Small things can annoy me big time:
Loud neighbors past midnight.
People who believe the earth is their trash can.
Zigzagging drivers who don’t signal before changing lanes.
Folks who chew gum with their mouth wide open.
Lowballing “colleagues.”
I could go on forever but I won’t because I’ll end up annoying you.
A short while ago I was in my car listening to NPR‘s “Morning Edition,” and something else bugged me. It wasn’t their angle on the news or their choice of topics. It was something more subtle.
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I’ll take a small hit on being out of shape, but you tip on keeping your mouth open at the end of a sentence and the breathing techniques explained here are wonderful! Good technique leads to less editing time, which directly affects the bottom line. Good technique is had by practice. I’m glad I don’t “Suck” Thanks for sharing your knowledge Paul.
Always a pleasure, Ted!
Wow Paul, I concur with Ted. I was surprised mostly by this sentence, “Not only do I open my mouth at the beginning of a sentence, I keep it open at the very end and for the very same reason.”
I think you might have changed my life 😉
As always, thanks for the fantastic insights Paul!
At first it sounds very counterintuitive to keep your mouth open at the end of a sentence. It only applies to your time in the studio. Otherwise your friends might get worried about your state of mind…
First of all, I want to thank you for writing your article and helping me. Recently I lost 85 pounds and counting. I have to relearn how to breathe again. I truly believe and know that your breathing has everything to do with how good you sound. Definitely this will be part of my daily workout for the rest of my days as a voice artist. Thank you!
Congratulations on your amazing result, Peacock. Keep it up and keep it off!
In a way, voice-over artists are very much like singers. Breath support is an essential part of playing our instrument. Here’s to making great music!
Oh Paul, this is why I love your blog.
It tends to hit on things that I’m currently thinking/working on.
Changing my breathing over the last 6 months, has LITERALLY changed my life in the booth. The frustration that comes out of hearing those nasty, gasping breath & mouth sounds in playback is motivation enough to try ANYTHING to make them go away.
When I was in acting school, it was always stressed that we needed to breath from the abdomen, so luckily I have that training in my back pocket and it has worked wonders behind the mic. But it takes conscious practice & effort to change a life long habit of shallow breathing.
Thanks for being awesome as always!
Thanks for your awesome comment, Lauren! Good breathing should be part of every professional (voice) actor’s tool kit.
Totally going to record today with your article in mind. I should know – I did learn all these things at one point, but have developed bad habits.
As always: Thanks, Paul, I would still suck if it were not for you 🙂
Another great article from Paul.
It bears noting that breaths heard over the radio can appear very loud and obnoxious because of the desire of most broadcasters to process their audio so that it’s always as loud as possible. One reason for this is, for example, when people are listening in their cars, there could be windows open, creating wind noise and allowing the sound of traffic into the car.
Unfortunately, when some people new to voice-over come from a radio background, there can be a tendency to try to duplicate that sound by employing too much dynamic compression, which is one tool broadcasters use. While *some* compression can be good, too much is, well, just too much. And, as a result, when the person stops speaking to take a breath, the compressor attempts to bring whatever it “hears” (the breath) up to a level to match that of the voice.
Use minimal compression and, by all means, use Paul’s excellent advice for maximizing the efficiency of your breathing so that it sounds natural, and so that it doesn’t become necessary to spend a lot of extra time fiddling with them in post-production.
Now, we can all breathe a little easier.
Thanks for your comprehensive comment, Mike. I suspected commercial radio stations of over-compressing their signal, but NPR…
Oh dear! The NPR compression is famous enough that iZotope alloy has a preset called “NPR Voice” and you adjust the “NPRness” of it. It’s a pretty complex scheme, but it does sound like you are doing morning edition!
I had no idea, Ted. I only use Izotope Rx2 and it’s phenomenal.
As a singer, I’ve got the breathing down, but that tip about leaving your mouth open at the end of sentences makes too much sense for me not to have thought of before. You’re right about not getting into such a habit that I do it in ‘real life’ though. Mom used to say, “You’re gonna catch flies with that mouth hanging open like that.”
Excellent tip and great post! Sharing now.
Thanks for sharing, Donna. That totally makes my day!
Uuuaaagh! Funny you should bring this up, Paul.
I sometimes battle back and forth between the proper breathing I do for maximum benefit and lung conditioning while at the gym… carefully working through my weight and aerobic routines… and the breathing I do behind the mic. I too have discovered it is quieter to inhale through the mouth and not through the nose.
I also find that removing ALL breaths from a VO or narration is unnatural. This bothers me the most in many audio books I hear. They literally suck the life out of the narrators story. Some are grossly over edited! It’s especially irritating when I hear a “drop out” from the background noise that exits through the whole piece. The editing draws attention to the noisy background. But that’s another discussion regarding sound quality.
