Voiceover Tip: Copy the Vocal Patterns on TV Commercials

Here's a great tip and exercise for voiceover artists: use TV commercials as a source of practice. Really listen to the commercials on your TV or radio. When you find a good commercial you like, try to parrot the VO actor who is speaking the lines.  You'll be repeating the words, of course, but also try to copy, as exactly as you can, the nuances, the tone, the inflections he or she uses, and the musicality.

Then mute or turn off the TV or radio and grab any random bit of text, such as an ad in a piece of mail or magazine. Try to bring the new tone and vocal patterns you've been copying to these new words. You will be using the style you've been mimicking with this new material.

This will really start to train your ear and attune you to what is currently “hot” in the advertising world. And it gets you practicing, reading aloud, and using your voice in new ways.

And it's fun! Enjoy!

“So How Do I Find My Own Voice?”

 

You can start identifying your own voice by making a list of adjectives that you feel describe your voice and your way of speaking. Then, because we often have trouble being objective, pick five people who know you well, and five people who know you less well, and ask each of them to come up with five adjectives to describe your voice. Remind them that they’re not trying to describe you or the way you look, but specifically your voice. If they have trouble coming up with descriptive words, maybe you could compile a long list of adjectives to make it easier on them. Here are a few adjectives you might choose (also see our suggestions in “Play to Your Strengths” in Chapter 10 of our book, The Demo):

abrupt             energetic               sincere           curt         fun-loving       

smooth            confident             guarded        upbeat    warm                 

See which of the words suggested by your friends resonate with you, especially if a certain adjective comes up more than once. That means there’s usually something to that suggestion.

As you become more familiar and comfortable with your voice, you may find that you can start to identify the attributes that are specific to you. Your voice might be raspy or it might be crisp and clear. Maybe you have a slight drawl from living in the South, or a particular vocal pattern that people identify with you. Identifying your vocal characteristics is a good way to start honing in on what types of characters and qualities you might be able to bring to the table.

Some people call this description of your voice and delivery a vocal signature or style; others simply call it your sound. As soon as you zero in on your sound, you’ve got a strong place to start and to build outward from. It’ll be your safe place that you can always fall back on, and probably the place from which you’ll do most of your work.

Vocal signature comes up a lot in commercial VO. You might get hired because of your specific sound and attitude – which the client feels perfectly represent the product, and suddenly you’re the spokesvoice for that brand.

Remember, the most important thing here is that you are discovering for yourself your own personal and particular vocal quality and sound. There are so many opportunities in the field of voice-over that there’s no reason for you to feel the need to alter your own sound. Simply learn to market what you have and who you are, and that’s when things will really start popping!

Check out the rest of the website for tips and exercises, we post daily VO tips on Facebook and Twitter, and our book, Voice Over Voice Actor: What it’s like behind the mic  includes a wealth of exercises to build your voice and keep it ready for a successful voice over career!

Voice Over: Playing with Speed, Pitch and Volume

There are so many different elements that contribute to how a person sounds, and if you can become aware of them, you can use them to your advantage to help you create some really fun, funky, and fancy voices for your repertoire. Start with the speed which is simply how quickly you’re speaking: slow, medium, or fast. People often joke about Southerners (from the U.S.) speaking in a slow, meandering drawl, while folks from the northeast (U.S. again) are more fast-paced, quick, and to the point. Play around with your speed to find fun patterns, not only of the words, but of the phrases and sentences.

Then move to the pitch. Generally a voice can be pitched high, mid-range, or low. Some examples of a high-pitched voice might be the aforementioned Spongebob Squarepants, or the actress Ellen Greene, or yourself after sucking on a helium balloon. A low-pitched voice calls to mind James Earl Jones, Tom Waits, Ron Perlman, or Lurch from The Addams Family. The rest of us fall somewhere in the middle.

One person’s mid-range pitch may be your low or high depending on how you’re built, and depending on what sex you are: men naturally tend to have a lower register, while women’s voices are usually higher. Play around with your pitch a little and see what happens. It can lead to touching moments, funny moments, and downright scary moments sometimes.

The final basic element is volume: loud, conversational, and soft. Perhaps a male character speaks in a loud booming voice and is always being asked to quiet down (maybe he worked for years in an anvil factory). Or a female character’s voice is shy and whispery, and no one can understand her (too many years as a librarian, perhaps). See how entire characters can develop out of how loud or soft you choose to speak?

