Ep. 138 Tuning Your Instrument with Kevin Burke

Hey there, Mark Brown, One of the things we haven't talked about is your voice. And look, you gotta keep it tuned. But honestly, I got zero credibility. The only time I've had an issue, I had an issue because I didn't know what to do about it. And I'm calling my friends. What do I do? What do I do? And Jim Key had suggested this thing called the Entertainer's Secret or something like that. But I thought. You thought. We both thought. Our buddy Kevin Burke has so much experience and can shed some light on tuning your instrument.

Let's do it, man.

Anyone can give a presentation. Few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. Welcome to the Unforgettable Presentations podcasts with your hosts, world champion speakers and coaches, Mark Brown.

Mark Brown, your life tells a story and there's someone out there who needs to hear it.

And Darren Lacroix. And Darren Lacroix.

Stage time. Stage time. Stage time.

Ready for some powerful presentation. AHAs. Let's dive right in.

You know, Darren, I learned to play piano as a kid and I can recall someone coming to my house and tuning that instrument ever so often. When you move piano, when you move it, you tuning instrument. Well, today what I think is going to be important is for us as presenters to understand that our voice is an instrument and we do need to keep it tuned. How do we find someone who could really help us? Well, the cool thing is one of our dear friends, a part of the stagetime family, Kevin Burke is quite qualified for this. Having performed a one man Broadway show over 4,000 consecutive times. My brain can't even handle that. Kevin, welcome once again to the unreasonable Unforgettable Presentations podcast.

Thank you very much. I'm now a two time guest. I think the third time I get a blue jacket, right?

Yes, yes you do. And in the words of Ed Tate, if he was to introduce you. I like this. We just had it at Game Changers. The greatest beep and coach that there is, he's just amazing.

Presentation coach.

Try to get me to coach you.

On business mastery and you will be bankrupt in a month.

But Kevin, on a more serious note, you've got a storied background from being a circus clown, Trained circus clown. You still do stand up comedy. You were an amazing coach. All your clients talk about how you transform their presentations, but you had to be on stage and on fire every night for 4,000 plus consecutive performances. And if I'm right, Kevin, that actually was in the Guinness Book of World Records. Is that correct?

Yeah. I hold the record for most theatrical performances in 50 days, and my record is 60 theatrical performances.

Wow. 60 in 50 days, which is kind of crazy. So I know, having traveled for the last almost 30 years and delivering presentations all over, that there are times the voice does some strange things to you. It goes away. You wake up at 6am It's a 9am keynote, and your voice says, I'm staying in bed. And I will confess, I have tried various home remedies, and pro speaker named Dan Metzger got me to use an item called Singer's Saving Grace, an herbal formula with herbs and vitamin C and so on, which I had used for several years. But on a very practical note, what are some of the things that we can do to take care of our instruments from a man who's had to use it so often and so many times?

Well, we can dramatically cut down on you having to use any form of chemicals for your voice. That's. First of all, most people in the stage time universe do not know that. I got my degree in acting and directing from Indiana University. I'm a trained classical actor. That's where the Kevin story begins. And a lot of the training that we did there was on voice and bodywork. So we're going to leave the bodywork aside, but we're going to concentrate on on the voice. And if you're a speaker and you think that you don't need any sort of vocal training, I'm going to go ahead and tell you that I was part of a this past weekend. It was a part of a presentation for Tony Robbins event that he was doing this past weekend. We talked to him afterwards, and this is, you know, at the end of the day, at the end of the event, and his voice was shredded. Honestly, he damaged his vocal cords during the course of that day. And yet he still should have been able to do the Tony Robbins thing for two days without shredding his voice. And now I don't know if that, you know, because he talks in that kind of get out there, maximum labor potential. He's got that kind of growly thing going on in his voice. And I don't know if that's a physical characteristic or if that's just how he grew up talking. But even Tony Robbins can shred his voice. And so if Tony Robbins can shred his voice, you and you and you and you, and especially you and you over here can all shred your voices. I want to help you avoid that as much as humanly possible and avoid having to take any kind of chemical concoctions. That thing you talked about, it's good. It's great. It's all herbal. It relaxes your throat. But sometimes what it does is it masks the problem, you know, and it gives you a super voice for four hours. And then after those four hours, you find that you've shredded your vocal cords more than you would have if you'd have just given the speech with a crappy hoarse voice. And there are, you know, there are things like, I don't know, do they still even make chloraseptic? Chloraseptic anesthetizes your throat. So if your throat is anesthetized, you can scream at the top of your lungs and you won't feel the damage that you're doing. And so those can be a short term fix, and they work really well, But I'd rather you be able to avoid them all together. So let's go to work on that. What I'd like to do now, I make a joke that my vocal warmup, after doing caveman so many times, this is the sum total of my warmup. Okay, let's go. And that's a joke. I mean, that's just me joking and being goofy. Every day I would go through a full vocal warmup, and with the added bonus of being here in the desert during the time I was doing it here in the desert, you have to enforce a good six hours of vocal rest during your day in order to do that show at night or any show at night. Otherwise, you get what's called desert throat and you are screwed. So let's just dive right in. Today's practice vocal warmup exercise person. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Darren Lacroix.

