(00:00): Intro music
Kayla (00:07):
Hello and welcome back to Routine Drama. I am Kayla and this is a podcast about the everyday kind of stresses and dramas that happen in our lives and what we can do to navigate them a little bit better.
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And today I am going to be talking about something that I would say has kind of been low-key stressing me out lately. It's not a huge issue, but in light of me doing this podcast and the new addition to my audio equipment today, I thought it would be a good episode to talk about vocal fry.
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If you have listened to any part of this show at all, you can probably tell that I have some pretty bad vocal fry. If you aren't quite sure what vocal fry is, we'll get into that in a minute.
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But like I said, I upgraded my microphone a little bit today and assuming I am recording correctly into this, then you can probably hear my vocal fry even more pronounced than you could when I was using my lower-quality headset.
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The thing about the headset is it doesn't record as well, but then I think you can probably maybe blame some of the bad vocal quality on the microphone. In this case, that's no longer really an option.
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I have a very scratchy and kind of just fried voice naturally, especially right now because it's February, it's winter, the air is dry. I'm on the East Coast, so there's not a lot of humidity in the air here this time of year.
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So if you don't already, once you understand what vocal fry is, you will hear it in my voice constantly. And if you are someone who is bothered by vocal fry, this is probably not the podcast for you, I am sorry to say.
(02:12):
You are welcome to stick around and just hate me for the way I talk I guess. I really can't help it and I will get into a little bit more about why vocal fry would be something that I would consider a drama in my life, and that many people I think get a little bit of drama from, especially if they are anyone who's in a podcasting space, YouTube space.
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If you are, especially, a woman and you have vocal fry, that seems to really set people off as well.
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So all that said, we are going to get into the topic and if at any point you need to stop listening because the fry is too bad, I understand.
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So what is vocal fry? If you don't know what I mean by vocal fry it is generally a vocal characteristic where your voice has a kind of creaky quality to it and it tends to happen at a lower octave.
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It's not so much something that you hear in higher pitch voices. And I'm smiling because my voice did it really bad right there when I was describing what it was.
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If you're still not quite sure what is meant by vocal fry, I think just kind of an exaggerated version of it would be to imagine the movie The Grudge.
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The sound that woman makes when she's creeping around, coming down the stairs, whatever. That kind of creaky, low groaning noise that she makes is a kind of hyperbolic example of what vocal fry is.
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That creek is essentially just like a dryness of the vocal chords that, when you're speaking normally, it kind of comes in at the end of sentences. And if it's not something that you're really looking for, I've always found it to be kind of hard to detect.
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But once I started kind of becoming aware of the qualities of my own voice and looking into what vocal fry was, now I kind of hear all the time in everything and I do see how it gets really annoying to some people.
(04:31):
But yeah, essentially you'll notice at the end of a lot of my sentences, there's a little creek in my voice and a lot of people have that.
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And perhaps one reason that so many people seem to have vocal fry these days is either just the fact that we're more aware of it with more YouTube creators, more podcasters, more people kind of getting themselves out there in the audio space.
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We might just be more aware of what vocal fry is, and so we're hearing it more. Another theory that I have seen posed is that shows like The Kardashians and generally shows featuring American women--typically from the state of California--tend to have more vocal fry in their voice.
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And because so many people, not just in the US but around the world, watch those shows, some of us have kind of started to just pick up that speaking pattern even though it's not something that we're doing consciously.
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I have never watched The Kardashians. I don't really know why my vocal fry is so bad. Like I said, I suspect a lot of it just has to do with the time of year.
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Everything is a little drier and my vocal cords are just more dried out. But I try to drink a lot of water and I try to do certain things to make my vocal fry not as bad, but at the same time, I am not really willing to go to extreme measures to hide it.
(06:09):
It's just the way I talk. And if it's the way I talk, then I apologize if it bothers some people, but there just isn't a ton that I can do short of putting on a voice all the time to hide my vocal fry.
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If you want to learn more about vocal fry and the scientific reasons behind why it happens, what actually causes that characteristic, there was a really great YouTube video I found by Dr. Geoff Lindsey. I'll link that down below.
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But it really does a great job of going through all the details of what is happening in your voice and then giving a lot of examples of vocal fry in different scenarios.
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But one thing that Dr. Lindsey brought up that I had never really thought about before is that both men and women have vocal fry or can have vocal fry. However, it seems like it only really bothers people, and especially only really bothers people on the internet or social media platforms, when the vocal fry is happening in a woman or female-presenting person's pattern of speech.
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And he actually brought up that there have been famous radio show hosts in the past that were known for their way of speaking, and one of the characteristics that made them them was that they had vocal fry. But they were men and it was seen as kind of a dignified way of speaking.
