Just how can you improve the sound of your voice before you hop onto the next zoom call?

Most people push a lot, push too much air over the vocal folds, and they end up straining the throat. The throat becomes narrow. So you mentioned the feeling of when you drink coffee, the feeling of narrowness in the throat. So that's a somatic sensation that if we get perhaps nervous before we speak. So by warming the voice up and using the correct muscles to do that, it's going to keep the larynx and the throat really nice and open. And relax. Now, to feel the resonance, which is basically the vocal folds moving together, they're connecting together very quickly, and that's causing the vibration or the phonation, if you like. We're going to change that sh into a j, so we're going to go from a sh to a j.

Jimmy Cannon, thank you so much for joining us on the Unnoticed Show to talk about voice and how we can get heard literally. Jimmy, welcome.

Hi, Jim. How are you?

I'm okay, but I don't sound as good as you. So I'd like to know, Jimmy to Jimmy, I'd like you to tell us about voice because you're both qualified in voice, but also you help as a voice coach, business owners, musicians, and you're a trained saxophonist. So tell us about how voice can get people noticed and what they can do to improve that.

Thank you for asking. Okay. The first thing is something that I've always noticed with my people I'm speaking to and my clients is obviously the sound of their voice and how they're engaging. And perhaps the difference between— can I take it off Pete slightly? What I've noticed about— we had a chat in the virtual green room earlier on, and the difference between your voice and then and your voice now is quite considerable. And it's, for me, it's fascinating because before you started speaking, we were chatting about various things. And really interesting. And what I noticed is that your energy was a very different type of energy to where it is now. So for instance, when you started introducing me and introducing the, the podcast, etc., your energy was, was higher, your pitch range was more expanded, much more dynamic. You started using into what's called your head voice, and you were much more aware of how you sounded. So I'd like to ask you, were you— are you aware of that difference when you start speaking and when the red light comes on, for instance?

I put my radio voice on, Jimmy. And sometimes I think, and I have to say that I sometimes listen to the pre-record and the post-record and I go, actually, why do I not sound the same before and afterwards? And what am I trying to project when somehow I go, hi and welcome to the Unnoticed Show. And that's one of the reasons I was interested in having a conversation with you because we all do it. We have a kind of an on-air and off-air voice. And we, how do we, if you like, be authentic and relevant in both circumstances? So I am aware of that. And thanks for embarrassing me slightly with—

No, not at all. No, I like both. I like to have a normal general conversation, but I think there's an, it really depends. Excuse me, I've got beeping going on. There's, it really depends on the circumstance and the environment. So if you are pitching, you've got to sell the product. You've gotta create some energy. You've gotta engage with the audience. If you are on stage, You might be speaking to 500, 600 people. You haven't got a lot of time to engage with them. And it's your voice is your core instrument, if you like, to, to engage instantly with that, with the audience. Now, whatever audience that might be, I think there's got to be an element of performance when you're selling, when you're pitching or you're presenting. You've got to, you've got to find, you've got to find some variety of, of dynamics, of pitch. Of, of tone of voice to express yourself and also to communicate your message, whatever that message might be. So there's got to be an element. I can't possibly, as a singer, I couldn't possibly, or saxophone player, I couldn't possibly go on stage and just play like I'm playing at home, like I'm practicing, noodling. So noodling, you could say, is sort of your conversational area of things. And when I, when, as soon as we go on stage There's a responsibility, there's a prerequisite in a way that you have to communicate with the audience. They all, the audience, there's an expectation that your audience need and require.

So how does one then, if you like, get prepared for those? Because as you say, we have our kind of offline voice and maybe we have our voice for talking to our children or to our colleagues or our business partners. And then as you say, if it's a pitch, it's a different different situation. Jimmy, how do you help people to prepare for that?

Okay, so the first thing— well, preparing for— if we're specifically looking at preparation, the first thing to do is to warm up the voice. So we need to get the gears in motion, get the oil moving around the engine. So there's a lot of warm-up exercises that I— we, we can go through, and I'm happy to share a couple with you right now.

Yes, I think so, because I always try before I get on, and I found, for example, if I drink tea before a show, I have a lot of, a lot of Moisture in the chest. So now I'm just trying to drink water. If I drink coffee, it makes me a bit tight.

So that yeah too. And I love coffee. Yeah, I love coffee and the milk. Dairy is terrible. So coffee is caffeine is terrible. Dairy is terrible.

