0209 – Stressful Sally’s Story

0209 – Stressful Sally’s Story

Sally worked as a TV presenter out of a small and busy newsroom where everyone was expected to do everything. She loved her job but was concerned about the pitch of her voice, and wanted to know ways to lower it because she thought it too shrill. Would smoking help, she wondered, or maybe more late nights with friends?

On visiting Sally in her office, the cause of her concern was apparent.

Even though she was the presenter of the evening news show, she also had to produce items: calling contacts, chasing stories, arranging interviews and then filming and editing them. But when it came to the 6.30 show, Sally had to morph into a cool, calm, collected presenter.

She had the clothes and the hairspray to help in that change, but inside she was still tense from the ‘rush of the day’, unknowingly holding her whole body in a state of tension until she was off air at 7. And that tension could be heard in her voice, partly because of the how it affected how her vocal folds were being held, causing a rise in her pitch.

The prescription: slow down, relax mentally and physically, and to practice better breathing techniques.

And once you are relaxed and stress-free, you can try and find your natural pitch.

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