 Hey, it's Monday night and time for voiceover body shop George You're not here No, I'm virtually guesting tonight. How's everybody going? Well, we've got a great show tonight. We've got dr. Rina Gupta who is an Leringologist will forget the rhino odo part of that and just say Leringologist We're gonna talk about vocal health So if you got lots of questions on that stay tuned for that You've got lots of tech updates, right? Yes, we do. We've got a whole bunch of gear to talk about some of it's very Simple things that are gonna make your life a lot better. All right. That's all coming up on voiceover body shop right now two men Twin sons from different mothers with a passion for voiceover recording technology and the desire to make recording easy for voice actors everywhere together in one place George Whittem the home studio engineer to the stars a Virginia tech grad with an unmatched knowledge of all the latest gear and technology in voiceover today Dan Leonard the home studio master a voice actor with over 30 years Experience in broadcasting and recording and a no-holds-barred myth-busting attitude for teaching you how easy it is together to bring you all the latest technology today's voiceover superstars and Leaving the discussion on how to make the most of your voiceover business This is voiceover body shop Voiceover body shop is brought to you by voice over essentials comm home of Harlan Hogan signature products Source elements makers of source connect source connect pro and source connect now The O to go-go.com everything you need to become a successful voice artist voiceover extra your daily resource for VO success The VO dojo take your voiceover career all the way J. Michael Collins demos when quality matters and by voice actor websites dot com Where your voice actor website shouldn't be a pain in the butt And now live from their super secret multimedia studio in Sherman Oats, California Here are George Whidham and Dan Leonard Well, hello there. I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Whidham and this is voiceover body shop or VO BS all right well another Monday night and you're here with us and of course we have a Laryngologist with us tonight. And what do I have? I have a cold Then how the heck did you plan that? I you know, I was walking around looking for bacteria. Let's see Yeah, let's try some of that See if that'll work. You don't have to look far Living where you are with the dogs and everything. Yeah, it's it can be that way Anyway, our guest tonight is dr. Marina Gupta from Osborn Head and Neck Institute here in Los Angeles and We're gonna talk about vocal health and I'm sure you have lots of questions And of course if you have any tech questions for George or I or both of us at the same time Put him in the chat room because Matt is running the chat room tonight and He will relay those questions to us and we really would love to hear some of your tech problems because that's why George and I are here and And But you know, it's been an interesting week here and in la la land Now you're in boulder. How's the weather in boulder? Is it snowing or something? Oh It is snowing if I can only show you what it looks like. I'm taking a peek. Okay It's it looks like uh, god is taking a powdered sugar shaker and dumping it all over the uh The yard out there. It looks it looks beautiful. I miss it's not I don't miss my snow blower or any of those things well I had an interesting week because I got to do a big national spot for once and hang out in a really nice studio and work with a real professional crew and it was fun And like we always say, you know, because we talked to so many voice professionals on this show um How is it? You know, how do you how do you get that break? And it's like well when the opportunity comes You gotta deliver And fortunately I got cast in something that actually works for me So, of course, I can't talk about it But uh usual, right? Yeah But well, they say luck favors the prepared Yeah, exactly Whereas my father-in-law used to say the harder you work the luckier you get I like all those sayings. They all they all work And and then yeah, and then I ended up in a celebrity's closet, but I I can't really talk about that Ha ha ha It's a Hey, let's just let's just say it's a tech story Anyway, we don't have news tonight because John Florian's on vacation somewhere and you know, what are you gonna do? But you have lots of tech updates. So why don't you lead off with that, mr. Woodham? Yeah, I've just been combing the web for some stuff Some of these things I already knew about and some of them I just discovered recently so You know I'll go through it. I I've got a few links in there And hopefully Susan might be able to grab some of these and show you what I'm looking at as we as we go here, but um Working standing something we've talked about for a long time. I have a standing desk at home But it's really a desk that's fixed at a standing height It's something from Ikea the legs while they are adjustable are you have to set them once and be done with it You can't adjust them on the fly They'd be a real it'd be a nightmare to try to lower the desk So there's been a lot of products coming out like the vary desks and all this kind of thing But this company I found the price keeps coming down into them into the affordable office furniture realm And this particular desk crosses the $99 barrier So if you've been thinking of getting a standing desk, but the pricing was just too much or they're too large or too bulky This one's pretty sweet. It it it will It's just it's a desk desk of its own It's not something you stand on top of your desk Because there's a lot of those out there as well and for 99 bucks it's got Uh, basically it works basically like your basic office chair with the hydraulic lever that lets you raise and lower Um, but the two it has two legs and each of those two legs are controlled by a single lever on one side So when you squeeze the lever the desk comes up if you want to lower it again, you just have to squeeze the lever and then push back down simple elegant and It's something that's not very bulky. So it should be able to fit in most Small booths, you know, I I think it could fit in everything But the teeniest whisper room or or maybe the smallest walk-in closet But um, a really cool way to to have your computer at the right height and be able to sit down for those long narrations The model number if you're looking for it is the tang gula tan g k u la Computer desk sit stand workstation It's a notebooks or notebook stand with wheels Yeah, I I will attest to the using a standing desk because I was having all sorts of back problems until I decided to stand up and do my work You know until I get tired I just grab a chair and I just sit down there and look up at it Which is not a good idea Well, you can of course get a get a high stool. Yep for those times you need to take a break and If you look around you'll actually find some interesting stools that are like not fully just for sitting But actually for leaning leaning absolutely Yeah, and that's an interesting compromise because you're not plopped down. You're not gonna slouch. It's almost impossible to Slouch when you're leaning on a leaning stool. It forces you to have a good posture. Yeah, so Might be something to give a try. I I attest it works great Works great. Now. Here's something else that is far less expensive But really really practical at this point You're probably in the minority if you haven't heard of command strips I'm a minority. Wow If you use command strips Probably not So what's a command strip? It's it's basically it's a fancy velcro strip It's made by 3m though. So it's not velcro because they don't own that that trademark But it's a hook and loop or hook fastener now I've known about command strips for a long time, but it wasn't until recently that they became really really useful And now I know why If you have to hang acoustical panels like Arlex foam Or even the much heavier panels from like a ts acoustic something made out of wood These things will actually be able to hold the weight of your acoustic panels If you get the heavy-duty ones 4 2 inch long strips can hold 16 pounds of weight So a large pin picture a mirror or whatever These can do it But what's cool about this what makes them different from regular hook and loop fasteners If you've ever had to remove those hook and loop fasteners from your painted walls, you know the deal Paint comes right off It's a it's a train wreck. It's really a mess and if you're renting It's a bad bad situation So the command strips have a really interesting function and that feature and that is behind the adhesive Is like this piece of elasticy elasticy foam Yeah, you pull on it removes it Yeah, when you pull there's a little tab and when you pull it it releases the adhesive It sounds so simple, but it's a brilliant brilliant solution. Oh those command strips Those command those command strips. Okay. Yeah, those command strips. Yeah So they're they're really handy and if you have to hang anything temporarily I highly recommend them. I use them. Um and in Joe Cipriano's studio last week He's in an apartment for a while and he needs to have We put acoustical panels all over the inside of a closet including the inside of the closet doors But just angled in about a 30 degree angle so he gets to stand inside and have a mostly enclosed space We're all having fun celebrities closets this week. It's great. Aren't we? And uh, and so we used I used the command strips on the panels But the thing is for extra security Don't just stick the command strip on the panel or on the foam with something really heavy like the wood panels I actually staple gunned the two staples the command strips to the back of the panels Um, you can see a time lapse video of me doing this on my facebook page George the tech you'll see a little facebook A little time lapse of me stapling and hanging these things on the closet doors, but really really handy Um going on the list Something that I just heard about for the very first time is the focus right red net x2p 2x2 Ethernet audio digital interface with mic preamps In case you were wondering That's fancy for an audio interface that works over your network Why is that interesting? It's interesting simply it's well, it's it can be it really actually It's designed to be wired. It uses something called Dante And Dante is just sort of a trademarked name Kind of like ndi which dan and I are familiar with for sending video around the studio Dante lets you send multitrack audio around a network So the the interface musicians then Musicians, I mean if you have a studio where your interface is in your booth But the computer is a good distance away If it's more than six feet away or 10 feet away Running usb or thunderbolt cables really far distances is a problem Does not work well at all. It's not reliable So this using Dante, which is an ethernet connection cat five cable It goes between the interface and your network