Vocal Stamina

Hello there, Jamie here. My small group voiceover workshops now have a name. They're called "read the room" with Jamie. Now, these workshops are strictly limited to four attendees only. They last two hours and they're held over Zoom, so you can attend them from wherever. There are three levels, beginner, intermediate, advanced, and we sometimes do genre-specific classes as well. These are a combination of networking, business coaching, script analysis, performance. I introduce you all via email a few days before the class, so it's really a social, learning, performance, combination, delicious soup of a workshop. So to get involved, go to the website readtheroomvo.com, click on the green group classes button, fill in the form, and then I'll be in touch as soon as the next class is available. I usually schedule these about a week in advance. So go to readtheroomvo.com for more information fill in the form and I look forward to seeing you there. That's readtheroomvo.com. Hello, bright and early. It's good morning. It's morning for me. I mean, I guess it's the morning for you. Yeah, 11, 14, 10, at least all morning. If this comes out on next week Monday, happy daylight savings, everyone. Oh, yeah. I always think that we should stay on daylight savings forever. And I don't understand why we don't. I apologize, I guess. I guess. I just feel like it's so dangerous when it gets dark in the evenings. It's dangerous for kids coming home from school. If they're coming home from school late, like it makes everyone more tired at night, like driving at night is far more dangerous than driving in the day. And when you have more, like if it gets dark at 4.30 pm, people are driving home from work every day in the dark. There's probably more people driving home in the dark than would be driving to work super early in the morning, right? Yeah. For sure. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. And there have been, there have been attempts to stay on daylight savings time forever. It's just great. And it feels better when it's lighter later, right? It feels like you got more day. It feels better. It feels better. My kids come from, from school and they want to ride their bikes. Actually, the other day, I let them ride their bikes in the neighborhood. We have a really safe neighborhood. Every, all the parents look out for each other. It was like 520. And my littlest one, Alana, was like, "Mommy, can I please go down the street to my cousin's house?" Or, "My niece and nephew live down the street." And ask them if they can ride bikes with me in the neighborhood. And I was like, "Okay, but you can really only go for 20 minutes." Like, as soon as the street lights turn on, you got to come home. She was like, "Okay." And we went, my niece went to who was 11. So she was like kind of in charge. And it was like 540. And they didn't come home. There was like 545. And I was like in the middle of cooking dinners. So I couldn't really go out there and look for them. Sean, my husband, was coming home from work. And I called him and was like, "When you drive in the neighborhood, can you just drive around and look for them?" And he was like, "Sure." I sent Mahalia out, my eight-year-old, to go look for them. And they were just like, "No where." And I was like, "Oh my God, this is terrible. This is really bad." And finally, at 6 p.m., we found them just, you know, happily riding around the neighborhood. And we were like, "What are you doing? The street lights are on." And they were like, "Oh, they are." Can you put your tags on your kids? Yeah, yeah, they have it. Well, Alana doesn't have an Apple Watch. Mahalia has an Apple Watch. As long as, like, always with us. And also, my niece Nora has a phone. And we were calling her on her phone. Her phone was on silent from school. She was just, they were just having a grand old time. And they were like, "Oh, we didn't realize. You mean those street lights?" And I was like, "Oh my God." So, you know, it's fine. Why don't you go back to DC and try and fix daylight savings? Can you do that? I would love to go to DC and fix anything at this point. I went to DC last week. And it went really well. And we had a lot of meetings with a lot of people about AI protections. And everyone's like, "Yes, we're like, it's moving along. It's all on. We're all on your side. It's going to get done. We hope it gets done in the next few months to pass the No Fakes Act. And then, and then, as soon as I got home, we started a war. So, now nothing's going to get done. Sorry, not a war. It's not a war. Whatever it is. It ain't the No Fakes Act. No, it's not the No Fakes Act. Yeah. Well, welcome to -- So, you know, some days, someday. So what are we talking about today? I would love to talk about vocal stamina and how not to shred your voice. OK. Because I am really excited that I just got hired to do a really big role in a video game. And they're going to have me in two or three times a week for the next two to four months. And every time the session is four hours. Yeah. And then, after that session, I still have to do all the other work that I have to do for my voiceover life and be a mom and do all the other stuff that I'm doing. And I have to sound normal and regular and, you know, not like my voice is shredded. Yeah. And so I've been thinking a lot about this. I feel like I have a kind of PTSD relationship with vocal health and exercises and warmups and stuff because of all of my opera training and it was like intense and crazy and weird. But I've been thinking about it in a different way. And I'm teaching a class at View Atlanta about it. And I just want to talk about it today. Yeah. I'm done. I'm excited. Well, I'm here to learn because I take the approach to video games. I take a similar approach to how I used to play rugby, which is just throw myself into it full hearted, full throated without a lot of consideration for my well-being. And I'm much better now because I am really concerned about everything else that I've got to do, like you just said. But and I do, I am much more judicious about what games I will accept or what projects that are going to strain my voice. Soldiers, I just don't do any more. Just like if it's just like soldier number four and it's just going to be screaming from beginning to end. Even if it's only a two hour session, I'm like, yeah, but now I'm potentially out for two, three days, you know. But yes, I'm here to learn. I've got things that I do and I've noticed I've picked up things just through experience, but I've never really studied it and I've never worked with anyone to figure out good technique. Yeah. I've just been self-sacrificial. Self-sacrificial. When you played rugby, did you ever get injured? No. Oh, good. I didn't play it enough, probably consistently, to be injured, but my whole thing was no skill for commitment. Full throttle. