#69 Prosody: The One Word Every Podcaster Needs to Know with David Goldberg (Part 3)

Welcome to the Podfather podcast. Today, I'm excited to welcome back David Goldberg. He's the founder and CEO of H-Studio, one of the world's leading voiceover and communication training centers.

David has spent decades coaching professionals, performers, executives, and podcasters on how to harness their authentic voice and deliver messages that truly connect. In this segment, we're diving into part three, which is your effective vocal patterns make all the difference on your podcast, exploring how these can dramatically elevate your podcast presence. David, welcome back to the show.

Right. It is fabulous to be back. Thanks.

Always look forward to us and always learn a lot and love what you share. So I suppose, like effective vocal patterns make all the difference. What are we talking about? We're talking about one word, prosody.

The strange thing is, it's a word that almost no one knows, and it is dumb. It's dumb that no one knows it because everyone should know this word. I only learned this word recently.

I've been teaching this stuff for 38 years. And recently, as little as a year ago, someone said, oh, that's prosody. I said, come again? They said, that's prosody.

I said, how do you spell that? Is that I-D-Y at the end or O-D-Y? I'll tell you in a moment how to spell it. But first, let me tell you what this means. Prosody is the word that means how you say a word.

The inflection, the intonation, the pitch, the rhythm, the tone, the pacing, your spacing. It's the elements or the characteristics of how you say your words. It's not what words you say.

It's how you say those words. The silly thing is that we should learn prosody in grade school. And I think back to my own kids when they were in grade school, especially when they were in second, third grade, when they started having oral presentations in school.

Now, a bit of context. Our town is a big family town, huge family town. Our schools have like 400 kids in each grade.

So the school is big and full of kids. The auditorium is tremendous. And when the kids invite the parents for the oral presentations, there are a lot of parents in the auditorium.

These kids get up, they stand on stage, and they have never learned how to speak publicly. It's weird. It's dumb.

Honestly, I have to talk with our principal about this. The kids, our sons, my wife and my son, they would come home from school back in second grade, third grade, fourth grade. They'd have a report to write.

They'd read the book. They'd write the outline. This was before AI.

They had to read, actually. They had to write the outline. They'd draw pictures for the presentation.

They'd make the slide deck look really nice. And all of their effort, all of their work went into reading and writing words and drawing pictures and nothing. No education on how to speak.

So these poor kids, they're now sent up in front of a thousand parents. Seriously, it's a thousand parents in this auditorium. They've never learned how to speak publicly, yet they're thrown in front of a thousand parents.

They know two of us. My wife and I, we're like row 50. They can't see us.

It's scary. And they're told to read by themselves for two minutes. These kids didn't read well, and it's not their fault.

And it's really unfair that they probably got poor grades for their performance or their delivery because they were never taught how to read. They were never taught prosody. They should have taught, they should have learned prosody.

It's spelled P-R-O-S-O-D-Y. Prosody. I don't know why kids don't learn this, but it makes a lot of sense why kids, their oral presentations are so bad.

Kids get up on stage, they speed. Oh my goodness, the words go from one word to the second word to one sentence to the second to the third to the fourth to the fifth to the sixth. And they tremble, and they're nervous, and they don't know how to mask their nerves with their voice.

There's no variety. There's no engagement. And it's the teacher's fault, honestly.

I come to think of it, I think it's my and my wife's fault also. Because we should have thought, you know what? The kids aren't learning something so important. We better step in.

This whole world doesn't teach prosody. Human communication, our voice, our words is absolutely the most direct form of communication. Yet we don't learn it.

Just because I didn't know the word either. So when I was looking at some of the stuff, I didn't even know to pronounce it. I had to type it in and press the sound to go, okay, that's how it's pronounced.

But what you said there is very important about the kids, because not only when they're speaking in front of all the parents, but also in the classroom. And what happens is they get ridiculed. And what I've learned just from having a lot of people on the speaking podcast, most people, they go through a phase of they get humiliated.

And that's why they hate public speaking. And I think it's the teacher's fault. And it's like it's orchestrated to stop people and stop getting their message out.

It is. It's so weird that we don't learn it, being that it is so key to success in this world. Corporations always will tell you that communication, good communication skills is one of the most important skills that they look for in people who they hire.

Getting into colleges, kids need to know how to interview for college recruiters. They need to know how to interview for internships and first jobs. Adults, they go and they give a toast somewhere at a wedding or a keynote, or they deliver a speech at a boardroom meeting, or they have a customer presentation to give at work or an investor pitch.

And they listen back. And almost every single adult says, geez, when I listen back, I don't like the way I sounded. I didn't realize I was speaking so fast, or I didn't realize I was doing this or slurring or that or whatever it is.

And they didn't realize because we haven't learned it. So I have learned it. I've studied it for 38 years.

Finally, I know what to call it. So it does have a name. There's not even a synonym for prosody.

There's not another word that means the same thing. The closest word that I have come up with is speaking patterns. But that's not really accurate.

Patterns is your rhythm, your pacing, and your spacing. Patterns is not your intonation, your inflection, and all those things. So I don't know.

I thought today we would talk about prosody, specifically prosody for podcasts. I typed it in. What other words could be used for that? And it didn't give me any other words.

It was just giving kind of explanations of it. And I was like, okay, that's interesting. So it's interesting that you actually mentioned that.

Yeah, there's nothing else out there. Pardon me. It's just weird.

I am now saying this out loud, on record, publicly, I'm going to speak with our principal and start up a prosody phase. Okay, said it. So, you know, when you are delivering a podcast, it's all about human voice.

It's all about speaking. It's all about how you come across through your voice. The weird thing is, I've looked at a lot of podcast schools, and they teach lots of things.

There are lots of podcast classes out there. They teach how to begin a podcast, how to get sponsorships, how to read your numbers, how to get better sponsors, how to monetize your podcasts, how to get it on air, and so on. Podcast schools don't really teach prosody, even though it's all about voice.

I've looked at political schools. Political schools in the states where I am, there are lots of them. If you want to run for office, you can go to school and learn how to run for office.

They teach you how to dress right, how to walk on stage right, how to get your name on a ballot, how to get in-kind support and donations, and they teach you everything you need to know about campaigning except how to use your voice. And boy, that's pretty darn important to a politician, right? They're giving campaign rallies and fundraising events and promotions, commercials and hometown meetings, town hall meetings, in fact, and all sorts of things. They probably spend their time teaching them how to lie because that's what the majority of them seem to be doing unfortunately.

Yes. So it is a weird world. And today we're going to talk about prosody for podcasters.

This is specifically for those giving the podcast for hosts. So I've broken up prosody today for our lesson today into seven categories. So they are, and I have them, by the way, on a piece of paper right beside me.

