Who dat! Here's how to yell at a Saints game

Saints fans who made a din fearful enough to force the Eagles into burned timeouts and false starts Sunday are rightfully getting their due for helping the team to the critical win, but with even more on the line this Sunday, what’s a hoarse Who Dat to do?
According to voice experts, the rules are pretty simple: Breathe deep — through the nose is best — before letting loose with an offense-rattling roar. And stay well hydrated — by drinking more water, not more beer.
Alcohol is a diuretic, vocal coach Kristin Samuelson of New York points out. That doesn’t mean fans can’t enjoy a cold one, but she and others advise alternating a beer with a water.
“The vocal cords are teeny tiny little ligaments that are mostly made of water,” according to St. Tammany Parish Hospital speech therapist Kathy Crain. When they’ve been repeatedly slammed together, they don’t want to touch each other. “They’re angry and overused,” she said.
That inflammation results in hoarseness, which Crain said normally subsides in a day or two — plenty of time for Saints fans to be ready to disrupt the Rams.
Fortunately, the same techniques that make yelling easier on the voice also produce more sound, according to vocal coaches.
Margaret Albert, a Slidell resident who has taught voice for more than 20 years, advises breathing in through the nose to access air from deep within the lungs.
Singers and actors who have vocal training are able to get that deep air with mouth breathing, she said. But an average football fan yelling in a stadium will have more success in getting enough air into their cheering by breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth.
Albert also advises using the “H” sound as a way to boost the flow. “You can put an H before a consonant — no one’s going to know but you. HMOVE DEM CHAINS. Or, if you want to be especially kind to your voice, HMOVE HDEM HCHAINS,” she said.
“It’s only gonna sound weird to you.”
The “H” sound encourages what Albert called “aspirate articulation” as opposed to “glottal articulation,” which can be harmful.
Fortunately for Saints fans, the cheer of choice already provides the optimum sound. Samuelson, who formerly lived in New Orleans and is still a big Saints fan, loves a good “Hooooo Dat.” But she’s also partial to “Go, go,” because of the oh and ooh sounds.
People think they need to squeeze to make the sound come out, to provide what they perceive as a loud, harsh sound, she said. But Samuelson suggests picturing the back of the mouth as a cathedral or big church or imagining an umbrella popping out of the back of their head to produce a round, full sound.
Or think about a burp, which is letting a big air bubble out. “Belch it out,” she said, but keep open and relaxed, which is better for the whole vocal mechanism.