I am the guinea pig. And by the way, Mark, did you have a quick question first?

Kevin, you mentioned about going six hours of rest. Real quick anecdote. I was given the opportunity the last couple of years ago to emcee a major Valentine's ball here in Macon, Georgia. One of my friends was event planner, and they brought in a group of singers, a male group from Las Vegas for the event. And the lead individual who ran the group walked around for the whole day. I went like several hours early to do a check and then talk to the organizer. And the lead singer walked around with a pad and a pencil all day. And he wrote notes to the producers, he wrote notes to the tech team, he wrote notes to his band, he nod his head, he'd wag his finger, he write a note and hand it to him. He did not speak until like 9pm when it was showtime for him to come on. And those guys came on and they killed it. But he protected his instrument for the entire day. And I thought to myself, that might make my wife happy if I did that before I gave a speech. But yeah, rest is important.

Caring for not just your wife, Mark.

Thank you, Kevin.

I love you too, brother.

I'll let you give Darren the vocal warm up. Those of you who are listening, you won't see this, but hopefully we'll get video to you later on and you'll get the idea nonetheless. Kevin?

Yeah. And I'll describe what I'm having to do hopefully adequately. And if. And Mark, if you don't think I'm describing it adequately enough for audio, go ahead and ask for clarification while it's happening. So making sure that your voice is primed and ready on the day that you need it is a practice of taking care of your voice every day and exercising your voice every day. If you were going to run a marathon, you wouldn't show up on the day of the marathon and go, okay, I'm ready to run. Would you? No. You would train for it. You would train constantly for it. Bodybuilders train constantly and then they train harder to peak before a competition. Every athlete trains as a speaker. You are an athlete. You're a vocal athlete if nothing else. And we think of our voice as just being what happens here. It's connected to every muscle from your diaphragm down here where your belly is, all the way up through your throat, in and around your throat, up into your face, all the way up into your sinuses. Every muscle from the top of your skull to your diaphragm, at the very least, should be involved in vocal production and should get some attention in your daily routine. So let's warm up Darren Lacroix, shall we? Let's give Darren a vocal warm up he could do forever. All right, so, Darren, you are currently sitting. I need you to stand up, please.

Yes, sir. Standing.

Good. Your headphones might fall off, but that's ok. That's all right. Just grab them and put them back on.

Yes, sir.

All right, so the first thing, Darren, is roll your shoulders. You know, take your shoulders up to your ears, up to your ears and let them drop. Just let them drop. Okay. Take them back up to your ears. Let them drop. Now roll one shoulder real slow.

How you doing?

Keep your neck long. Don't hunch down into it. Keep your neck nice and long. Roll one shoulder, roll the other Shoulder. Roll the other shoulder.

This is much more entertaining if you're watching the YouTube version.

Yes, yes. We're going to want to tuck a dollar in your pants when this is around.

