(JAZZY PIANO MUSIC)
NARRATOR: Talking into a microphone is hard,
even for the most experienced broadcasters.
How can I sound more natural?
How can I take better care of my voice?
How can I sound more like myself?
We've got solutions.
Meet Jessica Hansen.
You hear her all the time on NPR ...
CLIP: "Support for NPR comes from ...
... NPR, offering 'Hoodie-Footie' PJs ...
... and from the listeners who support this NPR station."
NARRATOR: Jessica is also an actress and director,
a voice-over artist and a vocal coach.
With help from some friends here at NPR,
Jessica is going to explain three common problems
with vocal delivery and teach us some helpful exercises.
(JAZZY PIANO MUSIC)
JESSICA HANSEN: Low vocal energy ...
Do you know what low vocal energy is?
SUSAN STAMBERG (IN A FLAT VOICE) I guess it's when you just talk
in a straight line all the time.
And sound like you need a nap.
HANSEN: Yeah, and a lot of that comes
from poor breath support.
So today we're going to do a couple exercises
that build up stronger breath support and breath control.
STAMBERG: OK, let's do it!
HANSEN: Are you game?
STAMBERG: I'll do my best.
HANSEN: So the first exercise just opens up the rib cage
and gets the breath flowing freely in the body.
It involves pretending you're different kinds of dogs.
STAMBERG (LAUGHING): Excellent!
HANSEN: Do you like dogs?
STAMBERG: I do, yes.
HANSEN: So the first one we're going to pretend to be is a chihuahua.
And we're gonna just focus all the breath
at the very top of your ribcage.
And do just short, shallow, little breaths.
(PANTS LIKE CHIHUAHUA)
STAMBERG (LAUGHING): OK, and I have to do this with my hands?
HANSEN: Well ... you know, it makes it more fun for me.
STAMBERG: It's cute but I would have gotten a manicure.
(PANTS LIKE CHIHUAHUA)
HANSEN: That's great!
STAMBERG: That's fun, actually.
HANSEN: Those are good little breaths up here.
The next dog is a Labrador and we're focusing
on the ribs that are right under your armpits here.
And you should feel those swinging open
and closed with this Labrador pant.
(PANTS LIKE LABRADOR)
STAMBERG: So it's deeper.
HANSEN: So that rib movement is great because that helps us,
it helps the breath move more freely
once the ribs are sort of open and swinging happily.
And the last dog,
you might want to stand up for this dog,
the last dog is a great big St. Bernard.
You're going to use all of your all of
your big belly and your ribs down here.
(PANTS LIKE ST. BERNARD)
STAMBERG: Yes, I feel it down here.
HANSEN: That's a good St. Bernard! Yeah!
HANSEN: Yeah, yeah.
STAMBERG: This is fun but I may faint.
HANSEN: Don't do that. Don't do that.
Sit down before you faint.
STAMBERG: OK, good. Good tip.
HANSEN: So that just gets the air moving all the way through
your lungs, it gets your body sort of open and loose
and ready to take deeper, more intentional breaths.
So when you're reading your copy, you can fill up
with air better before you start a sentence,
so you don't start sort of at half-tank.
So the second exercise is very simple.
You're going to hold out your finger
and pretend it's a birthday candle
and you're just going to try blow that flame out
on the tip of your finger five times.
And you want each breath to be equal in length and power.
So it goes like this ...
(BLOWS ON FINGER LIKE A BIRTHDAY CANDLE)
STAMBERG: OK.
(BLOWS ON FINGER LIKE A BIRTHDAY CANDLE)
HANSEN: Yeah.
STAMBERG: Yeah?
HANSEN: What's important to remember with this one
is that you take a good, deep, solid breath
and then you're blowing that breath out
in five equal pieces.
STAMBERG: OK, let me try it again.
HANSEN: Sure.
(BLOWS ON FINGER LIKE A BIRTHDAY CANDLE)
HANSEN: Yeah!
STAMBERG: It's harder but I see the point.
So once we, you know, practice this every day,
the body learns how to keep those breaths equal
and equally supported and they've got equal power
and 'oomph' in them and that helps to sustain
the breath energy through a sentence.
STAMBERG: Mhm. I think I've heard you on the radio.
HANSEN (LAUGHING): Probably — I think I've heard you on the radio.
STAMBERG: Occasionally.
(JAZZY PIANO MUSIC)
HANSEN: Do you know what vocal fry is?
SAM SANDERS: Oh yeah, I do.
You know what? I'm very good at vocal fry.
HANSEN: You are?
SANDERS (USING VOCAL FRY): Frrrrry.
I could keep going.