I will read them so you don't possibly forget one. Pitch, tempo, tone, volume, pacing, spacing, and variety. Okay.

Shall I hit each one? Are you ready? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Okay.

Pitch is key. Holy cow, pitch is important. Pitch is the musical note of your voice.

This is a low pitch. This is a high pitch. By far, pitch is so important, perhaps the most important thing.

You know what? I think they're all important. Roy, mark my words. On each of these seven things, I'll probably say it's the most important thing.

They're all so important. Pitch is one of the top seven most important things. It's so important because it's one of the biggest ways to add engagement to what you're saying, to engage the audience, to increase listenership.

If you have zero pitch, meaning that you stay at one note all of the time, your voice doesn't go up in pitch, your voice doesn't go down in pitch, that's called being monotone. It's really confusing because monotone suggests that it's staying in one tone of voice. But really, monotone means you're staying at one pitch.

It should be called monopitch. It's a weird word, another weird word. Oh, pardon me.

See, I'm all choked up when I talk about this stuff. So pitch is the musical note or the tune of your voice. Generally, not all the time, but generally, if you want to increase engagement, increase the range of your pitch.

So some notes are lower in pitch and some are higher in pitch. Increase that range. Go up and down and up and down.

It does add a lot of energy. Notice that when I'm going up and down, I'm not going up and down in volume, only in pitch. My volume is staying consistent.

That's key. We'll talk about volume later. The interesting thing about pitch is this.

When you are nervous, as many people are when they begin podcasts or for that matter, if you're giving a big presentation somewhere or a TED talk or a keynote or something, if you are nervous, your pitch goes up. And when your pitch goes up, people immediately recognize the fact that your pitch is up. It's higher.

It sounds artificial. And when they hear you sounding artificial, they kind of dismiss what you're saying. Because you don't sound like a credible, competent, confident speaker.

So if you are nervous somewhere on a podcast or as I said, a TEDx, a keynote, an investor pitch, a media interview, a press release, whatever, even at a networking function, if you are nervous and you know your pitch is higher, because that's what happens when we're nervous, just focus on lowering your pitch. You can keep the same range of pitch, just lower your low and your high. So when you lower your pitch, you mask your nerves.

You can still be nervous. You will still be nervous, but you won't sound nervous. And when you don't sound nervous, you sound credible and confident.

And the interesting thing is when you lower your pitch, you'll feel how much more confident you sound. And because you feel more confident, that will actually decrease your nerves even more so. So you want to make sure you enter your podcasts in your natural pitch.

Okay, so then how do you find your natural pitch? It's really simple. There are two ways. And one of these two ways will work for nearly everyone.

One way to find your natural pitch is to hum as if you're humming to yourself in an elevator. You probably wouldn't hum too loudly in an elevator. You're probably humming your natural pitch like this.

That's your natural pitch. The other way to find your natural pitch is to pretend you're meditating. Put your fingers together.

Right. I don't know the name of this pose. There's probably a word for it.

But people who meditate and kind of do that with their hands, and they go, usually people in their natural pitch. Occasionally, really every rare once in a while, I get someone who does that and they go, and I wonder why are you so high in pitch? Probably nine out of 10 people will meditate in their natural pitch, and they will hum in an elevator in their natural pitch. So chances are one of those two things will help you find your natural pitch.

And that's about where you want to begin. You want to steady your entire pitch range in that area. From there, considering that to be your base or foundation pitch, then you have your pitch go up and down.

So easy exercise, everyone. Take any sentence, say it in a monotone, and you'll hear how boring it is. For example, this is a monotone.

My voice is not going up and my voice is not going down. And then I would suggest just take that same sentence without changing your volume. Just exaggerate your pitch and go extra high and extra low.

It's going to sound sing-songy like a cartoon like this. This is very high and this is very low, and this is very high and very low. And that also sounds kind of silly, right? It sounds artificial.

If you can get your pitch to be monotone, and if you can get your pitch to go very high and very low, then somewhere in the middle should be easy. So that is a good lesson in pitch. Vary your pitch.

The more pitch range you have, generally, the more engaging you are. Last comment on pitch. Tailor your pitch to the situation.

If you're giving a podcast on a serious topic, well, maybe less pitch range is important. If you're giving a pitch on something interesting for kids where you want to keep them energized or something, maybe more pitch range is important. Okay.

Brian, any thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, when I remember starting off, that it was always like the introduction, or someone really famous, and I would get nervous, and you could tell. You couldn't, like, even if I listened back. And then, with experience, that kind of went away.

But lots of times I'll have guests on, and I can see it as well. And especially if they haven't been on many shows. You can kind of control their pitch and relax them.

And you'll see them, sometimes it just takes a minute, but then, and then they're in their space, and they're just kind of one-on-one, and they forget about the nervousness. But I constantly see it. Cool.

Yeah. So, I can move on to the second type of prosody, which is tempo. Tempo, I'll say it for all seven, is one of the most important things you can do.

Really, truly, all seven of these are important. Tempo is the speed of your words, not the speed of the space between sentences. It's the speed of the words, the tempo of the words.

So, I think this is pretty self-explanatory. If you say your words very quickly, they may be harder, more challenging to hear, or to decipher. Everyone will hear them, but the question is, will they decipher their words? Generally, the slower you say the words, in other words, the slower your tempo, the easier it is for people to understand or decipher your words.

Of course, if you go too slowly, it kind of sounds really dumb, just to slow those words down so much. Some of us speak really fast. The words are super fast.

And then there are other people who naturally speak at a great tempo, easy to follow along, easy to decipher, except when there are a group of single-syllable words. If you give them a group of single-syllable words, those words whiz by, expressions like one of the. They might say, for example, that was one of the fastest cars ever.

Notice how fast one of the is. That's one of the best restaurants ever. They rush these groupings of single-syllable words.

Listeners can't follow along, especially if you have music in the background. So your job is to make sure that your tempo is clear on all of your words. That's absolutely critical.

It's hard to do, but you have to do it. The other very important thing about tempo, and this is a weird kind of neuroscientific thing, but it's so true, and it's so helpful. When people hear your first word, in other words, when your podcast begins and you say hi or welcome or whatever, however you begin your podcast, your listeners have not yet acclimated to your voice.

Their brain has not found a connection to your words. It takes their brain, your listeners' brains, a moment to sort of catch on to your voice, your prosody. Their brains have to catch on to your prosody, your accent, all of these things about your voice.

So your first word takes the brain extra processing. If you are fast on your first word, the listener will not decipher your first word. It's as if you are writing a book and you take the first word and you erase it.

It's just gone. If you rushed your first word, that word is gone. So the trick to do as a podcaster is to slow down your very first word.

Stretch it. Here's an example. If you begin a podcast with the word welcome, a lot of people may rush the word welcome.