Dance, Kevin.

So lean your ear either way, all the way over to one side and touch your shoulder with it if you can. Don't strain yourself. And do everything very slowly, Darren. Very slowly. Super slow. So go all the way down to one shoulder.

Feel that stretch right here, Kevin?

Yep. Slow. Yeah. It stretches along the side and the back of your neck.

Yes, I can feel that stretch.

Yep. Slowly come back up. Nice long neck all the way through. Now slowly lean over to the other side with a nice long neck. Lean over just until you feel. Don't raise your shoulder to meet your neck. That's cheating. And come back up to center like.

You'Re falling asleep on one shoulder.

Yes, exactly. I got it. But in slow motion. In slow motion. Okay, Kevin, now, Darren, very slowly bring your hands out to your side and reach them up all the way over your head. Reach to the ceiling, keeping a long neck and a nice long stretch all the way through your body. And then let your arms just fall down at your sides, loose. Good. Now here's some gold for you, Darren. If you could sort of turn sideways to the camera for me, please. What I want you to do is let your torso just kind of fall over with your head hanging down loose and your arms hanging down to the ground. More. Let it go down more, more, more, more. Like you were reaching down to touch your toes. But don't make it be uncomfortable. All right, now, when you come back up, Darren, starting with your lower spine, I want you to roll back up slowly, stacking one vertebrae on top of the other, all the way through your back, all the way through your upper back, through your neck, stacking one vertebrae at a time. Now fall over again. Ball forward again. Just loose. Just like a ragdoll.

Boom.

Now come back up and stack those vertebrae one at a time, slowly, one at a time. You're rolling back up into position. It's like if you are cracking a whip upward in slow motion so your head will be the last thing to start to straighten. There you go, Kevin.

That almost looks like those scary movies where you think the bad guy is dead. And slowly he kind of rises back again. Now, again, I'm giving color commentary for those who are listening to our podcast. Z. All of a sudden, he slowly appears again. That's what happens. It's a slow movement with the body being rolled back up again. So that's a visual for those who are listening to our audio file today.

Yeah. That's how you can tell the monster was a trained actor. It's like, what do I do? I'll just do the acting thing. All right, now, Darren, face the camera and stand up as I want you to. There are two images that you can use. Whichever one's better for you. Imagine a helium balloon, and the string is attached to the top of the center of your skull. Let that balloon gently pull your spine upward. Stay centered on your feet. Don't go up on your toes, and just gently let that pull you. You upward and elongate your spine. And especially let it elongate your neck. That's one way you can do it. Another way you can think of this as though there was an iron rod from the top of your head all the way down through your spine, all the way down into the earth, connecting your body to the center of the earth. And that's where you're going to draw the power of your voice from. And I know it sounds corny, and I know it sounds goofy, but you saw me do it twice at game changers, and it works. So let's get that long stretch through your body. Nice, long neck and chin level. Chin level with. Okay. Because I can't. The camera doesn't quite tell me how you're standing, but yeah. Nice. Nice level chin. So we have that. Now, Darren, keeping your shoulders down and your neck long, I want you to start exercising your face so the muscles in your face. Because your vocal production has a lot to do with the muscles in your face, believe it or not. So make a big surprise face. Like, eyebrows up, mouth wide open as you can. And now make a pickle sniffer face. You scrunch everything down. Scrunch your mouth upward to your eyes, and make that space as small as you possibly can. There you go. And then now big face again. Big open, wide open. Everything open. And pickle sniffer. Scrunch it all down. Scrunchy, scrinch, scrunch, scrinch. All right, go back to a neutral face, keeping your neck long and your body in that solid, upright position. Make, like, a goofy face where your lips go different directions. Yeah, and then switch the famous Hewlett face. Yeah, yeah, right. And then bare your teeth like you're snarling.

Hey, Hard, hard, hard, hard.

Relax and relax. Now lower your jaw And, Darren, try not to do happy feet. Stand. Widen. I can't see your feet, but I can tell you you need to widen your base a little bit. Just so you're nice and solid. Let your jaw drop.