Whiskey is even worse, especially if mixed before your morning. Thank God.

Exactly.

It may loosen you up, but you forget what you're saying. So let's Jimmy, let's do that. Let's think about as a in terms of preparation, what should one do or could one do before? I guess a Zoom call, for example, or a pitch.

Yeah. Okay. There's a couple. Of things to do. And let me give you a couple of techniques or exercises that you can do. Water— absolutely, hydration is key. So you've got to keep the vocal folds hydrated. Well done. And the other thing you can— we want to do is you want to activate the vocal folds. So the vocal folds are very small, they're just under about 2 centimeters in length, and they're in your throat, in your larynx. And if you're listening You'll be able to feel them if you, and we could do this now actually. If you make a if you make a sh sound, so imagine you're shushing your a cat has walked into your office there, Jim, and you need to shush it away. So you need to go just do that for me. Put two fingers just above your Adam's apple where exactly where you are. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. Perfect. So just get a nice long sh.

Like a steam train.

That's it, that's it. Yeah, perfect. So just get a nice long— that's it. Now, to feel the resonance, what we call the resonance, which is basically the vocal folds moving together, they're connecting together very quickly, and that's causing the vibration or the phonation, if you like. We're going to change that SH into a J. So we're going to go from a SH to a J. Just try that for me. Yeah, how does that feel? Can you feel the resonance?

A lot different.

Yeah, yeah. So this is one way— this isn't necessarily a way to warm up, but it's just to get— just to feel what's happening. Because most people push a lot, push too much air over the vocal folds, and they end up straining the throat, and the throat becomes narrow. So you mentioned the feeling of when you drink coffee, the feeling of narrowness in, in the throat. So that's a somatic sensation that we, we, if we get perhaps nervous before we speak. So by, by warming the voice up and using the correct muscles to do that, it's going to keep the larynx and the throat really nice and open and relaxed. So this is really important to let that air go. So let me give you a couple of exercises where it might take a couple of days to get to practice, but here we go. So this, the first one is called a lip trill. Okay?

Okay.

So this is brilliant. It just takes the energy away from the throat, and I'll do it for you now. What you need to do is you need to put your lips together And go and make a sound like a horse.

So like that. Okay, I was gonna go—

You got it. Perfect, perfect. Okay, you can't laugh, by the way, when you're doing this. Doesn't work.

Do I get the part as the pantomime horse? That's the question.

Yes, you do. The back end.

The back end. That's my reaction to that, Jimmy.

Excellent. Jim, you didn't tell me it was going to be fun.

Oh yeah, this podcast should not be fun for sure.

All right, so we're gonna go from there. We're gonna go from there. We're gonna start just exactly the same, making a resonant— making it phonate. So we're gonna go— yeah, feel it if you want to. So the idea is that we keep that But we make a sound, so we just do this. Give that a go.

Wow! Okay, this may be more fun than you're expecting here.

Yeah, that's great.

I lose it a bit at the bottom though. You're much better at that than I am.

I've been doing it a while, and I did have practiced it for quite a few times before I started started doing it. So okay, it's it takes it. It will take a couple of days. So you've done very well, actually. Very good.

Thank you.

Very good. That's very good. The, the other thing, if you can't do that, is what's called a tongue trill. So instead of a lip trill— now just go back. The idea with that is that it's just, you could go all up, you go all the way up to the top of your vocal range and then down again. So let me just demonstrate. You start low. Oh, by the way, it can help. You could try this actually if you've got, if you've got one hand free. Is to put 2 fingers underneath your cheekbones near the, near the, near your lips and just raise the cheekbones slightly. And that tightens up the lips. Try that.

Okay. Now I look a bit like the Joker without the makeup.

That's it. Unfortunately, your sound's cutting out a little bit, which is probably the noise cancellation on your Zoom, but never mind. It's, I, I can, I get it back. How, how's that feel for you?

Yeah, good. Now I can feel the range and my whole face is starting to vibrate. Feels like a facial massage, actually.

That's it. That's great. That's good. Talking about massage. One way of really just really getting loosening up the jaw and loosening up the, the fricatives and around the area here as well. If we just take your, your fists and you go into the bottom of the cheekbone and give that a nice massage there just to free up the— Oh yeah, okay.

So we're just rubbing our faces here.

Faces. We're not rubbing each other's faces, just rubbing our own faces, obviously.

That's right.

This is a virtual thing.

