No one gets on stage and just wings it.
Actors, comedians, singers, and any form of performer will go through a gradual warming up process before they get out there in front of the crowd. Podcasters are no exception.
Just like you would stretch and warm up your muscles before a big dash, as a podcaster, you should go through regular vocal exercises to take care of and strengthen that valuable instrument, your voice!
Not only will you sound better, but you’ll also make sure that you don’t damage your vocal cords from long discussions. I know that sometimes I’m doing podcast interview after interview, and it can be a lot of stress on my own vocal cords.
Here are some effective ways that you can warm up your podcasting voice. By the way you should also look into these techniques for speaking better in general.
1. Loosen Your Jaw and Lips
This is a great vocal exercise if you don’t talk a lot in your normal life, but suddenly turn into a chatty wizard when you go on your show. A lot of the times, we forget that our lips and our jaw are an important part of our voice.
When you are “tight lipped,” or don’t open your mouth very much when you speak, you’ll find that a lot of your words sound mumbly. That’s because your lips aren’t open enough to allow the sound to travel from your vocal cords to the listener’s ears.
By “yawning,” stretching open your mouth, and practicing over-enunciating what you say, you’ll warm up your lip and jaw muscles for when you go on your podcast.
2. Do Scales to Warm Up Your Pitch
Start with the lowest and most resonant voice that you can muster, and proceed upwards saying “ah.” See how high you can go and where your voice begins to crack.
We have two types of voices:
- Chest voice: that lower, more resonant sounding voice where your chest vibrates when your chest vibrates when you talk.
- Head voice: that higher pitched, upper-range part of your voice. Singers report feeling a vibration in their head, rather than in their chest.
When you do scales, you engage both types of voices, and typically there is a break point in the middle.
3. Practice Breathing Through Your Nose
The breath is fundamental to your voice, just as it is for any wind instrument. To speak effectively, you must master your breath! This begins with breathing through your nose to moisten the air quality that you take into your lungs.
When you breath through your mouth, the air coming in is much dryer and can dry out your through, the longer you talk. It’s more damaging to your mouth. When you breath through your nostrils, the little hairs in your nose referred to as nasal turbinates (or nasal conchae) will help to moisten that air.
As an exercise, breath through your nose and then speak when you’re breathing out to get into the habit of it.
4. Lower your adam’s apple (aka your larynx)
This is a big sticking point for MANY podcasters. You gotta lower your adams apple, relax, and that way your vocal cords don’t have to do as much work. When your larynx is pulled upwards, it makes it harder for your vocal cords to fold and close. If you’re nervous or anxious, you might tighten up in this fashion.
By relaxing, you can lower your larynx, making it easy for your vocal muscles to do their work. your adams apple should be as relaxed as possible (without forcing it to lower). You’ll produce a much better quality of sound this way, and it will take a lot less effort. If possible, I’d watch a vid on how the vocal cords actually work.
As a simple exercise, pay attention to whether or not you’re tightening your adam’s apple as you talk, and relax yourself if it does happen.
5. Improve Your Body Posture
Your body IS the instrument that you’re using to command your voice. If you’re slouched over, it’s going to be hard for air to travel to your lungs effectively. The sound and volume of your voice will be effected. You won’t sound your best.
By being aware of and improving your body posture, you’ll also affect the emotional inflection of your voice. By simply having a more confident body posture, you’ll notice more tones of confidence in your voice. I discuss this more in the Perfect Podcasting Voice, my online course.
For this exercise, first assess how your body is positioned. Make sure that you role your shoulders back, that you’re sitting upright, and positioned in a confident manner.
6. Breath Into Your Diaphragm
When we’re going through our daily lives, many of us will breath into our chest. You might be stressed, nervous, or anxious. As a result, you take shallow breaths. You can feel your shoulders rising up and down, along with your chest.
To maximize the punch of your voice when podcasting, you’re gonna want to make sure that you breath into your belly, using your diaphragm. By doing this, you’ll avoid straining your voice on the podcast. You’ll also feel much more relaxed.
For this exercise, I recommend doing a little bit of meditation, but if you’re not interested in that, then just take five minutes to breath into your belly. As you exhale, practice speaking so that you get used to using your diaphragm this way.
7. Get Your Mind Nimble
As I discuss here, there is a lot more than just your vocal cords when thinking about a great podcasting voice. So much of interviewing guests and speaking on the show comes down to psychology.
If you’re not in the right frame of mind, then you’ll never be able to do things like come up with witty comebacks, illustrate concepts using beautiful analogies, or maintain your confident voice when you’re interviewing someone who’s powerful or famous.
A simple way to get your mind nimble is to practice tongue twisters, so that you can easily talk quickly. Another is to do a game of word association, so that you get used to talking on your feet and coming up with ideas on the fly.