You know, like.

Like Homer Simpson after eating a donut. You know, like you're in a Thanksgiving meat coma. Just relax your tongue and just let your jaw drop. And then shake your face out like that. Just like you go.

Roger Rabbit noise.

Yes, but without the sound. But that's exactly it. Now take your hands and put them on either side of your face and.

Just kind of massage.

Move your cheeks around.

Yeah.

Move your eyebrows around. Move everything around. Give yourself a face massage and loosen everything else.

Yes. It's great. A little massage, Kevin.

Oh, I know, I know. So you didn't. You didn't think this was going to be so much fun, did you?

Oh, this is great. A self depicted massage. I can. 1. I can tell our listeners are going, what is. What are they doing? Just imagine. Yes, go on the face massage. And when the video comes out, check it out.

All right, loosen up the muscles in your face. Now again, establish your base, Darren. There you go. Nice and straight. Nice long neck. And just turning your head, look as far to your right as you can. Slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. Until you feel that stretch in your neck. Come back to center. There you go. And then slowly look the other way. Over the. Over the other shoulder. Keep your shoulders straight and square. Doing great. Get that nice stretch. Stretch and come back to center.

This is so cool.

We should require our listeners to be doing this while they're listening.

Yes.

Please follow along and watch the neighbors and the other car going by.

And thankfully, Kevin, Darren did not do an exorcist move just now and turn his head all the way around or I'd be gone.

If he could do that, he wouldn't.

Need me saving that for the finale.

Okay, so one more time, just gently lift your shoulders up to your ears.

Right?

And let them drop. Again, gently up to your ears. Let them drop. All right, now you get to make sounds with your mouth. Okay? So, Darren, set your base. Get yourself settled.

Yes, sir.

You're happy feeding me again?

Yep, I am.

So we're gonna start with fricatives. And fricatives are consonant sounds that don't get any vocal support. So like, if you were going to constantly pronounce the letter F or the letter S, now what I'd like you to do is take a deep. Nope. Keep your face relaxed. Keep your face relaxed. Take a deep breath. And mark. Do you have a stopwatch?

I can get one on my phone right now, sir. Certainly.

That'd be great. That'd be great.

Yep. Okay.

All right, so, Darren, take in a deep, cleansing breath. Hold, release, blow it all the way out into the nose, out through the mouth, all the way out. Blow it all the way out. And then what I'm going to have you do is take in a deep breath and just pronounce like you. Like one long F. Okay.

And I want to go in.

Huh? No, on the out. So just taking a deep breath. And Mark will start the stopwatch. And just gently, gently put your shoulders down. Relax, relax, relax, relax. And for as long as you can.

We gotta restart that again.

I didn't know what it was starting. Oh, man.

And by the way, Kevin, for our listeners, Kevin said fricative. It was not a curse word, so you understand. It wasn't. It's a good word. So fricative. One more time, Gary.

All right, so let's go together. Gary, taking the shoulders down. Long neck, long neck. Relax, relax. Taking a deep breath from your belly. And we'll do it together. Mark, you say go. Go. Okay. I beat you by a little.

A lot. It's okay.

My limit is around 40 seconds of f sound. But remember, this is something I did every day of my life before I retire. So let's do it again, this time with the S. Very gentle, gentle, very soft. If you want to pull the mic up a little closer to you so we can hear you essing, that'd be great. Relax your neck. Nice long neck. And just let that S sound out gently. Don't strain, don't strain, don't strain your face. If you're running out of breath, just run out of breath. Everything should be done as relaxed as possible. But you're doing great. You're doing great. Now we're going to add sound to the F, okay? And that'll make it sound like a V. So it'll sound like this. Almost like a raspy tugboat sound. But the rasp comes from your lips, not from your throat. Now go ahead and give that to me as long as you can. I'm going to give you some instructions while you're.

Sounds like a what?

Like it'll sound like a. A raspy tugboat. But the rasp comes from your lips, not your voice. Like it'll sound like this. The rasp is from my lips, not my throat. Give me a nice long neck. Relax your shoulders. Relax your face. See? Great. You're increasing your capacity as we go.