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But when women do it, because of I guess shows like The Kardashians or whatever, it's kind of seen as somehow like dumb and yet bossy at the same time, which I don't think is fair.
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But I mean, I don't personally feel that having vocal fry as a woman or hearing other women speak with vocal fry--it doesn't bother me. And I think it doesn't bother me because I know when I'm having really bad vocal fry, it's usually because I am relaxed.
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I'm not trying super hard to sound a certain way. If I really want to, I can make my voice a lot higher and I can speak more towards the front of my mouth and I can try to sound really crisp and nice and sweet.
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And that might be okay for a couple minutes at a time. But if I'm going to be sitting here talking to you for 15, 20 minutes, whatever these episodes end up being, I don't really want to have to put on a fake voice for you and pretend that I speak in a way I don't.
New Speaker (08:54):
I think it's just a bit inauthentic and I think that content consumers today can pick up on when you're kind of pretending to be something you're not.
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So while I could probably save your ears a little bit from my vocal fry, I'm sorry to say, I just don't want to pretend that I naturally speak in a way that I don't.
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On the other hand, if you do have vocal fry and it bothers you and you want to try to minimize it--sometimes mine is so bad that I'm like, "I really need to do something about this," there are a couple things that you can do to try to hydrate your vocal chords a little bit more and hopefully reduce some of that vocal fry.
(09:40):
If that's how you speak--unless you, again, really want to try to just change your speaking characteristics, how you speak naturally, or just put more effort into how you speak--you're probably not going to eliminate the vocal fry completely. Especially if it's a way you've been speaking for a very long time.
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But there are a couple simple things you can do to try to just hydrate your vocal cords a little bit more.
(10:06):
The first and most obvious one probably being drinking more water. I don't think my vocal fry is caused by sheer dehydration because I do make a huge effort to drink a lot of water every single day.
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I drink at least 80 ounces of water, usually more. Especially if I have been going to the gym or whatever, I'm more thirsty. So between probably 80 and 100 ounces of water a day.
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I also recently got a humidifier that I try to keep on when I'm sleeping at night just so, again, the air isn't so dry in my bedroom while I'm sleeping, especially in the winter.
(10:45):
In the summer here on the East Coast, dryness is not so much of a problem because it gets very, very humid, but in the winter there's definitely less moisture in the air and that makes my voice super creaky and even probably lower than it naturally is.
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Another thing that you can try to do--and this isn't really solving having vocal fry--but you can just try to make peace with how you speak as a person.
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Not everyone speaks the same way. Not everyone has the same kind of voice, and if you do just naturally kind of have a lower voice, it is just really helpful to accept that that is who you are and that's how you speak and just kind of embrace it.
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Like I said, I'm aware that I have vocal fry and I know it bothers some people, but it seems almost silly to me to even consider putting on kind of a higher pitch voice for these episodes just because that's not who I am.
(11:48):
So that is probably where I'm going to leave off for this episode. Like I've said, I don't love that I have vocal fry. I sometimes wish I could just have a higher pitch, very feminine-sounding voice that's just super crisp and clean and soothing, but I just don't.
(12:11):
This is how I speak. And it's not that I think I sound especially masculine or anything, but having a drier voice and dried-out vocal chords definitely does make my voice sound a little bit lower than it might in the summer when I'm basically just sweaty and there's just in a ton of humidity and my vocal chords are a little bit more hydrated.
(12:35):
But I do what I can to keep it from being just unbearable to listen to me. But there isn't a whole lot more I can do aside from what I'm already doing.
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And if you are someone who happens to have strong feelings about vocal fry, I would love to know why. What specifically bothers you about it?
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I know a lot of female podcasters I listen to, they've mentioned on their shows that they get disparaging comments on YouTube or Apple Podcasts and things like that. People just kind of complaining about the way they talk.
(13:10):
So I am kind of expecting those to come in at some point for this show. But I guess for the record, I am aware that this is how I speak and I'm sorry if it bothers you, but yeah, there's just not a whole lot else I can do about it.
(13:28):
So that is where we will end it today. If you have any feedback about this episode or there are other topics you want me to cover in the future, if you want to share any stories or insights from your own experiences having vocal fry, if you're a man and you have vocal fry, how is that for you? I would love to get another gender's side of it.
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So as always, thank you for listening and for me and any other podcasts that you listen to, please rate and review us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts because it really does help so much.
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A lot of how everything is organized and discovered online today is by algorithms. And without those ratings and reviews, it's really hard for the algorithms to know that we exist as content creators.
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So please rate, review, subscribe, and I will see you in the next episode.
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Thank you for being here.
(14:34): Outro music