General Performance Hints

1. Figure out how you want to recite this.
   1. Read the piece a few times.
   2. Listen to the sample recordings. You don’t have to copy them, but they can give you ideas for how to approach your sonnet.
   3. Figure out what words or phrases are important to you and what tone of voice (happy, sad, angry, lonely, etc.) you want to use.
2. Practice!
   1. Read it out loud to yourself once or twice so you can figure out which words and phrases you have trouble with.
   2. The first time you record something, it normally isn’t very good. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve read a piece, reciting it is a different thing. If you’re recording your recitation, figure that you’ll have to do multiple takes.
3. Speak at a normal rate.
   1. There aren’t prizes for fastest recitation.
   2. When we’re nervous, we tend to speak faster. It’s natural. But that gets in your way here. We tend to run our words together when we speak quickly, making ourselves harder to understand.
4. Speak at a normal volume
   1. Whispering is not your friend here.
   2. Your voice needs to be loud and clear enough that your audience can hear it.
5. If you stumble, keep going.
   1. If you’re live in front of an audience, odds are they’ll ignore your stumble if you don’t call attention to it. After all, you know what you want to say, your audience doesn’t.
   2. If you’re recording yourself, finish the recording then listen. If it’s not bad, you can turn it in if you like, Or you can delete it and try again.
   3. If you’re recording your sonnet, another option would be to repeat the word/phrase and then just edit out the part where you stumbled.
6. Remember to hit the final consonant sounds.
   1. In normal conversation, many people tend to drop the final consonant in words, especially if that consonant is /t,d,s,z/. This is more formal speech, so you need to pronounce them.
7. These sonnets have a rhythm to them.
   1. This doesn’t mean that you have to follow the exact rhythm: you can interpret, but you need to be consistent with your choices.
8. Your tone of voice matters.
   1. Your tone of voice should match the emotional tone on the sonnet.
   2. You shouldn’t sound bored or over it.
   3. You shouldn’t sound like a robot.
9. These are guidelines.

When you look at the notes on the individual sonnets, remember that they are guidelines. You can interpret the piece however you like. Just remember that you have to be able to explain your choices.