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So what if I told you that there are ways that you can do a two hour screaming session and still be able to do the rest of your work the rest of the day? I'm here for it. What if I told you that there was a technique and if you pay $14.99 today, I'll teach it to you just kidding. Yeah, the rest of the episode is behind the pedal wall, guys. I think in the same way that, so I think about it like this. When I started doing yoga, I got into the studio, the yoga studio, and I was like bending in all these positions and like my muscles were just shaking because I'm like trying to hold myself in the position of like this is the right way to do it and I'm just shaking and all my muscles are like dying. But after you do it for a while, your body learns how to get into those positions and how to release tension in ways that don't make you use all of those muscles and you just kind of fall into the pose. Yeah. And you can just sit there for a really long time and stretch in different ways because you're not holding yourself so much like to do the right thing. I think that a lot of vocal technique is the same way. When you start out, it feels kind of awkward and you don't really know what you're doing and you're just kind of letting the emotion drive the sounds that you're making instead of letting, and it's because you don't know how to make the sounds any other way. We're all naturally people who have screamed in our lives or cried in our lives or like run into a wall and you go, you know, like. That happens all the time. Yeah. So we know what that, we know what that's like. You don't know how to do it in like a more vocally healthy way. And I'm here to tell you that if it seems like there must be a better way to do this, there is a better way to do it. If it seems like there must be an easier way to do something, there's probably an easier way to do it. And that is true of voice production, it's true of learning your keyboard shortcuts on your computer, it's true of like almost everything in life. If it seems like there should be an easier way to do something, there probably is. So I want to talk about this. This is good for video games, obviously, and any kind of vocally strenuous work that you do, but it's also really good for any long form voiceover that you're doing. So whether that is corporate narration or audiobooks or anything else that takes a lot of voice production and hours and hours and hours and weeks and weeks and weeks. But kind of, do you do long form stuff like regularly and does your voice get tired? Really, not so much anymore. I mean, I will have to say, I think everyone's baseline of stamina is different. And I think part of the reason why I haven't really developed particularly good technique is that I can definitely like stick it out, you know, and my voice doesn't seem to change within the second session, even if I'm screaming and shouting for a long time. I pay the price like an hour after we're done. So if I was unable to complete a session or my voice was changing drastically after hour one, yeah, I mean, I couldn't get away with what I, you know, my complete lack of technique. So there's that. And when I do long, long sessions, I just need to take a five minute break and then I'm back in it and I'm fine. Yeah. Okay. You don't know why this, that is what? So well, it's for several different reasons. But in all of my years of studying opera and voice technique and whatever, I never knew this until my dad said it in a class that he taught for an hour recently, which is that your vocal chords have this lining on top of them of epithelial cells that kind of protect the chords themselves. It's almost like mucus, like covering your vocal chords. And when you do screaming or coughing or clearing your throat or any other kind of vocally strenuous thing that you might do, it kind of like excels those epithelial cells away from your chords. So you no longer have the same protective coating on top of them. And if you just take a five minute break or a ten minute break where you're just quiet, just start to go back into place. And it's not as good as if you wait 24 hours and don't say anything or two days and don't say anything, but they start to kind of go into place, back into place. And you can drink some water and relax the muscles in your throat a bit more, because sometimes it's the strain of trying to make that sound, all the muscles in your throat and around your larynx get really. And so just a five minute break can really help. Yeah, I mean, I didn't know why that was the case, but that has definitely been something I've just instinctively done, I guess. And tension is a big thing. If I'm sat there, I don't know if you, you know, your experience of this, but if I'm sat there tense, I'm much more likely to wear my voice out or be physically like physically tired. You know, you're sitting there tense for like two hours is kind of exhausting versus being comfortable and being loose and even just jaw tension and shoulders and neck and everything like that. Things flow. I mean, even just psychologically, you know, if you're physically tense, you're going to probably mess up more because you're like a little bit, you know, on the edge. Yeah. If everything's looser, I find things flow much better. Yeah. And it's more enjoyable in a better headspace and physically or, you know, able to articulate yourself better. I love that you use the word flow because that brings me to my next point. And that is vocal sounds are created by breath going through the vocal cords. And the