The Transformative Power of Piano Playing Before Voice Acting
Musicians, athletes, singers, dancers and actors, to name a few, all have one thing in common... they go through a variety of warm-up exercises before attempting to accomplish their task or goal for the day; be it a workout, game or performance.
Warming up muscles prevents injury from parts of the body being used or moved 'cold'. In other words, it would be like a car going from zero to 60 mph in a matter of seconds without first idling the engine of the car, at least for a few seconds. Something like that could really damage the inner workings of the engine.
Warm-up and Workout Before Getting in the Booth
Voice actors are no different, and actually they fall somewhere between a singer and an actor. No matter what title is being used; voiceover, voice over, voicer, talent, narrator, vocalizer, speaker, performer, moderator, reciter or reader, to name a few, what they are all doing is acting with their voice.
Most voice actors warm up by doing some stretches of their jaw muscles, gently massaging their facial muscles, stretching their neck, rolling their shoulders, reading tongue twisters or going through some type of vocal runs that you might hear singers use, to loosen up tight vocal cords. Running up and down scales seems to be very popular.
Sometimes even just walking around the block and humming a familiar song, or blowing through a straw, is all a voice actor needs to be ready to go into the booth of a session; either to self-direct, to practice, or for a directed session via a distance connection using a phone or a platform such as Source Connect, ipDTL, Google or Zoom.
A Favorite Thing
For me, my best warm-up is playing the piano. And I don't mean singing at the piano. I just mean playing the piano. I'm lucky in that all of the vocal warmup I need to get my voice to where I would like it to be, sound-wise, is to eat breakfast. If I try to record before I eat, my voice sounds low and kind of 'spotty'. But eating breakfast seems to be all of the workout I need for my voice to be right where I need it to be to sound like I always do. Makes it really easy if I ever have to match my voice to where I might have left off in a recording the day before. My sweet spot for playing the piano is between 45 minutes and an hour, although 90% of the time, it's for a full hour. That's just enough time for me to feel as if I'd had a workout. I literally feel a runner's high when I am able to play for a block of time like that. My mind clears, as when I play, I have to concentrate, so anything that has been weighing on my mind just magically disappears. I notice that if I start to let chatter in, that's when I start making mistakes In my playing. But for the times when I can keep my mind focused, I find that I just naturally play for about an hour. Sometimes it can go longer without me even knowing it. I usually don't even look up at a clock until I have been playing for either exactly on hour or very close to it. I have been known to play for 90 minutes to two hours and swear that I have only been playing for 20 minutes. That's how far into The Zone that I go. Playing piano is one of my most favorite things to do.
My body just seems to know that if I play longer than an hour more than about once a week, then my hands and arms will hurt so much that I won't be able to play for a few days. And I really don't like that!
I seem to play pretty strongly on the keys. I really have to tell myself to hold back when I want to play quietly, either for emphasis, or depending on the time of day (either very early or very late) or if it's fairly warm or even hot in the house and I want to open up windows.
I play on a piano, not a keyboard. I think the vibrations, both the ones that I hear, and the ones that I feel from the piano, to my fingers, up through my arms and then into my entire body, make me feel alive. I truly do feel as if I have been through a physical workout after an hour at the piano.
Good Vibrations
Playing the piano makes me feel like me. It's a feeling that I have enjoyed since I was four years old. I love the feeling of the keys under my finger tips, the vibrations, and I especially love the sounds that I make, both from following the notes on the page and when I improvise.
Piano playing is the perfect warm-up for me before getting behind the mic, even though at first glance, it appears to have nothing to do with using my voice. But it makes me feel alive. And confident. And it puts a smile on my face. So in that regard, it has everything to do with how I use my voice to tell a story, convey the importance of a product or service, teach a child or a patient, or create a character.
It really is the key(s) to my vocal warm-ups.
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