Yeah, we're not haptic wearing suits. Just yet. One day, Jimmy, I'll be able to rub your face away. But in the short term, we'll have to do. But he has a one— Jimmy has a wonderful full-face beard, for those of you that are listening.

I do. It's difficult actually because I can't very easily demonstrate when I have to turn sideways when I talk about the throat. So there we are. The thing about what you want to do, the great thing about these is— let's talk seriously now— the thing about these lip trills, tongue trills, etc. Tongue trill, incidentally, is just is when you make it make a sound like this. So you're putting the middle of your tongue to the roof of your mouth, the soft palate. Give that a go. Yeah, that's great. Well done.

I don't know whether I was cancelled by Zoom again then, but a little bit.

Yes, okay. That's all right. So that was I could hear that was very good. So you you might find that the tongue trill is More effective for you rather than the lip trill. But either of these are really great because they take the energy; they place the energy more forward rather than into the throat. So they take away the the energy from the larynx here. So it's a great way to warm up, and I do it every time I go on stage wings. And it's it's tricky because obviously if you've got other people around you, they're going to wonder what you're doing when you're going. Yeah, so that might be a bit of a challenge.

Maybe wondering if Especially if they're sharing the pantomime horse with you, they may be worried, uh, what's going on. Now, Jimmy, let's just talk about, about not just horses, but breathing, because that's the other big part of it, isn't it? Warming up is one, but I know that a lot of singers and so on all talk about breath. So where do we go with that?

Breathing is absolutely key. And I pretty much every first session that I do with a client or training is spent on breathing. So we— I always have to cover it. There's never a session where I don't talk about or cover breathing. So it's really essential. And it is essential because none of us breathe correctly. And as soon as we get to about 6 months of age, our body starts habitually changing the way we breathe. And if you notice a baby as they're— if we can— if you and I can remember that, that time, Yeah, I remember the children being babies.

Mine's a little bit more distant. I remember the daughters. Yeah.

If you remember when your daughters were lying as babies, lying on their tummy, and you could see their lower back raise as they're taking a breath in. So you might have heard that phrase, and, and in, in the UK we hear it a lot, that there's always somebody when you get into a lift and, and it's a crowded lift, you'll hear somebody, oh, breathe in. But actually what you want to do is the opposite. So by— if you breathe in, you're expanding the lungs, you're taking breath in.

Mm.

And I, I know that sounds really obvious, but when you really think about it, we're, we're not really breathing correctly. So think about when you're taking a breath in, your belly is coming out, your diaphragm is dropping and actually relaxing. So when— and then when you take a— when you exhale, or the breath comes out, your— the diaphragm is contracting and pushing the air up through your lungs. So that's— firstly, it's about thinking about how much air you need for each phrase and really controlling the amount of breath that, that you're taking in, and then controlling the out-breath. And it's the controlling the out-breath that is going to allow you to find or control where that breath goes and what areas of body it resonates within. So by resonating different areas of the body, there are 7 areas of resonators in the body, and by finding those areas, you can find different ways to create different tone and different emotions when you speak. So if I wanted to, I'm going to use my microphone now. That makes a, makes a big difference, as you can hear. But you started— when you started with this kind of head voice, this mixed voice between your chest voice and your head voice there, and you mix— there's a mix there, and it's a different sound. And you can, if I go back and I want to, I want to project my sound, I want to speak to most of the room and I want to start using, it's a little bit of a cliché. Hopefully I'm not overriding the channel here, not distorting, but you can see the difference in finding that different tone. And I think, and I strongly believe that the change of dynamics, pitch and tone in the voice can give you that, can give you that change of engage, like give you that engagement when you're speaking, give you that variety that you need to keep people engaged.

So it really sounds as though, A, it's a very complex area that we probably have taken for granted. I know I feel as I speak sometimes the top of my throat and struggle with how you get the, the sound to come out of the lower part. Yeah. So how do you get people to— you get them to just to focus on breathing out then, Jimmy, from a practical point of view, before they're going to be speaking?

I wouldn't say before. Yeah, my sessions are not purely just for just before speaking, but if you're Yeah, there's the whole, it's the whole gambit really of the whole, but I, I get what you mean. For instance, if I was working with you, Jim, then I, I would agree with you that it's not a drastic thing. Don't panic.

I'm gonna quit. I'm gonna quit podcasting. I hate my voice.