Awesome, man.

And it's kind of a fun sound. It sounds like a pissed off hornet.

Yeah.

And I hope people started listening from the beginning and didn't start right in the middle. Like, what is going on?

What is going on?

We are giving Darren vocal exercises to do every day for the rest of his life to keep his vocal instrument in tip top condition.

This is great.

Great. Again, relaxed shoulders. Nice long neck. Give me that. Nice long neck, Darren. There you go. Set your base. Get your base set. Either feel that balloon pulling you up or feel that steel rod from the top of your skull through your spine all the way to the center of the earth. Whichever one works better for you. It is important to add sound to your vocal. Warm up slowly because if you just jump right in with loud, harsh sounds, you're. You're going to damage your voice. There's no two ways about it. So we want to do this slowly and deliberately and mindfully. So now we're going to add lip trills. Lip trills. T, R, I, L, L S. This is actually one of my favorite things to do. And Darren just took a drink of water. How did you know I was going to say lick your lips?

Darren, you said lips and they felt dry, so it was just a natural thing.

So go ahead and lick your lips, Mark. Go ahead and take a drink. Lick your lips too. Everybody's lip licking. Everybody get your bass. Stand up straight. And this is the sound we're gonna. You hear that? Yep. Yep. And again, a very Roger rappy kind of sound.

We're learning a lot about you, Kevin, that we didn't know that this is one of your favorite sounds.

I know. You're like, you're like. You're like witnessing the final 20 minutes before I walk on stage to do caveman. So shoulders down, nice long neck. Both of you.

Yes, sir.

Taking a deep breath from your. Oh, so breathing from your diaphragm. Your diaphragm is located right below your ribcage. How do I breathe from my diaphragm? Here's a great way to practice that. Take your index finger and gently touch your diaphragm. Now use your diaphragm to push your finger away from your body. I can sort of show you, I think so. My diaphragm. Here we go. Ready? Did you see that expansion? Yep. That's not me just letting my chubbiness go. That's me deliberately pushing my finger away. And when you can, establish a nice solid base with your feet and a nice solid base with your diaphragm, that is 80% of the battle. First speaker.

I'm glad you mentioned that because if for perspective, people, if you watch anyone, you know, sleeping when they inhale, their abdomen will rise because they're naturally breathing through their diaphragm when. When they're. When they're sleeping. But all too often, we're told, take a deep breath, and we constrict the diaphragm, try to breathe through it in our chest. Yeah.

Raise our shoulders up.

Yeah. And we actually constrict our diaphragm. But if you watch someone sleeping, you'll see their abdomen is rising when they inhale. And we want to do that in person, live. When we're told to inhale, not pull to your shoulders or your lungs, force that finger or your abdomen, and you'll feel the diaphragm actually expand, which is what we actually want to do. So, Kevin, thank you for that reminder. I appreciate that, man.

Oh, you're very welcome. And we're kind of lucky that we live in the air where a lot of singers, Male singers either wear no shirt or female singers wear crop tops because we can see their abdomens.

Yeah.

And if you watch a singer's. A good singer's abs, you watch them, it's like they're doing crunches while they're singing.

Yeah.

And that is. That is what your abdomen should be doing. It should be. Now, when I'm just sitting here talking to you like this. This is just my normal voice sitting, relaxed, talking. But when I set my abdomen, you can hear a change in my voice, can't you? Because my voice relaxes because now I'm getting support from down here instead of pushing everything from my chest upwards. And now I'm going to relax and talk like a relaxed person again.

Why, thank you, Kevin.

You betcha. Okay, so, Darren, lip trills. Let me hear some lip trills.

Give me the sound one more time, please. Okay.

This is gonna be fun.

I stumbled.

Push it. Push it from your diaphragm. There you go.

And Kevin was right. It does seem rather goofy, but it does help.

There's no shame about it. It's is goofy.

It is. But remember, we're. We're protecting your vocal cords by introducing sounds slowly.

