0277 – Nervous Newbies

Get A Better Broadcast, Podcast and Voice-Over Voice

English - October 03, 2021 23:01 - 6 minutes - 4.2 MB - ★★★★ - 4 ratings
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Previous Episode: 0276 – The ‘Grand Old Duke Of York’ Readers

Next Episode: 0278 – Intonation Is Easier If…

2021.10.04 – 0277 – Nervous Newbies

This person is a beginner in reading, perhaps live on air. Their problem is that they start their read not on their ‘home pitch’ but one or two octaves higher, which means that when they need to intonate a word using a slightly higher pitch there’s little head room to move in to. It can sound painful for humans to hear – although dogs may be able to!

As well as internal and external stress contributing to a higher register, the style and content of some presenters leads to them speaking this way:

· Excitement – this will cause a voice to rise in register, it may be genuine excitement (during the commentary of a sports match), or non-genuine (the sub-consciously fake higher pitch of a game show host when giving away a prize, which signals to the audience that the event is exciting).

· Volume – a rise in loudness will naturally lead to a rise in register: it is impossible to shout in a low voice. So a ‘frantic DJ’ is likely to have a higher register than a ‘chill out DJ’.

· Projection – subtlety linked to ‘volume’, projection is more to do with how someone ‘throws’ their voice than its sheer loudness. For example, you will throw your voice further according to the number of people you are trying to engage (as well as their distance from you), and in doing so your register will rise. For example, imagine you talking to a single colleague in an office at work and the projection you would use. It’s probably quite low-key, yes? Now imagine that there are four people in that same location, all listening to you. The voice you will use has changed hasn’t it? Not really in loudness, but certainly in projection, and with it your pitch has changed too.

When Intonation Goes Wrong

Think how the voice over felt when they mis-intoned in these situations.

· 4-Skins wine – so-called as it’s “made with four of Nova Scotia's choicest grape varieties - Castel, Marechal Foch, Leon Millot and Lucie Kuhlmann”

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