This unit can be placed, you know, just about anywhere. There's an ethernet connection So it's just something new out there something to try if you're having trouble with stability Finding um usb or thunderbolt stuff to be unreliable It's just something new out there. I haven't demoed it yet, but one of these days I'll get my hands on Another thing just stumbled on and this seems maybe a little more practical Is the zoom f1 dash sp. There it is right there. No there It's $250 you're getting a shotgun mic and a recorder in one So it's it's a little tiny field recorder. It's hard to tell from that picture But it's only about this big And then it uses the modular microphone system That zoom created to work with the h5n and the h6 Recorders and they sell as a bundle so you can get the shotgun mic with this little recorder Attached to it for 250 bucks Why would you want this? Why would you want one of those? You know if you find that Recording on the road using mic port pros and devices like that are frustrating because maybe You can't get it to interface with your iphone properly or an ipad Or the reliability factor again relying on usb is something that you're not too keen on This is an all-in-one standalone recording device So you set it up where you want it hit record and it's recording on its own when you're done You pop out the memory card where you plug it usb into your mac or pc and you copy the files over so just a different concept on on on remote recording and field recording and I don't know for $250. I was really impressed with the price point and Zoom has been hitting it out of the park lately. There's their quality is really improved Really, that's really cool. Well, tell you what? Why don't we take a break and cover a bit more of these in in just a minute And dr. Rina Gupta will be with us in a few minutes as well and we'll talk about your vocal health So stay tuned. We'll be right back here on voiceover body shot Michael Kostrov, you know him. You just don't know how you know him. Well, there he is He's that kind of actor been everywhere and knows a thing or two about book and work And that means he knows more than a thing or two about auditioning Now Michael is coming to la to record his amazing breakthrough workshop audition psychology 101 It's going to change how you approach your work. It'll change how you audition It'll change your performer life You want to change your performer life then attend audition psychology 101 live in la David H. 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Go to voice actor websites.com like our name implies voice actor websites.com just does websites for voice actors We believe in creating fast mobile friendly responsive highly functional designs that are easy to read and easy to use You have full control no need to hire someone every time you want to make a change And our upfront pricing means you know exactly what your costs are ahead of time You can get your voice over website going for as little as 700 dollars So if you watch your voice actor website without the hassle of complexity and dealing with too many options Go to voice actor websites.com where your vo website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what? And we are back on voice over body shop. We're talking tech right now. We're going to talk about vocal health Which is you know medical stuff in just a little while so stay tuned for that Um, but I gotta remind you that George and I are here for a reason and that reason is to make sure that your home voiceover studio is sounding the way it's supposed to sound and Every studio is different every room is different every voice is different every voice is different with different microphones And there's only two guys on the face of god's green earth that actually understand this who have worked on more home studios Than anybody else out there. They may talk about it, but they haven't done it and uh, George if they want to talk to you and Have you look over their situation or start from scratch? How do they do that? Well, they head on over to george the tech dot com That's my home on the web for all the services I provide And you can book me for a 30 minute phone console or we can work over skype We could also do virtual engineering when you send me your audio and I send back The resulting files presets video tutorials, whatever it is that you need All right there at george the tech dot com and dan You do cool stuff with people's audio too. I will figure out which way to point one of these days down It's down here. There you go. Yeah Yeah, you can find you on the web. Well, they can find me at home voiceover studio dot com And or dan at dan lennard dot com got all these websites. What am I going to do with them all? Uh, and I and I do a lot of the same stuff. I love working with beginners who don't know what a v umeter is and Get you from not knowing anything to being competent in a very short period of time And uh, and if you have a studio setup and you want me to listen to some of your audio If you go to my website home voiceover studio dot com At the bottom of the home page is the specimen collection cup click on that And that will give you the opportunity to send me a specimen of your audio And I'll be able to tell the size of the room and all those sorts of things. So Do that getting a lot more of those lately and some of them are really interesting Anyway, um, remember when we did bad audio of the week, I Seven years ago. Yeah, it's kind of hard to get people to convince people to to send in their audio for that But that was a fun segment. I wonder if we can revisit that someday. That's not a bad idea Bad audio of the week because boy we we got a lot more than we used to so maybe we have more choices Maybe maybe people want to volunteer that their audio for that segment, right? So what do you we're going to talk about this brother printer? Yeah, just one last thing. I mean some of you still want to read off paper And I totally understand why I mean it's it's more natural Very very easy to mark things up I just I totally get it But some of you out there are probably still using inkjet printers to print out your scripts And that is a waste of money It's just crazy expensive to maintain your inkjet printer The cartridges are ridiculous if you look online you can find inkjet costs the ink in an inkjet Cartridge cartridge at I think it costs about four thousand dollars a gallon It's the most valuable liquid on the planet. I think So maybe try something different and that I just set up for maxine Here in her home studio a new brother printer the EHL L 2 3 2 0 d rolls off the tongue They have a whole range of totally black and white Network connected printers. This one has usb and it also has ethernet And I love the ethernet connection because once it's connected to your home's network Anybody that can connect to the network can print to the printer And the beauty of it is it uses toner cartridges and toner cartridges can print I mean the printer the cartridges this thing came with Can print 2,600 pages on average? Wow, that's before it starts to say low toner Right And that's that's five plus reams of paper Wow So but what's really amazing is a toner cartridge is like 50 bucks If you ever went out and bought four or five packs of ink for your inkjet It was probably about 40 or 50 bucks. So you get way more pages to print. Yes, it's black and white So if you really need to print color, you need another printer for that or go to kinkos or whatever But most of you will probably find that you rarely print color So it's pretty sweet right now. You can find one of these refurbished on amazon prime For 75 bucks It's really incredibly good value. Wow, that's really tired of your inkjet printer This might be something to give a try Very cool. Now. I'm not sure whose studio we're in tonight It looks like we're in somebody's closet and I think we actually are Uh, so whoever you are if you're watching let us know who you are because I look through I'm like who sent us this picture But uh, I always put your name in the file. It helps it does it does But it's cool. It's very it looks like a totally practical but well treated studio Yeah, yeah and well lit and and that sort of thing. Well, we have a tech question though All right, we do from joy baker She says I'm switching from using a centrance mic port pro to a scarlet 18i 8 It's a lot of that's a lot of inputs My computer refuses to share both the input and the output with my digital audio workstation Which happens to be reaper and a website skyper webinar site at the same time. How do I solve that? I've tried all the sound card settings. I can think of Boy, that's that's a that's a big one well I gotta I mean I gotta ask the first question Why the 18i 8? Are you recording? eight microphones once Time because that that isn't a fantastic piece of gear But it it was it's for doing large productions where you can record a band or Uh an ensemble or something. So that said I'm not gonna rant on but it's it's overkill Definitely overkill. Um, but that said maybe you are doing some music It you're probably on windows. That's my best possible guess You conveniently left that detail out. And so if you're watching the show And you're in the chat room, please tell us whether you're on mac or windows Um, because he kind of these kinds of issues are really a totally non issues on the mac Yeah, everything's plug and play on a mac and you plug it in and it works Pretty much. I mean the sound drivers are really solid and Devices can be shared between Different applications and they all work together in harmony very very well On the windows side, there are more than one set of drivers there's like the windows classic wave driver and Trying to figure some others right off the top of my head But there are a lot of different kinds of drivers, but there's also what's called the azio or asio driver All right, we have an answer here. She should have said windows Good call You know got you she's using it for you know more than voiceover. She's yes doing worship team stuff Right. She says she bought it for the church worship team Gotcha. Okay, it makes lots of inputs the choir reverend Exactly so you can do multi track recordings now from from the church worship team Um, so the problem is is if you're using likely the asio driver And she might even be able to confirm this in the in the chat as she did the last question I had The asio driver may not allow the audio hardware to be shared with other things outside of reaper So if reaper is set to use that audio interface under the asio driver I don't think it's going to play nicely with anything else Now that said some asio drivers will allow that device to be shared and there are settings in there that say Whether the device can be used another application or something can take over the use of the device or not So if that's the case for you, um, you may want to not use the asio driver And use something else like the windows classic a wave driver Is that