vocal cords, uh, abducting, right? So like they come together and they vibrate the same way when you have, uh, balloon and you fill it up with air and you pull the top of it tight and it goes. Yeah. Do it. Yeah. Do it with my mouth. You got to keep that in though. Yeah. I will. I'm going to turn it up. Yeah. What? You're going to turn it up. Great. I love it. But it's the same. It's the same as that, right? So you cannot make a vocal sound without air passing through the vocal folds. You can do it on an exhale or if you're like me and I do really weird creature sounds sometimes you can do it on an inhale. And that sounds like, like if you, um, if you gasp for air and you're like, like I made a sound with my vocal cords. Yeah. But then you can kind of pinch your cords together more and you can go. Yeah. Yeah. Sound like a dolphin, yeah. It's a dolphin or like a baby chick. Yeah. Or you can, or you can, you can do all kinds of weird things you can make. Dragon sounds. And now everyone's pets are freaking out. Well, then it's this punk. Yeah. It sounds like a dolphin/seagull/dinosaur/seagull/dinosaur. But you can do all kinds of weird things with your voice, but you have to have air. Yeah. This is something that we learn in theater and in opera is that you have to fill your lungs with air and then instead of using your throat to bring your vocal cords together, it's like a mental thing. And you use your body, like you sink into your body and you release the tension in your throat and you just kind of let it go like, ah, hey, how's it going? You don't want it to sound breathy because sounding breathy is going to make you tired. Now, of course, people are going to come to me and say, but Karin, what about character voices? What if your character's like this and you have to do that all the time? Like, I promise you, there are ways to make that sound that is less vocally taxing. If you have to do a weird character voice, you have to do a weird character voice, but you have to find that coordination in your body where you're literally surfing the wave of the air. And you can just let the wave of air take you over like a bad surfer or you can find the wave and you can jump on your board and you can go forward and it takes you and you're like surfing and it's great. Can I throw one more tip in here that probably the only thing I can actually contribute to this episode? Which is when you're in the studio discovering the character with the director and people like that, be aware of all this stuff and be aware that you're going to have to do that performance for potentially tens of hours. So don't go in hard out the blocks and then the producer or the director is like, oh, I love that. That's fantastic. Let's go with that. Because now you're stuck with it. Yeah. You've got to commit to that. So five fallen foul of that. I've gone in with all the gusto and the enthusiasm like, oh, I'm going to try and do it like this and I'm like going this crazy, full-throated guy. And I'm like, oh, damn. Now I've got to do this for literally hours and hours and hours. My little tip for that is a character voice that sounds more like SpongeBob is easier to do than a character that sounds like Patrick Star. And what I mean by that is nasal voices, voices that are more in the mask and kind of sound like this are more vocally healthy than something that's really dropped down. And you can do this. You can do this for a long time. And you can do that in a way that's healthy, but that's going to make you tired faster than something that's more nasally. And that's because humans actually naturally make a more forward mask placed, like when I talk about the mask, I mean like your sinuses and around your eyes. Like humans naturally make a more forward-placed sound. If you listen to any kind of world music, like think about like classical Indian music, or even things from Africa and Asia, like it's a very forward-placed sound. If you think of a baby crying, it's a very forward-placed sound. Babies are not crying like, "Ahh!" And babies, let me tell you, if you don't know from experience, they can cry for hours. And not get tired. Yeah, they have great vocal placement. They have great vocal placement. So that's not to say you can never do a character that has a low larynx and is like. But you might get more tired. If you're trying to discover a character and you know that you're a person that gets vocally tired, that's the advice that I would give. There is some placement that triggers my gag reflex. Oh, yeah. You know, if you're doing a voice back there and you do that for a longer than, you know, a couple of minutes, I'm like, "Oh God, I'm going to throw up." Yeah. Totally. Totally. Okay, so we talked about support. Um, some good exercises, like, okay, let's just get this out of the way. The best way for you to learn how to use your voice efficiently is to take singing lessons. 100%, I cannot think of another better way. Even if you suck at singing. Even if you suck at singing, because singing is prolonged speech. I can talk to you like this, Jamie, and I'm still talking in a speaking range, but I'm using my air efficiently and everything's placed nicely and I'm not getting too tired, right? And I'm learning how to use my breath. I'm learning how to make the sound ride on that breath in a healthy way. And singing is, singing lessons are great. Yesterday morning, I took my first singing lesson in like 15 years, 12 years, something like that. I haven't had a singing lesson in forever. And I was, I was like kind of nervous about it, but I'm going to sing, I'm going to be Ursula in the little mermaid with my kids. And, um, and as an opera singer, I don't really know how to belt. Yeah. Well, I do. And I do put on fortunate souls. Oh, yeah. It's sad, but true. It's going to be great. Yeah. I'm excited. But I need to work on my belting, because in opera, you sing almost everything in your head voice, like, oh, oh, oh, oh, right. And you bring it down in Broadway and musical theater, you want to take your chest resonance and bring it up as high as you can, right? And so I just, I was saying to my teacher yesterday, it's kind of like telling a ballet dancer to dance hip hop. Yeah. Like, you can do it. Yeah. But