2023.03.01 – 0790 – The ‘Toothpaste Tongue’ Vocal Exercise Toothpaste Tongue · Imagine there’s a blob of toothpaste on the tip of your tongue and give each tooth and individual clean with the tip of the tongue. · Keep the jaw as relaxed as possible as you run your tongue all around your mouth to ‘clean’ it: between lips and gums, behind teeth, along the roof and floor of your mouth, even counting your teeth with your tongue. · Keep going for 30 seconds. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for...
Mar 01, 2023•2 min•Season 3Ep. 790
2023.02.28 – 0789 – Getting a ‘Slug Tongue’ Slug Tongue Relax the jaw, drop the tongue out of the mouth and count slowly out loud to 10. Then recite the ‘Happy Birthday’ song or something similar, keeping your tongue relaxed and floppy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Feb 28, 2023•1 min•Season 3Ep. 789
2023.02.27 – 0788 – Tongue Stretches Tongue Stretches · Open and relax your mouth with your lips apart, then stick out your tongue as far as it will stretch. Hold it there for 30 seconds while breathing. Check you are not tightening your neck muscles (use a mirror or put a hand on your neck to feel for tension) · Stick your tongue out and slowly draw a square with the tip of your tongue. Try different shapes and try ‘writing’ your name. Do this 5 times, with increased speed each time · Stretch t...
Feb 27, 2023•7 min•Season 3Ep. 788
2023.02.26 – 0787 – Tongue Fun The Tongue Your tongue is a major articulator helping form sounds into recognisable words (as well as being used in swallowing and eating). It moves courtesy of eight muscles: four intrinsic muscles run along its length and change and the shape of the tongue (lengthening and shortening it, curling and uncurling its tip and edges as in tongue rolling, and flattening and rounding its surface), and four extrinsic muscles change its position (for protrusion, retraction...
Feb 26, 2023•3 min•Season 3Ep. 787
2023.02.25 – 0786 – The Exaggeration Vocal Exercise Over Enunciation Silently say a phrase (“ Get A Better Broadcast, Podcast and Voice Over Voice ”) with really exaggerated mouth, lip and jaw movements. Repeat it, with really big, animated and exaggerated articulation. Now put the sound in and keep the performance. Finally, relax and speak the phrase normally with your usual face and you should feel more freedom, and ease of movement. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Feb 25, 2023•3 min•Season 3Ep. 786
2023.02.24 – 0785 – Jaw Massage Jaw Massage Let your jaw drop slightly and put the balls of your hands just under your cheekbones. Rub firmly into the hollows of your cheeks as you let the lower jaw drop into a more open position. Temple Massage With the tips of your fingers, massage your temples as you open and close the jaw, circular movements in both directions. As you close your mouth you will feel a bulge of the associated muscles. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information...
Feb 24, 2023•4 min•Season 3Ep. 785
2023.02.23 – 0784 – The Toffee and Chipmunk Jaw Exercises The Jaw If you experience a popping or clicking in their jaw, it’s a possible sign that you are tensing or clenching it too much. But of course, you need to be able to drop the jaw when you speak, to allow the tongue to move freely and the sound to come out. Some of the muscles that close the jaw fan out towards the temple and skull, the ones that open it are linked to the neck and larynx, so any tightness here can affect a large area. · ...
Feb 23, 2023•9 min•Season 3Ep. 784
2023.02.22 – 0783 – The ‘Silent Laugh’ Vocal Exercise The Silent Laugh Imagine you’ve just been told a joke but you’re not allowed to laugh out loud, instead do so silently and gently inside your throat with no sound. If you find this tricky at first, laugh vocally, and sense what is happening inside your mouth and throat and replicate this, silently. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Feb 22, 2023•1 min•Season 3Ep. 783
2023.02.21 – 0782 – The ‘Yawn Sigh’ Vocal Exercise Throat The Yawn Sigh Yawning opens and stretches muscles at the back of your throat. · Stand up and inhale as you yawn, a full-bodied one, wide and deep. Get your whole body involved: open your mouth, keep your tongue relaxed and gently touching your lower teeth, soft palate raised, stretching and widening at the back of your throat, scrunch your face, stretch your arms over your face and really let it all go. Consciously feel your diaphragm as ...
Feb 21, 2023•7 min•Season 3Ep. 782
2023.02.20 – 0781 – The Ubiquitous Panting Exercise Panting Your vocal folds make a tense and strained sound if they are closing too tightly over the airflow, but a pleasant and easy sound is made when the folds meet and vibrate, stimulated by air passing over them. In this exercise we’ll first work on ‘aspirant consonants’ which are produced with the vocal folds open and not vibrating at all. · You can let more air through, by making a breathier sound such as ‘ h ’: panting like a dog or ‘ her ...
Feb 20, 2023•4 min•Season 3Ep. 781
2023.02.19 – 0780 – Tarzan and The Wake-Up Hum Let’s start with the larynx. Larynx Your voice needs to start slow, so we’ll start by awakening the cords with humming, a great go-to for easing-in your instrument. The Wake-up Hum Be sure that your jaw is loose and your teeth are separated to create more room for resonance. Humm from your throat and chest in your usual register. That is, not from your lips. Sirening Now gradually move up a register. Don’t stop and reset, but glide up and then retur...
