Robert Blumenfeld: Acting with the Voice - The Art of Recording Books

Getting an Agent The Casting Process Auditions: What a Director Expects The Recording Session: What a Director Expects The Nature and Care of the Voice Some Advice about Vocal Technique Finding Your Voice Placing and Supporting the Voice Breathing and Breath Control Developing Variety and Flexibility Paralinguistics: How to Do Different Voices How to Change Your Voice Vocal Exercises Guide to Correct Pronunciations Positions of Vocal Apparatus Stress Patterns: Rhythm Pitch (Intonation, Music) Some Sounds to Avoid Practice Exercises for Good Diction Microphone and Recording Technique What to Expect: How the Recording Session Works / Preparing for the Recording Session Chapter 5: Reading Techniques Preparing the Text for rRecording Phrasing and Thythm Personalize the Text Chapter 6: Recording Prose Fiction General Advice: Telling the Story Understanding Style and Period The Character's Voice Attitudes are Adjectives Actions are Verbs Using Accents

The author of the hugely successful Accents: A Manual for Actors here turns his attention to another aspect of acting in which the voice is again of crucial importance but in which the medium requires a different message. Robert Blumenfeld convincingly argues that the basic techniques of acting apply whether the actor is performing on a stage or in a sound studio, whether he or she must memorize lines or read them, and the whether an "entrance" means opening a door or breaking into another character's speech. Numerous practice exercises help the actor to speak the words of a text that can be illustrated and enhanced by the varying sounds of a human voice. In addition to the practice exercises, the book is generous in supplying sample literary texts that the actor may choose or be asked to read. Mr. Blumenfeld analyzes and interprets these texts at length and prepares the reader to do the same for material they are unfamiliar with. Finally, Mr. Blumenfeld takes a hard look at teh business of recording books and provides substantial information about the employment opportunities available to those who have mastered the ability to "act with the voice".

Robert Blumenfeld lives and works as an actor, dialect coach and writer in New York City. He has been on the faculties of both the Stella Adler and the National Shakespeare Conservatories and has recorded more than 280 Talking Books for the American Foundation for the Blind. In 1997 he received the Canadian National Institute for the Blind's Torgi Award for the Talking Book of he Year in the Fiction category for his recording of Pat Conroy's Beach Music; and in 1999, the Alexander Scourby Talking Book Narrator of the Year Award in the Fiction category.