you kind of are always going to look like a ballet dancer, probably. So he's great. By the way, if anyone lives in the LA area who's listening to this or Pasadena Glendale, you should, you should take a lesson with my friend Sam Linkowski. He's like super energetic, fun, amazing voice teacher, um, yeah, shout out, shout out to Sam. So, um, yeah, so singing lessons are the best way to figure out how to use your voice. If you're in a voice actor and you've never taken a singing lesson, take a singing lesson, even if it's on Zoom, just take one. I promise you, it will change the way you think about your voice. I have a question for you. Yes. How does your physical health, your fitness level influence vocal stamina, or does it? That's a really good question. Some of the most amazing opera singers in the world are larger people. Yeah. Why is that? In part, because when you have extra weight around your chest, you can, you can expand your lungs and then just kind of relax. And the weight that is on the outside of your ribcage naturally kind of makes your lungs go in at a steady rate. If you're, if you're a super thin person, sometimes that's not helpful. And opera singers who were formerly large and lost a lot of weight, a lot of them have to relearn support. So if you are a larger person, that does not necessarily mean that you are unhealthy or that you can't make great vocal sounds. Think about Brad Venable, who passed away in, in 2021, amazing voice actor, amazing, larger person. You know, you definitely want to be fit enough that you're not going to be physically tired in a four hour session. Yeah. It's always, always, always a good idea to move your body daily in whatever way feels good to you. You get your heart rate up to get moving, to stretch your muscles, to use your muscles, and to practice making vocal sounds, to practice your breathing, to try to not be out of breath if possible. But you don't have to be like going to the gym every single day for four hours a day. It would be a voice actor. And in fact, throughout history, we've seen people who don't go to the gym who are amazing voice professionals, voice actors, singers, etc. Hey, this is Jamie here. I'd just like to tell you about my small group classes that I've just relaunched. Now these are intimate, intensive, where there are just four students per class. It's held on Zoom, it lasts two hours, and we have group discussion, we have one-to-one discussion and coaching, we have reads and script analysis and feedback. And it's just a really great opportunity to learn about voice over, connect with other voice talent, get feedback on your career and your reads and where you are and where you want to go. And we've just been having so much fun in these classes. We're arranged in three tiers, so there's beginner, intermediate and professional. So wherever you're at in your career, you will end up in the right class for your current position in the voice over. So to find out more, go to my teaching website, which is vowschoollaunch.com, vowschoollaunch.com. So there's two Ls in the middle there, vowschoollaunch.com. And you can fill in the form, either one-to-one or the group classes that I'm talking about today, fill in your details, and then I will streamline you into the appropriate tier, and then I will be emailing out the next time classes go live, and you can sign up to the one that fits your schedule. Again, they're super fun, really rewarding, and a great opportunity to make new friends in voice over and move forward in your career. So that's vowschoollaunch.com, specifically as it relates to stamina though, does that increase your stamina, if your fitness stamina is better? I don't know, man, I want to say yes, like I want to say yes to you, however, I think of all these Vognarian opera singers who sing six hour long operas, and they are larger people, they are large people, and they are doing the most vowschoolly taxing job you can imagine. Yeah, it's funny, because larger people doesn't necessarily mean they don't have great stamina. Exactly. And things like that, right? Exactly. These incredible performances. Exactly. But then I did notice my voice over stamina improved when I was swimming a lot. Okay, well, but your voice over stamina could be improving a lot because what are you doing when you're swimming, holding your breath? You're taking big breaths, you're filling your lungs completely, and you are sustaining that one breath across a few strokes, right? And then you're taking another really big nice breath. Actually, swimming breaths is what I tell people to take when they think of taking a really good breath. I say to them like, all right, pretend like you're swimming in a pool, you're underwater, you're not panicking, you're swimming, swimming, swimming, and you come up for air and you go, that's it, that's your breath. When you're not panicked and you're swimming, you're like, swim, swim, swim, swim, swim, swim, swim, swim, swim, swim, swim, swim, and it's really nice, good, full breaths that fill up your entire lungs. Yeah, yeah. I never thought that that was specifically that specific type of exercise. I just assumed it was generally improving my stamina, but I never made that connection that was, it was the type of exercise, particularly, yeah. The times when I've had the best breath control ever have been when I've been regularly swimming. Hmm. And I used to be on the swim team and the water polo team in high school. Yeah. I used to be a like, we used to, both used to be, yeah, we both used to be life cards. That's why we're friends. It's the big watch connection. Exactly. Yeah. I'm the Hasselhoff, you're the panellitis. Yes, definitely. That's, I mean, people mistake us for David Hasselhoff, the panellitis and all the time. Oh, speaking of swimming, why don't we talk about Curacao? Oh, sure. Yeah. Just a little ad break for five minutes. Let's do it a little ad break from Chew ad break. We only have, actually, we might only have five rooms left as of this morning. Yeah. Oh, Sarah Jane Sherman, who is a, one of the presenters at Vocation Curacao, just one and Emmy. Wow. Cool. For directing Spider-Man animated show. Oh, amazing. Yeah. It's amazing. I'm Christian Lens. Yeah. He does the live news. He does the live news for the Emmy's. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, amazing people, really amazing people. I have their talks, wait, let me look at the titles of the talks so that you can, I'm going to release the schedule next week for sure. Okay, keynote speech by JP Carlyac is first. Then we have taught by Michael Scott, rich actor, poor actor, what we should have learned about wealth. Yeah. Both up. Yes. Voice over and what else, JP Carlyac and Scott Barnhart, JP, of course, is an amazing voice actor and amazing person. at JP's Husband Sky. is was in the original Broadway cast of Book of Mormon and is an amazing singer and session singer and they're gonna talk about all of the other things that you can do outside of just a voiceover career and session singing and stuff. So you can sing and swim in Curacao. Then we're gonna take a lunch break we have small group coaching and our small group coaches for that day are Sissy Jones absolute legend. Milena Tinoco, Debbie Irwin, Jennifer Sunbell and Tony Senator and the small groups are like you sign up in groups of 10 and you go eat lunch and you get you just get inundated with knowledge from these amazing people during your lunch break. Okay then we come back from lunch and we have a negotiation master class with Vince LaBica. I have seen him teach a similar class at one voice this past year. Oh my god it is amazing and I'm so excited for everyone to hear Vince speak. And Vince is Asian at DPN? A DPN correct. Then we have next building a thriving career with Christian Lance who I would say has built a thriving career. Pretty thriving. Pretty thriving. In two languages. Yeah. The next day we have Danielle Famble teaching a class called when water comes out of the walls. And I don't see bro we an email being like I want my class title to be this I know it doesn't sound like business but it is and you're gonna love it. Intrigued. I'm very intrigued. After that we have diversifying your genres for career stability with Maria Pendelino. Love Maria. Then we have behind the scenes of gaming with Kelleal Bugdenoff who is an amazing video game director. He directs for Insomniac and Marvel games and all kinds of awesome stuff. So he's gonna tell you behind the scenes of gaming. Then we have behind the scenes of animation with Sarah Jane Sherman. And then we have a class taught by amazing wonderful superstar agent Portia Scott. Yeah. We also have a glow party. We also have a cocktail party. We also have a welcome party and lots of other awesome stuff. Oh and I forgot to say our lunchtime small groups on the Saturday are taught by Delano Owens, Tim Heller, Leah Hoffman and Bridget Reale. Oh my goodness what a packed. What an amazing schedule. And we basically have every day a break from either 3 to 8 pm or 4 to 8 pm for you to just go in the afternoon and swim in the water and enjoy the sun and go to the city if you want and just like enjoy Curacao and then come back for our parties in the evening. So we schedule that in on purpose. Amazing. And if you're interested in coming, fill those five remaining spaces, you can go to vocationconference.com or shoot us an email. Yes. [email protected]. We have sold out every year. So yeah. I would say don't plan on buying a ticket at the last minute. Usually we sell out like a month before. So it's coming up. Yeah. Getting very close. All right. Add over. Jump. Back to the episode. Back to the episode. Okay. What next? What are you telling us now? Sleep. Yeah. Sleep, man. You got a sleep. Okay. So the reason why you have to sleep is many fold. But especially if you're doing something that I'm doing now where I'm doing two or three strenuous sessions, four hour sessions a week for the next couple of months. I can't get sick. Like the game has a ship date. They have to record all of my stuff. Then they have to put it in the game in English. Then they have to localize it for different regions and languages. They have to have my reference audio in order to send to the different places that they are going to localize for. And then it all has to be released at the same time. So they have to get all of my stuff recorded. Are you doing facial capture as well or is it just not for that one? No. Okay. Yeah. But they have to I have to be consistently on consistently in good voice and not sick for the next two months. Now I'm human. Might I get sick? Perhaps. And you have kids. And I have kids. But the number one way to stay well is to get good sleep. And also like take some supplements maybe drink a lot of water exercise. Yeah. What about I mean, this is a question I'm rather intrigued to hear you answer actually. What about diet? Because I know people are like, oh, dairy doesn't affect. Well, but it really does for me. And when I reduced my dairy down to almost nothing after about a month, my voice sounded so much clearer. I don't know how that affects my stamina as such. But it definitely hugely helped my voice. Four years ago, five years ago, I would have told you that a lot of it's in your head and it's a bunch of BS. But now that I am older, like I have such a different relationship with food than I did when I was younger and I could just eat and drink anything. Yeah. I think it's absolutely on an individual level. And I think the number one thing for your vocal cords is you want to reduce inflammation. So you might like dairy causes flim for some people. For me, I eat dairy and I feel completely bloated. My hands feel swollen, my feet feel swollen. Same thing now I've discovered with wheat. I've been trying to really limit my gluten intake recently because I find it just really bad. I do. You said weed. No, no, weed. I've really been trying to reduce the amount of weed that I smoke every day. This probably goes without saying, but like probably don't smoke. Yeah, any kind of smoking is probably not great. Yeah. Probably. I mean, everyone's different. Can you count to balance that with swimming? Probably. It's an individual thing. I don't know, man, like, like, do you know who the most recorded voice in history is? He would think it would be like green accent or one of the Beatles or something. No. The record or at least a few years ago, the record