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I’m a voice over artist based in the North East – but I’ve worked for radio stations in many parts of this country before I got to this point. In fact I worked in radio for 13 years, and fell in love with the medium. It’s so powerful!
And I’ve often wondered why local printed press have never managed to do what radio should and often does do really really well. That is create local momentum, create optimism and self-belief, create a sense of location-based identity. There’s a real chance to create positive momentum in a community through radio communication with a local/ regional audience.
Local newspapers have that potential too – though it is a little more difficult admittedly through the printed word. The spoken word might get to the point more quickly I suspect.
NEvolution logo – regional north east newspaper campaign
However, that’s all changed in the North East. The majority of the region’s papers, dailies and weeklies, have joined up in the creation of the NEvolution campaign, to urge the Government to hand over the funding and powers needed to drive the North-East economy forwards. It is wonderful to see all the editors joining forces and campaigning, and taking their readership along with them.
Click here to read the Northern Echo’s launch of the NEvolution campaign.
I hope this is award winning for them. I hope that others see how powerful it is to work with your competitors on something you all believe in. And I really hope it works in delivering for the North East.
It’s inspired.
It’s making me want to be back in a radio studio… so I can back them all the way too!
I’ve been working on an audio book for a while – sometimes it gets put to the end of the list when more urgent jobs are through, but this week I’ve had time to concentrate on it.
I’ve just finished recording all the audio, so a bit of editing out of retakes and it’ll be on its way. Before long, I’ll no doubt find it on amazon.co.uk …
The good thing about audio books is you’re reading a story while at work … and if it’s a book you’re new to, you’re as intrigued as the listener. With this one, I’ve been editing some of the week and rec
ording some of the week. And I’m loving listening back to it – even I was surprised by how much I was enjoying listening to myself.
Can’t be bad.
Want to hear what I sound like – well try the demos page at www.emmahignett.com. Enjoy!
It’s not rare that I’m at my computer on a Tuesday afternoon, but the novelty of today is that my son is at school for the first time, the first of four taster sessions before he starts for real in September.
The 4+ years since he changed our lives unrecognisably have flown, and I believe I’m meant to not want him to grow up. But I’m loving his increasing independence, his new-found confidence, and am dying to run and pick him up to find out what his first 2 hours at school entailed!
And at the same time, my life reverts to one I’m more accustomed too. Longer hours of work. And I’m so happy about that.
So get booking your voiceovers – my availability is on the up.
Want to hear more? Visit www.emmahignett.com.
Why is it everyone’s voice is somehow different the moment they stand infront of a microphone. Confession here – but the first time I ever stood infront of a mic, aged about 12 I think, I could only speak with a mock American accent (and a very bad American accent at that).
Your voice changes infront of the microphone as part of the performance, which is why sounding natural and not like a voiceover is a skill to be learned. And I’ve picked up tips and techniques along the way that work for me – but they won’t necessarily work for anyone else.
The first one is to imagine yourself in another setting – generally my alternative setting is a coffee shop, specifically a coffee shop in Barnard Castle that I go to quite often and I imagine I’m talking with Robyn, one of my best friends. Sorry Robyn, but for some reason it’s always you!
Then there are things you do with your body and face … for me shrugging was a tip I heard recently which works well. The other one I’ve discovered is bad for the wrinkles but good for the voiceover (so the wrinkles get deeper) and that is to frown while I speak. Using your hands to talk can help as well…
As with all things, practice and more practice helped me work out how to make natural work for me.
We all get a bit bunged up from time to time, for most walks of life it really makes no difference.
But infront of the microphone, a nasal sound isn’t really the way you want to sell yourself.
Two things work for me – Airwaves chewing gum does a great job at clearing the passages. I find them a bit yummy too, so probably go through the entire packet quicker than I should. And I should say, in true broadcaster fashion, there are other menthol chewing gums on the market, of course.
Secondly, cleaning your teeth. Toothpaste normally has some menthol element, or similar which clears the tubes, so often when voicing early in the morning a good brush is really effective. Also, when you have to talk early on in the day, cleaning your teeth with a good minty toothpaste is a great way to wake it up, make it feel alive. I’m not sure that it really does wake up the mouth muscles too, but it somehow feels like it.
And as I write this, I’m sniffing … so teeth clean first, and then to the shop to stock up on Airwaves.