going to result in better stability or better reliability? I don't know asio is usually Usually the most stable driver But the reason why asio is such a big deal is because of latency So when you're using asio if you have to listen to something and sing along with it Doing multi track recording where you have to sing along with the track That latency matters matters a lot If you're only doing live recording a voice over track or a bunch of microphones The latency is a non issue. You don't care about any delay that the computer Imparts while recording. It's not a problem. So if that's the case for you Try a different driver try windows classic rave driver Um, and she actually responded. This is so interactive tonight Um, she has the asio driver, but it doesn't always work well. Sometimes I have to do wave out or direct something Um, yes, you're finding out the stability issues you may have with windows 10 And multitasking Windows 10 with audio stuff just doesn't multitask very well Just doesn't So I may recommend to you if you're looking for absolute reliability Have a second computer another windows laptop or whatever that you're using for auxiliary stuff Playing back websites playing back audio from itunes. Who knows and pipe that in to an input on your 18 i8 So you have an independent system Because you really want that system to be locked down dedicated and reliable For the purposes of doing live recording All right, is that enough tech for now? I think so. All right Well in that case, let's Break away and we'll be back with dr. Rina Gupta and we'll be talking about Vocal health so stay tuned for that here on voiceover body shop. We'll be right back Are you confused about how to set up and maintain a professional quality voiceover studio? No wonder the information out there is mostly mythology This is the best microphone to use. You'll have to have a preamp. You need a soundproof booth This software is the best your audio must be broadcast quality Consult with someone who knows the truth someone who's been there in the trenches doing voiceover for over 30 years Someone with unparalleled experience with voiceover studios Who's worked with hundreds of voice actors and designed hundreds of personal studios? He knows how to teach and cares about your success In one of the harshest environments known to voiceover your home Dan Leonard the home studio master Separate myth from fact and get a handle on your personal voiceover studio Contact the home studio master at home voiceover studio dot com drop off a specimen of your dry audio for a free analysis Everybody I wanted to tell you about one of our wonderful sponsors source elements You guys have heard us talking about a lot of different products for them But tonight i'm actually going to tell you about something that's totally Free Yes, free and that is source connect now Source connect now is their audio software that is not software at all. It's actually completely based on the web And that comes with it pros and cons those that have used Web-based audio systems like ipd tl and things that run on chrome Are aware that chrome the web browser updates itself whenever the heck it wants to and when that happens Things sometimes break. They don't always but sometimes they break So for that reason it's good to try something that is standalone And they actually have built at source elements a standalone source connect now So if you're using source connect now or if you haven't tried it yet Set up your source elements account at source dash elements dot com And then go to the downloads area and under the categories of software you'll find there's actually a source connect now You can download and install the standalone version of source connect now and start using it just like regular source connect now It connects to anybody else with source connect now You can send out links to have your clients listening on sessions It's like the world's best phone patch sound quality is amazing Works on macro windows works with any audio hardware you got from the scarlet 2i 2 To the universal audio polo and beyond so go check it out at source dash elements dot com And we'll be right back with dan and rina back in los angeles All right, we're back like to introduce our guest dr Rina Gupta is director of voice and swallowing center at the osborne head neck institute Based out of the cedar cyanide medical towers here in los angeles california. Nice address Uh, dr. Gupta gupta has to devoted her practice to the care of patients with voice and swallowing problems She is a board certified, uh, doctor in otolaryngology and laryngology and a fellowship trained in laryngology With a special interest in the care of the professional voice Let's welcome dr. Rina gupta. Welcome to voiceover body shop. Thank you very much for having me. It's great to have you here. Um First off It's always great having a doctor on and I know a lot of people will probably ask a lot of medical questions and stuff You are a doctor. You haven't you probably played one on tv too, but um But you can't really like without a lot of details and without examining somebody It's kind of tough to make give them an opinion. Isn't it it is I get that a lot when I do lectures or when I do Spots and shows that people ask really insightful questions and they ask questions about how the voice works and then inevitably we get to the so I have a And that's really hard to answer because I it sounds cagey, but I need an exam I need more information to be able to make a diagnosis and you want me right to have all that information So I will feel as many questions as I can and if we get into that turf. I'll just say honestly Um, I can't do that without an exam. All right. Well that makes sense all right, well You know most of the time we're talking to voice actors on here and producers and casting directors and stuff like that And I always ask how'd you get into voiceover? How did you find yourself in the medical profession? Tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell you my story, huh? Okay, so first you're gonna have to orient me. Where am I supposed to look right there there? Okay, because yeah first time area So I have sang my whole life. I trained in the world of professional voice More as a hobby, but I really was passionate about it and What I found is that I was I knew I was going to go into the medical field But as I was pursuing medicine, I also continued to answer to the Part of me that wanted to sing And so through my medical school choir I found out about this field of laryngology, which is a subspecialty within e and t Where you are essentially just taking care of the t part the throat or the larynx and so Kind of answering that calling for wanting to be part of the voice world And medicine and just fortuitously finding that there was a field that married the two Led me to this world of professional voice care and then even within laryngology theoretically I could do swallowing as you mentioned and airway stuff But I've even further tapered it down to the professional voice just because that's my my real passion And it's I find it fascinating when doctors talk about how the specialty they get into When I was in high school I had a couple of friends that were going off to college to be podiatrists They're like you're gonna be a podiatrist And the answer from both of them because they were both good friends was You wouldn't believe how many things can go wrong with somebody's feet And I'm imagining that something is sophisticated as Your vocal vocal folds and all the things connected there. There's a lot of stuff that can go wrong Yeah, it's true. It's sort of the through way also So if you imagine you have these vocal chords that sit in the middle here But they're subject to whatever you're breathing in and whatever you're digesting and reflexing back up And then use and abuse and so it's they're small. They're about the size of a thumb like the width of a thumbnail But especially because of how Communicative our society is and how much we rely on voice You often do find that there's a lot that can go sideways with the voice Yeah, I don't I know it, you know, all of us have one So usually something goes wrong one time or another. I'm in business. Yeah. Yeah, there you go I find it fascinating also that a lot of people who end up in in otolaryngology Also are vocalists themselves. Uh, so you've talked to a biased crew. Well, maybe maybe of course My last random otolaryngologist the legendary dr. Joel Bernstein. Maybe maybe remember him from e-wabs a few years ago Was also an opera singer So yes, you you've spoken to and been cared for by um By a subset I would say so within the field of ent you're going to get people who take care of all things, right? So that's going to be your otorhinolaryngologist or your ent And then a lot of us, especially these days have chosen to subspecialize because each area has become Very advanced in its own right So while I trained to do everything all of ent I did what we call a fellowship, which is subspecialty training in just Laryngology, which is where you get that term laryngologist But in my practice, for example, we have people who just do ears. So we have otologists. We have facial plastic surgeons We have head and neck surgeons. So nowadays I say the real Cutting edge most advanced care is going to be provided by people who have subspecialized and truly only do One of the parts of ent it's um Probably increasingly common over the past decade so that a lot of the old guard still does Everything um, and I don't think it's as bad as like jack of all trades master of none I'm certainly not I'm not saying that but I do feel that by dedicating myself for example to just voice A lot does come out just from seeing 15 voice patients a day That somebody who's seeing two voice patients two ear patients a few sinuses a few allergies You're not going to get exposed to the same Bread than depth of voice issues. And so I have to believe that with the training as well as with that Practical experience that there's more that I can offer to a professional voice user Yeah, and being here in LA You meet a lot of people who use their voice. Yeah, I'm not here by accident Are you from here originally? I'm from new york. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, and there are laryngologists in new york Um, there's laryngologists in LA honestly, but when I first came about a decade ago, there were none Um, there were a lot of entees who had a passion for the voice and cared for the voice But none who truly were sub-specialized and trained to care for the voice and so Over these past 10 years that's been one of my soapbox issues Which is um, you don't have to come to me but go to a laryngologist Go to somebody who understands The latest and greatest in the world of voice science so that you can get um the care you need Now we've met a few times at a couple of voice conferences And I remember you stick is is it an otoscope or what is it? They call this this fiber optic thing You stick down you look at your vocal cords and stuff So every question you ask is incredibly loaded and I don't know if you realize it But there's a long answer to every question Um, the I'll make it as short as I can which is to say that there's a lot of ways you can look at the larynx And the old way the classic way the way that I would say all entees do is a fiber optic scope That goes through your nose And that's what we call fiber optic laryngoscopy or fiber optic flexible laryngoscopy because the the tube has to be flexible to go Into your nose Um laryngologists will not do that We will do a what we call a rigid Straboscopy and that's probably what i'm hoping I did for you Um equipment, you know permitting and that's the scope that goes into your mouth And we have a microphone which is nowhere near what you have here But it syncs to the pitch the frequency of vibration of the vocal folds And it starts a strobe light to be just barely out of sync with that So that you're capturing a different frame on every wave so that you get this illusion of slow motion And you can actually see vocal fold vibration Which is incredibly Fascinating and it's just beautiful to watch But with the flexible scope the fiber optic that you get in the nose You can't see that because it's too fast for the naked eye to see closing you just see this exactly So people will say well, you don't have nodules and so you're fine But you really need to be able to see the vibration to assess function So it's sort of like the ophthalmologist saying okay your eyes look beautiful And they're probably fine because I don't see anything horrific going on Yeah, but what about that visual acuity testing you need to actually look at how they're Seeing right to know how they're functioning and so that's what I sort of that's the closest analogy I can come to well that was that was short and sweet. So you're good. Okay. All right How does how does it all work? I mean, I mean I open my mouth every morning And it doesn't sound quite the same as it did the evening before But I mean it's vibrations and control of air. It's An amazing evolutionary thing on our part It is an incredible instrument and I love when people appreciate that because It is very sophisticated. It's very delicate And we do take it for granted because people talk all the time Oh, I lost my voice I went out and it'll come back and they kind of keep chugging along But it is the complex interplay between your breath and the support that you provide To allow vocal fold closure and then vibration, which is a combination of Sort of that Bernoulli effect right that pressure phenomenon and this acoustic phenomenon that comes back onto your vocal fold So it's an interplay of below and above Right and then the most important part, which is why you sound different than I sound is our resonance So it's everything from vocal folds on out to the outside world Which is your sinuses and all your mouth your lips your teeth your gums I mean everything has a different weight and density to it in you And me and as we age that changes and as you know As we use it and shape it for voiceover it changes and that's what allows us to sound different From ourselves from day to day and from each other in the world. That's what makes us look different It's also what makes us sound different And everybody's voice is totally unique Which is why there's so much work for you guys out there We're all snowflakes and you gotta in everybody's a little bit very apolitical sense. Yes In an apolitical sense Go there What amazes me like I said with feet How many things can go wrong with You know with with your your vocal chords or with your voice and there's because as you said, there's so many different things that are affecting it What are some of the prime problems that you see from from voice actors? Voice actors are prone to one of the most difficult problems because it's not what you have heard right nodules polyps things like that those are I find those more in singers to be honest what voice actors are prone to Is something that can't be detected without Straboscopy which is probably why it's been missed for so many decades And it's this wear and tear phenomenon that happens. So there's a layer of the vocal folds That's responsible for all of our vibration and all of the sound that we make And that layer can erode with overuse misuse Especially we see this with like a lot of the people who have to do a lot of yelling and Really aggressive like pounding the pavement voice use That layer sort of erodes and I give the analogy of like the lubrication and your knee joint It erodes with heavy use and that stuff is irreplaceable But that's what I see in a lot of really extensive voiceover users is that wear and tear And that's what introduces a little bit of the raspiness a little bit of the unevenness of pitch that can happen Over time. So I don't see a lot of voiceover users with nodules and polyps and things like that. It typically is this sort of chronic problem Yeah, yeah now. I got a cold right now. All right. Well, don't don't worry about it. It's wasn't your fault. This is true um, but How is it that that affects everything because I it's not in your vocal chords But it it's taking out a number of frequencies in there. Yeah, and so what exactly is going on and I mean, I mean aside from this big empty space here. What's going on? You know with the vocal chords Yeah, that speaks to sort of what we were talking about how the vocal chords are your through way So what will happen is almost every cold virus almost every illness starts up here starts and that's why everyone Yep Does that the sniffles that sort of itchiness in your nose and you feel it in the back of your nose I felt it in my ears too because I was having balance problems. Yeah. Oh, well, that's unusual, but that's Probably that same virus happens to be going there as well, but typically you'll get it nose and sinus What happens from that point is if you're not able to kind of Arrest it in your nose and there's strategies that you can implement to do that It will drip and that's just simple gravity and that's why we wake up feeling really crummy because all night It's been dripping from our nose into our throat And it just kind of sits on your chords and it drops into your chest and that's where you get the cough And that's where you get what we call laryngitis, which is just inflammation of the chords But when they're swollen They're vibrating frequency changes So you're used to positioning your chords a certain way and getting a certain frequency of vibration from that positioning But now that they're heavier That vibration slows just enough that you get bassy and you get that. Yeah The way I want to sound all the time. Look, you can't always sound sick. I'm sorry But that's where you also get that sort of Delicacy if you will so you're trying to Sing and you'll be pitchy you'll be flat because they're heavier and what you're used to positioning to execute Doesn't get the result result that you're looking for anymore because they're weightier, right? So if you've got a cold Uh and and voice actors early is talking about this. Yeah, that's like yeah What what do you do to to make yourself sound normal? I find that You know, you know it's showtime. You just got a sound just got to be who you are and do what you do Best. Yeah The push through it phenomenon. Yeah. Yeah, I'm never sick. No. Yes. We're not we're not human I don't get sick either. So, um The the key I find is to catch it early and to not pretend you're not sick So if you can get it to stay in your nose, you're already winning And so I'm a big fan of the neal med the sinus rinse You know the squirt bottles that they have and you just fill it up with distilled water throw a little salt packet I definitely should be a sponsor for them because I probably sell more than anybody But I do believe in it. I think it really works to stop it from dripping into your throat And I'll have my patients, you know, do it several times a day while they're sick Because you're just trying to rinse away the virus and the mucus before it can drip into your throat So try to keep it up north And then there's a lot of things you can do my other Council is just get seen get seen as day one I can get you through that recording session I can get you through that performance But when you come to me day seven and it's kind of creeping towards a sinus infection Now you're like I need to perform tonight That's a lot harder for me to get you to be able to do So what I say is the soon as you feel it rinse your nose sometimes you can stop it within a day or two just by Rinsing away the virus. Um, the nasal steroid sprays are really good I'm hydrating like your life depends on it. And then um, like aphorine Nyquil dayquil the things that are the decongestants hit them Even though it's not nice to try to perform while you're dry It's better than performing while you're swollen And so I say get seen early get seen by somebody who knows how to handle professional voice users But the home remedies like the sinus rinses they do work. Yeah, what about I'm a big fan of something as I can which Works, you know, of course I was like, well, maybe it's just allergies So I didn't really do anything about it for a couple of days. It's like, well, maybe it's a cold Then again allergies can turn into a cold. How so? Allergies will make you more susceptible to catching things because you're in the state of inflammation So you have this inflamed nose And viral particles can kind of latch on to there and now they're trapped because you're not getting that same Flow that you're supposed to get Because you're inflamed and it's sort of like your immune system is distracted So it's distracted by trying to process dust And launching this immune response to dust and then the the virus comes along and it's It's not really able to attack it head on because it's doing too many jobs at once But the truth is you're just basically chronically inflamed So now if you keep rinsing if you're an allergic person You can keep that allergic response at bay and make yourself less likely to get the the virus on top of that And then kind of double down if you do get sick and rinse rinse. I mean, have I mentioned the rinse? A couple times. Yeah, okay rinse Unless you're one of those people who can't I should say that because I'm giving medical advice But there's some people for whom it goes into their ears Um, and if you're one of those people, sorry that rinse isn't for you and you're just gonna have to Yeah, that's true. Just kind of drain it out that way. No, I would not advise that don't do that If you're just joining us boy, you've missed a lot already. Uh, our guest is drina gupta. She is an A laryngologist. See I know I practice. Yeah. Yeah a laryngologist and uh, that means she is specializes In your larynx Did I pronounce that right? You did. Oh good. Not larynx. I know larynx Yeah, remember that one for high school We have a lot