You might say, welcome everyone. Now that welcome was really hard to hear. Let me repeat that.

Welcome everyone. If that was the first word of the podcast and there's no context, your brain doesn't know what to do. Your brain is hearing my voice for the very first time.

It would have no idea what that word is. So what I would do is take that E in the word welcome, the first E in the word welcome, and stretch it. So the word welcome is now spelled w-e-e-e-e-l-c-o-m-e.

I would pronounce it like this. Welcome everyone. So here's the rushed version.

Welcome everyone. And the slowed down version. Welcome everyone.

You're stretching that first word. Do that on the first word of every podcast. If you have music in the background, it's even more important because then your audience's brains are focused on the music.

And then when you come in with your very first word, their brain is not even expecting words. They don't know when your words will begin. So their brain is listening to the music.

And all of a sudden, something has to jog their brain to switch from music to voice. And take note that this person has a different tone, a different rhythm, a different dialect. And all of that processing is happening.

And if you rush that first word like this, welcome everyone, their brain can't possibly absorb that first word. Like I said, it is like taking your script and erasing the first word. Slow down your first word of every podcast.

Just stretch it. Easiest way to practice this is to intentionally say the word too fast, as I've done a few times. And then say it too slowly.

Make it sound dumb. Go welcome everyone. That's way too slow.

If you can do it too quickly and too slowly, that's great. Then just come somewhere in the middle. Welcome everyone.

So go say the word too quickly, then too slowly, and then find that perfect balance, that in-between balance where it sounds natural. However, a weird thing happens. Almost every single person who focuses on slowing down their first word pauses after it.

And then you sound choppy. Then you get this. Welcome everyone.

And then people think, wow, your podcast sounds choppy. And they tune out anyway. So make sure you can slow down the word without pausing after the word.

I must be check when I'm editing this, what way I've done. But I think I do. Welcome to the podfather.

I think it's at the level that's okay. But what I'm conscious of when I'm talking to different people, if I'm talking to a native Irish person or Scottish, a tendency, we speak a lot faster. And that's something that I'm conscious of.

And I tend to make sure that I'm slowing them because I'm aware of different levels. And English isn't the first language of a lot of listeners as well, where sometimes people make the mistake, they get too engaged in the conversation, the machine gun, and you must always remember to listen. Absolutely.

There are a few other words to slow down on in general, in general, slow down on negative words. So if you are talking and you have a word like not, or don't, or can't, anytime you have a negative word, slow down on it. It gives emphasis or clarity to that word.

Try it. It will sound great. We tend to naturally go fast on those negative words.

It's just how we speak. However, if you slow down on those words, it sounds brilliant for your listeners. So for example, if you have a sentence that sounds like this, the sentences, you can't find a better piece of music.

Let's say you're talking with a musician, you can't find a better piece of music. We will naturally rush the word can't. It will sound like this.

You can't possibly find a better piece of music. I know you didn't hear the word can't. I did say it, but it was really fast.

So slow down on the negative word like this. You can't possibly find a better piece of music. Second thing to slow down on is any key words.

Your name, your product name, your service that you sell, your podcast name, your tagline, your elevator pitch, your promos, your sponsored by ads, all these things that are so important to you and or the monetization of your podcast, slow down on those things. We all know our names so naturally, and we've all said our names so many thousands of times that we crank on those words. People say their own names and the name of their podcast so fast sometimes that I cannot figure it out.

It's hard to figure that out because if you practice your podcast for someone, you know, your friend, your family, you can rush your name, you could slur your name, you could completely hack your name, and they won't notice it because their brain will fill in the missing letters. You can skip half your name and their brain will fill it in. They won't even notice that you're rushing or missing half of your name.

If you want to practice saying your name and your podcast name carefully or clearly, you need to practice for someone who doesn't know it. You need to play your podcast for someone and say, someone on the street, listen to this. Tell me if you can understand my name.

You'd be surprised if you don't slow down on your name, there's a fair chance people will say, geez, I caught your first name, but not your last name. The way I see it, that's sometimes your one chance to brand yourself. If you have one chance to brand yourself, make it clear.

If you are designing a graphic for your podcast, for example, an advertisement that you're going to post, a graphic advertisement you're posting on LinkedIn or TikTok or wherever it is or your website, you probably put your name and the name of your podcast in bigger letters, right? So it stands out. If it's in bigger letters, people have more chance to see it. By slowing down on it, people have more chance to hear it.

Okay. Other words to slow down on? Just on that, because with the Polish, I was using AI that would give me like the description that I was putting into the show. And every time, Roy Colin was, because I used to say, Roy Colin, I used to say K-O-L-I, every time it was different.

And just by seeing that, that I started saying it more clearly. So I was guilty of that for years. Yeah.

Oh, we all were. Yeah. Until I learned this stuff, I had no idea.

So some other words to slow down on are your accented words. Let me say that one for next. Words which are new to the listener.

Any word which might be new to the listener, slow down on. Like when I said prosody the first time, I made sure not to rush it. If I rushed the word prosody the first time I said it, if I said, Roy, here's a new word, it's called prosody.

You'd say, what? So I intentionally slowed down on that word because it's a new word. Anytime you introduce a new word, slow down on it. Just like you would see in a textbook or something, a new word that's being introduced might be italicized or bolded or elongated or in a larger font.

So it stands out, do the same thing here. And then if you have an accent, slow down, slow way down. It's hard to say when you have an accent because it depends on who your listener is.

But if you have something that is going out internationally, then slow down. Or if you are being, if you are on a podcast for a country that doesn't speak your native tongue, and perhaps the language you're speaking is your second or third language, slow down. Any, let me say it differently.

If your listeners, your audience thinks that you have an accent, slow down. It's very easy for us to go super quickly, forgetting that the whole world doesn't speak the way we speak. So to the rest of the world, the way you speak sometimes is harder to understand.

And if you go quickly, they will not, or they may not understand you. And if they don't understand you, then they click off, you lose your listenership. So again, if your audience may be made up of people who don't speak your language the same way, slow down.

And the beauty of that as well, like a lot of the podcasts that I listen to, like I listen to Patrick, Pat David at 2x, I'm able to understand that, but there's perhaps some people have to go 0.75 and now there's technology that can speed it up or slow down. So even if people thinking we're talking too slow, they can 2x and once they can comprehend and that's okay for them, that's the beauty of technology. Yeah, there's something else that I've come across that's odd about understanding language.

When people don't understand something, they automatically assume is that they, their own brain tuned out. It's weird. We just assume, oh yeah, I must have dozed out for a dozed for a second.

But really sometimes it's not us kind of tuning out. Sometimes it's because the other person can't be understood. An amazing example of this happened a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago, there was a live presentation in one of our studios.

Someone with a pretty thick accent gave a presentation, a three minute timed pitch. And I was a panel, a part of a panel of eight people. We had to give feedback on this pitch.