went to a baritone named Dietrich Fischer Discow. And he is, he recorded a lot of German songs and operas and concerts and all kinds of stuff. He smoked like a chimney. There are videos of him in the recording studio literally taking a drag of a cigarette and singing on the smoke, like coming out of his mouth, singing like opera. It's crazy. So I mean, and I have a friend who's like a very, very amazing bass who is a smoker and I don't know. I can't do it. Maybe you can, but probably don't smoke. What about alcohol? Because that's quite dehydrating, right? That's pretty good, right? I used to be able to drink alcohol any day of the week and wake up the next day and still be able to sing everything that I could sing. Now I drink alcohol and there's like an 80% chance that if I have even one glass of wine, I wake up the next day with a horrible migraine and my hands and feet and body are swollen. And so I don't really drink alcohol very much anymore. Like maybe like at a celebration or if it's like something fun, but like on a daily basis, I'm not having a glass of wine with dinner or drinking a cocktail or something like that. Why do we get more sensitive to this stuff as we get older? That is a great question. Interesting. That's a great question. Any doctors in the audience please let us know. I think your body just doesn't heal as quickly as it does when you're younger. Yeah. You don't have the same cellular turnover that you do when you're younger. So like in my 20s, like my kids can eat frickin pizza and birthday cake and hot dogs and drink a soda all in one day and be totally fine. Yeah. And like I have a piece of pizza and I have acid reflex for four days. Yeah. Yeah. So my answer is I think food absolutely affects us. I also like let's talk about acid reflex for a second. You have to get your stomach acid under control. Ideally you do it with diet. If for some reason you're stuck, you're at a birthday party, they only have pizza. It's the only food that you're going to eat for the next seven hours and you really need to eat it and you have to like you can take antacids and I prefer something like pepsid or Xantac or even like an omeprosol situation to like a thumbs or a gavaskon in that situation because it just it doesn't work as well and you absolutely do not want to be lying in bed with acid coming up from your stomach and burning your vocal cords. People who are frequent voice users, they are very susceptible to that and when acid is burning your cords in the night, you wake up and you just feel horse and you don't know why. And sometimes it doesn't even really like hurt. You don't really realize it. You go to bed with a little indigestion. You wake up and your voice is gone. And you're like, "Damn it." I heard that to test for that. They put like a little sensor in your software or something. They literally place it there and it can monitor how much stomach acid comes up and it goes to like an app or something like that. It's just kind of next level technology for me. It's crazy. Okay, so I want to talk about when you're in a session. Like, what do you do? So let's say, so typically in a video game session, if your director is good and this team is good, you will do kind of your regular spoken lines first for as long as it takes to get through those. And then the last part of the session, they will save for the vocally strenuous stuff. Hopefully, they only have you do that for like an hour or less, an hour or less. That's all of the yelling. That's all of the efforts. That's all of the coughing or the spitting up water or all of the stuff that you have to do in a video game session. That's really the best way to do it. And then on your drive home, if you're in a session or in a studio session or if you're done after that, just shut up. Don't say anything. Listen to a podcast. Don't call people on the phone. Just be quiet for like an hour. If you can, just vocally rest. But if there's a pothelial cells, yes, exactly. Drink water, you know, drink electrolyte, stuff, drinks and just take a break. Okay. If you're in a session and you start to notice your voice getting tired. So if you're doing a lot of yelling and you're starting to notice, oh my god, my voice is getting really tired. Please, please, please ask for a break. Take 30 seconds, say like, hold on just one second. Even if you take 30 seconds to walk away from the mic, go to your water, take a sip of water, swallow, center yourself, relax the muscles in your throat, relax the muscles in your body. Remember your technique and go back using the power of your body and your breath, not your throat and go back into the session after that. Just take that 30 seconds to mentally reset. I promise you, it will help. I can't get through strenuous sessions without using throat coat or like lemon water or stuff like that. But I know people say, well, it doesn't touch your vocal cords, so it can affect anything. But it really gets me through the sessions. So what's going on there? Okay. So it's true. It doesn't touch your vocal cords. But throat coat and things like that. First of all, warm liquid in your throat is soothing and helps you relax. throat coat and other things make the spit in your mouth more or less viscous, I guess. So it's more able to slide around and it makes your mouth feel more slighty and it makes everything feel more slighty. I think a lot of it is mental because you're drinking this thing. It's helping you relax. It's helping your mouth feel better. It's helping everything feel more lubricated. And so then you can go into it. You can go into the next line feeling like, okay, I've got I've got some power. I've got some power. If it works for you, keep doing it. Don't stop doing it. I can't do I can't live without it in those intensive sessions. What do they call it in LA? They call it suddenly like Hulk juice or something like that, right? Isn't that what they call it? Hulk juice? Something like loquat, like loquat. I feel like Brad was talking to me about this years and years ago. There was some like, I don't know what it is. It's some, I mean, we'll have to Google this and find out what it is. You go ahead and I'm going to Google it. Yeah. Take a second and relax because so the worst