Right.

As opposed to quick anecdote. And I'm going to drop a name here. So here, listen. There. There's the name drop sound. I was talking to Celine Dion in her dressing room right up until she walked out on stage. And I said, don't you have to do a vocal warmup? She says, oh, no, the first song is my warmup. I'm like, okay. She walks out on stage and does Open Arms by Journey. That was her vocal warm up. But she is a rare and special unicorn of a creature. We normal mortals can't do that. We have to introduce sounds slowly. So let me hear some more lip trills, Darren. Yeah, it's kind of. Kind of like a horse wound like that. Oh, yeah, that's good too. Yeah, that's good. Keeps your mouth loose and your jaw loose.

I don't think I'm gonna put this one on YouTube, just so you know.

Oh, you absolutely have to. We have to be able to see it.

I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

Good.

Amazing. This is great.

All right, so now. And you would do those for a minute or so. Just you would repeat those for a minute or so during your exercises and your warm up. Now we're going to move on to expanding your vocal range. So you're. You're going to make an occluded sound like ng good. Relax your jaw. See how my. My mouth is all the way. So you're just closing off your soft palate in the back, right. And. And loosening your tongue. What I'd like you to do is start this sound at the absolute highest pitch you could possibly start. And as you do it, you're going to lower down to the absolute lowest pitch you possibly can, all while making that same sound whenever you're ready. Okay? So right before you went growly, that's. That's your folk, right? I think you have a little bit more on the high end. So listen to this. So try it way up high.

Yes. Okay.

I ran out of gas there. Didn't make the Runway.

When you do this, you will feel your voice. There'll be three sections with two breaks. At the beginning, you're kind of in a falsetto like Frankie Bailey, like.

Which.

I can't do, but you're almost in a falsetto. And there's the first break when I get into my throat voice, and it'll break again when I get down into my chest voice. Now we had talked, Aaron, about how we can get people out of their nervous high pitched voice that a lot of people do when they speak because they want to make an impact. Right. And this is a great way to get your voice down into its lower register. You know, you just start at something at a pitch that's comfortable and then go down as low as you can and feel. I want you to do it again, Darren, and I want you to feel your voice vibrating in different places. At first, it'll be vibrating up in your sinuses and all around your, you know, above your mouth. All those sinuses above your mouth. And then you'll feel it vibrating in your throat. And at the end, you should feel it vibrating in your chest and in your diaphragm. So do it again, please. You don't have to go to the falsetto. Just go to whatever's comfortably high for you.

Yeah, I could. I could feel, literally, the vibrations went down my body. It was kind of freaky.

Yeah, I know. Weird.

Yeah.

So do it one more time and then follow my instructions afterwards.

Okay.

Stop. Stay relaxed. Keep your jaw down. And just begin. Relax your jaw. Ha ha ha ha. And begin any presentation that you give regularly.

But that was on Saturday morning. But let's go back to 1992. I'm driving down the road listening to a tape of Brian Tracy.

Okay, stop, please. Do you hear a difference, Mark?

Yeah, a bit more lower. Brian Tracy. He's ending his voice. Even his word endings are more down here. He could be a voiceover artist.

Yeah, absolutely. You're working down in your lower.

Yeah.

Brian.

And Darren's. Darren's quite. Those who know Darren, he's very animated. But even now, it's not like, I'm going down the road. Listen to a tape of Brian Tracy. He's not saying Brian Tracy. He's saying Brian Tracy. It's a different range vocally that he would. Even with his level of excitement, it's a good vocal range for him to be at when he says that. This is really interesting stuff, Brad. Thank you so much. Kevin.

Oh, you're welcome. And you are naturally blessed, Mark. With a nice deep baritone, a nice resonant baritone. The rest of us, Porsche loves, have to work our butts off to try to get that which God has given you so freely.

You're very kind. Thank you very much, both gentlemen.

You're very kind. One more time, Darren. One more time with the ings. All the way down into your lowest register. When you hit your lowest register, stay relaxed, stay centered. Stay with the balloon or the rod, whatever your imagery is, and then begin your presentation right from that lowest register when you're ready.

