Learning to use Orchestral Speech While Reading Aloud

The easiest way to get to grips with Orchestral Speech is to start to employ it while reading aloud. Here are some practical exercises to get you started…

Practical Exercise 1

Remember, the essential characteristic of Orchestral Speech is that it involves giving a higher priority to maintaining the rhythm and forward flow of your speech than to its accuracy. So, you focus your attention primarily on keeping moving forward and you don’t pay attention to what the words sound like or how well you are saying them. To get you into the swing of this, choose a text to read aloud. Start with one that is relatively simple, perhaps from a children’s book. Then follow these 5 steps…

1. Read a phrase from the book silently, just using your inner speech (the little voice inside your head).
2. Having familiarized yourself with the phrase in that way, decide what would be an appropriate rhythm and speech-rate to adopt when reading it out loud.
3. Then, read the phrase again, this time silently mouthing the words with the rhythm, and speech rate that you decided upon.
4. Then, gently whisper the phrase using exactly the same rhythm and speech rate that you used when when silently mouthing it.
5. Then, gently speak the phrase out loud using your normal voice, once again using exactly the same rhythm and speech rate that you used when silently mouthing it and when whispering it.

Then, continue on to the next phrase and follow the same 5 steps with that phrase.

Continue on, working through the text, phrase by phrase using this procedure, until you can follow the procedure without having to think about it.

Don’t worry about how accurately you are articulating the sounds or words, just let the words flow together comfortably. Feel free to miss out some sounds in order to make the phrase flow more smoothly if you wish.

If you find yourself starting to stammer when you whisper or speak a phrase, immediately abandon the word you are stuck on and go straight to the next word, focussing even more strongly on maintaining your intended rhythm and speech rate, just as you would if you were speaking together with a chorus of other people. Miss out as many words as necessary in order to keep up with that imaginary chorus of other speakers.

Then move on to the next phrase, once again following steps 1 to 5.

And so on. with the remainder of the text.

For each text that you read, experiment with reading it at different speeds. The faster you go, the more errors you will make, so reading fast give you plenty of opportunity to practice ignoring your errors and carrying on regardless. In contrast, when you read more slowly you will make fewer errors, but you will quite likely feel a greater temptation to start listening to (and judging) how you sound . Remember, you need to learn to resist this temptation, you should only focus your attention on maintaining the rhythm and flow.

Practice reading texts alone to begin with. But once you get the hang of the procedure, you can try reading them into speech recognition software or artificial intelligence (AI).

If you read into speech recognition or AI software, afterwards you will be able to look over the transcript of what you have read. You may be surprised to find that the software often accurately transcribes the contents of the text you were reading from, even when you are dysfluent or make minor speech errors.

Don’t worry if 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, stick to your planned rhythm and speech rate even when you anticipate that you will stutter; don’t slow down or speed up! Remember, you’re teaching yourself to keep going no matter what… just like a player in an orchestra, a singer in a choir, or a speaker in a chorus. 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 or the blocks that occur. Keep reminding yourself, it’s alright if speech errors or blocks do occur. Just don’t let them hold you up.

Practical Exercise 2

When you feel relatively confident that you are able to successfully follow the procedure outlined in Practical Exercise 1, the next exercise involves missing out the silent mouthing stage and instead going straight from reading a phrase in inner speech to whispering it and then speaking it out loud. In other words, follow the steps 1,2,4 and 5. (as described in Practical Exercise 1). This procedure is slightly more difficult and may require quite a bit of practice.

You may find that, when whispering the phrase out loud, the rhythm and speech rate that you choose are not ideal, but don’t worry, just stick with it anyway and keep moving forward regardless to the end of the phrase. Then when you speak the phrase out loud using your voice, you can adjust the rhythm and speech rate to one that is more appropriate. But whatever you do, when you speak, keep focussing on maintaining your planned rhythm and speech rate. Don’t worry about how accurate your articulation is or how the words sound.

Again, start by practicing this exercise alone, then practice it with speech recognition software or artificial intelligence software.

As with Exercise 1, don’t worry if 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.  It’s alright if blocks occur while doing this exercise, just jump over them and carry on, as described in Exercise 1. However, if you find yourself blocking a lot when doing this exercise, go back to silently mouthing or whispering your way through the phrases a few times first. Most importantly, stick to your planned rhythm and speech rate even when you anticipate that you will block; don’t slow down or speed up to avoid anticipated blocks! Remember, you’re teaching yourself to keep going no matter what… just like a player in an orchestra. It’s alright to make mistakes and its alright to block – just keep moving forward regardless.

Here are the important points to remember while you read the phrases…

• Don’t allow yourself to slow down or speed up when you anticipate you might block. Just maintain your intended speed regardless.
• Don’t worry if some words come out wrong, or if you have to miss a word or two to keep moving forward at your intended rate. (imagine you are speaking together with a chorus of other people)
• If you find yourself getting stuck on a word, just abandon it and jump straight to the next word (or to whichever word the imaginary chorus would be saying).
• If you find yourself blocking a lot, go back to silently mouthing and then whispering the exercises the first few times. Don’t slow down.
• Whisper and speak very gently, using minimum effort. Indeed, using not much more effort than simply breathing.

Practical Exercise 3

This third exercise involves simply scanning some of the upcoming text, identifying a suitable phrase, and then saying it out loud – with the focus of attention purely on maintaining an appropriate rhythm and speech-rate.

It’s worth noting that non-stammerers generally scan ahead in this way in order to decide on its phrasing and rhythm. People who stammer can also scan ahead in this way 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.

For all of these exercises, remember, 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 with the imaginary chorus of other speakers.  And remember…

• Don’t worry if some words come out wrong, or if you have to miss a word or two to keep up.
• Don’t fall into the trap of slowing down when you think you may stutter—just carry on at the same speed regardless. Don’t allow the fear of stuttering to cause you to slow down (or speed up!).
• If you find yourself getting stuck on a word, just abandon it and carry on with the next word (or with whichever word the imaginary chorus would now be saying.
• If you block too much and feel like you are becoming more tense, try silently mouthing or whispering your way through the phrases a few times.

Practical exercise 4—reading from a book

Finally, once you have finished working through these three reading exercises, now try reading aloud spontaneously out of a book. In order to have an idea of how the phrases need to be spoken, naturally you will have to scan a few words ahead of the words you are actually speaking.

In this exercise you will probably find that the phrasing you adopt is not ideal, and you may also make quite a lot of speech errors, especially if you are reading at a relatively fast rate. But don’t worry about that. Just keep moving forward regardless. The more practice you get at reading, the more skilled you will become at selecting appropriate phrasing and intonation patterns. For the time being, just focus on keeping moving forward. If you want to make fewer speech errors, you can choose to speak with an overall slower speech rate. But avoid falling into the trap of slowing down in order to avoid blocking. If you block, it’s OK, just give up trying to say the sound you are blocking on and jump to the next word or to whatever word the imaginary chorus would now be saying.

As with the previous exercises, first you can read aloud to yourself, then read aloud into speech recognition or AI software.

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 and on how your words sound—which is the habit we are trying to break.

Practice by yourself first, and then, when you feel ready, try reading to some of your friends (see the instructions for this on the next page). It’s good to video yourself as well, if you can, so you can play it back and see how it sounded.

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