But look, the, the, here's the thing. It's about your perception, isn't it? It's about your self-observation about, and people come to me and they say, I, I had a, I had a chap, I had a chap come to me. We all do discovery calls. We're, we're all businesses, aren't we? So I had a chap come to me. a couple of days ago from the States, and he had the most incredibly amazing sounding voice. And he— hi, yeah, hi Jimmy. Oh, it's Jimmy Cannon. Hi, yeah, great. Listen, I really want to improve my voice. And, uh, are you sure? Because you sound great. And actually, I, I, I've— my, my business coach would— I told him about this and he, he slapped his head and said, Jimmy, he wanted your help, why didn't you? And I said, I don't think I could have helped him. But it's all about your perception. Now you've already said to me that you're You feel— well, just explain to me again. You were talking about the high in your throat.

Yeah, that's right. I think that somehow I end up speaking much too much through the nose. I feel as though that's how I sound, that it doesn't come from the chest or even from the stomach. It comes from much more from the head.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So it— and you're— is it— what's interesting is that you feel like it's coming from your nose. Actually, it is coming from your nose a little bit. You're resonating what's called from the mask area, which is in the nasal passages, and it feels like that. And in it, into— in a way, it is resonating. The actual phonation is coming from the throat, but you can make it feel— the tone of it can be felt in that area. And it can also be if you're not breathing correctly, if you're not— if you're not using the air correctly and you're not allowing your larynx to be nice and relaxed, then you will— your throat, your vocal tract will be more narrow. So you I would say that we could widen your vocal tract a little bit more and gain access, a bit more phonation within that area, and also relax the jaw a little bit, more access into your, your oral cavity, and use your abdominal muscles to create more subglottal pressure without getting too technical. But basically open up those areas of resonance. So being able to breathe correctly and be able to control that breath on the exhale is going to allow you to access those areas. So that would, and, and that I could change that, you know, probably now for you.

Wow. Okay. We've only got a 20-minute show, so maybe we can do it.

We'll talk afterwards.

So yeah, no, I'd love to do this. What would perhaps be funny is we do this offline and then we can come back and trial, uh, it for another show. But Jimmy, do you have a sort of a one, one thing you say to people, if you just do this, that'll help? Do you have anything like that that you recommend to people?

Well, for you, because it's easy for me to, to see what you are doing, what I would do is I would concentrate on the inhale. And this is not a quick fix, but I would think about how much breath you're taking in because I don't feel that you're taking enough breath in when you're speaking. So if we just quickly put your hand on your belly and take a breath in very slowly through your nose at 8 seconds. Here we go. 1, 2, 3, 4. Yeah, hold your nose or through your nose. Sorry. 5, 6, 7. No, I don't hold your nose.

I've lost track.

I'm holding my nose and trying to breathe because I thought it looked like you were holding your nose. I think I'll start again.

If you hear me passing out, it's because the instructions— I'm breathing in through my nose but holding my nose and my face is going red.

No, definitely don't hold your nose. So, hand, one hand on the belly and think about the belly coming out and relaxing as you're taking a breath in. And don't hold your nose, but think about breathing through. Definitely breathe through your nose. In, here we go. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

8.

And let it out for me.

Let it out when you were doing yours.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do it. Yeah, do it. Do it on your own because it's quite difficult to do it together.

Okay, I'm gonna do this one time and then we're out of time.

Here we go.

I'm gonna breathe in. I have to say, about 4 I stopped.

Go on, take a breath in. That's it. 3, 4, 5. Yes. 6. Yeah. And then let it out with a ha. Ah. So you should be able to quite easily and comfortably take in around about 8 seconds. of breath and then let it out for 8. I would say that you're not utilizing the amount of breath that you could do when you're speaking, and that will give you more resonance and more, more of a dynamic range of your voice.

Jimmy Cannon, I could manage an inhale of 4, so I'm only using 50%. So I can only do better with your help. Jimmy Cannon, if people want to find out more about you and your amazing insights into sound, and also just to enjoy your company, how can they find you?

jimmycannon.com.

Thank you so much for joining me today on The Unnoticed Show, Jimmy.

Take a breath.

Thank you for joining us on The Unnoticed Show. I've been with Jimmy Cannon, saxophonist, voice coach, and professional voice expert here in the UK and also to clients around the world, including the Americans. Thank you so much for joining me, Jimmy.

My pleasure, Jim. Speak soon.

Good. I'll look forward to it, hopefully with a better sounding voice.