of questions piling up and we got questions coming in if you've got a question for dr Gupta, uh, throw it in our chat room and our chat room monitors will relay that to us and uh, we will And we'll answer those questions and I think they'll probably take up a Quite a while here Some of them are asking for like a specific diagnosis and just to remind you again Not gonna do that I'm not gonna do yes second opinions are gonna be tough in this right right But you know, we'll read them anyway. And if there's anything rina can, you know, sure I'm sure she I'm looking to where I hear the voice coming from. I know you're not up there But I'm not used to this format. So yeah, I'm just looking at what it feels like george slash speaking to me I will answer all your questions So One of the one of the things you hear a lot from voice actors is laryngitis You know and uh, I mean and and it's not necessarily from a cold. What what can usually cause that? Um smoking is a big culprit. Um pollution So if in allergies all laryngitis means is inflammation That's the itis part of the larynx, right? So anything reflux laryngitis allergic laryngitis inhalational laryngitis, um Those are probably the commonest causes and it's just because the larynx is on the way For mucus and for reflux aid. So what about stress? Stress, um What happens when we're stressed especially for professional voice users is we tend to manifest our stress In the muscles around our throat So while you're not going to get inflammation from stress A lot of the times the voice stops working because we're over gripping and we're really tight So it's sort of like the um the picture with like the really tight shoulder muscles, right? And you need to kind of work it out So there are stretches of the larynx and there's actually a whole manual therapy that I'll do in a lot of my patients And I'll have them lie down and for 45 minutes I'm working on just these ligaments and these um the muscles that are around the larynx to try to release them so that That I kind of think of it like a slinky so the slinky can can bend and flow again because The ligaments will get tight when we get stressed Other people manifest their stress other ways so people will get ulcers in their stomach or knots in their shoulder But voice users tend to go right where they need it the most What can we as voice actors do? To prevent these problems and what can we do to strengthen our voice and and make it there when we need it? Yeah Um, that's a complex question. All right. We'll take it one piece at a time You can do this Okay, so what I would say first and foremost is making the relationships you need before you need them So I'm a big advocate of vocal coaching and sort of having an outside set of ears To assess. I mean, I think in your first segment you talked about how sophisticated Our ability to listen is right. You're getting these sound samples Through your website and you're saying you can tell how big a room is right? So it tells you the ear is a very sophisticated instrument So when you have somebody listening to you and they're saying, you know things sound a little funny Trust that and pay attention and listen and get seen I think people tend to come to me for crisis management And that's the other big mistake that I find is that I can't fix you in a day You know, if you took six months to develop a problem, give me some time to get you better Don't give me the minute that you have that recording So establishing care with somebody who is a laryngologist who is specialized in voice Before you need it allows us to get a nice clean baseline And then compare any future issues you have against it And then there's the basic stuff learn about how your instrument works so that You know how to use it. I'm constantly train it Be you know cognizant of how medical problems affect your voice because almost all of them do in some way Yeah, take care of those medical problems and Partner with your laryngeal is to say, hey, look, I have Depression and I'm going to be on this medication. Are there any vocal side effects of this medication? And how can I negotiate that, you know, I'm not going to take you off your any depression But there might be other things that we can do that help you strike that balance And I think that where we run into trouble with professional voice users is that it's always crisis management. It's never Okay, let me be preventative about it. Let me kind of Figure out what I might need to do to prevent myself from having an issue I get too much on the other side, you know, when it's now I have a crisis I need to figure out the solution but Treat it like any other athlete treats their body part that's related to their sport, you know is Get it fine-tuned get it maintained get it evaluated constantly and you won't run into any issues And warm it up warm it up cool it down Tell us tell us a little bit about that that process about how do you warm up your voice because I've seen Half-hour routines and I and I've just sung the scales some mornings and that seems to help Yeah, I'm gonna tell you that that's out of my bailiwick and so whatever I tell you is gonna be made up Okay, and probably unreliable, but that's where you exactly speak to getting a good vocal coach or getting someone to create a warm-up for you I think a lot of voiceover people should take singing lessons if for no other reason then you start to become A scientist of your own voice and what can you do at the extremes and what are your extremes? And then now when you're warming up you're task testing you're figuring out Okay, am I still able to do the full range that I've always been able to do and when you start missing notes off the top I get it you're not singing every day right for a career But when you start to miss a note off the top now you're testing the extremes and you're catching an issue When it's step one instead of when it's affecting your speaking voice, which might be step three or step four So the warm up and the cool down, you know, I can't speak to but having one and having a vocal coach And maybe even a singing coach might be a nice way to establish that um routine for yourself All right One trick I will tell you though if I may jump in please um and I don't allow my patients or people to google often Because I think only bad things happen when you google medical things This happens in the voiceover business too. Oh gosh googling medical don't don't crowd source your throat No, please don't please don't um, but straw phonation has been You know time tested a really valuable technique for optimal vocal fold closure So you guys are in sessions for a really really long time And what will happen is you'll start to fatigue And you'll start to kick in these compensatory muscles to do the job right because the primary movers are exhausted and that will result in a lot of inaccurate closure patterns and sort of suboptimal inefficient use patterns So there's a technique and it's been really popularized by this vocal scientist ingotica Which is spelled t i t z e And he has sort of been a pioneer in the field of vocology, which is the study of sort of the The use of voice and it's the marriage of the art and the science in a way And so what you do is you use this like coffee stir size straw And you just do different pitch glides and what I call revving the engine like Through this little straw and the resistance that it provides gives you back pressure onto your vocal folds to optimize closure So if you're in the middle of a three hour session doing that every 30 to 60 minutes Can give you a really nice reset. It's sort of like the runner who stretches their hamstrings before each race So I will allow you to google that and tea says videos on it are really a beautiful way to Understand how it works why it works and what to do And that would be as far as i'm going to dip my toes out of the medical world into like speech pathology and vocal technique because Otherwise, yeah, I start sounding dumb and I don't like that. I don't like that Alrighty, once again, we're talking with dr. Reena Gupta from Osborne Head and Neck Institute here in Los Angeles Talking about vocal health again if you've got a question for her put it in our chat room And I know they're probably starting to pile up already So we're gonna take a break and uh, we'll be right back with dr. 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It's a bundle with an already great discount The V.O.B.S. promo does not apply to it voiceover essentials.com the place for everything voiceover And we're back here on voiceover body shop it charge you're here What you do they So we got lots of questions fire away Yeah, i'm gonna give dan a vocal rest and go through some of this real quickly A few of them were emailed in before the show actually and uh, again, some of these are asking for a diagnosis But let's let's see what dr. Gupta has to say first from paul perisi He says i'm a voice actor in the new york city area and i was diagnosed with stage four Papillary thyroid cancer I had surgery this past july the surgeon took out my thyroid and found it spread to my chest The surgeon told me it would take about a year before i could go back to voice acting But i've been itching to get back to work My voice seems better, but it gets raspy if i talk too long I went to a throat doctor before my operation and he said that it shouldn't interfere with my acting I just want your opinion when I should be okay to voice act again. Thanks for any information. You can give me Um, yeah, I mean first of all, i'm sorry for the health issue That's got to be extremely stressful and difficult to go through and to be perfectly frank that alone The stress of that is alone enough of a reason to have a voice issue Um, it is really hard. It's kind of what we were alluding to before it's hard for me to know When you're going to be safe without having a much more complete picture despite the detail you provided Um, I definitely rely on the sound of your voice and the exam and the strobe and everything to really Be able to clear a patient for voice use now. There are going to be more questions like this and um I understand why and where they're coming from so I will say that I do a lot of remote consultations If you look through um my website voicedoctorla.com there is a sort of request a remote consultation And you can always put information through there. I love to have videos accompany those questions because again That allows me to really analyze your particular case and give you Help rather than just saying, you know, oh, it seems like it should be fine. Um Thyroids and voices are very intimately connected. So stage four Definitely has a lot of implications to it and I would I would really want to take a look at the details Before being able to offer you an opinion. I'm sorry Sounds fair enough. I mean you have to give accurate information based on the enough data, you know, yeah Um, miss tanner or mrs. Tanner says what are your suggestions for those of us