I finally got around to seeing “I Saw The TV Glow”, and it definitely lived up to the hype.
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Day 1 of voice training again to get past my block: I am way better at this than I remembered.
Trying some of the more modern methods from that site linked last time and I can already hit a voice that I like, just getting it consistent is gonna be the issue like usual. I forgot how fun this gets though. I was mostly just doing a preliminary test of everything that was on the site for an hour with plenty of breaks to listen to the clips and let my voice rest. Overall pretty happy with it for a basically 0 effort practice. Now just to keep at it for at least 30 minutes every day.
Ooh what’s the site? I’ve been meaning to start voice training for ages
https://selenearchive.github.io/
@awth13@hexbear.net linked it to me. It’s pretty overwhelming to at first. (especially compared to L’s guide which I used to use, but apparently L’s is outdated. Mfw I’ve been (slowly) voice training long enough that the methods I used are considered bad now.) But if you just listen to a few of the audio clips instead of thinking you need to do all of them it’s not too bad. I do kinda wish the site had a more clear ‘start here’ bit though, I was able to jump right into it without one since I have my old experience to go off of but idk I feel like someone without any would be lost. Just do shit in the order you want to.
Did you find the Guide page not sufficient as a starting point? Thanks for the feedback!
Kinda yeah, one thing I found nice about L’s was how structured and ordered it was. It gave you specific things to focus on before moving onto the next thing once you felt comfortable. And in so doing it was able to introduce new concepts as they became relevant which allowed for an easier learning experience. You did just Pitch and then learned what Resonance is and focused on just that and so on. It atomises the process of learning in a way that’s less overwhelming
While I understand it’s a difference of the approaches, where this one is a lot more open ended and wants you to work on multiple things at once, it means that, for instance, I don’t really have an obvious “start” point. Sure size and weight come up first, but I won’t understand why I should do those two first over the other voice clips until after I’ve already been training a while, which I think is pretty discouraging. Personally I know why it sets those first, like I said I have previous experience with this stuff, but even with that experience I feel almost aimless right now in a way I never did while using L’s.
I’d also add while I’m at it, I’m more of a textual learner, and so the audio focus of the method is kinda harder for me. The amount of times I need to relisten to an instruction when I know if it was written out I’d have understood it immediately is quite high. I get that it’s a huge part of this method though, since it’s all about learning to identify and replicate the sounds, so listening to clips is very much necessary. It’s just another small bit though that’s quite noticeable, I’m probably gonna just start writing notes to compensate.
Edit: Also, using all the jargon without explaining any means that anyone without some sort of voice background isn’t going to understand it until they get further in, which is discouraging
Thank you, these are all great points.
I think a lot of these issues stem from the story behind the website. Selene (the voice in the clips) never intended to make a guide or course but rather was just saving clips from her lessons to have them on hand. Some of the clips are her responding to a specific question, some of the clips are entire lessons, most of them are named in a way that probably only makes sense to Selene lol. But then another person realised how valuable these clips are and tried to kind of, sort of make a guide out of the disorganised clip collection, and here we are.
I hope, eventually, someone with similar ability to demonstrate differences in sound and expressiveness as Selene makes an actual guide based on the same approach; whenever that happens, the website will immediately become obsolete in turn. Until then, I agree, something like L’s guide can be much better at orienting people, especially when all of the caveats about the mechanical approach I mentioned last time are understood. Unfortunately, trying to modulate your voice can get pretty desperate – I’ve personally seen people filming their throats with laryngoscopes in chase of that mythical OPC and injuring themselves by obsessing over larynx movements – so I personally find it hard to tell whether all of the issues with Selene’s archive outweigh its ability (and explicit intent) to teach people to explore their voices without ever thinking about the larynx.
P.S. The website is open-source. If anyone has ideas on how to organise its content better, please open an issue or PR. I kind of moved on from working on it myself but I’ve been forced to be the maintainer because nobody else stepped up.
That makes sense, hopefully it happens, in the meanwhile this is still definitely very helpful. Just not as structured as what I’m used to.
You will have to pry my larynx movements and swallow hold from my cold, probably suffocated, dead hands though