2021.09.26 – 0269 – Sing-Song Reads

Here then is my ‘Reading Rogue’s Gallery’ – ‘criminal intonations’ committed by newbies who haven’t been trained properly, and old hands who’re stuck in a rut.

 

Sing-song reads

These are scripts read with a repetitive rhythm, with a similar rise and fall in one sentence as another. This kind of delivery shows that rather than intoning the correct words, you’re merely intoning the ones that appear in the same place in each sentence.


Each sentence should come across as a new idea, but reading with the same rhythm - sentence to sentence - gives the impression to the listener that what you’re saying is something they’ve already heard.


Sing-song is wrong-wrong as the rhythm detracts from the delivery of the message, and shows that that as well as not connecting with your script, you’re not connecting with your listener either.


Formulaic colouring compromises communication.


“I’m always very disappointed when I hear someone reading the news and it’s probably because they’ve never been told, and they’ve developed a pattern of how ‘this is how the news should be delivered’ and it’s a sort of sing-song pattern. And what it says to me is that they’re not really making sense of what it is that they’re saying, they’re delivering it because they think it sounds authoritative to do it in that way because that’s how they’ve heard someone else do it.

And you just have to unlearn all of that stuff and think about telling the story.

A good way of practicing is to read something that isn’t news and just practice reading actual stories, fiction, and telling that story in a non-newsy way and then picking up a piece of news and trying to apply the same thing. Obviously, it’s very different but it’s a good way of untraining those bad habits.”

Zeb Soanes, BBC radio 4 Newsreader and Continuity Announcer[1]

 

A way to overcome much of a sing-song read, is to vary the length and structure of each sentence (we looked at this earlier), to upset a rhythm before it can take hold.

 

However, there is a close relation to the Sing-song read and that’s…


[1] “The Voiceover Social” podcast. 14th November 2020


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

 



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