Now look at these three elements: speed, pitch, and volume, and break each of them down into its low, medium, and high grades. The result is nine different qualities to mix and match in three dimensions. Imagine a giant 3-D tic-tac-toe board with each quality represented by its own dimension. It’s kind of like a simplified vocal Rubik’s Cube of choices, with speed represented by height, pitch represented by width, and volume represented by depth (see diagram below). Now pick one of the intersections of these elements (a small cube within the cube) and see what combo you get. Here are quality groupings you’d end up with if you selected each of the numbered cubes in the illustration:

Cube 1: a fast, low-pitched, soft voice

Cube 2: a slow, mid-range, loud voice

Cube 3: a medium-speed, high-pitched, conversational voice

You can come up with a variety of other combinations simply by mixing these three different qualities. This doesn’t even take into account other flair you can add, such as attitude, accent, or age. The possibilities are (nearly) endless!

Expand Your Breath! Some good exercises....

Learn about your breathing, then expand or lengthen it, to really increase your skills in VO!

     1. Begin by lying flat on the ground and placing your hand on your abdomen just below your ribs.
     2. Feel the natural rise and fall as you breathe.
     3. Notice the natural ‘pause’ between inhale and exhale.

This is how your body breathes without you trying to do anything to control it. As you breathe, there should be four sections to each breath: 1. an inhale, 2. a pause, 3. an exhale, 4. a pause. We usually don’t feel the pauses because they’re short and they happen naturally, but they’re there, all right.

This next exercise focuses on lengthening, or expanding, your breath:
      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 lig ht-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.

(Tara once had a voice teacher who could breathe in and out on a thirty-count, which comes with a lot of practice. Being able to hold your breath and control your breathing allows you to play with your voice more, giving you more range and stamina, which could come in handy for things such as recording long passages for audiobooks or characters who really ramble on.)

Vocal Warm Ups: The 1-2-3-4 of warming up!

How do you start your warm up? And is there a correct order for warm up exercises? Here are our recommendations:

 1)      WARM UP YOUR VOCAL CORDS:  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.

• Hmmm
• Mmmm

2)      ENUNCIATION:  After your voice starts to feel a little less groggy, 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

3)      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’
• “Brrrrr” made by blowing out with your lips closed to create a motorboat sound, sort of like a raspberry without sticking your tongue out (this can get a little spitty, so watch out)

4)      WORK YOUR 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

“Breathing with your diaphragm” What does that mean?

From Wiki: Thoracic diaphragm: “In the anatomy of mammals, the thoracic diaphragm, or simply the diaphragm, (Ancient Greek: διάφραγμα  diáphragma "partition"), is a sheet of internal skeletal muscle that extends across the bottom of the rib cage. The diaphragm separates the thoracic cavity (heart, lungs & ribs) from the abdominal cavity and performs an important function in respiration.”

As a VO artist you need to know about and use your diaphragm!  It is our big breathing muscle, a dome-shaped muscle at the base of your lungs. This shelf of muscle is controlled by the nervous system; it contracts when we inhale, so that a vacuum is created in our  lungs and air rushes in to fill it. The opposite happens when we exhale; the diaphragm relaxes  and the air in the lungs rushes out.

Breath is the fuel of the voice, whether it is for singing or for voice over work. The stronger the diaphragmatic muscles, the better you can regulate the amount of breath that is pushed over your vocal cords, so improving the control you have over your voice in your sessions.  When the diaphragm is strong you can ensure a steady stream of air for your needs, you can speak longer without needing a breath, and you have more power for volume or attack in your speaking. And the stronger the diaphragm, the less effort all of this is for you!

Here is an exercise to help build the strength of your diaphragm, from our book, Voice Over Voice Actor: What It’s Like Behind the Mic!

1. Place your hand on your diaphragm.
2. Open your mouth and allow the tongue to relax and hang out of your mouth.
3. As quickly as possible, inhale and exhale, like you’re a dog panting.
(of course, if you feel dizzy or lightheaded, stop immediately)

We’ve been focusing on strengthening your diaphragm, but that won’t be the only thing you’ll be using. Your diaphragm will be working in conjunction with your mouth, tongue and mind so they must be ready to go as well. Articulation, or the ability to speak clearly, is a crucial element to a voice actor’s repertoire. Not every character you play will need good articulation (and sometimes you may even be told to articulate less), but it is always better to have it up your sleeve, so that if you’re slurring your speech, it’s a choice rather than an issue.

Hum while chewing - it's a great exercise!

We hear good feedback from folks about this exercise, and we find it very helpful.