It was 1992. I had just failed in business. I'm driving down the road listening to a tape of Brian Tracy. As I drive down the road, I heard him ask a question. What would you dare to dream if you knew you wouldn't fail?

Okay, pause, please.

Yep.

Mark, is that not way more compelling?

Golden. Golden. That's wonderful.

Yeah. That was excellent.

How's that going? Excellent.

Thank you, Darren.

Thanks.

I had a good coach. I had A good coach, Kevin Burke. We got time for one more effing good coach.

Right? So now simply yawn. You know, get in your. Get in your relaxed, relaxed, long neck. No, don't. Don't fake. Don't. Don't act. A yawn. Just open your mouth. Begin that deep breath. Keep your mouth open, your jaw down. So just yawn. Go ahead and yawn. Now talk.

Sure. Why not?

So there it was.

See? See? There it is. That's another way, another exercise to help lower the pitch of your voice. We all get excited. We all talk in a higher pitch than what we would really like to for maximum impact, because we think we're making a difference, and we are. But we can make much more of a difference if we talk down in this pitch because it has gravitas, it has sincerity, and there were emotional colors that came out when you. When you did it in your. In your lower pitch than we ever see during your. The normal pitch voice pitch that you use.

Fair enough.

I received really good. Awesome.

Sweet.

Now one more thing. So now to cap off your vocal, your vocal warm up.

Okay.

You get to sing, but it's not really singing. It's just vocalizing in pitch.

We are about to lose our audience.

Is this my turn, Darren? I don't know.

All you're gonna do is you're gonna sing Mae me ma moo on one pitch. So just go ahead and sing May me ma moo.

Mae me ma moo.

Oh, one pitch. One pitch. Maimo mo. Take it up slightly.

May me mamo.

Up a little bit. Keep doing that. Going up.

Mamie mama.

Okay, pause. You're singing may me ma. Just may me mamu. One pitch.

May me mama moo.

Good.

May me mama moo.

Now, Mamie mamo moo. Just take it up a little.

Mamie mamo moo.

Good. Now take it up a little more, Mamie mama.

Up a little more.

May me mama.

Excellent. Excellent. We have created a singer. Yeah.

Here comes Darren.

And the way to use this is to start at the top of your comfortable range and then work your way down to that. To that comfortable baritone sound.

Wow. Kevin Burke, man.

Yes. It's been an exercise of exercises, Darren, and seeing you as a singer, as a speaker.

Don't laugh so hard when you say that.

We all have the heart of a beginner.

Yeah. That's really, really good. I mean, Darren, wow.

You have to do that every day. You can't just do it before you go on stage.

I can't just play the podcast every day.

Just listen to the podcast. Visualize yourself in that nice, comfortable, sexy Darren baritone.

May me mamu.

Nope. May me momo.

May me mam oo.

Yeah, do you have a. You can buy a toy keyboard or, you know, like a little Casio keyboard and just go down to your lowest comfortable note and just, just plink May me ma moo. And Then go up 1 Mamie Mamomu up on Mamie Ma mo. And then go up as high as you can if that.

Very cool. Kevin Burke.

Frickin day. All of it.

Kevin Burke, the secrets behind the world record holder. And by the way, when we said he did over 4,000 performances, that's just once he got here. We're not Talking about the 20 years of stage time before that, but Kevin Burke, thank you for walking us through. We've never quite done a podcast like this, which is why we like to experiment, try new things. And I really think that was an eye opener, especially, you know, Mark's opinion of the difference that it made. So Kevin Burke. By the way, if you're listening to this, check out Kevin Burke. Go to getaspeakingcoach.com and you could work one on one with Kevin Burke. You could also find. Follow him on Facebook. It's. What is it? The official Kevin Burke.

It's fake Kevin Burke.

Fake Kevin Burke. Fake Kevin Burke on Facebook. Follow him.

A picture of me in a red cap holding a sign up that says no picnicking. And I'm admonishing you, no picnicking.

