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\u00a9 The Voice Realm<\/p><\/div>\n
Hydration starts hours before the session<\/h2>\n
Everybody knows to have water nearby. The mistake is thinking a few big gulps just before you start will do it. The advice from both the clinic side and the studio side is that hydration is a slow process.<\/p>\n
The University of Minnesota’s Lions Voice Clinic puts hydration at the top of its list for anyone who uses their voice for work: “Hydration is the most important concept. The mucosal covering of the vocal folds must be wet and slippery in order to vibrate optimally.” The same moist, slippery surfaces you want on your vocal folds are the ones you want in your mouth.<\/p>\n
On timing, Edwards is specific: “The secret is that you need to start hydrating at least two hours before your session starts.” He adds that for an early morning session you should start the night before, because you lose water while you sleep. If you only start drinking when you sit down at the mic, you end up with the worst of both worlds: still dry underneath, and a mouthful of water sloshing around on top, which brings its own wet noises.<\/p>\n
How much is enough? The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, part of the US National Institutes of Health, suggests people with dry mouth aim for 8 to 12 cups of water a day. You don’t need to measure it to the millilitre. Drink steadily through the day, not in one go, and keep a bottle within reach while you record.<\/p>\n
During the session itself, keep sipping. Edwards says he usually gets the actors he directs “to sip a little every 10-15 lines or so.” Little and often beats a big swig, and it gives you a natural pause to reset your posture and your breath. If you want more on that side of things, our guide to where your breath goes before the words<\/a> pairs well with this routine.<\/p>\n Water in is only half of it. A few everyday things quietly pull moisture out of your mouth, and it’s worth knowing which ones you’re up against before a big session.<\/p>\n Edwards also tells voice actors to skip coffee, tea, fizzy drinks and dairy on session days and stick to water. Plenty of narrators swear that milk and cheese leave a film that makes mouth noise worse, so if you notice a pattern after a latte, you know what to leave out.<\/p>\n Ask a room full of voice actors how to stop mouth clicks and someone will say “green apple”. Take a bite of a tart apple, the theory goes, and the acid cuts through thick saliva and gets it flowing. The NIDCR makes a similar point about sour flavours in general, suggesting sugarless gum or sugarless hard candy “to stimulate saliva flow”.<\/p>\n It works, briefly. Edwards has a good line on it: “Eating green apples to stop clicky mouth is a temporary fix only.” He says the effect never lasts more than five or ten minutes before the clicks come back, and calls the apple “a last resort”. It’s a rescue for the middle of a session when you’ve been caught short, not a replacement for being properly hydrated.<\/p>\n If you do reach for it, eat a slice, swallow, take a sip of water and give your mouth a few seconds to settle before the next take. Recording with apple still in your cheeks swaps one noise for another.<\/p>\n Here’s the part most people don’t expect. How close you sit to the microphone has a big effect on how loud your mouth noise is compared with your voice.<\/p>\n Edwards explains it with two set-ups. Sit very close, about three inches, and speak softly, and you have to turn the input gain up to get a usable level. Your voice is quiet, so the noise floor and your mouth sounds are comparatively loud. Sit further back, “say 7-8 inches”, and speak a little louder than normal, and you turn the gain down. Now the voice is strong and the clicks are small next to it.<\/p>\n That doesn’t mean everyone should back off to eight inches for every job. An intimate read wants a closer mic. But if you’re fighting clicks, try moving back a hand’s width and lifting your energy slightly before you reach for anything else. Our guide to finding your own sweet spot at the mic<\/a> walks through a ten-minute test for exactly this.<\/p>\n One catch: backing away from the mic also lets more of the room in. If your space is echoey or noisy, sitting further back will show it. Run the free Home Studio Analysis<\/a> on Voice Edit Suite before and after you change your distance, so you know whether the room can take it.<\/p>\n Put it all together and you get a routine that takes almost no extra time. Most of it happens while you’re doing other things.<\/p>\n \u00a9 The Voice Realm<\/p><\/div>\n Even with good habits, a few will slip through, especially on long narration days. That’s normal. The job in the edit is to remove them without making the voice sound processed.<\/p>\n The simplest method is by hand. Zoom into the waveform and look for thin, sharp spikes between or at the start of words. Select just the spike, a few milliseconds at most, and either lower its volume sharply or replace it with a sliver of the room tone next to it. It’s slow, but on a short commercial or an audition it’s the cleanest result you’ll get.<\/p>\n For longer projects, most editors reach for a dedicated plug-in. iZotope’s help documentation for its RX Mouth De-click module describes what it’s for: “Mouth De-click detects and reduces mouth noises such as clicks and lip smacks.” The same documentation carries a warning worth taking seriously: “Increasing sensitivity can impact plosives, reducing or damaging the original signal.” Turn it up too far and your P, B and T sounds start to lose their edges, and the read begins to sound soft and slightly lispy.<\/p>\n A few habits keep automatic tools honest:<\/p>\n If you’re building your own editing workflow, our piece on the pass order that saves hours in the edit<\/a> shows where click removal fits alongside breath edits, noise reduction and loudness.<\/p>\n If your mouth feels dry most of the time, whatever you drink, it’s worth a conversation with a doctor or dentist. The NIDCR lists medications, some medical conditions and cancer treatment among the causes of ongoing dry mouth, and it’s easier to fix the cause than to fight the symptom every session. The same goes for a voice that’s often hoarse or tired; our guide to looking after your voice day to day<\/a> covers the warning signs.<\/p>\n For most voice actors, though, clicks aren’t a medical problem. They’re a habit problem, and habits change quickly once you know what to do.<\/p>\n Mouth clicks come from sticky saliva, and compression makes them louder. Start drinking water two hours before a session, keep sipping every few lines, and go easy on coffee, alcohol and dairy. Sit a little further back and speak with a bit more energy so the voice outweighs the noise. Keep a green apple for emergencies only. Clean up what’s left gently, before compression, and listen back before you commit. Then go and try it on something real: our voice over jobs board<\/a> has scripts of every length to practise on.<\/p>\n Sources: Hugh Edwards, Gravy for the Brain, “The Secrets of Preventing Mouth Clicks in Voiceover Recordings”<\/a>; University of Minnesota Medical School, Lions Voice Clinic, “Maintain the Vitality of the Vocal Fold Mucosa”<\/a>; National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, “Dry Mouth”<\/a>; iZotope, “Mouth De-click, RX 9 Help”<\/a>. This article is general guidance, not medical advice; if dry mouth or hoarseness keeps coming back, see a doctor.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why mouth clicks happen, when to start drinking water, what dries you out, where to sit at the mic, and how to clean up the clicks that still get through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5887,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,504],"tags":[578,577,334,576,574,575,505],"class_list":["post-5886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-voice-over-studio","category-voice-over-tips","tag-audio-editing","tag-dry-mouth","tag-home-studio","tag-hydration","tag-mouth-clicks","tag-mouth-noise","tag-voice-over-tips"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\tWhat dries your mouth out<\/h2>\n
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The green apple trick, and why it’s plan B<\/h2>\n
Your distance from the mic changes how loud the clicks are<\/h2>\n
A routine for click-free sessions<\/h2>\n
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![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.thevoicerealm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/wm-edit-mouth.jpg\")
Cleaning up the clicks that still get through<\/h2>\n
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When it’s more than a few clicks<\/h2>\n
The short version<\/h2>\n