Feb 19, 2023•9 min•Season 3Ep. 780
2023.02.18 – 0779 – Why Warm Up Your Voice? Warming up The intensity, speed and duration of any voice-over work can cause vocal fatigue. Not warming up will lead to a longer recovery time and possible ongoing injury. These exercises will improve your vocal flexibility and eliminate unnecessary levels of tension in your body and voice. The Exercises These easy-to-learn exercises are ones that you can do at home, in the car, in the shower or in the toilet at work. Do them regularly to get the most...
Feb 18, 2023•3 min•Season 3Ep. 779
2023.02.17 – 0778 – Vocal Exercise Advise A quick health warning: · Like at the gym, always do a warm-up before you do a work-out · The first part of the warm-up (see below) should also include physical and mental work, which in this book you will find in separate chapters · Pace yourself. Vocal exercises should be challenging in a similar way to going to the gym is challenging and when you stop you should feel better than when you began. You should not end up feeling sore. · Before you try any ...
Feb 17, 2023•4 min•Season 3Ep. 778
2023.02.16 – 0777 – Vocal Work-Outs, Warm-Ups and Winding Down %VOCAL WORK-OUTS, WARM-UPS AND WINDING DOWN A dance or sports person wouldn’t dream of performing without a warm-up, or suddenly stop at the end of a race without a cool-down regime. To do otherwise would risk temporary or permanent injury to their muscles and ligaments, and they would not be working to the best of their ability. You are a ‘vocal athlete’ and you too need training, warm-ups and proper rest to lead to greater vocal he...
Feb 16, 2023•5 min•Season 3Ep. 777
2023.02.15 – 0776 – Help! I’m Getting A Cold! Help! I’m getting a cold! (Or blocked nose, sneezes and sniffles, itchy mouth, catarrh, sore throat, dry cough, headache, hoarseness and general feeling of being unwell… it’s all literally a pain in the neck.) During this period your voice will sound deeper, rougher and may almost disappear, because swollen vocal cords vibrate more slowly and unevenly. With a blocked nose, your sound will be nasally because of reduced resonance. And you will have les...
Feb 15, 2023•5 min•Season 3Ep. 776
2023.02.14 – 0775 – Vocal Fold Haemorrhage Continued talking may lead to ‘vocal nodules’ on your folds, which are common with loud, tense, constant talkers. (Polyps are similar but usually occur after a single cough or shout, rather than long-term abuse, and happen when the folds haemorrhage.) Know your body. If your body is hurting (even a sore throat), stop. It’s a sign that something is not ‘quite right’. Speaking when hoarse, or worse still, shouting to deliberately make yourself hoarse (yes...
Feb 14, 2023•2 min•Season 3Ep. 775
2023.02.13 – 0774 – Voice Advice From Justin Timberlake and Larry Hagman ‘Resting’ actors Larry Hagman was best known for playing ruthless oil baron J. R. Ewing in the 1978–1991 primetime television soap opera ‘ Dallas ’ and the befuddled astronaut Major Anthony Nelson in the 1965–1970 sitcom ‘ I Dream of Jeannie ’. For 20 years he undertook “ silent Sundays ” after a doctor suggested that he did not talk for a few days after he strained his vocal cords. For one day a week he said not a word to ...
Feb 13, 2023•2 min•Season 3Ep. 774
2023.02.12 – 0773 – Polyps, Nodules and Phonal Trauma Treating your voice badly, shouting [1] , smoking or straining it, is not showing it the respect it deserves. These actions can lead to ‘phonal trauma’ such as nodules or polyps (small growths) on your vocal folds. These can be painful and if they heal at all can take a long time. At an extreme, they may need to be removed in an operation. (Wince…) “Once, a year or two back, I’d lost my voice during the evening… really lost it and I had to do...
Feb 12, 2023•2 min•Season 3Ep. 773
2023.02.11 – 0772 – The Greatest Vocal Athletes The voice-overs with perhaps the most vocal stamina have to be the audiobook narrators. Recording day after day for a total of 70 hours is not unheard of, and on top of that (for fiction books at least) creating and remembering different voices and accents for different characters, and reading with different sets of emotions and volumes. Another skill is keeping up the enthusiasm, perhaps for page after page of content that you are not particularly...
Feb 11, 2023•2 min•Season 3Ep. 772
2023.02.10 – 0771 – Vocal Conditioning Through Proper Pacing If your body is tired, your voice sounds tired: it’s one of the first areas where your lack of zeds shows itself. Before a recording session, get plenty of sleep so your voice doesn’t sound too husky or in a lower register than the producer was expecting when they booked you from your demo reel. Voice overuse and misuse Total voice rest This is an important part of recovering from a voice injury, but not something that is advisable lon...