It's a rather large startup. So I couldn't understand a thing this person said. They had a thick accent, like a seriously thick accent, and they spoke seriously quickly.

I truly could not understand 90% without exaggeration, 90% of what this guy said. He was also nervous. So he was going extra fast.

I just really concentrated. I just couldn't get the gist of what he was saying. And at the end of the three minute presentation, the woman next to me said, I thought that was a great presentation, she said to me.

And I said, really? She said, yeah, it was great. I said, could you understand that? And she said, well, no, but not really. I said, well, if you can't understand the guy, how can you call it a good presentation? She assumed that she was just kind of like snoring or something, like not focused.

It was her own brain not catching up. And I said, no, I couldn't understand it. And then everyone else said, yeah, we couldn't understand it either.

She said, oh, okay, it's not just me. Yeah. So you have to really pay attention to your tempo.

Okay. Two down. There's some more to go.

Next is tone. Because you were mentioning prosody and the words. And I think that's something that podcasters should note as well, because sometimes you could be talking to people, medical, whatever field they're in, and they'll mention a word and just go on.

And there's times I'll understand it or I'll know about it, but I'll intentionally kind of explain what it means because I'm always aware of the listener. Because like that presentation you said, I mean, that was, he spoke too fast and everything. But if people don't understand the word that has the key meaning to the future context of what we're going to discuss, they're gone.

And I'm always conscious of that. And I think podcasters should be aware of that. Oh, yeah.

Once you, and everyone listening, as you know, Roy, once you lose someone, they are gone. Once someone is confused by what you're saying, likewise, if you have poor audio quality, if anything goes wrong, you can pretty much be sure that that person is checking out, tuning out. They're gone.

You can't get them back. If your first word is hard to understand, if the first thing they hear sounds bad because there's noise or hiss in your microphone or something, or the music's overbearing and powering out your voice or the opposite, they're gone. You need to make sure you have attention to detail.

You need to make sure your balance is good. Your mix is good. Your voice sounds good.

It's clear. It is decipherable. Okay.

So third is. And just before you touch on that, because you mentioned about the music, I've been a guest on some shows and he has music playing for the first 30 seconds as he's introducing. And then when he's asking me, how can they contact you? His music's playing.

You can't hear me. And I actually said it to him prior to recording because I'd listened to some shows, but I've seen a few people doing that. I think it, I haven't seen it work where people have music playing.

Does it make, is there any advantage to have, even if it's lower music while you're kind of talking? I think there, if, well, if it's mixed correctly, I think there's a huge advantage. It can, it tells the listener how to feel, which is why movies have music and why commercials have music. Music is amazing.

It tells the listener how to feel. So imagine, imagine you turn on a Netflix or a movie or TV or something of any video and you see someone standing in a field of flowers. If there's no music, you have no idea what to feel.

But if there's scary music, like, like, like the soundtrack from the movie Jaws, that comes to mind, like doo doo doo doo, real bassy, you know that you've realized, oh, there's tension. There's something scary about to happen. Or maybe it's happy music and you realize, oh, it's a fun song.

Maybe there's funny music. You realize it's a comedy. Music tells you how to feel.

If it's mixed correctly, it can do wonders. All podcasts don't need music. A lot of podcasts I think are better without music.

Sometimes it's nice to have music at segues, at introductions, the conclusion, the outro that is sponsored by, or ads have music sometimes throughout them, but it depends on the the podcast. But yeah, if the music is overpowering the voice, yeah, that's not good. And the people who mix the music sometimes too loudly, they don't recognize that the music is too loud because they know what words, or they know what the words are.

So they hear the words clearly because their brain is telling them to hear the words. So, okay. Do you want to? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Tone. Tone is the emotion of your voice. When people listen to your podcast, if someone says to you, oh, what does that podcaster sound like? Like what kind of tone were they in? That's like them saying, what emotion did they have? Did they sound happy? Did they sound enthusiastic? Did they speak with pride? Did they have a soothing voice? Did they sound sophisticated? That's all types of tone.

It's the emotion of your voice. You can act it if you want, or call it acting. In fact, you might be having a crappy day, but you're on air and you're supposed to record an enthusiastic podcast.

Well, now you have to put on a fake smile. Maybe you're sick and you feel really run down, but you're supposed to sound enthusiastic. Well, you have to put on some fake smile.

That is tone. Tone is hard for some people to capture, especially at the beginning of the podcast. So here's something that I always suggest.

Think about who your audience is. Imagine that they're right in front of you. No microphone, no recording, no studio.

You're live with people in person. You're standing in a room and they're right around you, five, 10 people, and they're close to you. They're not far.

You don't need to yell. You don't need to project. And then you see them live.

And then before you read, before you begin your podcast, you have a chance, five or 10 seconds, to add a couple of fake words, artificial words, words that you know aren't going to be part of your final podcast, but they're warm up words. So if you, for example, are recording a podcast for kids, let's say it's for young kids to, let's say second, third, fourth grade, and the podcast is supposed to be fun and happy and enthusiastic. Maybe your first word is welcome kids.

Well, you could try starting by with the word welcome, but do you really have the right smile, the right energy for the word welcome? It's hard to start in character. So what happens if you add a couple of words to the beginning? Add some fake words, words that will not end up on the final podcast. I call them warm up words or lead in.

So again, if you have to read a podcast for these second and third graders, and you're supposed to sound enthusiastic, before you say welcome, maybe you hit record on your mic and you say, kids, this is going to be a ton of fun and welcome. And you kind of start with some, some words, some warm up words, and then you cut those words off. Again, they're called warm up words or lead in.

Lead ins are used all of the time in the industry. They're used in recording audio books. They're used to record commercials, cartoons, video games, podcasts, all sorts of things.

They're just warm up words. It is just like a singer going on stage. They have a chance to sing right before a singer, a singer goes on, on stage.

They warm up their voice with the, the do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. They do these scales. And hopefully they sing it better than I did.

And they do these scales to warm up their voice. And that, if there, if it's a record being recorded, for example, the scale doesn't go on the record, it's just a warm up. Same thing with your podcast.

So let's suppose you have a very serious podcast. Maybe it's for seniors looking for retirement advice. Well, how would you talk to a group of five or 10 senior citizens who comes to you for advice on retirement if they were live right there in front of you? You'd be proud, sound confident, have a smile on your voice.

But geez, how do you begin the podcast in the right style? Or the right emotion? Or the right tone? Well, I would just begin my, my podcast like this. I'd say, everyone, thanks for coming. This is going to be an excellent seminar.

I'm going to tell you all about retirement for seniors. And welcome to the podcast. And that's that lead in that you use.

