As a voice actor, it is extremely important to pay attention to your voice. The way you take care of your voice will reflect on your progress. If you are careless with your voice, it will soon lose its quality and will result in you having difficulty getting voice over work. And, if you’re one who happens to have voice acting as your main job, you can’t afford to put it in jeopardy.
Enhancing your voice-over skills ranges from having the proper lifestyle to the vocal exercises that will develop your enunciation and articulation of words. Having said that there are many voice artists who don’t necessarily follow a particular discipline, they just read on the mic and are aware on how they read, by listening to themselves. They are the first ones to realize the quality of their performance. But even if you are an experienced VO artist, stay away from that confort zone and ask others how they perceive your voice delivery.
Anyway, I have picked up some useful tips that could help those who are starting and those who just need some tuning…
The popular ‘how-to’ site, E-How, advised a couple of helpful tips to take care of your voice on the physical aspect.
“Keeping your vocal cords wet is an important part of improving them. Drinking at least 64 ounces of non-caffeinated fluid spread throughout the day is a must to keep your voice lubricated. Caffeine is a diuretic that will cause your body to flush out water instead of retaining it as needed. Drink more fluids during drier days. This is especially important during the cold and dry months of winter, for instance.
Avoidance of fattening foods is also suggested when trying to improve your voice. Foods that are high in fat will compromise voice quality. You should also avoid ingesting dairy products before you are to perform, as they encourage mucus production. Excessive mucus production will make you want to clear your throat, which is can be damaging to the vocal cords. Instead of clearing your throat, try drinking a sip of water or using more air. Although stereotypes may suggest that people who are heavier have better voices, it is a proven fact that regular exercise improves the health and quality of your voice.”
When it comes to exercising your pronunciation, there are a few blogs in Raise Your Voice Acting that provide vocal training to increase the quality of your voice.
Begin by inhaling for a three-count, holding for a three-count, exhaling for a three-count and holding for a three-count. Do this until it’s comfortable and then start to increase your count, four-count, five-count, etc. If you start to feel light-headed or dizzy, stop immediately and take a break. See if you can comfortably work up to 5, 6, 7 or even 8, 9, 10.
Inhale deeply and then, holding your palm an inch in front of your mouth so you can feel the air, let out a hiss. Then, hiss for as long as you are comfortable and then take a deep breath. Repeat this 5 times alternating between an “s” hiss and a “z” hiss (which we guess might be called a ‘hizz’). Begin to gradually increase the length of your hiss (or hizz) as you are comfortable.
Hissing can strengthen your abdominal muscles and your diaphragm because they are working to maintain one strong continuous flow of air. This exercise will force your diaphragm to rapidly push and pull, which will strengthen it over time, but might tire you out pretty quickly.
Raise Your Voice Acting also shares an all-around exercise that touches the warming up of your vocal cords, enunciation, articulation, and your voice range.
- WARM-UP – Begin by gentle warm ups – you may notice when you first wake up that your voice sounds sleepy. Humming and feeling the resonance in your chest is great for getting the voice gently moving. Produce the sounds ‘hmmm’ and ‘mmmm’ here.
- ENUNCIATION – After your voice starts to feel a little lessgroggy, begin to focus on enunciation, or the art of speaking clearly. Pay attention to the different ways the mouth must move in order to create the following sounds:
> PTKT pronounced “puh-tuh-kuh-tuh”
> BDGD pronounced “buh-duh-guh-duh”
> WEWA pronounced “wee-wah”
> TRILLS created by rolling your tongue on the roof of your mouth while saying “TR: trrrrr or R: rrrrrr”
> Rapid fire succession “ptkt-bdgd-ptkt-bdgd”
- ARTICULATION – Similar to enunciating, articulation relates to speaking distinctly. Let’s call the moving and non-moving parts of your face and mouth that help you articulate words (lips, teeth, tongue, roof of the mouth) the vocal creators. Articulation is a function of how these vocal creators work together to make sounds. After practicing the enunciation exercises ptkt, bdgd,wewa, try to pull everything together for articulation by saying these rhymes and tongue twisters:
> “What a todo to die today, at a minute or two ‘til two, a thing distinctly hard to say, but harder still to do; for they’ll beat a tattoo at a twenty ‘til two, a rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-too, and the dragon will come when he hears the drum, at a minute or two ‘til two today, at a minute or two ‘til two”
> “Unique New York, Unique New York”
> “Red leather, yellow leather, blue blood, black blood’
- VOICE RANGE – And finally, you’ll want to work on your range (the high–to-low pitches that you can take your voice to). Here’s an exercise for expanding your range:
> Sirens (sort of like the sound of a fire truck): eeeeeeeee up and down in range, starting from low to high, and then high to low
Are you doing these exercises on a regular basis? Or, do you have your own way of exercising? Share it with us!