Recording an audition. The equivalent to D-Day for any voice-over artist. It’s the bread and butter, and probably the jam as well. If you struggle to make a good recording, you’re obviously going to struggle a fair bit to get anywhere in the voice-over world, but UK Voices would like to help you improve your recording process, and you can do this very simply by investing five to ten minutes before you record your voice in warming up your voice and vocal chords. In this article, we are aiming to give you some exercises that you’ll be able to do to prepare your voice.
So let’s say you’re planning on recording your voice-over at 1pm, you’ll need to start warming up around 12.50, so your voice will be at it’s peak performance when the time comes to hit record and go to work. The vocal chords are like your muscles, you need to stretch them and warm them up before using them properly. You wouldn’t run a marathon or even a sprint without getting your muscles limber, and the same goes for voice-over recording. Even your lips and cheeks and tongue need warming up to ensure a top quality recording. When you wake up your voice tends to be scratchy, hoarse and somewhat weak when compared to usual, this is because your vocal chords haven’t warmed up yet. So there are two easy steps that you can take to fix this.
The first stage of your warm up should be focused on breathing. What you should aim to do is stand up and relax your shoulders and breathe in. Place your hands on your abdomen and push your abdomen out. You want to take a really deep breathe in as such that your chest isn’t puffing out at all. It should only be your diaphragm that’s doing the work. Hold the breath for three seconds, and then slowly release. The purpose of this exercise is to warm up your lungs and diaphragm as your voice will need to be strong for the recording. Complete this exercise five to ten times, without resting. Another bonus of this exercise is that by breathing slowly, you’ll slow your heart-rate and it’ll help to alleviate any pre-recording nerves that may have.
The second part of you warm up is the loosening of the tongue, lips and cheeks. You can do this very easily, by reciting a number of tongue twisters slowly at first, and then speed up as you go along. At the start make sure to enunciate every word, you should be stretching your lips and mouth, then start quickening the pace until you can’t go any faster. This will help work the diaphragm as it’ll have to work hard to keep pushing out enough air to get out the tongue twister. We’d recommend searching online for more tongue twisters to use, but below are a few examples of ones that you can use.
“Some shun sunshine, do you shun sunshine”
“Six thick thistle sticks”
“Lucy like light literature”
Or if you feel really adventurous, you could try:
“When a doctor gets sick and another doctor doctors him, does the doctor doing the doctoring have to doctor the doctor the way the doctor being doctored wants to be doctored, or does the doctor doing the doctoring of the doctor doctor the doctor as he wants to do the doctoring?”
So if you want to get your voice working and in top shape before attacking your recording, follow these two simple and fun steps. You’ll have your voice and your recordings in top shape in no time.
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