So add your lead ins to get into the right tone. Anytime you find yourself kind of losing the right tone of voice, for example, you're losing the engagement or the smile or the sophistication or the confidence in your voice, then throw in a lead in. Just remember where it is, and go back and delete it.

A great thing to do, and I don't know if you use this trick. But when you're recording the podcast, if you know you want to throw a lead in, or even if you want to start a section over again, clap real loudly, like this. Clap a couple of times.

You see the spike and you see the spike, you know exactly where to go and cut, you know, you search for an edit point. So those are some thoughts on edits, not edits, those are some thoughts on tones using your right tone of voice. It is really important, everyone to use the right tone of voice, because you are speaking to different audiences.

And if your podcast is always to the same audience, and always with the same engagement, or there's a right enthusiasm level, then you'll always always use the same tone of voice. And that's pretty common. However, if you record multiple different podcasts, then each one probably has a different audience.

And therefore think how you should adjust or tailor your tone for that particular audience. So again, you pretend you're standing in a room with five or 10 people that right there, think how you would talk with them. And then add a lead in and go right into your podcast.

Right, any thoughts on tone? Well, there's, I think you attract the people connected with your style on that as well. So if we look at say, Clay Clark, I mean, we had him on a live show. I mean, I couldn't list, he saw every energy, but he's got millions of followers because of it.

But then you've got people talking on the technical side of things, IT, and it's mundane, but it's, and they're sticking to that as well. So they find who follows them, where sometimes people are trying to be to everybody. And I think your listeners will be attracted to you with the style that you've got.

Yes. As long as you can capture people in real life, you should be able to capture them in the audio recording. But it is weird sometimes, you know, talking into a microphone and not seeing the people in real life.

That's why you have to really pretend that someone is right there. Look, I've had people record podcasts and audio books and all sorts of different things in our studios. And they actually have someone, they bring someone standing there, like right on the other side of the glass.

So they really pretend they're talking to someone. And sometimes that helps kind of gauge or find the right tone of voice. I've heard of people sticking pictures of people above the camera as well.

Absolutely. Yeah. We had one person wants a voice actor.

We hired for a car. I think it was for a cartoon. Now, maybe it was for a pro a promo, a movie promo, whichever it was for, we're going to set recording levels and we hear the sound of scotch tape being pulled.

And then we hear something like crumpling on the microphone. And if you, if you've worked at microphones as you have Roy, anyone out there, you know, you know, that if someone is like grabbing the microphone, it's really loud on your speakers or your headphones. And I went running in and I said like, what's going on? The guy was scotch taping a picture of his like six-year-old daughter, something to the microphone.

He said, I come from a radio background. And if I don't see my daughter, I tend to go into radio mode. But if I see my daughter, I tell a story to one person.

I said, get this scotch tape off my like $3,000 microphone. Like, dude, like, come on. Like he should know better.

You know, he's in a radio station. He probably has cheap dynamic microphones that can take abuse. You know, we're in studios with high quality condenser microphones.

You can't put tape on them. It's ridiculous. I never hired them again.

Never. Okay. Fourth, we have volume.

Volume is simple. There's very little to say. Just pretend you're talking to one person.

That's it. If you talk to one person, you probably don't yell at them. When you're on the microphone, sometimes people forget that people, people who are podcasting forget that the listeners, your audience are listening very often in near field monitors, like in other words, speakers very close to their ears or even headphones.

So you're kind of talking into someone's ear. You don't need to be super loud. Use the same volume you would as if you're talking to someone face to face.

You might naturally be loud. You may naturally have a soft volume. That's all fine.

You can be loud if it's natural. You can be low in volume if it's natural. The moment you project, the moment you project as if you're talking to two or more people, that's when there are problems because then you're projecting your voice.

Now, that sounds a bit hypocritical because a moment ago I talked about tone and I said, pretend you're in a room with five or 10 people around you. I did say they're close by, right? So you don't want to project. And I've repeated that twice.

Don't project. I'm really focusing on that now. When talking about volume, don't project.

Use your natural volume as if you're talking to one person. In that last example, you talk to five or 10 people just to establish the tone of voice, the energy that you need. Otherwise, talk to one person.

Tell one person your story. It's great if you are interviewing someone and you see them on the podcast. Then it's really easy to have a conversation, a one-to-one conversation.

But if you don't see the other person or if it's a monologue podcast, some people, especially those who are new, get louder and louder and louder and louder, and it just sounds harsh. It's not easy to listen to. And you can have a compressor, which is a processing tool that automatically lowers the volume.

So as you get louder, it brings your volume down. But still, if you get louder and louder, your tone changes, the sound of your voice changes, and it still sounds like you're yelling at someone. And it works the compressor even harder, which here's a technical weird thing.

When you work the compressor harder, it brings up all the noise in your background. So your mouth clicks get louder and hiss from your furnace get louder and kids upstairs, whatever other noises you have going on, get louder. Ideally, you want to be able to stay in your natural volume as if you're having a conversation one-to-one in real person, in real life, because you are talking into someone's ear.

Mistake I see a load of people doing is when they're having the intro, which is done previously, or they just have one that's the same that they constantly just insert. And then you go to the conversation. So you start adjusting your volume to make sure that's comfortable.

And then it's either way up or way down once the conversation begins. And it's strange that they don't actually check that to make sure that it stays the same. Yeah, I've never understood that.

That is weird. It's so annoying. So many people talk about that, even with commercials on TV, they talk about the show is at one level, and then the commercials are louder on TV.

And that is really annoyed a lot of people so much that in the States, the FCC, which is the Federal Communication Commission, I think it stands for that's the government organization that monitors or has, they create the rules over broadcasting. They came out about probably 20 years ago with some law that states that TV commercials can't be above a certain volume. They can't be much louder.

I guess it drove so many people so crazy that people complained. So commercials can't be louder. Really interesting thing.

Now I'm going to tell you that something I heard, but it was a long time ago. So I don't know completely how accurate this is, but something to the effect of when the FCC added the regulation that commercials can't be louder than the TV show or the average volume, which is, I don't know if they were recording in decibels or loose. Side note, Roy, when you're working, are you monitoring levels in decibels or loose? Decibels.

Okay. So they said the commercials, in terms of decibels, couldn't be above a certain level. It couldn't be louder than the TV show, pardon me, where the average commercial couldn't be above the volume of the TV show.

So what commercials did, or the advertising agencies did, is they had part of the commercial be really quiet, like no music, no voice. So there was basically zero decibels. And then the other half was really, really loud, louder than the TV show.

So the average of the TV commercial was the same as the TV show. It's a really sneaky way to get that volume increase because louder sounds better. Studies prove it repeatedly.

People like the sound of loud. Loud sounds good, but not when you're being yelled at, everyone. Don't speak loudly at someone.

