0203 – Reading Out Loud

Get A Better Broadcast, Podcast and Voice-Over Voice

English - July 21, 2021 23:01 - 2 minutes - 1.94 MB - ★★★★ - 4 ratings
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Previous Episode: 0202 – The Story So Far

Next Episode: 0204 – Don’t Be Too Much

0203 – Reading Out Loud

Of course on radio and podcasts, when you aren’t seen, sound is all that you have to create visuals. That may be music or sound effects, and also the words that you utter, but it is your disembodied voice that creates much of the ‘picture’ on the kind of the listener.

Let’s be honest, reading is an unnatural process. We have evolved over millions of years communicating via grunts and then quite recently, by using words. Our ancestors told each other stories and passed on information while sitting around fires outside caves. By comparison, it is virtually only yesterday that mankind started putting squiggles onto pieces of dried wood pulp as an interpretation of uttered sounds and expected others to translate those into speech with meaning.

But scripts, especially those for commercials, are not like real-life ‘conversational communications’. For a start, the words are most-likely not yours and yet you have to present them as though they are, and that you’re making them up in the moment.

But your job is to be the faithful go between, between the originator of the message and the recipient.

What follows is simply what you already do in everyday life when you talk with someone. What I’ve done is break down the elements of conversational speech, so we can use those same ‘talking tactics’ when we interpret those strange hieroglyphics on a page or screen and sound similarly ad-libbed. By using these, you will sound natural as you tell people what is going on. The content may have changed from the best place to forage for food to the latest food scare, from the dangers of the sabre-toothed tiger to the danger of terrorism, from how to make a big sail to how to save at a big sale … But the way the tales are told will sound the same: conversational.

Through these around-5-minute episodes, you can build your confidence and competence with advice on breathing and reading, inflection and projection, the roles played by better scripting and better sitting, mic techniques and voice care tips... with exercises and anecdotes from a career spent in TV and radio studios. If you're wondering about how to start a podcast, or have had one for a while - download every episode!

And as themes develop over the weeks (that is, they are not random topics day-by-day), this is a free, course to help you GET A BETTER BROADCAST, PODCAST AND VIDEO VOICE.

Look out for more details of the book during 2021.

Contacts: https://linktr.ee/Peter_Stewart

Peter has been around voice and audio all his working life and has trained hundreds of broadcasters in all styles of radio from pop music stations such as Capital FM and BBC Radio 1 to Heart FM, the classical music station BBC Radio 3 and regional BBC stations. He’s trained news presenters on regional TV, the BBC News Channel and on flagship programmes such as the BBC’s Panorama. Other trainees have been music presenters, breakfast show hosts, travel news presenters and voice-over artists.

He has written a number of books on audio and video presentation and production (“Essential Radio Journalism”, “JournoLists”, two editions of “Essential Radio Skills” and three editions of “Broadcast Journalism”) and has written on voice and presentation skills in the BBC’s in-house newspaper “Ariel”.

Peter has presented hundreds of radio shows (you may have heard him on BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 4, Virgin Radio or Kiss, as well as BBC regional radio) with formats as diverse as music-presentation, interview shows, ‘special’ programmes for elections and budgets, live outside broadcasts and commentaries and even the occasional sports, gardening and dedication programmes. He has read several thousand news bulletins, and hosted nearly 2,000 podcast episodes, and is a vocal image consultant advising in all aspects of voice and speech training for presenters on radio and TV, podcasts and YouTube, voiceovers and videocalls.

The podcast title refers to those who may wish to change their speaking voice in some way. It is not a suggestion that anyone should, or be pressured into needing to. We love accents and dialects, and are well aware that how we speak changes over time. The key is: is your voice successfully communicating your message, so it is being understood (and potentially being acted upon) by your target audience?

This podcast is London-based and examples are spoken in the RP (Received Pronunciation) / standard-English / BBC English pronunciation, although invariably applicable to other languages, accents and dialects.

Music credits:

"Bleeping Demo" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/7012-bleeping-demo