Egads! What’s that slurping noise?

Have you ever listened to a recording of your voice and been bothered by the sound of your breathing?

Those loud, annoying breaths have no place in a professional voice over and they have to go.

You can mute and edit the breaths out of your recordings of course, but that takes time. And while every voice over needs a certain amount of de-breathing the best thing is to reduce the problem at the source.

In this week’s Inside Voice over training blog, I’ve got voice over breathing tips for you. Often people will ask me about that. Well, this is the week we’re going to talk about it. So number one, don’t confuse speaking for voice over with singing. For singing, you need a whole lot more breath. You need breath support to reach those high notes.

In voice over, it’s the same amount of breath as for speaking, so you’re really not doing anything differently. But there are some tips and tricks when you get nervous and to help you use your breath to sound a lot better. So the second thing I want to share with you is that you should mark your voice over script and plan ahead of time where you’re going to breathe. That will help keeping you from gasping and it will make sure that you’re reading in smooth flowing phrases.

So tip number two, mark your voice over script, plan where you’re going to breathe ahead of time.

Number three is think about the product and the audience and not your breathing. The more you think about your breathing, the more tense you’re going to feel and the weirder your breathing is going to be. So don’t even think about it because the fourth tip is to relax and let it flow naturally.

I mean, we breathe without thinking about it. The more relaxed you are in the booth, the easier your breathing is going to be, the less of a problem it’s going to be for you. Breathing tenses up when we get nervous, so learning to relax yourself is a key voice acting skill. So take a yoga class, learn some stress reduction breathing. Tip number five is to stand up for better breath support. Often if you find, see, I’m sitting up really straight right now. So often if you find that you’re slumped over or your breathing just isn’t flowing smoothly, if you stand, all that problem might go away and you’ll sound a lot better. I also think you sound more energized when you stand up. So if the voice over isn’t too long, have at it, adjust the microphone and get on your feet.

And the sixth tip is to take better care of your health. If you smoke, I mean, a million people probably told you to stop, you know that. Well, this is the time to really get help and do it because smoking and voice over just do not go well together. Take a Palates class, do yoga, do a daily walk. Your overall physical health will really help your voice over breathing and help you sound better behind the microphone.

Watch this week’s short training video Here Now

After you watch the video be sure to leave a comment. I always love to hear from you so I can support you as you grow your voice over career.

To your voice over success,

Susan Berkley
Founder, The Great Voice Company

PS. I’ll be coaching and mentoring a very small group of voice over beginners and emerging talent at my Mic To Money Bootcamp December 7-9, 2019. Learn my Perfect Performance techniques, the Mic To Money Marketing Framework and get a home studio Tech Check .Click or call: https://greatvoice.com/bootcamp-1 talent@greatvoice.com or 800-333-8108.