That's not when it sounds good. Music sounds good loud, I should say. Commercials on TV sound good loud.

They sound powerful. Your voice will not sound good if you're loud. You'll sound like you're yelling at someone.

That's not a good thing to do. Okay. That's four things we've talked about.

We've talked about pitch, tempo, tone, and volume. Next, we'll talk about pacing and spacing. And we can talk about these together.

Pacing is very similar to tempo. Tempo is the speed of the words. Pacing I look at is kind of the speed of all of the words together.

So when you're talking about tempo, you're talking about the individual words. Is the word too fast? Is the word too slow? Slow down on words which are negative. Slow down on words which are, slow down on your name.

That's the tempo of these individual words. In general, pacing to me means the overall pacing of your voice. Very similar to tempo.

In addition to pacing, there is spacing. And spacing suggests the space between the sentences. In general, more spacing is a good thing.

In other words, some break, some silence is a real good thing. If you go from one sentence to the second, and then to the third, and to the fourth, and into the fifth, the listeners can't absorb what you're saying, especially if you're recording an educational content. I gave an example earlier of life insurance, or a retirement podcast, helping seniors understand the retirement benefits.

The seniors, anyone listening, may be writing down notes. Or even if they're not writing it down, they're trying to observe that information. Breaks are a good thing.

When you are on air, when you are recording, the inclination, the natural inclination is the speed from each thought into the next thought, and into the next thought, without break. If you do that, it is like a run-on sentence. It's like reading a book that's a run-on sentence.

Oh, better example. I want you to imagine your favorite book. And I want you to imagine that in between each chapter, there's probably a blank page.

Well, I want you to kind of remove that page. And then I want you to imagine how between each paragraph within the chapter, between the paragraphs, there's a blank line. I want you to get rid of those blank lines.

And then I want you to think about this. Within the paragraphs, there are periods to separate the sentences. Well, I want you to get rid of the space in the periods between sentences.

And then sometimes within the, between the phrases, there are commas to separate the phrases. Well, I want you to pretend that you get rid of the commas. So you get rid of the commas, and the periods, and the blank pages between chapters.

In other words, all of the words from the beginning to the end of the book are identical, but there's no breaks. One long, may I say, one long ass sentence. It would be impossible to parse that.

All those little breaks organize the content. And then when you read the book, it makes sense. You have to do the same for your listener.

Short breaks, longer breaks, sometimes longer, longer breaks. Let the listeners know where you are in your content or your organization of your content or your stories. With pacing, I'm sorry, with spacing.

So that's the difference between pacing and spacing. Pacing is the overall feel or tempo of your words, the overall tempo, not the tempo of each individual word, but the overall tempo of the whole piece. Whereas spacing is the space between sentences.

The more complicated your text is, the longer the breaks usually between sentences. The more complicated the text, the thicker your accent, the more words that you are introducing, the more new concepts that you're giving to the listener, the longer your spaces should be. The more you want people to take in and write down notes or type out notes, the more spacing you need to leave.

The more time you want to give people to conjure up a mental image of what you're saying, especially, for example, if you're telling a story, the more space you should leave between sentences. If you give a story and you say, the man walked into the room and there was an old car beside the driveway, that's too fast. If you leave space, it may make sense, right? If you say, the old man walked into the room.

The old car was behind the driveway. He walked out of the room and into the driveway. If you give space, people can kind of create their own image, their own imagery.

Spacing is a key thing. And by the way, don't fill up your spaces with filler words. This was not on my list to talk about, but let me just jump to this for just a moment.

And it's important, like before the filler words, because it's very important, but one of the things that I noticed as well, sometimes people, they're talking about something and they're asking the audience about what you think. And without even allowing to contemplate their own thoughts or it doesn't take it, they're answering it immediately. Yeah.

Yeah. Isn't that weird? Yeah. Yeah.

Give people a chance. Let people think. Give people a chance to hear what you say, digest it, think about it.

Yeah. And I used to, at the, at the start, when I was doing my speaking podcast, I'd take a pause filler words, which we're about to discuss, but long pauses, because I taught that's a better podcast. And the format now is it goes out as is obviously if something happens, Corey, we can edit things like that.

And it's doing way better. It's you think, because it's, it's unnatural because if we're having a conversation in a networking event and we're talking, we talk like we're talking now, not that there's no pauses. So you're making it unnatural, thinking you're helping the listeners.

Yep. Totally. And then the thing about filler words is don't fill up your pauses with filler words, which we are super inclined to do because that's, that, that removes the pause and it makes the audience perceive you to have estimated 25% less credibility.

So let me explain what this means. Filler words are those words that don't really mean anything. They just take up space.

They fill up space like, um, and, uh, and M and like, and, you know, and right. If people leave a space between sentences, they may do something like this. Here's sentence number one.

And, um, you know, uh, so, uh, and here's sentence number two and, uh, and they fill up those spaces with filler words. I repeat studies show that when you have filler words, when you use many filler words, your audience perceives you to have up to 25% less credibility just because you have filler words. And because you, because you fill up the space, then the listener doesn't have the chance to absorb what you're saying.

They don't get the breaks. It's like going back to that example of the book. It's like taking the periods between sentences and the blank line between paragraphs and a blank page between chapters and filling it up with other words.

Then there's no organization. You need to, you need to give people time to have or to intake that organization. Okay.

Like when I see Bill Gates, somebody that's a lot of the time getting airtime, it's incredible how many filler words he uses. I mean, I cannot understand why he has not got professional training for the amount of speaking that he does. And when I did Toastmasters, there was different techniques.

Some people had a little triangle or a bell, but I also saw people freaking out. So what I used to do is if I was doing that, I'd ask people, do you want me to do the Bing or do it in silent? And then give them the report afterwards because it can troll people. But for those that this might join Toastmasters, it's a good way of reducing filler words.

Oh yeah. I just gave a presentation last week to a group of the leadership team of a financial company, a large financial company. And the COO was telling us the story that he once went and had a session at Toastmasters and he said, they had me give a one minute presentation.

And at the end they said, guess how many filler words you used? And the COO said to me and the whole group, but I think it was 17 people. He said, I was sure I had zero filler words, but just in case I said two and they said, no 20. And he said, no freaking way.

And they played back the minute, the minute presentation. And there were 20. He said he was shocked.

Yeah. A lot of people use a lot of filler words without realizing it. Ums and uhs and you know, like is a real big one these days.

I'm shocked how a sentence can have four or five likes in it. People say things like this, like, so we wanted to get dinner over the weekend, but like, it was really hot out. And like, so we wanted to find a restaurant, like, but it was just like, I don't know, like we were just, there's so many likes.

I'm thinking, Oh my goodness. It's like, you know what I mean? Like it's like Cork for some reason, everybody uses that at the end of the work. And no, I'm conscious of it.