You can also join Kevin, me and Stephanie at Humor bootcamp. Go to humorbootcamp.com Mark Brown, your observations on this.

It's actually quite fascinating. I can remember when I was trying to do voiceover Back in 2013, which is about nine years ago, and they gave me several vocal exercises, but nothing as intense as what Kevin gave you today. And for those who are simply listening to the podcast, it may seem kind of weird or goofy. It's. Trust me, if you want to take care of your instrument, it's important to find ways to do exactly as Kevin says, to rest well, to hydrate frequently, to exercise before you present, and take great care of your instrument. So I'm really thankful that Kevin spent some time with us today, Darren, giving us a peek behind the curtain of what it takes to tune your vocal instrument. And I got some keepers today which might be of interest to some of you who are listening and hopefully watching as well. Let me know when you're ready and I'll fire them at you. Darren, before you have any other questions or comments, For Kevin. Kevin.

Yeah, I'd like to address something. So if, in spite of all your good efforts and diligent practice, if you wake up at 9am and you only have half of your voice for whatever reason, the traditional remedy of tea with honey. I don't like to put lemon in there because lemon's a little caustic, but tea with honey works great. Again, none of this is medical advice. Please consult your doctor before doing anything I tell you to over the next 30 seconds. If you are somebody who drinks, a sip or half a shot of whiskey will relax your throat incredibly. Again, this is not medical advice. Consult your medical professional. The Las Vegas Headliners remedy for no voice is a Z pack and a B12 shot. Again, consult your doctor before taking any actions that the idiot talking to you right now might advise. You know, might even talk about. But I did the Z pack and vitamin 12 shot once and my voice came back instantly. It's amazing.

Wow.

Zithromax. They call it Zithromax. Yeah.

Yeah, a Z pack. It's a like prescribed mega doses of antibiotics. Why that works, I have no idea. Antibiotics shouldn't even enter into it.

But is it B12, Kevin?

And a B12 shot, which is not medical advice. Don't even listen to anything I just said. Don't do it ever unless your doctor says it's okay.

Yeah.

All right, Mark Brown, what do we got for keepers as we wrap up?

Keepers?

Wow.

Well, listen as we tune our vocal instrument. My first keeper was avoid short term chemical fixes when you have some vocal issues. Kevin did say natural is good when you can do that. But avoid short term chemical fixes. Or with the emphasis on the word chemical, please.

Okay.

It's wise to go through a full vocal warmup before you present. And it may be even wiser to practice this on a regular, daily basis. Every single day. Every single day. Do vocal exercises. Remember, as a speaker, you are a vocal athlete. You must keep your instrument in tune. When you do your vocal warmups, slowly, slowly add sounds like lip trills and the V over F. When you breathe, breathe, breathe from your diaphragm. If you're not sure how, watch somebody who's sleeping. You'll see what happens when the diaphragm is expanded. Use your vocal exercises to broaden your vocal range. Remember me, Me, ma moo. And it's also safe in a pinch to use some tea with honey to soothe ailing vocal cords. Most of all, remember your voice is your instrument. Tune it and care for it. Well, back to you Darren.

All right, Kevin, your final thoughts and advice for us.

The first five letters in speaking business are S, P, E, A, K. It's at the beginning because it's the most important. And that voice is what's going to make people want to be a part of you and want to have what you have to give them. And I would point out and Mark, please back me up on this. After doing this hour long warmup, Darren's voice is still comfortably down in that nice sexy baritone.

Why, yes, it is. How you doing?

How you doing?

Okay, Joey, how you doing? It's been so much fun, Darren. It really has. Kevin, I can't thank you enough, man. We know you as a friend, a brother. We hang out together, we work together. But this particular episode was meaningful to me because for two years almost being on the air talking about this, but never once really focused on how to take care of our instrument. Listeners, friends, we hope you've got some good tips here. Begin applying them immediately if you want to go from good to great to unforgettable. Darren, take us home.

And remember we're talking about tuning your instrument, your voice. You can tune your voice, but you can't tune a fish.

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