HANSEN: That's perfect. That's like popcorn popping.
SANDERS: Right?! Thank you.
HANSEN: From a vocal technique standpoint,
it's not a really healthy way to make sound.
The little vocal folds are banging up against each other
in a way that they're not designed to do.
It can hurt your voice, it can hurt your vocal folds,
by eventually creating calluses called "nodes"
and then leading to surgery.
SANDERS: Not good.
HANSEN: Nobody wants surgery in your throat, not good.
So in order to keep your voice out of the vocal fry,
we work really hard to keep it forward so it's in the front
of the mouth using your lips and your teeth
and all those frontal resonators.
And to do that there are several exercises,
but I'll teach you one of them.
SANDERS: Let's do it.
HANSEN: So this is called a lip trill — and some people can't do it,
so let's see if you can.
Basically you just take a deep, supportive breath, and then ...
(TRILLS LIPS)
... trill your lips! Can you do it?
SANDERS (LAUGHING): I don't know.
HANSEN: Let's try it.
SANDERS: You were very good at it.
Okay, let me try.
(TRIES TO TRILL LIPS)
No. Focus.
(TRILLS LIPS)
HANSEN: There it is! That's great.
SANDERS: Thank you.
HANSEN: So you just go up and down in your range,
and just explore all the notes that you have.
(TRILLS LIPS)
And then the next time you speak, you'll just find
that your voice is naturally placed forward.
SANDERS: All right, so you give me total permission now
to do this at my desk, all day?
HANSEN: Ooh, I wouldn't do that to your colleagues.
(JAZZY PIANO MUSIC)
HANSEN: We're talking about how sometimes people can occasionally
sound like they're reading right off the script.
We're calling it scripted voice.
Sometimes maybe not sounding
like they're talking to a person.
Has this ever happened to you?
CORY TURNER (IN A ROBOTIC VOICE): I don't know what you're talking about.
HANSEN: Exactly.
I think one of the best ways that we can
approach this sort of sounding like you're reading words
off a page, is to choose somebody that you would be
talking to, that you would tell the story to.
Do you have somebody that you think of
when you're reading, when you're tracking?
TURNER: I do, yeah. It depends on the story.
Sometimes I imagine my wife sitting across from me.
Or, depending on the story, it may be my eight-year-old son.
HANSEN: Excellent. In addition to having sort of one person
in mind that's your imaginary audience, we can also
do something with the voice to help limber it up,
and see if that helps your voice to just open up
and find new places that it can go that maybe will help
you with that sort of warm and engaging sound
that we're going for.
TURNER: Sounds great. My voice is excited to open.
HANSEN: So you brought some copy with you today, right?
You have a story.
TURNER: I have a story.
HANSEN: So I'm just gonna ask you to read it a couple
different ways, as playfully as you can.
And the first way we'd like you to read it today
is like a cowboy. So get in your best
cowboy stance and get your cowboy 10-gallon hat on,
and read it like a cowboy.
TURNER (LAUGHING): All right. And to further complicate things, I brought one
of the nerdiest, most complicated stories
I've had to report in the last year.
HANSEN: Excellent.
TURNER: On an IRS data retrieval tool.
So this should be a serious jam.
OK. (CLEARS THROAT)
(SPEAKING LIKE A COWBOY) 'Warning! The IRS data retrieval tool is down.'
If those words didn't plunge you into a cold sweat,
then you're not a high school senior or college student
racing to apply for financial aid.
HANSEN: That was great. The next one that we'd like to do
like a toddler, mid temper tantrum.
TURNER: OK. (CLEARS THROAT)
(SPEAKING LIKE A DISTRESSED TODDLER) ''Warning! The IRS data retrieval tool is down.'
If those words didn't plunge you into a cold sweat,
then you're not a high school senior or college student
racing to apply for financial aid.
HANSEN: Good.
So the last one — you've been very bold and brave —
the last one requires all the courage you can muster.
TURNER: OK.
HANSEN: Go ahead and read those sentences again
like the greatest opera singer in the world.
TURNER: OK.
(SINGING IN AN OPERATIC STYLE) ''Warning! The IRS data retrieval tool is down.'
If those words didn't plunge you into a cold sweat,
then you're not a high school senior or college student
racing to apply for financial aid.
HANSEN: Good! How's that?
TURNER: Embarrassing.
But your voice moved in all these wonderful places.
It moved up and down and it was big and full.
And you lifted your soft palate and made all this extra
space in your head for resonance.
That was great.
TURNER: You make it sound so fancy.
HANSEN: It was! It was very fancy what you just did!
(JAZZY PIANO MUSIC)