Even talking to friends and stuff like that. And I know I do it a lot myself. I'm conscious of it.

I tried to reduce it, but it sounds so strange. Why do we do it? I don't know how it started, but it's very popular in Cork. And once you point it out to someone, they realize like, wow, I actually do do that.

Yeah. People have no idea. Okay.

Ron, the last. That's a word that you just said that I laugh sometimes do do that. And sometimes I'm listening to people and they go do do they know, which is like, it's a very important one to have a pause in that, that I do do that instead of I do do.

My ear always catches the do do. How can you not catch do do when someone says it? Yeah. Yeah.

There are a couple of words like that. Fun words to throw in there. Okay.

We're on a seventh type of prosody and that is variety. And it's pretty simple. Add variety.

Earlier, I talked about variety in terms of your pitch, how going up and down can add energy and enthusiasm and engagement. Now we're talking overall variety. And that just means very everything we've talked about.

Vary your pitch, your tempo, your tone, your volume, your pacing, your spacing. Let things sound natural. Let things sound spontaneous.

The more the more variety there is, the more spontaneous or authentic you sound and the more believable you sound. Therefore, if you sound stilted, in other words, if you sound like you're reading a script, then it doesn't, you don't sound credible because it doesn't sound like you're talking from the heart. You're reading a piece of paper.

It's not necessarily you. It's not natural from you. You're reading some, you could be reading someone else's prose.

If you want to come across interesting and engaging, incredible sounding, then sound spontaneous, which means there's lots of variety. Some words can go up, some words can go down. It's fine to get faster on some words and slower on other words.

In fact, side note, if you listen to people in everyday conversation, the thing that varies the most is their tempo. The tempo of their words. Listen back to anyone conversing.

They're fast one moment and the next thing they slow way down. I'm noticing myself doing that right now. It's how we speak.

So vary your tempo, your tone, your volume, your pacing, your emotion, vary all of those things. However, sounds singsongy and artificial. Do what feels right.

Final thing to say is to practice. Record yourself and listen back. I repeat that earlier I said if you play back your sample recordings for someone who knows your voice, they already are familiar with your speaking patterns.

They know your accents. They've learned, their brain has learned how to decipher your voice. It's not an accurate gauge as to whether or not your voice will be great on a podcast.

You have to try out your voice for someone who's never heard your voice before. And if you plan on having music in your podcast, then make sure the sample you give someone also has music so they can listen to it and say, dude, I can't hear you. Can't hear a thing you're saying, can't understand a thing you're saying.

You want to find someone who can be objective, who can hear past the music and hear your voice, who doesn't know your voice, and they should be the judge as to whether or not you are coming across appropriately for your intended audience. Okay, that is a once over of prosody for podcasts. With the sometimes people they're doing audio only and because they want it ring-fenced, whether they're afraid they'll be sued or they're just perfectionists, they have prepare a lot and they're reading it.

What techniques can they do that doesn't make it sound like they're reading it, that it comes across natural? Well, first technique is to not memorize it. Let it be natural. Second technique, use a lead-in.

So we go back to the example I said earlier. If your first words are welcome to my podcast, if you begin there and especially if you are reading a script that says welcome to my podcast, it's going to probably sound like you're reading, which as I said, means you don't sound authentic or natural or credible. So then just improv your way into it with a lead-in and always make sure your lead-in is not written down.

Your lead-in has to be spontaneous. That's the whole point of it. You want to sound spontaneous.

So you can mess up your lead-in. You could stumble on your lead-in. It's fine because you delete it anyway.

So if your script begins welcome to my podcast, you could say, okay, I'm super excited about this podcast and, you know, I don't really know what kind of words to say for my lead-in, but anyway, let me just start my podcast right now. So everyone, welcome to my podcast. You could make that lead-in that long.

The more you talk your way into it and the more spontaneous you are, the more natural you will sound. Another great trick, if you are reading a script and, for example, like the intro or the outro or a segue or a sponsored ad or something like that, if you're reading a script and it sounds stilted, it sounds like you're reading, then take that same script and intentionally add a whole bunch of colloquialisms to it and contractions and change it up on the fly. So if your script says, today's show is sponsored by Amazon, and when you read it, it sounds stilted.

For example, it sounds like this, today's ad is sponsored by, oh, sorry, today's podcast is sponsored by Amazon. If it sounds stilted like that, then add some colloquialisms to it. Mess it up intentionally.

So you might say, okay, so you know what? Anyway, today's sponsor, today's podcast, I think it's sponsored by Amazon. Just kind of throw in some words and then take a mental snapshot of how you're saying that sentence with the colloquialisms in there and the contractions in there. Take a snapshot of how it sounds and then repeat it back just without the colloquialisms and the contractions.

So in other words, once you add the natural words, the colloquialisms, add some squares in there, they help you sound natural, add some contractions. Once you add those things to your voice, it's going to sound very natural. So then you take the mental snapshot of how you sound and you mimic back that natural feel just with the correct words.

And usually that makes you sound very natural. Easy trick on that one. And I'm not sure if you know the answer to this, but I'm just curious based on what you just said with the ads, because some people do dynamic inserts themselves and sometimes they'll send it.

But I'm just curious what the conversion would be with the podcaster's voice as opposed to a different voice, because it's a breaking pattern. Has any studies been done on that? I'm sure studies have been done. I would bet money studies have been done.

I believe, and what I've seen on all the podcasts that I've worked on, whether I've been brought in to direct the speakers or give feedback on speakers or record the speakers or direct the show, whatever position I've had with that podcast, what I've seen is there's a time and place for everything. If you have a podcaster who sounds credible and people tune in because they know that particular podcaster, in other words, they're not tuning in necessarily for the subject matter, more so they're tuning in because of the podcaster. Sometimes having the podcaster read the commercials is very meaningful because people trust that person's voice.

Sometimes if you tune into a podcast, not because you know the podcaster, but because you want the subject matter expertise, and if the podcaster is boring, then get another voice for the sponsored ads, because then it does break up the show. That's an easy way of adding energy. That's the same as adding music also.

Just adding music kind of gives a whole new feel sometimes on the sponsored ads or the intros and segues. And you know, when we were talking about somebody that's reading the whole script, like I could never prepare. I mean, I've done hundreds of speeches, but it's kind of similar.

The way they could do it is I've always known my introduction and my conclusion, and I used to have bullet points because you know exactly what you're going to talk about, you understand it. And I think if they've done it that way, you'll come across way more natural people who will connect with them as opposed to reading it all. Oh, definitely.

Yeah. Yeah. Don't read your podcast, anyone.

Yeah, yeah. This doesn't work very well. I mean, that is just a big voiceover script.

And then it's not. I mean, I guess technically, technically would be a podcast if you have an RSS feed and all that kind of stuff, but it's going to sound like a voiceover. There's nothing wrong with voiceover.

