Speaker 1: Hello, it's Peter Baker here from voiceovermasterclass.com. I've been in the voiceover business for a very long time, since the early 70s, and one question that comes up again and again is, how does one improve one's voice? Now the word improve, what does that mean? Usually when people say, how could I improve my voice, they want to sound more like an announcer with lots of resonance, and resonance or depth in voice is a very good aspirational thing to get. Basically, a resonant, deep voice gives assured authority, it gives you the sound of someone that you want to listen to, it makes it easier to listen to as well. So resonance is a good thing for men and for women, by the way, and people who have maybe a thin voice want to know how to make it a little bit deeper. Well, it's kind of difficult on a video where I can't hear your voice at the moment to give you any specific tips as to what to do with your own voice. I can give you some general tips, but really you need to see a speech therapist or someone who can help with drama, who can listen to your voice. Maybe there's something physical, if not psychological, in your makeup or some little things that you say in the way that you say them, or the way that you use your voice. But first of all, talk about a music shop. You go into a music shop and you ask for a new string for your guitar. You get it in a little bag, you take it out and you pluck it. It doesn't sound anything like it is on the guitar. You suddenly put it on your acoustic guitar and it sounds like a guitar. It's the same basically with the human body. You have vocal cords, they vibrate, my vocal cords are vibrating now, but I sound like me because those vocal cords are basically reverberating throughout the cavities I have in my body. Every body is different. And usually, though not always, usually the larger the body, the larger the sound, the more depth you get, the more resonance you get, the more assured authority you get. But as I say, it's not always. And if you notice when you wake up in the morning, you're a little bit groggy, a little bit tired, your voice is always deeper for some reason. It's because you're relaxed. The problem I find with people who start off with voiceovers, they're so worried about how their voice is going to sound, what the producer is saying the other side of the glass. It's the tension, basically, because you're behind that microphone. And that tension then tightens up all the muscles and all the places you don't want them to tighten up. And suddenly your voice becomes a little bit thin, a little bit forced like that. You simply cannot physically get lower than that note because you're tensed up all the time. Now imagine you are woken up in the morning. Morning, dear. How are you? Like some breakfast? You're naturally deep in a romantic candlelit dinner with your partner. It's having a nice meal. You know, you're relaxed and suddenly you come out all sounding deep. So the first thing is relax as much as you possibly can. Relax. Force yourself to relax. Understand in your body what muscles it is that do tense up. In fact, do an experiment now. Just pretend you're on stage. Loads of people are looking at you. You're absolutely terrified at your wits. Just put yourself in that mode. Just think about what tenses up. Normally your shoulders go up a bit. You're normally staring ahead. Your head doesn't want to move from side to side. Now just think of those muscles. Just identify them. Let your brain identify the muscles that affect your voice there. I'm not a doctor. I can't tell you the name of the muscles. They're the ones at the back of the throat and ones that should be relaxed. Now you've identified them, try to relax them. And we do this by humming exercises. Humming exercises are absolutely brilliant generally for relaxing one and also for helping to get your voice deeper. And this is a good general exercise for everyone to do. And it's an easy one to do as well because you can low hum on a long car journey, on your way to work, wherever. Maybe not do it on a bus because people next to you might think you're a bit crazy. But if you're on your own, certainly in a car, do some low humming. And I mean really low humming. And you can test how low you're going by putting your hand on top of your chest. So I don't touch my microphone. You put your hand there and go as low as you can. Like mmm lower, mmm lower, mmm. Find the lowest note you can do without it breaking up. For me it's mmm. I don't know if the microphone can pick that up. My hand is picking up vibrations. That's what you want. You want those vibrations. Now the next thing to do, once you've found the lowest note you can possibly hum, sorry I hit the microphone, is basically to open up those muscles dramatically. The ones that you have identified. The ones that are causing you to tense up and not get below your current low note. And it's the same muscle that you use when you're thrown up after a party. Right, when you do that, would you do that for me please? That is the muscle that you need to relax. And it's right there in your throat system. I say I'm not a doctor. If you're a doctor you're probably laughing at this right now. But it's that one. So I am now going to relax that muscle and you'll see how lower I can get. So this is my low note at the moment. Now I'm going to open up that muscle and you'll hear it sound much more mellow and deep. And because I can't speak and hum at the same time, my hand is up when it's tense. When I relax that muscle, it's down. Just listen to the change ok. Subtle I hope you got that on your computer speakers. It basically is a mellower sound. Now when you start speaking in that mode, suddenly you become more like the announcer maybe you wish to be. Now some of you are now thinking, well we don't all want to be announcers. Don't I see audition scripts that says no announcer? That's absolutely right and you've got to learn how to switch yourself out of that. Quite often, in fact earlier today I was doing some scripts for a museum in Belgium. I had to be various historical characters that people pick up on their headphones you know. You get acting jobs where you don't want to be an announcer, you don't want to be a narrator, you have to be a real person. And there quite often my voice is too deep for that and sometimes I don't get the jobs you know. So deep isn't always good, but if you want to go deep, humming, that low humming where you go, you do that basically. And when you do that in that mode, relax that muscle when you're speaking, you go from this voice into this voice because you're really relaxed. You've now loosened the muscle at the back of your throat and you're talking nice and relaxed. And it's amazing how low you can get. And to get lower you continue doing these humming exercises. Basically you do your low hum as much as you can, I'd say 10 minutes a day. After a week or two weeks certainly you will know a difference. Suddenly whoa, I didn't know I could get as low as that. And that with your relaxation really helps a lot. So humming exercises, really, really good news. As much as you can. Now there are other resonance exercises, but they would need to be specific to your voice. That's why you need to see an expert face to face. But there's no point having that wonderful resonance if you haven't got the clarity. And so I always say QEQR is the best exercise you can possibly do. I talk about this in the full voiceover masterclass lessons. And basically you say the letter Q, then E, then Q, then R. You'll notice this stretches the mouth from a tiny little Q to E, which is like a letterbox shape, like that. Q again, then R, which is really open. Now we don't open our mouths enough when we talk in the Western world. And it really helps you as a voiceover, particularly because they can't see you, to get that diction correct. So you can speak as much as you like. However, you should not over-enunciate like that, because that sounds ridiculous. But just doing Q, E, Q, R, please try it for me now, Q, E, Q, R, Q, E, Q, R, gives our muscles a workout. You sent your mouth to the gym and it comes back a happier mouth. I hope you found that useful. For more tips and content on www.voiceovermasterclass.com I've got to get back to my museum characters, so I'll see you soon. Bonne chance.