thing that can happen is that you're in a session, you're like giving as much as you possibly can. You're shredding your voice and then you can't get through the whole session. It's much better to take 30 seconds to take a sip of water and relax yourself and reset and even like, I'm not joking, close your eyes and take a breath. Take a sip of water, close your eyes, take a breath, force your neck muscles to relax and come back at it from a place of relaxation. I know that it feels like you need to give as much volume and passion as you possibly can when you're doing efforts and attacks and and all of that stuff. But let me remind you that intensity comes from your acting choices, not necessarily your volume. Yeah. Oh, 100%. And there are people who can like, like give you the most intense performance and it's and it's a whisper, but it's the acting behind their words that you're just like, oh my god, like it's so intense, right? Volume does not equal intensity. Volume can actually be detrimental if you're having to really gain down the level anyway, actually doesn't end up sounding better. It's like, can actually and I said this in a class recently, we know a total class at American University to a bunch of entertainment industry majors. But I said, you know, if someone is like the best actors in the world don't lose it. Like the best actors in the world, if someone is screaming at you, like automatically to me, I completely turn off. I'm not connected. I'm not connected to them. I see them as like a whoa, look at that crazy person over there. I'm not empathizing with them. I'm not feeling human to human connection. If someone is pretending to scream, that's also not very good. But it's the people that walk up to the line of almost losing it. And as a, as a, you know, an audience member, you're sitting there going, oh my god, are they going to lose it? Oh my god, are they going to lose it? They're really feeling this. Oh my god, they're going to lose it. Like once you've gotten to the point of crying and screaming, you've lost them. But if you go right up to that line and you're like right there, you know, that's when you have the most, I don't know, that's when it's the most engaging and the most interesting to watch. Oh, 100%. There are also times when you're just screaming across a battlefield but you're buddy, right? Yeah, that's true. Absolutely. Absolutely. But you can do it in a way that sounds more like you're, I'll show you, I'll show you, well, I don't know if I want to do it wrong, but I'll show you the difference. If I'm like, if I'm like, Jamie, get over here, Jamie. That's kind of a little bit wrong because I'm using my throat, right? If I, if I use my support and I do it more on the breath and I'm like, Jamie, get over here, Jamie. Like, I don't know if you can hear it, but I'm not using my throat as much. Instead, I'm using the breath support. And I don't think it sounded that different. No. But I know that it feels like I could do that for an hour. Yeah, I think that the difference is negligible. I can definitely hear the more performant version of the second take. But to get through a session that is a sacrifice worth making, right? Rather than just letting yourself just, just go to the town on a performance because like, you can, it's damaging. You can literally in one session cause your vocal cords to bleed and have a vocal cord injury that takes you out for months. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like, you can, you can develop nodules if you're not using your voice correctly. You can develop like polyps. You can have, you can have my dad had a blood, a blood vessel explode in one of his vocal cords and he had a death surgery and he had to be on vocal rest for weeks. And that's something that happens sometimes to professional voice users. But like, hopefully that happens once in your career. Yeah. Not every time you do a video game. Well, I skid myself on a video game and I every time I did the session, I'd come away with the sort of metallic blood taste in my mouth. Like, after every single session and I'd committed to that at that point and I was like, and this went on for years, this production of this game. I wasn't doing a session every week but I was just like dreading it every time I do it. And I'm like, and it's just wall to wall screaming. The character was psychotic and it was just, that's what he did. That's who he was. That's how we communicated. Yeah. So it was just a nightmare. I looked up Hulk Juice. Oh, what is it? It's a honey based herbal throat syrup. And I put, is it low quiet? Well, I put it in the chat. That's, that's the, I think it's low quiet. Like, I think that I, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's like low-quot Chinese herbs. Yeah, I've, I've, so they have this at the studio where I'm recording and I tried it the other day and I didn't like the taste at all. Oh, okay. I don't know if it helped, but I put it in my tea. Honey is incredible. Just straight up honey is so great. I love just putting a chunk of lemon and hot water. I just think that I've, I really, I find that's really effective. Yeah. What else did I want to talk to you about? Oh, people always ask me about warm-ups. Oh, yeah. Warm downs. Okay. What I said to you, Jamie, when you were like, what about warm-ups before we started recording? I was like, yes. Other people should definitely warm-up. The reason why I say that is exactly the like ballet dancer dancing hip-hop thing for me. You tell me to warm up and I go like, no, no, no, no, no! Oh, yes. Oh, Jamie, and then I get in a session and I'm like, "Jamie, get over here, Jamie!" And then it does not sound like what it means to be. You mean you get in your head about it? Because you're. No, I get in my head voice. Oh, I see. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. So like, like I was talking about belting and head voice. Yeah. So like, I can do this all day. And actually, when I'm at a conference, those of you who are coming to B.O. Atlanta, you'll notice because I have to talk all day long. I usually, like, instead of being like, "Hey, guys, it's so great to see you!" Right? Like, at B.O. Atlanta, I switch my voice to my more opera-sounding voice and I'm like, "Hi! Oh my gosh! It's so great to see you! Hi! Oh my gosh, how have you been? You've been good? Great! That's awesome, right?" And I talk like that for the entire conference and I never lose my voice because I'm speaking in a way that I know how to do this very, in a very healthy way and it doesn't sound too weird. It's a little weird. It's a little weird, a little Julia Childs-ish, but that's the way that I save my voice for a whole conference. But that's not like a badass, you know, soldier. Like, I'm not going to be like, "Incoming! Take cover! Take cover everyone! There's a bomb coming!" That's not the way to do it. What about, I've heard straw phonation, is a. Yeah, straw phonation is really good and the reason why is that it makes the air flow more efficient. And you're literally exhaling through a straw, like a dry straw, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have some over. Oh, I have some here. Want to hear it? I'll show you. Cool, let's do it. So if you're a novel member, you actually get a discount with the voice straw if you're interested. But I have here a pack of metal straws from the voice straw. You can really use any straw. You can buy them on Amazon if you wanted. But they have different diameters. So I'm showing you, Jamie, there are some that are larger and some that are smaller. Obviously, the larger ones allow for more air flow and the smaller ones allow. Sorry, closed my door. The larger ones allow for more air flow and the smaller ones are less air flow. And you just want to be able to feel your support and not go like. So you kind of just go, "Mmmmmmm" and you don't have to be particularly loud. So that's what the larger one, here's a smaller one. And you want to try to phonate, you heard my voice crack a little bit, it's because I'm using too much air for the straw. So you want to be able to phonate the whole time you're using it. What do you mean by phonate? Oh, phonate is making sound. Oh, okay. So like if I go, that's not phonating. Is phonating. So yeah, that's the straw. And you do that for like driving into the session or something? Yeah, you can do it driving into the session. It's also a great warm down or a cool down exercise because it just kind of relaxes everything around your voice. And if you're doing a warm down or a cool down, don't do it too much. Like best to just be quiet, just relax. But like intentionally, my main point for everyone is that when you're in a vocally strenuous session, you have to think about your technique or you're going to blow it. And if something hurts, you're not doing it as effectively as you could and you could be hurting yourself. If something hurts, stop, take a sip of water, reset, recenter yourself into your support and your breath and your power in that way. And then do it again. We all know from being babies how to make sounds that can be loud without hurting you. And part of it is just you have to figure out the balance of it for yourself. So you can practice in the car and figure it out. And you said earlier, you know, speaking up in a session is going to benefit the everyone in the session because if you can allow yourself to complete the session without any interruptions, that's actually helping everyone, rather than having to, you know, quit a session halfway through because your voice is sure. No one's happy about that. And the production loves it. Like, so a few weeks ago, I did a session for a very big video game that was literally three straight hours of yelling. And at the end of the session, I got in the car, I drove home and I was still able to record three other jobs and then I was still able to work the rest of the week because of my technique. In these sessions that I do for this other video game that I'm in, we have, we do regular lines and then at the end, we do like battle yelling and battle chatter and stuff for an hour. Oh, no, it was an all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, and efforts and dying and whatever. Um, in the last session, not this past one, two sessions ago, we finished our hour of battle cries and they were like, hold on, hold on. We just have to see, I just have to see how many you got through because I think you got over 300 and we've never had anyone do over 300 prompts. And I was like, oh, and then they looked and it was 352. I crushed the record. Yeah. Because I'm relying on my technique. I didn't need as many breaks. And I did, I did it the way they wanted me to do it. And at my session yesterday, they were like, well, now that we know that your voice is indestructible. Yeah. We're going to schedule you. Yeah, we're going to just give you as much as we can and they gave me two other characters too in the game. So like, you know, when you do good work, everybody appreciates it. So if you can get a handle on this technique, it's going to be way better. And that's true for commercials, audiobooks, long form narration, get a handle on it. Make sure you're not getting tired and not hurting yourself. Well, that was fascinating. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. We appreciate it. Do my best sometimes. I don't know. If anyone was listening to this episode and they're like, Karin, you're totally wrong. That's fine. Leave a message in the comments. We don't have a message in the comments. Karin, I've been an ENT for five decades. I just wanted to tell you that you are wrong. I mean, having put out content now for a while, whatever you say, you're going to get people saying, oh, you're an idiot. You don't know anything. Okay. Well, we will see you next time. See you next time. Bye, bye. Hello, they're Jamie here. They're called Read the Room with Jamie. They last two hours and they're held over Zoom so you can attend them from wherever. There are three levels, beginner, intermediate, advanced, and we sometimes do genre specific classes as well. I introduce you all via email a few days before the class. So it's really a social learning performance combination, delicious soup of a workshop. So to get involved, go to the website ReadTheRoomVO.com. Click on the green group classes button, fill in the form, and then I'll be in touch as soon as the next class is available. That's ReadTheRoomVO.com.