Give it a try!

1. With your lips closed, start to hum.
2. Then make chewing movements, as if you were eating, and keep humming the  whole time.
3. Now use your hands to feel the vibration in the front of your face, your nose, your cheeks, and gently allow your hands to move to your neck and throat, and perhaps even onto your belly so that you can feel how your voice resonates in different areas of your body.

Using the chewing hum can warm up the different areas where your voice will resonate. Once again, when your voice resonates, it bounces around a certain area of your body, whether that’s up in your face, nose or head area, your throat, or your chest or belly.

Now to begin to identify where your voice is resonating, let’s concentrate on specific sounds that tend to resonate in different areas. Certain sounds we create generally vibrate more toward the head, while others, because we use different muscles to make them, may vibrate lower, toward the belly. If you can learn to control where you choose to place your voice, you can begin to use it in more powerful and interesting ways.

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Great VO Exercise: Raspberries, Sirens, and Lip Trills

1. Keeping your lips together, like you were making imaginary car (or motorboat, if you prefer) “brrrm, brrrrm” noises, and allow your lips to make a “raspberry” type sound (like a good old-fashioned Bronx cheer without sticking your tongue out), or lip trill. Begin at the bottom of your possible range and while continuing the lip trills gradually raise your pitch until you hit your highest note possible.

2. Now reverse direction. Start at the top of your range and move downward thru your natural pitch to your lowest note.

3. Continue your lip trills while going from low to high and back to low again. It’ll sound a little like a siren.

4. Repeat the sirens 3-5 times until you feel like your voice is beginning to get warmed up.

5. This can be hard to describe on paper. Feel free to visit this link ( ) to see an example.

Lip trills are a great way not only to warm up your face and resonators in your sinus cavities, but also helps keep your vocal cords and neck muscles from tensing up while you’re warming up your voice. Don’t worry if your voice cracks during the sirens. That’s just a natural part of expanding your range. We all have “head tones” (high) as well as “chest tones” (low) in our range, and in order to move back and forth continuously from one to the other, you have to move through your natural “break,” which is the sound that often people associate with a teen boy going through puberty. One of the reasons for this is that the vocal cords are actually growing and stretching and sounds that used to be easily within one range move to a different register, and the voice “cracks” as it pushes through unfamiliar territory. So in addition to warming up your voice, this exercise can also help you widen your vocal range.

Sirens w/out Lip Trill

1. Allow your mouth to hang slightly open, and begin an “ee” sound at the bottom of your range. As you exhale, slide your pitch higher and higher until you hit your highest note possible.

2. Now reverse direction. Start at the top of your range and slide your pitch downward until you hit your lowest note.

3. Make sure your face and jaw are relaxed and comfortably open while making the siren sound.

4. Repeat the sirens 3-5 times until you feel like your voice is warming up.
Practicing sirens can really begin to stretch your range and gently allow the musculature in your face and neck (as well as your vocal cords) to begin to become accustomed to the sounds you’ll be making while acting.

Whether you have a high or low-pitched voice you can also begin to think about the placement of the sound you’re making. This is separate from the pitch. Placement relates to the physical location in your body where your voice is resonating. For example, if you have a head cold and are all stuffed up, you might sound very frontal, or nasal, since your sinuses are blocked and thus blocking the sound from escaping completely, therefore creating a very frontal resonant sound. If you drop the sound way back to the back of your throat, then you would almost sound like you were swallowing the sounds, creating a very different quality altogether.

Begin to play around with extremely frontal, a mid-range placement as well as a back placed sound. This is something that you can bring into your work and begin to pick and choose where certain voices you create will be placed and where others will lie instead. [Should this be a new exercise to help develop awareness of where you’re placing your voice?]

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Great Voice Over Exercise: "The Phrasinator"

People tell us this exercise from our book, "Voice Over Voice Actor: What It's Like Behind the Mic"  really helps them, so we thought we'd blog it again:

Try each of these phrases in the emotions suggested at the right. It will really work your ability to quickly change the feel and tone of your expression.

Exercise: The Phrasinator

• Over here......................................... Excited
• I need that........................................ Overjoyed
• Let go...............................................Secretive
• What are you talking about..................Frustrated
• Don’t do that......................................Uncomfortable
• I don’t think that’s a good idea..............Annoyed
• Give me the new one..........................Angry
• No....................................................Scared
• Try it again........................................Sleepy
• Listen to me......................................Happy
• Alright..............................................In awe
• Stop right there.................................Uncomfortable
• Wow that’s huge................................Frightened

Then if you want continue playing with the phrases by trying each of the different descriptions with each of the sentences. To take it one step further, try adding punctuation (? . !) and see how that might change the way you say the lines.