I think I’ve mentioned a couple of times that I was invited to speak at County Durham Community Foundation’s Women’s Spring Lunch. Being me, I obviously said yes and then panicked about what people could possibly want to hear from me.
The big day was yesterday.
And it was a bit of a success.
One lady came up to me afterwards and said she’d found me really inspirational? I’m still trying to get my head around this one… Don’t worry, I’m not about to launch business no 3 as a motivational speaker but it does do your confidence, self-belief, get-up-and-go no end of good if you find out your an inspiration to others.
I’m not going to post my speech up here for a very good reason – what I wrote on paper wasn’t what I said in the end. I got a laugh fairly early on, and that encouraged me to enjoy it, and that meant that I went off script a little bit and ad-libbed.
I was speaking to a room of 180 women, and even as a woman you can worry that such a situation will be feisty and competitive. But in retrospect I couldn’t possibly describe the atmosphere in that way at all. It was relaxed, warm, encouraging, and overwhelmingly friendly.
Oh, God, I have to write this but I was left feeling elated, I still am, I want to punch the air as I write…
And myconclusion is go speak, go motivate, because it’s the most motivating thing you can quite possibly do…
With thanks to County Durham Community Foundation for finding me, and Teesdale Business Awards for flagging me up!
I tend to try to learn from singers and singing coaches how best to look after the voice, and I read last year that 8 hours sleep is essential, and if you can’t do that then make sure you catnap.
At the time I read it, I’d had laryngitis for quite a while. I’d had a dose of antibiotics which had previously always worked, and on this occasion it held it off for about a month (while I did a big job – phew) but then the croakiness and coughing starting creeping back and I didn’t want to go back to the doctors and beg for another round of antibiotics.
I read a singing teacher’s comments about sleep and decided to try it out.
And it worked.
So, now, if ever the voice isn’t holding up, is sounding tired and struggling in longer sessions, it’s early to bed.
I have a 4 year old so I’m often woken by 6am, therefore it’s bed by 10pm regularly to keep the voice fit.
Did I mention – it really works. Tried and tested and recommended – by me at least!
As time goes on I pick up the odd tip which hclps with what I do – voiceovers!
And I thought I’d share some with you over the next few weeks.
The dreaded mouth noise
I’d been on radio for years and never really worried about it, but now that I voice and listen intently back to everything I do I’m incredibly conscious of mouth noise – you should hear me getting exasperated when listening to Radio 4 interviews…
I was taught early on to use hot water with fresh lemon (no warm lemonade won’t work) to enable you to work longer and this does help to lubricate and remove mouth noise too.
But I heard a few weeks ago that excessive mouth noise and clicking is helped by green apples (yes green, not red or any other colour). It’s one I’m experimenting with – though hubby keeps eating all the apples I buy.
As you can imagine, my studio normally has a cooled mug of lemon in water in there – I don’t have a problem with the lemons disappearing from the fruit bowl. You might now notice the odd apple core making it into the bin in there too…
So, I spent my day in school on Thursday, giving 6 workshops to year 11 students. I came away from it admiring and respecting teachers.
I’ve taken my work into schools before, but on the whole to present to students who have chosen to come and hear from me. On this occasion, the children were doing a series of completely different workshops, so inevitably only a percentage of the students were going to be interested in media or the arts.
So with no teaching experience or training (and no, qualifying to be a ballet teacher 20+ years ago does not count) I’m quite proud of what I achieved. I spoke with each individual student who came in that day, tried to find a way to engage with them, to find something they were interested in and work from there. The students, in groups, wrote advertisements, and the braver ones even recorded / voiced their own adverts. Some who weren’t prepared to get infront of the mic themselves, proved to be impressively good at directing.
I came away exhausted, possibly to a degree because I’d had one cup of coffee all day. Normally I’d have had one every 20 minutes up to midday…
The best bits were when the students truly took an interest, one or two came up after a session to find out more, another had a wonderful time trying out my headphones and discovering what a difference great quality headphones make. One or two were clearly into drama…
On the list of workshops for the day, I was categorised as ‘local hero’. Hmmmm. I’m certainly not a local hero, though I did give myself a pat on the back for giving 6 back to back presentations to year 11 students last week!
Emma Hignett Voiceovers 
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