Twistr – a little tongue warm-up tool

I’ve been unable to record for more than a week, while a perfectly average-looking cold took out the best part of my voice and left me with an depressingly-unsultry growl. So, I’ve been grumping around the house being largely unproductive. A shining exception to this was putting together a web page to pop up tongue twisters which I’m trying to get into the habit of reciting before starting to record. I collected together over a hundred of them from various sources, and grouped them according to the letters they were emphasising, along with a group that I just love for the sound of them (The epitome of femininity! Ed had edited it!) I then stuck them into a quasi-blog page, with some code to make the list change randomly when clicked. You can have a play at:

http://piratelibrary.com/twistr

The aim was to have a manageable, fun exercise to put my mouth through before starting to record. I’ve not noticed much benefit in the past from general warm-ups (though I should probably still do them, just as good practice) — but limbering up the tongue, jaw and lips, definitely makes the recording process feel easier to me. The same tongue twisters will appear from time to time since there are only 10-15 in each of the seven categories and they appear in random order, not sequentially, but I hope that’s enough to keep the exercise fairly fresh. We’ll see; I can always write more if needed.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be back to recording — and before I start, I’ll play twistr with my tongue.