LIKE, VOCAL FRY
Watch out actors and singers! If you fall into trend with today’s speech patterns, you could be damaging your vocal chords (and your career) by speaking with vocal fry. What is vocal fry you ask? Find out
Vocal fry is a low, sizzling rattle sound made when words are pushed into the lowest register causing the vocal folds in the throat to vibrate irregularly. When using “uptalk,” a user goes from using a lower register to raising their pitch at the end of a sentence, making it sound like they are asking a question. Think Alicia Silverstone as Cher Horowitz or Kirsten Dunst in Bring It On. Research from USC shows that more and more men are using uptalk and vocal fry, which is generally associated with young, dumb women.
This speech pattern can hurt you in job interviews and auditions by making you sound unintelligent and burnt out, and it can also cause damage to your vocal cords! The sound comes from actual friction caused by the vocal cords ‘clapping’ instead of smoothly rubbing together. Singers and actors need to watch out for vocal fry not only to prevent from being pigeonholed in young teenage roles, but to keep their voice in good health.
Listening for vocal fry is a great acting exercise. Watch clips of Keeping Up with the Kardashians (if you can handle it without going insane) and then listen to yourself speak to notice any differences. If you aren’t able to watch the Kardashians without throwing a brick through your television, watch Colin Firth’s Golden-Globe winning performance in the film The King’s Speech on (available to stream on Netflix). The movie will teach you a lot about speech and language therapy.
Like, good luck overcoming the vocal fry epidemic.