Feb 10, 2023•2 min•Season 3Ep. 771
2023.02.09 – 0770 – Why Having A Secret May Be Hurting Your Voice Whispering – Normal speaking is with a regular airflow and closure. With whispering you get no closure and you need more effort to make a lesser sound. Try it right now and feel the strain your vocal cords are under. What you are doing is pushing them into an unusual shape and then passing extra air over them that only adds to their dryness. Instead, if you are going hoarse or are speaking secretly, don’t be careless with your whi...
Feb 09, 2023•1 min•Season 3Ep. 770
2023.02.08 – 0769 – Why African Elephants In Underpants May Be Hurting Your Voice Vowels Say the following phrase aloud, word by word: “ African. Elephants. In. Our. Underpants ”. Each word begins with a vowel, A, E, I, O and U. And as we saw before, it’s these sounds that are made with a lot of potential pressure on the larynx. Say “ African ” again and you will feel that the initial sound is quite harsh (unlike, say “ European ” which is more of a gliding first sound), as the air that has for ...
Feb 08, 2023•4 min•Season 3Ep. 769
2023.02.07 – 0768 – What To Say To An Anaesthetist Surgery – Intubation is when a tube is fed into your mouth (‘endotracheal intubation’) or nose (‘nasogastric intubation’) and then into the airway to help you with breathing, deliver anaesthesia or medications, and bypass a blockage. Be aware of the potential damage to your vocal folds during intubation anaesthetics, and prior to planned surgery make sure that an anaesthetist is aware of your profession. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy fo...
Feb 07, 2023•2 min•Season 3Ep. 768
2023.02.06 – 0767 – How A Kettle Can Help Your Voice Steam inhaling - can help the health of the vocal folds and the mucous membranes that line the nasal and mouth cavities. Steaming once or twice a day for 10-15 minutes will: · allow the water vapour to get into places that no lozenge, gargle or linctus can ever reach, soothing and moisturising and helping to thin the mucus, so it’s more slippery · help relieve a tired sore or hoarse voice · calm an irritating persistent cough · improve your ‘v...
Feb 06, 2023•2 min•Season 3Ep. 767
2023.02.05 – 0766 –Voice Problems Caused By Shouting and Smoking Shouting – causes the folds are slammed together harshly. Consider why you are shouting – perhaps it’s because of a loud and busy newsroom, or maybe you are going slightly deaf…? If you are tempted to pick up some part time work say behind a bar where you have to raise your voice to be heard, you may want to think of another job that will put less strain on your folds. Try and speak less, and less harshly and to take regular mini-b...
Feb 05, 2023•3 min•Season 3Ep. 766
2023.02.04 – 0765 – How Snoring May Be Causing Voice Problems Mouth breathing and snoring - can dry your vocal folds (as we saw previously, part of the job the nostrils have is to humidify the air as it enters your body). Although it’s OK to take gasps of air through your mouth as you speak, try to otherwise inhale through your nose. That’s especially true at night otherwise for many hours you will have dry, unfiltered air passing your larynx. If you sleep on your back, you’re especially prone t...
Feb 04, 2023•2 min•Season 3Ep. 765
2023.02.03 – 0764 – How Meds Can Hurt Not Help Your Voice Medications – Again, sticky-sweet, tongue colour-changing over-the-counter lozenges do not touch your vocal cords. Although they might have a placebo effect (you feel as though they are helping, and so your confidence returns), the ones with anaesthetic or numbing properties may actually be causing further damage, giving you a false sense that everything’s OK. Instead, focus on the root cause of your vocal fatigue by practising with a voc...
Feb 03, 2023•4 min•Season 3Ep. 764
2023.02.02 – 0763 – How Your Voice Is Affected By Oestrogen, Progesterone and Androgens Menopause can also affect the voice. [1] Vocally speaking, oestrogen: · affects how supple the vocal folds’ upper surface (the mucosal layer) is · supports the folds’ mucus-making glands · affects the deepest layer of the vocal folds, which produce lower and higher pitches blocks the effects of androgens, and so prevents the lowering of the voice Progesterone balances the effects of oestrogen as well as: · ca...
Feb 02, 2023•4 min•Season 3Ep. 763
2023.02.01 – 0762 – How Hormones Affect Your Voice Hormones - We know how boys’ voices change as they go through puberty, but so do girls’. Testosterone and oestrogen not only affect the voice directly in the vocal folds, changing their shape and so the sounds they make, but also indirectly as the overall body shape changes. Muscles and ligaments develop which can lead to increased lung capacity and other alterations affecting breathing and resonance. For women this is not a one-off hormone flow...
Feb 01, 2023•3 min•Season 3Ep. 762
2023.01.31 – 0761 – The Voice Enemies Of Air Con, Carphones and Coughing Air conditioning – a dry throat can be caused by heating or air conditioning in homes, offices, trains, planes and cars. Try getting more natural air into your life, or invest in a humidifier. Carphones – you tend to talk louder on them as the mic is further from your mouth, because the signal may not be good, you are talking to someone else who is also on a mobile, and to counteract the ambient traffic noise. Coughing – co...
Jan 31, 2023•4 min•Season 3Ep. 761