with allergies? But who are also usually mouth breathers I can't remember if I mentioned the sinus rinse Sinus yes, you talk about rinsing like the neti Rinse rinse rinse. So what you're basically trying to do is wash those allergic particles out of your nose So the reason we become mouth breathers if we do is that over time with uncontrolled allergies, there's Structures in your nose called turbinates. So they're long They're kind of like almost think of them like a finger and they go front to back in your nose And their job is to humidify the air that we breathe to warm it up to filter it And to sort of be your body's initial line of defense so that by the time that air gets into your lungs It's in good shape basically to be breathed But because of that they react, right? So you get an allergen it goes in it latches on to that turbinate and the turbinate will swell And as it swells it takes up more and more space in your nose Until your nose becomes too tight a space through which you can't breathe. I got lost verbally there. I'm sorry Can't breathe through your nose anymore And so you go to the path of least resistance, which is your mouth Which is drying because you don't have those nice humidifying turbinates in there So Rinsing will help to stop the process from getting worse But if you're already mouth breathing it kind of sounds like your turbinates have hit that point Where you might need more and it might be a steroid nasal spray It might even be a procedure and You know one of my things is I get that surgery is scary procedures are scary, but Usually in cases like what you're describing The benefits far outweigh the cost because it's really important for your general body health to breathe through your nose So Nobody wants to need a procedure, but you want a procedure more than you want to mouth breathe So managing your allergies is really important for vocal health for general health And so I would start with the rinse if it doesn't cut it see an ent Who will be able to assess your nose and if it's affecting your voice see a laryngologist Who should be able to dial back and take a look at your nose? Since we're talking about dry mouth, uh, Deidre Holly has about dry mouth due to medication medication How do you how do you try to offset that? That's a really difficult problem and it's not so uncommon I'm pretty much all the mood meds, you know all the antidepressants antipsychotics do that Retin A is another really common culprit and then a lot I'm even thyroid medication blood pressure medication can do it And there are sometimes Substitutes that you can make that are equally effective for your primary problem, but without as much of that side effect It's a rare Case where you can really substitute out that side effect And so unfortunately, you're just sort of caught with saying I am somewhat Encumbered by this dryness and you're going to probably want to take more rest be really aggressive about hydration Those lozenges that are hydrating and the entertainer's secret is another little thing that you can do throughout because it will moisturize that vocal tract But um, know that basically you're a little bit more fragile and treat your body as such and just take more breaks And hydrate hydrate like pee pale is basically the mantra Hmm there's some really interesting questions in here. I mean they're they get into some holistic kind of stuff This one from glen moor Says can pour and slump neck and or pot bad back posture Everybody sit up what now Can it affect your signage drainage down the throat and specifically to the vocal floor? That's not where I thought you were going so I could slump again. Okay So posture does affect vocal production because it is related to how you're using your breath and Bad posture is just not good anyway, but In terms of post nasal drip your posture does not affect your inside flow So in the end you can be like this and it'll still go down the back So it will not affect post nasal drip. If you have it you manage it non-posturally Great, there you go. Great answer. Thank you Fred north, uh, he's in Louisville, Kentucky and I'm among the worst places for allergies and he lives on antihistamines nasal rinses nasal steroids Decongestions and local honey. LA is pretty bad for allergies too. Everywhere's pretty bad right now He says and you may have already answered this with some of your suggestions But he says am I missing anything short of voodoo? Um, the only thing I can think of because it sounds like you tapped a lot Is immunotherapy? And so there's two forms of immunotherapy for allergies and what you're basically doing is training your body to be less sensitive And so there's allergy shots, which a lot of people have heard of And then there's what we call sublingual immunotherapy, which are the same formulation as those shots But you're putting them in drops under your tongue So it's nice. You avoid the trip to the doctor's office You avoid the shot and they're equally effective studies have shown and so what you might try to do is at george um is Look into immunotherapy You might also want to look into those turbinates because sometimes what happens is the medications are less effective Like the nasal sprays and stuff because the turbinates have gotten so swollen That the spray can't get back to the back of your nose And so you're continually having that allergic response Further on in your nose because you spray it and it hits the front of your nose and it just drops it can't Progress I guess so I would say having a really More sophisticated evaluation of your nose is probably going to be 50 percent of the battle And then considering immunotherapy. Um, there are other sprays We tend to rely on the the cheaper ones like flonase fluticasone naso nex, which are um liquid sprays but Increasingly, I'm prescribing for my patient an aerosolized steroid nasal spray because air can get through no matter what right? So the liquid will not really have that ability to propel but There are almost like asthma inhalers for your nose Which will shoot straight back there and we I've put a scope in the nose And sprayed the spray and watched to get all the way into the back and then sprayed the liquid and seen nothing So I know There's a difference the question is have you hit that point where even that won't work in which case You're considering having your turbinates reduced and you're considering the immunotherapy. So those are sort of like our um the surgery is a last resort obviously, but the immunotherapy should be strongly considered early on in the process because You will lower your body's overall inflammatory state if you can get your body to be less allergic and I'm a customer myself of this system and it works Um, I almost got rid of my dust allergy just through immunotherapy alone So interesting. What about you know, because there's alternative forms of medicine There's holistic stuff and Chinese medicine and I've seen some pretty amazing things in my day You know where it's like, you know An acupuncturist will say make tea out of this And it works. Okay. God only knows what's in that tea, but If you had any experience with that or I'm gonna plead the fifth because I don't know And I don't poo poo anything because you just said it right it worked So if it worked rock on, you know, as long as you're not getting really significant side effects or anything like that I think of immunotherapy is pretty darn holistic because it's the natural things that you're allergic to You're just putting it under your tongue So they actually even sell like a form of it at Whole Foods and things like that So that's about as natural as I can allow myself to get just because I haven't studied the eastern medicine enough But I've certainly heard those stories too And I'm the last to say stop because I don't know it right if it works Yeah, who cares you don't need me then question from joy but joy baker Yeah, um, can you do anything to help people improve their vocal stamina and help this kind of coaching or therapy Over skype for people in the middle of nowhere And she says sorry for yelling. I wasn't sure Cornfields you want to emphasize the nowhere part? Okay um stamina so stamina Is multifactorial so number one you want to make sure that you don't have any Injury to the cords that's preventing you from being efficient Right so that wear and tear that we were talking about the biggest problem is that it cuts down efficiency because you need really easy bounce off vocal folds for them to be efficient and Efficiency leads to duration of use There probably are a bunch of vocal coaches who skype and I would actually say you could probably point people to that better than I could But you know, again, even like a good singing coach when you start to plug into how your instrument works You can extrapolate those same skills to voiceover. So, um You know, I couldn't necessarily endorse anybody specifically but to say That technology is your friend and finding Remote care should really not be that hard these days Getting a laryngologist is probably going to be difficult. But even if you make one Vacation a year be in a place where there's a laryngologist That's still about all you would need to say I got diagnosis and I got maintenance now So I would consider that as yeah, it's kind of a lame vacation in some ways But build in you know a trip to disney at the same time and that's a win I prefer universal but uh, I've not been to either so okay Here all this time you haven't been universal. I know I know I can't bring myself to do it the lines I can't do lines. I don't like crowds. I don't like crowds. No, this is about as much as I can handle Okay, cool. Yes Let me get let me ask jv martin's question here He says he says it takes my voice a long time to wake up in the morning and it's only getting worse as I get older It happens jv. Trust me On days that I'm recording for a client on another continent who wants me to start really early What do you consider the most effective safest and quickest way to get rid of the fogginess and be mic ready? So again, it's the same answer, right? It comes down to figuring out. Why are you foggy? There's going to be some element that we all take a minute to warm up right? Nobody's expecting you to jump out of bed and run your fastest mile time but usually for people who um Are using their voices and they're finding that groggyness in the morning. It's a little bit of post nasal drip Or reflux right because you've been horizontal For the entire night. So number one what I would say is rinse your nose the night before said Performance or said said recording and even try a little bit of steroid nasal spray to see if you can stop that drip But also not eating within a few hours of going to bed that night So nothing just figure like within three hours of going to bed Might inhibit some of that reflux over the course of the night and you might institute that protocol for a few nights before That recording session you might find that morning voice Is less