Warming Up and Strengthening Your Voice

Nope. That is not an alien. Those are vocal cords and you need to strengthen them if you are going to be working in radio!

What does that mean? 

You need to practice, practice, practice. 

Warming up is key to conditioning your voice for any performance. 

There are many websites that provide many different methods to warming up your voice. Here are some good examples of vocal warm ups and how to do them. I am no expert in warming up your voice, I like to start humming before I leave my apartment and sing on the car ride to the station. I then read over my show prep and go through a news read. 

There is nothing worse than going through your show and hearing yourself  'wake up'.  Have you ever listened to a show where the jock's voice crisps as the show goes on, this is the vocal cords waking up. Warming up will avoid this. You can sometimes hear morning show hosts vocal cords 'waking up' if they do not warm up when they start a morning show. 

Do your show prep justice, warm up before you deliver your content. 

If you were a hockey defence-man you would spend time developing a strong slap-shot right? Think of strengthening your voice the same way. Your voice is what will be bringing in the bacon and your going to be talking more than you can imagine, spend some time developing it. 

In periods where I am not on-air some key things I do to maintain and strengthen my voice are:

1. Save your old news reads and read them aloud for practice. If you have a wire subscription you can simply pull a few newscasts from it to read. I mix it up, a couple from the wire and a couple of my old stories. Though working with new content provides an added challenge, if you are focusing simply on strengthening you vocal cords than any content will do. I try to do 3-4 newscasts at once when I use this strategy.

2. I read newspapers aloud. I try to read three medium sized articles without taking a break. This will challenge you, newspaper articles are not written for broadcast, you will find the sentences longer and often a more diverse use of words. I read the articles to the best of my ability without stumbling, it helps to read through each article first. 

3. Read to someone. This is a little different than other exercises, I recommend this if you are working on character voices or just want to change up your routine. I read to my cousin at his bed time, this can be challenging. If you are reading to put someone to sleep you will not project the same way you would on-air. Try reading with children other than at bedtime. Read magazine articles to your spouse or family members.

4. A new thing I have been trying to do lately is read movie subtitles or television with my broadcast voice. Sometimes it goes a little fast, but it is good practice reading new material quickly. 

5. Download movie scripts and practice going through a read. It is pretty easy to find scripts online, this is another good way to work on new voices as well. 

I think you can get the picture, strengthening your voice is not something that is going to happen over night. Start reading aloud with your on-air voice, do it whenever you can. Try to do it for at least 15 minutes straight. Unless you are working on talk radio it is very unlikely you will be speaking for so long on-air. 

Strengthening your voice should not come at the expense of your radio show. Before accepting a position your voice should be strong and ready to do shows consistently (especially if you are working on a morning show or on-air for long durations daily). Nothing would be worse than starting a job and losing your voice within the first few shifts.  

Keep at it all the time, but do not over do it. If it starts to hurt or you begin to lose your voice, stop! Remember your voice is your tool!