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Here's a great exercise - use current TV commercials!

Really listen to the commercials on your TV or radio. When you find a good commercial you like, try to parrot the VO actor who is speaking the lines.  You'll be repeating the words, of course, but also try to copy, as exactly as you can, the nuances, the tone, the inflections he or she uses, and the musicality.

Then mute or turn off the TV or radio and grab any random bit of text, such as an ad in a piece of mail or magazine. Try to bring the new tone and vocal patterns you've been copying to these new words. You will be using the style you've been mimicking with this new material.

This will really start to train your ear and attune you to what is currently “hot” in the advertising world. And it gets you practicing, reading aloud, and using your voice in new ways.

And it's fun! Enjoy!

Take Action #27: Getting your own practice copy together

1. This exercise is to help you begin to compile your own practice copy for you to work on and then eventually use to create your commercial or animation demo reel.

2. For commercial copy, find magazines, see which ads visually pop out at you and write down the advertisement (or if the magazine is yours, pull the page out). Remember that print copy reads differently from commercial audio copy, so use the print as a starting point and then make slight adjustments to help the line flow.

3. To build animation copy, find an inanimate object in your house, then begin to write a monologue or conversation this object/character might have with you about its needs or hopes or dreams. Another wonderful way to create animation copy is to write down your favorite characters from animated shows, then rename them and make changes to what you know of their experiences, then try building a history or story for them that you find interesting.

4. Note which type of ad goes with the different types of commercial types (hard sell, soft sell, partner read, tag, etc.) also review your animation copy to see what types of characters you’re showing off and make sure you have some variety that works with your voice.

5. Put all your found (and massaged) copy into a binder, and practice randomly flipping to different pieces and reading and performing them as you would if you were in the booth.

Wonderful. You’ve had the chance to hone your unique vocal qualities and become more familiar with your natural voice. You’ve also probably gotten to see how your body reacts to a warm-up and how that can better prepare your voice for a session. You’ve read copy and made choices and have begun the process of building your own personal stack of practice copy that you can use as you move toward making your demo reel.

Voice-over isn't like it used to be where only 'certain' voices worked, now there are voices of all kinds and varieties to make up the spice of life. Basically, if you are a solid actor, are professional and considerate and you have good mic technique there is no reason you can't work in VO, of course, someone would have to hire you, so you'd need your demo reel ($$$$, time, energy) and most likely you will need to secure an agent to represent you and get you auditions (time/energy) as well as giving yourself as much as an edge as possible by taking classes, practicing your craft, knowing your voice and how to take care of it; so planning a career in voice-over is an investment.

The wonderful world of voice-over allows you to create amazing characters, to teach, to entertain, to offer new alternatives and to go on a whole new adventure. Remember, voice acting just “acting” without the bonus of using your facial expressions or body language to convey something visually, so your intention has to come across with just your voice helped by your imagination. And we all have one of those…

Take Action #26 Practice Copy

PRACTICE WITH SCRIPTS & COPY So, your body is warmed up, your mind is awake and you’re ready to get your hands (well, your vocal cords anyway) dirty with some actual voice-over work. There’s a lot to take in when you are looking at a script so here are a few helpful (non-acting) hints and reminders.

As we mentioned in the book, if you’re working on ADR/dubbing, there might be notations in the script to let you know where pauses (sometimes called ‘hitches’) fall, at what time-code the line starts and ends, and what lines might be on-camera and not. If you’re recording original animation there might be loop numbers before each line of dialogue. Let’s review briefly some common notations, as any extra information you can mine from the page can help to inform your performance.

Hitches (means pause) (^, …, /_, ) MNS – mouth not seen, OM, CM – open mouth, closed mouth _______ - off screen Time code – 01:02:03:04

Below is a practice script, some fake commercial copy for you to practice with. Create a practice work session that you can go back and review by using some sort of audio recording device to record yourself while you practice out loud. Enjoy your session!

1.As you read, try circling all the notations you notice as well as be extra aware of any information you can mine from the page. 2 Ask yourself the Who-What-Where-When-Why-hoW questions to see what comes up. Underline this information to help you see if it affects your interpretation or acting choices.