in severity and takes less time to warm up out So then you might try some straw stuff and some whatever warm-up you've figured out for yourself But usually morning voice happens because of a combination of drip from above and reflux from below. So if you Coach yourself through that for about a week. You can probably find yourself way more reliable in the morning All right Question from john c. George. Yes, uh question from john c a question on the throat I was sore this week and I tried a tiny drop of basic castor type oil spread around which made everything calm down I wonder if that is a good or a bad idea hmm Castor oil don't zoom in on my face Um I don't know. There's no science behind it. You feel better. I'm happy Good answer. It's not hurting you. It's not damaging anything and it's natural You know go for it, right? Um, gary lewis asked why does my voice change to a raspier sound as the day goes on Often my voice sounds better in the morning Better in the morning. Is that what you said? That's what he says. Yeah, so that's not that on common If you have um, a lot of voice use you're just accumulating swelling over the course of the day most likely, right? So It just take it like any other body part. You're like, okay, I wake up and you know My knees don't hurt but then over the course of like walking around all day I start to get a little achy my ankles start going so chances are You're either being exposed to something that's irritating you right like you're you're eating Poorly and you're getting reflux or you're getting You know allergies which are less likely More likely is just the the voice use is probably a little bit too much And so you're just accumulating swelling and swelling sounds like raspiness And it'll feel more effortful and it'll be harder So then you'll start pushing a little bit more and then swelling begets swelling and then the next thing you know You can't really control the rasp anymore because you're swollen beyond Your ability to push through it or push past it Oh Fantastic, but get checked out. That's the best way to know for sure But that'd be my guess sometimes also I should say minor injuries like little pseudosys little polyps as you use them those disproportionately swell And so you'll find yourself more Of course at the end of the day because that little injured area has gotten worse What you what usually causes polyps. I mean people are always talking about Vocal polyps what usually causes that and how can you prevent that all vocal injuries the same thing Which is you get little bleeds Little what we call like micro bleeds in that layer that we were talking about earlier that gelatinous layer and that's going to be vocal trauma That can be using your voice incorrectly using it too loud using it too long Being sick and coughing a ton Using your voice when you're sick, you know really pushing it But basically you're talking about too much force on fragile blood vessels and whatever Variables make that be too much for you is going to be an individual thing But then you get this little bleed in your vocal cords and that causes inflammation And from the inflammation you start to get polyps nodules all that kind of stuff if the voice use continues If you find that little bleed when it first happens you can prevent anything from happening But most people kind of ignore the early symptoms because it's going to sound like I sound today Right like a little bit raspy a little bit swollen and you're like, oh, it's because I've been using my voice a lot In my case, you know, I'll excuse it away But this could be all you would hear from one of those little micro bleeds And now you're setting yourself up for injury in the long run So I always tell my singers and and voiceover actors One to two days of hoarseness that doesn't get better Get checked out because if you have one of those bleeds, we want to know sooner than later Right, how do you know you'd like feel a twinge or something or you hear it? Oh, you hear it. So again, like you'll hear this right and so I'll say okay today It's because I'm really jet lagged and I haven't slept and I've been you know, I taught this morning So all my excuses, right? So I'll rest for the rest of the evening and I'll check in with my voice tomorrow And if it starts to feel better and stay getting better, then I'm reassured if it doesn't feel better Or I don't feel like I have that control back. That's when I'm going to scope myself or in your case be scoped You're gonna scope yourself. That must be fun. I can ever lie. Well, there you go I don't like anybody editing my work either. So exactly. So you know my pain. Okay, totally get that uh question from um Maurice Maurice a scott Yeah, um, and by the way, there's another one from tracy reynolds that you basically just answered Okay, it was about the voice getting tired throughout the day Um, so check you got to check two on one. Um, Maurice a scott says what are some ways to get rid of mucus in the throat that seems to have lingered for more than a week I can't be comfortable. Um Yeah, is it from an illness? I guess I can't ask you that question But if it's like Commonly, it'll be you got sick and you have all this post nasal drip that doesn't go away It's what we call that post viral period. So you're sick for the week and then the symptoms persist for another Um, so if that's what's going on You'll be shocked to hear my advice is to rinse Um, but you do you get rid of all that inflammation and you get rid of the snot Um, you know a nasal spray but also figure out why are you having the mucus because sometimes we feel the sensation of mucus When actually you're starting to form an injury So what we perceive as mucus is just something that is making the voice not reliable or we want to clear our throat And I've had almost all of my injured patients say I'm just constantly clearing my throat because they're trying to get that clarity back But what they're not realizing is that they're perceiving that injury and how it's disturbing the vibration and so Again, you hit that sort of threshold of two to three days of symptoms that you can't really control Always better to get checked out, especially if your voice is your livelihood The worst thing that could happen is you come in and I'm like, oh, you're fine. You didn't really need to come in And that's great, you know, like I would love to be able to say that more often But usually it's okay. We'll know you're starting to form this or you know, you have a problem that we need to solve Don't ignore your body. I mean, I think that's where most vocalists get into trouble Is that we sort of Excuse the different symptoms that we have is like, oh, it's probably x y and z And we really are afraid to get evaluated or you're sort of hesitant to Pull the trigger because you're like, oh, it's probably nothing Rather than just being reassured that it is nothing and I no one likes to go to the doctor I get that I don't remember the last time I went to one But You know, if it's what you do for a living if my hand started shaking You better believe I'm going to be in the doctor the next day, right? So If this is what you do then invest in it and and get it checked out, you know Makes complete sense um Joy Baker asks when should we see a laryngologist one of the warning signs that something is wrong? Well, you sort of mentioned that yeah, great question. You hear it. So yep every year I tell all my voice users get checked out every year and get checked out now If you have no problem now give me the luxury of a clean baseline exam And let me know what you're supposed to look like so that even a microscopic change Now I can pick up on it because there's a lot of variability right where I might ignore certain things Because I've seen your baseline and I know that you were functioning with that little blip And so I'm not going to call it when you're having symptoms So, you know, the clean baseline is really nice the annual check all my patients I say come in when you're sick because all sickness affects the voice to some degree. So let me Get it so that it doesn't affect your voice in a way that hurts you And then within one to two days of any change in your voice that doesn't get better with rest Those are my three rules basically Now during the week I was talking about the session I was doing it was a lot of shouting It's for a kid's toy commercial. So it's like it's like this After and it was a two-hour session and after about 45 minutes I felt a little twinge in there So when I went to the water and started drinking water and that seemed to help a lot I was able to get through the whole session without too much Pain. Yeah, but I tend to think that this cold ended up from that Um, it probably didn't end up from it But probably the opposite you were starting to get the cold you were getting a little swollen You're doing all this work and now you're having to push a little bit to do the job So in that moment what you do is you do what you got to do, right? You do the job you do your straw phonation between every 30 seconds minutes that you can do it and Check in the next day, right? And if your voice is still feeling off Maybe you rest for a day and then you check in again the next day and if it's still off That's when you get checked out because performing when sick is when Probably 85 of my patients injuries happen So it's because you have to push to get a swollen instrument to do what you're asking of it, you know men actually get A little bit more of a free pass like you just feel you're a little bit more injury resistant than women Um, and that's just anatomy and right and some of us sound better when we're injured Yeah, because you get that nice bassiness that we get dry, you know, it's not continues to be unfair But um, you know, don't don't discount what you're hearing Trust your ear trust your voice and if it doesn't sound like you're normal It's usually for a reason um and sometimes I don't need to do anything but reassure you like okay This too shall pass but sometimes you really do need a little bit of help to get you out of the danger zone Alrighty george you get the last question last question better be the best this is Well, actually dan, this is a side note. Have you mentioned your favorite nasal nasal? alcohol somebody mentioned it earlier in one of the questions, but I've been using alcohol You know we use it as a vocal as a vocal rinse because people get mouth clicks and stuff like that I find they spray that in there It's gone Everybody's trying grammy smith apples and apples are big. Yeah, all sorts of different things. I found the spell that How do you spell that eight? We're not talking about alcohol. We're talking about alcohol I think there's a bottle Knows with alcohol a l k a l o l You guys nailed it. Yeah, no, bro. So this is the official last question. So this is from jv martin again Um, it looks like a multiparter. Is it true that whispering is harder on our vocal cords than full speaking? Yeah, that's a I get I do