I’m a very “selective breath remover”usually removing the biggest breaths. Besides half the time my VO is going through another production process and I’ll let them edit out what they don’t like.
I just hope I don’t start getting to the “wheezing” stage soon. That calls for an automatic edit!
At the gym it would be useful to have a breath or grunt-remover app. Some of my fellow-members inhale and exhale rather dramatically while working out. It this was Wimbledon, they would be fined….
HA, ha! Good point about Wimbledon! I think the judges there were somehow relating tennis to sex. Hum, what gave ’em that idea?
Those heavy breathers at the gym are probably not breathing correctly. I hear those folks as well. Generally, you should inhale on the positive part of the exercise and exhale on the negative side… or is it the other way around? I’ve been at it for 29 years now, I just know it as second nature during my exercises. It feels right when it’s right and you don’t overexert or turn blue or ruin the good form used for each exercise. Listen next time at the gym, I’ll bet most of the noise makers are sucking too much air in through their mouth as they inhale instead of gently inhaling through their noses. But back to the studio now…
Nice post! Breathing or the lack of breath, gets me in trouble when I’m cursing along and hit a section of copy that I didn’t prep well. It’s funny to listen to the playback as I attempt to force the last of whatever’s in my lungs to finish the line. Bad me!
I will ask the client if they want a clean, breathless read or a more natural one. A few have never really given it any thought and tell me to do “whatever.” Well, time is time and darn it, natural sounds good!
-JCD
Hi Christopher, I’ve never asked a client about breath. Usually, they prefer mine to be fresh.
wow, Paul! u haff hit ze nail on ze head again viss diss lasst vonn on how we babes suck! here’s a tube link to a quickie that portrays the sucking news-read of a top pro on the Italian TV pubcaster RAI – i have to zap to another channel; she makes me feel ill listening to her… -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9PvbO-URXk
cheers and greetings from Roma! Edwin.
Hi Edwin, I wouldn’t be surprised if Maria Cuffaro were a smoker. It’s not the smokey sound I enjoy listening to. I have to say that I’d love to be able to rattle in Italian the way she does. There are some awesome tongue twisters in your linked YouTube video.
I just copied part of your blog to keep in my studio-thanks Paul!
You copycat, you…. 🙂 Seriously, Jane, that is a great compliment.
Too funny, I did the same thing – noticing the loud breaths – a couple of weeks ago on a singer.
When doing longer narration pieces, I started taking a slight longer pause before each new sentence, then take a deep breath to hopefully make it through the next one without having to take another breath or only a short and “quiet” one. The longer pause then lets me edit out the deep and usually loud breath completely without interrupting the flow of the piece and making it sound unnatural.
Great tip on keeping the mouth open, thanks!
I’ve used that technique too, Sylvia, and I ended up spending a lot of extra time in the editing room. Pausing before the next sentence did help me focus on my breath and the position of my mouth. It was one of those “stop and think” moments as I was relearning how to breathe and keep my mouth open.
Awesome article and great tips, Paul! I’ve learned the trick of leaving my mouth open, but it isn’t a habit yet. Still have to consciously tell myself to do that.
We all go through the four stages of learning (as described in “The Ying and Yang of Freelancing“)/ Some say that if you practice a new routine for 30 days in a row, it is likely to stick.
Good article, Paul. Another thing I learned in my singing days was to make sure you expel all the breath left in your lungs before taking in another deep breath. The best way to ‘manage’ your breathing is to gauge how much breath you’ll need to get through the next amount of text so that when you finish and need to take another breath, your lungs are already empty. So, for instance, for a shorter sentence, you would take in less breath than for a longer section of text. So when I flub in the middle of a sentence and want to start it again, I expel the breath left in my lungs and then take in a new breath to start over with.
Great tip, Elaine, especially coming from a Singer! Thank you.
I think that puts me at the “Consciously Competent” stage, since I’ve learned that skill, but still have to think about it. On my way to step 4!
Another great article (Yin & Yang of Freelancing), by the way!
I have a couple auditions to knock out this afternoon and will look forward to test this out!
Just discovered your site and blog and love it. Thanks!
Hi Bruce, thanks for finding this blog! I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you, even though that makes typing very hard.
Well written copy makes natural breathing easy. Nasty writing makes natural breathing very difficult.
Since this is an excellent topic, what does that say about most copy?
😉
@Steve: A lot of copy I receive has been written for the purpose of being read, instead of spoken. I’m not sure better breathing would be able to rescue poorly written copy. Part of our job as VO-talent is to lift even badly written words off the page and make them sound good, convincing and natural.