That's what, you know, a lot of my life has been in that voiceover world. It's a great world. It's different.

It's quite different than the podcast world. Podcast is, is wonderful because it is genuine. It's authentic.

It's just, it's just prosody. That's all it is. So have your outline next to you.

I have a piece of paper right next to me with seven words written on it. Pitch, tempo, tone, volume, pacing, spacing, and variety. That's it.

That's all I have next to me, seven words. And I would glance at them at the end of each, at the end of each piece to see what I wrote down next. So I don't skip anything.

And then just talk spontaneously. And make sure you time, time yourself out. That's very important to everyone.

Keep an eye on the time. I'm seeing that, and I've talked to somebody recently with the AI. I mean, there's some people putting out AI podcasts, but now what's happening as well as people, they're putting in hours of their voice and then they're creating.

Curious, can the human decipher? Is it going to, I mean, I always think human to human is a million times better. And it's, you know, the amount of jobs and stuff that are going to be lost is going to be colossal and is starting to happen. But have you seen anything with that where people are starting to use the AI and just not even attuned to recording live? Oh yeah, I've seen a lot of things go AI voice, digital voice, right? Cloned or synthetic voice.

And it's interesting what I've seen. First, an analogy. I'm a drummer.

And I've played for the major acts of my younger years. And I was around when the drum machine came out. And all of us thought, holy crap.

There goes the end of our career. Because being a drummer is great. And it's fun.

But it's it's hard because whereas the singer walks around with nothing in their hands, and the guitar player carries a guitar, we have like 20 trips to the van back and forth, the drums and cymbals, and they're loud, and we have lots of microphones, and you can't practice because they're so loud. And, and it's not easy being a drummer compared to the other musicians. Sometimes it is fun.

It's very fun. Now I'm an air drummer. But so this drum machine came out, and we thought, oh, like, you could have all the drums in perfect sequence.

Like, truly perfect. Timing is absolutely to the hundredth of a second. So better than we could play.

Faster than we could play. No drums to carry around. No microphones to carry around.

Just a little box. And surely that was that would be the end of drummers. And today we found in this world a wonderful balance of human drummers and drum machines.

And lots of drummers have drum machines. We've balanced it out. It's found its place.

And I think that that will happen with digital voices and human voices. I can't predict the future. I think that that will happen because of this.

So many companies have a podcast companies or podcasters, audio book companies, advertising agencies, so many companies have tried using digital voices, and they've gone back to human for a couple of reasons. Number one, the fear factor. We've had companies say to us, we cannot use human voices.

I'm sorry, we cannot we cannot use digital voices because their customers would be pissed off at us. We need to use humans because a lot of people are against AI. Maybe that changes down the road.

It might. It never. I don't know.

But right now they stick with human voiceover. Number two, some people stick with human voiceover or they go back to human voiceover because they can't tune in exactly the kind of voice that they want. Unless you really know and have studied the nuance of human voice, it's hard to listen to a digital voice and say, put emphasis on the third word.

And you try that. No, no, that doesn't sound right. Put the emphasis on the fourth word.

You dial that in. No, that doesn't sound right. Let's try dialing the emphasis on the fifth word.

By the time you get something that sounds natural, it still sounds a bit stilted and it takes a long time. Way faster for a human to do it. And a human can give you multiple versions of something.

Also, a lot of audiobook, almost every audiobook company I know has said our listeners hated digital voices. We cannot go back or we will lose our customer base. And so, yeah, I think for a bunch of reasons why I think human voices will stick around for some time.

Oh, and really interesting, Roy, I saw an article about two or three months ago. Someone studied e-learning, e-learning modules, e-learning tutorials, e-learning modules that might be used in schools or on the job, in corporations, and so on. And they said that people, the audience, tends to learn 30% more when listening to human voice versus digital voice.

So, you have a 30% better outcome by using a human voiceover or voice actor rather than a digital voice. So, that was very promising. I'd have to imagine that if you are a company that puts out e-learning modules, to be able to use a human and have 30% more retention is huge.

So, I think a human voice will be around at least for some time. I sure hope so. If it's not, I'm out of work.

I'm sure about that. That won't happen. Well, excellent.

So, I think you've covered all the seven points. Is there anything else that you'd like to mention on that? Is there anything else? Let me think about that. Nothing comes to mind.

I will conclude with this. I will conclude with have fun when you talk. Oh, actually, this is an important closing.

It's great to learn everything I talked about. It's great to think about everything I talked about. However, if you study it and think about it so much, then you will put all your effort into, all of your effort will go into thought rather than spontaneity.

And you will sound stilted. Don't focus so hard on technique that you lose the performance. Always have fun with your performance.

That's a key thing. Be comfortable when you speak. Enjoy what you talk about.

Fake it if you have to, but pretend you enjoy what you talk about. And try to incorporate everything I talked about, but not so hard that it takes away from your performance. Don't sound stilted.

So, yeah, think about these things that we spoke about, but don't overdo them or you will sound stilted. Be free. Have fun.

Have a drink before you read or before you record a podcast. Do whatever you have to do to loosen up. Have fun with it.

David, as always, thoroughly enjoyed it. I want to just let the listeners know where they can find you. Tell them the services that you're providing so that, I mean, they can hear your skillset from the conversation that we've just had.

So you might tell them what they can guess and then where they can find you. Yeah, sure. My full name is David Goldberg.

The spelling of the last name is G-O-L-D-B-E-R-G. And my email address is super simple. It is david at edgestudio.com. Again, david at edgestudio.com. We have five voice studios, five international voice studios in New York City, Times Square.

And we record every single day. At any given moment, we have five studios going of recording podcasts and audiobooks and the soundtrack for video games and commercials and corporate training videos and all sorts of things. Lots of cartoons, lots of political commercials, lots of commercials that you see and hear on TV.

So we do everything that is voice, anything that is voice related. So I can help you with recording podcasts. I can help you direct your podcasts.

I do a lot of coaching. I do do a lot of coaching. So a lot of people will come to me and say, I have a new podcast.

I just want an hour with you to make sure my voice is at the right pace, the right speed, the right this, the right that. And I can guide you and kind of help you find a good balance, a good place to sit with your voice, given your audience and your topic. Excellent.

Well, I look forward to the next one, David. Thank you very much. Right.

Thank you so much. Bye everyone. Bye.

So you'll find everything about me. Scan the QR code or go to roycoughlan.com. And I haven't actually went spelled the spelling because I'm assuming people know my name, but it's C-O-U-G-H-L-A-N. And be sure to give us a thumbs up, five star rating and share with three friends because I've heard instead of sharing with your friends, just keep it simple to go with three is a lot better.

And I'd appreciate it if you do that. Until next week, take care.