| That 'esss' sound is sibilance, it's annoying. Really annoying, it cuts through and hurts your ears. Worse there is no physical way of getting rid of it :/ . So you have 2 choices: | | That 'esss' sound is sibilance, it's annoying. Really annoying, it cuts through and hurts your ears. Worse there is no physical way of getting rid of it :/ . So you have 2 choices: |
− | a. Get a de-esser and calibrate it towards where your specific sibilance frequencies are to be found. Annoyingly they are different for each person, and in quite distinctly different groups depending on if a person as a traditionally male or female voice. Mine is at 8Khz, which is towards the high end, but yours will be different, you can find yours by using a multiband analyser, and seeing what frequencies you produce when saying sibilant words, then using hardware or software, process it out. This is difficult, and wholly unnecessary, which is why only {{strikethrough|Arseholes}}Radio 3 and ClassicFM still invest in the technology to have individual processing for each presenter that tackles these noises. | + | a. Get a de-esser and calibrate it towards where your specific sibilance frequencies are to be found. Annoyingly they are different for each person, and in quite distinctly different groups depending on if a person as a traditionally male or female voice. Mine is at 8Khz, which is towards the high end, but yours will be different, you can find yours by using a multiband analyser, and seeing what frequencies you produce when saying sibilant words, then using hardware or software, process it out. This is difficult, and wholly unnecessary, which is why only <s>Arseholes</s>Radio 3 and ClassicFM still invest in the technology to have individual processing for each presenter that tackles these noises. |
| b. Keep what your mouth is doing in mind as you say the sentence at the top of the section. Instead of curling your tongue to make the hissing noise through a small gap in your mouth, make a concious effort to force your tongue down. This will result in a softer more rolling ess sound, that won't hurt your listeners to hear. This is difficult to do at first, but after a few hours, it's pretty easy to get into. After my first term doing radio my mum noticed how much softer my voice was as a result. | | b. Keep what your mouth is doing in mind as you say the sentence at the top of the section. Instead of curling your tongue to make the hissing noise through a small gap in your mouth, make a concious effort to force your tongue down. This will result in a softer more rolling ess sound, that won't hurt your listeners to hear. This is difficult to do at first, but after a few hours, it's pretty easy to get into. After my first term doing radio my mum noticed how much softer my voice was as a result. |