COMMERCIAL COPY

Your new voice-over agent would like you to read some of the spots they just got in today so they can see what would best suit your voice. Often agents will have you read for all sorts of things when you first sign, as a way of throwing things up against the wall to see what sticks. So, go ahead and read the various copy that’s come in

Luxury: The Jewelry Outlet at KnollCrest is having a pre-Valentines engagement ring sale. Come on down and surprise your loved one with the proposal of a lifetime. We have 24 karat gold and platinum rings on sale for almost 30% off, this weekend only. High Energy: It’s Faaaaaaantastic. Super Fruit Bowl ‘O’Sugars get you ready for a day of fun in the sun. Filled with vitamins, minerals and naturally sweetened real fruit pieces, Bowl’O’Sugars are part of a complete breakfast. Start your morning right, be fan-tastic.

Promo This October, The Best Show on TV is moving to a new time…five days a week. Catch your favorite characters Mindy, Bobbi and Karl now at 7pm on KOOLTV.

Partner read: A: Honey did you forget to pay the phone bill? B: What do you mean, I thought it was automatic? A: Oh, right, its just so easy, I keep forgetting? B: Yeah, now we can spend time thinking about more fun things. A: Like if you paid the cable bill? Announcer: Don’t let bills get you down, use the automatic bill pay feature offered by Earth Bank to pay for all your charges throughout the month, even if your provider doesn’t have an auto feature set up. Earth Bank the bank of the Earth. Not available in intergalactic space station Giltex. Soft sell: Soft CleoPattra Egyptian sheets are specially designed to become softer with use…and every time you wash them the natural bamboo fibers relax just a hint more…which makes your bed even more comfortable to get into….who wouldn’t want to sleep in…Soft CleoPattra Sheets. Easy to sleep on, easy to sleep in. High Energy: I love hitting the BergerJack on the way to the game. I can fill up on all my favorites, a real ice-cream shake, a 100% beef patty and a large Idaho potatoes home fries for under 5 bucks. And I can even grab something for the coach, so if I’m a little late to practice sometimes, no harm done.

Tag: Prices based on participation and subject to change without notice, offer good only in the continental United States, all entries must be postmarked by July 4, or will not be considered.

The above copy will give you good practice in looking for clues on the page as well as making cold choices. Of course, there are so many different types of spots always remember you can tune into the radio or TV to see what is currently running.

Take Action #25: Radio Follow-Along

Turn on the radio or TV and try to mimic not only the words, but the accent, the inflection of the speaker and see how close you can get to sounding like them. This is another great (and inexpensive) way to practice is to mimic things you hear. Listen to your favorite radio station and simply mimic the DJ’s, the commercial announcers, even the newscasters. Not only will this clue you in to the types of voices that are booking work, but you’ll often come up with new and exciting voices just by trying to mimic someone else’s.

Take Action # 24 Audition Time

1. This exercise is to help simulate an audition experience for you. Remember to look for all the information on the page to give you clues to your performance.2. Do a trial run with each of the specs and record yourself. Play it back and listen to hear if what you planned in your head was apparent in your recording.

Try out the following Commercial and Animation Audition Copy using the following specs. See how each unique spec changes your performance.

Commercial –

Specs: 1. young, cheerful, spunky 2. wants to be everyone’s friend 3. eternally optimistic 4.intelligent, honest, down-to-earth

1. In the summer heat, 2 bucks can go a long way. Now, at The Burger Joint, grab a large drink, large fries and your choice of hamburger or cheeseburger for only $1.99. Come in and fill up for less than 2 bucks.

2. Why choose one of those other companies that might loose your package or handle it with less-than-optimal care? Let BoxYouUp come by your office or home and package, mail and deliver your important items at your convenience. Visit BoxYouUp.com for pricing. Animation –

Specs: 1. energetic, sporty, hot shot 2. is always having a good time 3. goofy, crazy, wild 4.nervous and easily excited

1. Hey little monkey, I don’t know what you are doing in there, but you need to come out right now. You hear me?I don’t wanna have to yell. C’mon now. Get out. Get. OUT. Monkeeeeeeeeee! OUT. Now see, that wasn’t so bad, now was it. Ha! Silly monkey.

2. You mean there is more out there than this? Robots even? Wicked! Because I’ve been waiting my whole life for that.I just know I can take them on. Let’s go. What are you waiting for? Let’s do this thing. Woah. Did you see that? I’m awesome.