get asked that a lot. Um, yes and no No answer is short with me. So number one, it depends. Why are you whispering right? If you have a vocal injury and you should be on vocal rest then don't whisper that counts as voice use, right? So if you're trying to find a way to protect your voice then just And there's a these days technology there's text to talk There's a lot of ways to be on vocal rest and not have it be torture But in that scenario, you're definitely hurting yourself because you're supposed to be on rest The reason that myth about whispering is worse than talking came up I think is partly that is that people were whispering when they were supposed to be silent But what can happen for some people Is that you entrain muscle memory when you're whispering and whispering is a very squeezed Upper larynx posture. So we call them false vocal folds It's squeeze and that's how you get sound without vocal fold contact And what can happen is you can start to entrain that and your body can kind of forget How to go into a more organic voice use in the correct form? So I don't mind whispering so much if you're just trying to offload pressure on your cords and you're feeling just like a little bit tired But you want to try to restore closure again straw phonation good technique To follow that and ask yourself why you're doing it. And if it's because you're tired, then the answer is to be silent Wow That makes a lot of sense. Thank you Um, he has he has a little follow-up. I'll let I'll let I'll let slip this one. You let this one go. Okay He had a follow-up and it was from an earlier question. So it was a little bit more detail Um, this was regarding uh using a certain kind of pillow a wedge pillow Keeping from lying flat. Yeah, is that a good idea? So that's a reflux treatment So if you know, you have acid reflux I I like to start with lifestyle modifications instead of medications because I don't like meds in general Um, but the wedge is basically to keep you inclined so that you can't reflux into your throat. It kind of stays lower um My preference is that you Find out why you're refluxing. So is it something in your diet that you can eliminate? Can you not eat as late? But if you have it despite controlling everything else and the pillow is again a nice way to not need medication I wouldn't do it haphazardly meaning if you don't have reflux Sleep flat But if you're finding that you're getting heartburn really prolonged morning voice that doesn't Respond to nasal treatment then you might have reflux try the diet stuff first and if not go for the wedge But don't just stuff pillows behind your neck because that does this and you actually increase abdominal pressure So if you're gonna incline either put something above the bed posts that are at the top of your bed or do the wedge All right, we're gonna cut it off right there. Yeah do the wedge. That was one of the most concise and well-answered volley of questions in a while Where else are you gonna hear this stuff? But on our show, you know We try to bring you everything that's important for your your voice over career and nothing's more important than this Dr. Gupta, thank you so much for being with us. You've been great. It was so much fun And it's and you're so patient with us. Anyway, uh, George and I will be right back to wrap things up right after this Offer that place is voiceover extra dot com Whether you're just exploring a voice over career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level Stay in touch with market trends coaching products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls Voice over extra has hundreds of articles free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed Learn from the most respected talents coaches and industry insiders when you join the online sessions bringing you the most current information on topics like audiobooks auditioning casting home studio setup and equipment Marketing performance techniques and much more It's time to hit your one-stop daily resource for voice over success Sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports and get 14 bonus reports on how to ace the voice over audition It's all here at voiceover extra dot com. That's voice over x t r a dot com And we're back and thanks again to dr. Rina Gupta for joining us today But you just can't beat that stuff this information You know every time we've we've done a show like this people are like enthralled and asking really good questions And I love that she's really careful like if she knows that she can't give proper advice She'll she'll tell you you know and and I feel this I feel like a kinship in a way for what she does because she's a specialist Right. She's a specialist specialist, right? And that's what we are We're like specialists within a world of audio a niche, you know, and there's a really really tiny niche It is it is but that's why it's so important when you know It's when there's the right time to to talk to somebody that really is a specialist It's it's really good to have that resource. Yeah All right next week on this very show It won't be here. We're taking a week off after how many weeks in a row have we done? It's been it's been a year. It's it's been a very busy week a couple of weeks Uh, but on april 9th tim Friedlander will be here from uh sound box la I'm not sure what we're going to talk about with tim, but he's doing all sorts of cool stuff Uh april 16th the one and only scott brick the master of audiobooks will be here Uh, and he's always great to talk to uh april 23rd. We have a mystery guest Although a clue has been added. It's an agent Wow Well, all right, so let your let your mind go crazy with that one's all about Great guests to have we don't get that many of them. I know uh april 30th christen linux and daughter or is it daughters? I don't know. I think it's she has a daughter. That's a voice actor. I believe right, uh, and may 21st harry dun We'll talk about promos at the cw boy. They do a lot of promos over there Uh, we'd like to thank our donors of the week. Who might those be? We got we got letters. We got letters. We have lots and lots of letters Uh tracy h reynolds who is I think he's one of our new we I donate every episode kind of guys. So thank you tracy Really appreciate it and any kaufman or andrew kaufman regular for us as well as eric eric erigoni Thank you so much. Thanks, eric Just that regular ongoing support. It's really appreciated. Also patty gibbons is a subscriber on our paypal Subscription service where you can donate up as little as a buck a month My dad george widdum. Thanks dad That I call I call my dad aka google search results pages three and four You know what thanks for reminding me max Shout out to my dad. I don't know if you're watching if when you watch this. I hope you're healing up My dad got a burn In the garage with a propane heater and his leg and sounded pretty nasty. So dad. I hope you're healing Healing up and the pain goes away soon. It's been a couple weeks um Amanda fellows another sustaining member donor and brian page Um, I see these names regularly all the time and it's just so nice to be able to read them and Everybody that you're supporting the show. Thank you. Thomas pinto I'm pinto jelly avaleno. We may have said those last week, but uh, thank you everybody. We really really really appreciate it Alrighty. Hey, if you need help with your home voiceover studio and you want to talk to george you go to Uh, george the tech dot com That's right. If you want to talk to dan go over to home voiceover studio dot com Alrighty now and you've got a new podcast that you're doing too about for geeks Yeah, it's not that there's anything wrong with that It's released semi monthly or is that bi-monthly? twice a month bi-monthly bi-monthly It's released bi-monthly And uh, we record once a month. It's not done live. It's a traditional podcast. It's called the pro audio suite And it's four of us audio folk It's a stars in aussie vo actor andrew peters who has a radio background background Aussie producer darin robertson and our very our very own source elements robert marshall and myself We geek out. I also review voice talent as well. So it's not just told pure geekiness Very cool. Alrighty. Yeah show logs Hey, if you're going to watch this show later on What you're doing now because you're probably watching it later on There is the show log uh that jack de golly is taking down. I can't wait to see what he's writing for this one Uh talking about all the things that we're talked about in the show with timecode So you can find stuff like the answer to a specific question. So that's right above me here I think in our website just click on show logs Uh, hey show us your booths Like this guy here. Let's see this arm goes to this way that way Oh show us your booths We got a lot of pictures of people in their booths give it a good shot so we can really see what it looks like And I don't know who's this is But it's an interesting it's an interesting one, but it's kind of fun being in other people's studios I have to say I've been staying I've been corrected. It's when it's twice a month. It's a semi monthly According to that person if it's every other month, it's bi-monthly. Alrighty Hey, if you want to be in the studio for the show like denny hankler's doing tonight, uh We can you can you can be here live on monday night at six o'clock just write to us at the guys at v obs dot tv And you too could be sitting right here in this very studio, which is a lot smaller than it looks on tv Uh, and let's see we need to thank our sponsors like harlin hogan's voiceover essentials Uh voiceover extra source elements The o to go go voice actor websites dot com And j michael collin's demos. Alrighty. Well That's gonna do it for us tonight. We do need to thank of course marsy for letting us be out here in the garage Uh our produce. Yeah, katherine kerrardinos keeping the alternating thing. Okay. Go ahead. Yeah, all right producer Uh katherine kerrardin who's booked all these fabulous guests Yeah, uh jack daniel on chat room duty, although matt or hat whatever we decided to call him Was taking it on for a little bit Thank you for filling in we appreciate it Um and our wonderful full producer and technical director susan merlino And jack de golly for the show notes and of course lee pennie just for being lee pennie come visit us late for crying out loud Well, that's gonna do it for us this week You know my voice held out for the whole thing. It's not an easy business, especially on your voice So stay tuned every week here at voiceover body shop except next week Although you get you have a choice of 300 over 300 episodes that you could watch next week if you if you you know You're feeling like you left you left out uh, so uh Stay tuned every week here at voiceover body shop. We're here at six o'clock every monday night And uh, that's gonna wrap it up for us tonight. I'm dan lennard And i'm george widdum and this is voiceover Body shop or vio B s have a great week everybody