if you are struggling to keep up. You can also try to use appropriate stress and intonation patterns.  But don’t worry if you find it too difficult to incorporate appropriate stress and intonation. After all, many non-stammerers also have difficulty formulating appropriate stress and intonation patterns while reading. Remember…

• Don’t allow yourself to fall behind.
• Don’t allow yourself to rush ahead.
• Don’t worry if some words come out wrong, or if you have to miss a word or two to keep up.
• If you find yourself getting stuck on a word, just abandon it and carry on with the next word (or with whichever word is currently highlighted by the bold font. (and whisper if necessary)

Choose whatever speech rate that you can cope with, based upon your reading ability.

           text2demo              text2slow                text2medium                    text2fast

Practical exercise 3—Scanning ahead

“Scanning ahead” essentially involves running through what one intends to say, internally (in inner-speech), before trying to say it out loud. Although, most of the time, speakers don’t bother to do this, there are nevertheless times when it is helpful to do so. For example, scanning ahead can help speakers to determine the best way to express what they want to say.

Non-stammerers often scan ahead when reading out loud and also in speaking situations where it is important to say things as clearly and accurately as possible. People who stammer can also scan ahead for the same reasons. Unfortunately, however, many people who stammer have developed the unhelpful habit of scanning ahead simply in order to identify and avoid words that they fear they will stutter on. This third exercise is designed to give you experience of scanning ahead simply in order to determine how you want to say a phrase before you say it out loud—without falling into the trap of focussing on potential problem words.  In this exercise, a single phrase is first highlighted (in a red font), and you are given three seconds to read through it internally, to work out the most appropriate stress and intonation pattern before starting to say it out loud. When a phrase appears in a red font, read through it silently inside your head, and decide how you want to say it (including the stress and the intonation). After 3 seconds the red font will disappear and a bold font will appear and will move through the phrase, a few words at a time. Start speaking as soon as the bold font appears and keep up with it as it moves through the phrase.

For this exercise, don’t worry if you’re not quite ready at the end of the three-second familiarization period. Just start speaking regardless. It doesn’t matter if you make mistakes or if your stress and intonation patterns are not quite right. These exercises are designed to make you feel comfortable making mistakes. If you find yourself blocking on a word, just abandon it and carry on with the next word (or skip as many words as necessary in order to keep up with the moving bold font. Don’t fall into the trap of slowing down when you think you may stutter—just carry on at the same speed regardless.

           text3demo              text3slow                text3medium                    text3fast

Remember…

• Don’t allow yourself to fall behind.
• Don’t allow yourself to rush ahead.
• Imagine you’re speaking in a chorus and have to keep in time with the other speakers.
• Don’t worry if some words come out wrong, or if you have to miss a word or two to keep up.
• If you find yourself getting stuck on a word, just abandon it and carry on with the next word (or with whichever word is currently highlighted by the bold font.
• If you block too much and struggle to keep up, try silently mouthing or whispering your way through the exercises a few times first of all. Don’t allow the fear of stuttering to cause you to slow down!

Practical exercise 4—reading from a book

Finally, once you have finished working through these three moving-bold reading exercises, now try reading out of a book, while imagining a bold highlight moving across the page in the same way as in the previous three exercises.

To start with, imagine the bold moving forward in a rigid way (from one word to the next) without worrying about the stress and intonation (as you just practiced in Exercise 1). Most important is to decide how fast you are going to speak and keep speaking at that speed. Don’t slow down when you feel like there is a potential stutter ahead—just keep going regardless.

Then, once you have got accustomed to continuing to move forward regardless of errors and blocks, try adopting a similar strategy to the one taught in Exercise 3—Allowing yourself as much time as you need, between clauses, to silently read ahead and plan exactly how the stress and intonation of next chunk should sound.

For all of the above exercises, remember…

• give priority to continuing to maintain the planned forward flow,
• don’t worry about your mistakes,
• immediately abandon sounds or words you get stuck on,
• don’t ever use force to push words out.

Experiment with a variety of reading speeds. You may find that, surprisingly, the faster speeds are easier, insofar as when reading fast there is less opportunity for you to worry about how you sound and consequently you stammer less. Conversely, slower speeds present more opportunity for your attention to stray back towards focusing excessively on accuracy—which is the habit we are trying to break.

Practice by yourself first, and then try reading to some of your friends. It’s good to video yourself as well, if you can. So you can play it back and see how you did.

for further detailed clarification of how to use Orchestral Speech read through the items in the Questions and Answers tab.

Once you have got the hang of ignoring errors and abandoning words you get stuck on while reading, the next step is to learn to do the same when reading aloud to a real live person.