Fantastic. Hopefully getting the experience of listening to your performance has given you a deeper understanding of the variety of things you will want to consider when working on audition material or even going to an audition. Of course, this exercise can’t exactly duplicate an audition experience, but the more prepared you feel before you go into an audition situation, the more confident and relaxed you will be, and the higher your chances of you doing your best work, and with any luck, booking the job!

Take Action #17: The Count

1-2-3 inhale 1-2-3 hold 1-2-3 exhale 1-2-3 hold 1-2-3-4 inhale 1-2-3-4 hold 1-2-3-4 exhale 1-2-3-4 hold 1-2-3-4-5 inhale 1-2-3-4-5 hold 1-2-3-4-5 exhale 1-2-3-4-5 hold

Having a strong diaphragm will not only help you maintain your breath for longer periods of time, it can also help you yell, scream, shout and make fighting and reaction noises, all of which are likely to come into play in voice acting. Continue exercising and strengthening your diaphragm so that no matter what type of VO job you jump into next, you’ll be that much more ahead of the game.

Certain sounds (“s” and “z”) will naturally help you ‘hold on’ to your voice and increase the amount of time you can breathe in or out. The next exercise will help you to strengthen this ‘muscle.’ Using the “s” or “z” sound, (rather like a snake hissing) try to slow the air down as much as you can while pushing it out. Start by counting to a lower number (say, three) while inhaling, then exhale on the hiss for three as well and up the count as you feel comfortable doing so. Try also adding a count between breathing in and out, so you’re breathing in, holding, then breathing out, holding, then breathing in again, and so on.

Take Action #16: Your Breath

1. Begin by lying flat on the ground and placing your hand on your abdomen just below your ribs.2. Feel the natural rise and fall as you breathe. 3. Notice the natural ‘pause’ between inhale and exhale.

This is how your body breathes without you trying to do anything to control it. As you breathe, there should be four sections to each breath: 1. an inhale, 2. a pause, 3. an exhale, 4. a pause. We usually don’t feel the pauses because they’re short and they happen naturally, but they’re there, all right. This next exercise focuses on lengthening, or expanding, your breath. 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.

(Tara once had a voice teacher who could breathe in and out on a thirty-count, which comes with a lot of practice. Being able to hold your breath and control your breathing allows you to play with your voice more, giving you more range and stamina, which could come in handy for things such as recording long passages for audiobooks or characters who really ramble on.)

Take Action #15: Front-Mid-Back Sounds

1. Using a “nee, nee, nee, nee” sound, try squinting your eyes or scrunching your face muscles between the sounds and on some of the sounds to create a more nasal resonance2. Switch to humming to feel a very mid mouth placement 3. Now move the sound to the back of the mouth and throat by making a “guh, guh, guh guh” sound. 4. Try switching between the “nee”, the hum and the “guh” tofeel how your voice resonates in different areas of your body.

It can be very fun to learn to control your voice and be able to switch between a voice that is more frontal and a voice that is further back. Try reading this paragraph out loud in your natural voice and while doing so, move the sound toward your nose for a bit, and then reverse it and move it toward your throat and belly. Pay attention to where your voice is most comfortable as well as where it’s beginning to expand to offer you new and exciting options.

Take Action #10 - Can You Step Out of Your Natural Voice?

Stepping outside of your natural voice can be a lot of fun! Once you understand what your natural vocal qualities and “sound” are, you can begin to play outside the box and expand the range of characters and qualities you can offer. This exercise helps you play with a range of emotions. As you read the following phrases, you’ll notice that we have removed all punctuation, which can often be a clue to a phrase’s tone. But in order to expand your range, let’s play around with the many different ways the same phrase can be said. First, see what your natural inclination is when you read the phrase. Copy and paste this blog to a Word Doc, and after each one, write down the adjective that you feel most fits the phrase/sentence. For example, a sentence such as “stop,” might be angry. As you read the phrases, see how you naturally interpret the emotion associated with saying the words.

Exercise: Phrases

• Over here                                          
• I need that                                         
• Let go                                                   
• What are you talking about       
• Don’t do that                                    
• I don’t think that’s a good idea 
• Give me the new one                   
• No                                                         
• Try it again                                         
• Listen to me                                      
• Alright                                                 
• Stop right there                               
• Wow that’s huge                            

Now, review your phrase list and see how you naturally ‘heard’ the specific words. Perhaps your “no,” was “frustrated,” because you assumed that if you are telling someone “no,” it’s because you’re frustrated about something.

Becoming familiar with your instincts can be very helpful because it’ll allow you to make a choice outside of your natural inclination, which can yield very interesting results.

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