Put Your Best Voice Forward^[1]

“How wonderful is the human voice! It is indeed the organ of the soul.”

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Preview

Learn the Elements of Vocal Image

Start with the Breath

Breathe from the Belly

Stand Tall

Let the Breath Do the Work

Control the Breath

Use Pitch, Volume, and Pacing to Get and Keep Attention

Use Pauses Generously and Rate Prudently

Find Your Optimal Pitch

Vary Your Pitch

Convey Authority and Confidence Using Appropriate Pitch

Crank Up the Volume to Energize Your Audience

Project Your Voice Where You Want It

Turn up the Bass

Increase Your Stamina[SP1]

It has been said that you can be judged by three things: your face, your disposition, and -your voice, Indeed, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called the human voice “the organ of the soul.” Just as your personality gives people an idea of the kind of person you are, your voice creates an image that can either lend credibility to what you say or detract from your message. Remember Lina Lamont in the film “Singin’ in the Rain?” This star of the silent movies could not make the transition to the ‘talkies’ because all signs of glamour evaporated with the sound of her nasal voice, Brooklyn accent and ungrammatical speech.

How aware are you of the vocal image you project? You wouldn’t consider giving a presentation or attending a business function, let alone going to a party with friends, without first checking your appearance in the mirror. Yet do you ever check your voice? True, it takes more time and effort to improve your voice than to enhance your appearance with a new hairdo. But it can be done.

How did you come to sound the way you do? Think of the person you sound most like. Probably it’s your mother or sister. My sisters and I sound so much alike that my father is often confused as to which one of us is calling on the phone. Yet our personalities and body types are not at all alike. Since the voice--its rhythms, tones, and inflections--is the result of learned habits and patterns, it is possible to change it. Voice coaching techniques can help you develop greater strength, authority, and beauty in your voice, all of which will enhance your vocal image.

Learn the Elements of Vocal Image

Think of someone you know only by telephone. You have never seen her, yet you have formed a picture of her in your mind. What are the assumptions you have made about her age, education, personality, intelligence, ethnicity, and even her appearance simply from the sound of her voice? Have you had the experience of finally meeting such a person and being surprised that she does not fit the image you’ve formed of her? What image do you think a stranger on the telephone forms of you?

Think of the voices that you admire. They probably exhibit a number of common, essential qualities:

· They are easily understood: The articulation is clear and crisp; the rate is flowing and easy to follow.

· They are easily heard: The volume is appropriate.

· They are pleasant to listen to: The voice quality is rich, relaxed, and expressive.

· They are unobtrusive: The voice complements the message without distracting from it, and it matches the messenger without provoking unusual attention.

You can enhance these elements in your voice. The first step is to become aware of the desirable traits, then examine your present voice patterns. This chapter will teach you how to cultivate the desired qualities. It is up to you to practice the techniques and integrate them into your everyday speaking. Pick and choose among the many exercises. Not all of them will be relevant for you. The more you practice, the sooner you will find success. With patience and persistence, speaking with your optimum voice will become second nature. Then--voilà! --you will have a voice that others will admire.

When trying out new speech behaviors, exaggerate them at first. As you become involved in conversation, your attention to the new pattern will inevitably become less focused, and the exaggeration will be reduced. So, if you don’t “start big,” you will not end up “improved.” It may feel funny at first, but be bold. Trust that exaggeration works. Besides, what seems exaggerated to you may appear minimal or even undetectable to the listener.

Curiously, a change in speech patterns may trigger emotional reactions that could surprise you. You need to watch for them and keep them from preventing you from changing your speech patterns. The physical act of speaking in a new way will not feel the same as the physical act of speaking in your habitual pattern. You may not ‘feel like yourself.’ Give yourself permission to feel differently. Coax yourself to create a new you, a second you, an improved you. Understand that when it ‘feels wrong’ you are probably doing it right. When it ‘feels right’ you are probably reverting back to your old habits.

Start with the Breath

Your breath provides the foundation for your speech. You speak on a column of air as you exhale. Good breathing habits, therefore, are essential for adequate volume, projection, and durability, as well as for a voice that is easy to listen to. Many people go through life without ever considering the quality of their breathing much less how the breath affects the voice. Shallow breathing leads to a high-pitched, reedy voice that has little resonance or volume. Shallow breathing also leaves a speaker deflated during and after a presentation. The goal in learning good habits is to learn deep breathing, which is at the same time natural and unforced.

§ Breathe from the Belly

Exercise: Start by bending over from the waist as far as you are comfortable, with arms dangling, jaw relaxed, and knees slightly bent. Notice how your breath begins at the small of your back and moves out and around your waist, expanding outward with each breath. Memorize those sensations. Now straighten up slightly with your hands clasped in front of you, as though you were a golfer about to make a putt. Again, notice how the breath seems to begin at your back, though a bit higher this time, just above your waist. The breath expands out and around, not up. Again, memorize these sensations. Next straighten even further so that you are just slightly bent over from the shoulders with your head bowed and hands clasped in front of you, as if you were sniffing a bouquet of flowers. Notice that the sense of expansion out and around begins now in your mid back. If the movement has begun to move upwards at all, bend over again as far as you need to get the expansion back to a movement of out and around. Again, memorize these sensations. Finally, straighten back to your corrected posture and see if you can recreate the feeling that the source of the breath is out and around and from the belly, not from the chest. This is optimal diaphragmatic breathing.

§ Stand Tall

Breathing from the upper chest reflects poor posture as well as stored tension. Stand up straight and tall. What happens to your breathing? Do you find it becomes more natural to breathe from the belly? When your posture is correct, you have more room to expand the diaphragm. The following exercise demonstrates how closely linked posture is to breathing and thus to voice.

Exercise: Stand in what you consider to be your best posture. Take a mental snapshot of this position so you can compare it to any corrections you make as you read through this exercise. Check your knees. Locking them cuts off your breath, so be sure to relax them and keep them slightly bent. Avoid arching your back. Keep your pelvis slightly tucked in a relaxed way. Take time to feel centered with your weight equally balanced between your toes and heels. If you’re not sure, try coming onto your toes a bit and then settling back onto your heels. You should now have the lower half of your body in good alignment. Now check your head. Keep your chin parallel to the ground so that the front of your neck is soft and relaxed and the back straight. Imagine yourself suspended from the ceiling on a string attached to the crown of your head, making the crown the highest point and allowing your body to lengthen all along your spine. Try to expand the space between your shoulder blades while keeping them relaxed and dropped as low as they will go. Feel yourself fill the space around you by expanding and lengthening rather than shrinking and caving. Stand in this corrected posture in a relaxed yet alive way. Memorize the sensations from the tip of your toes to the top of your head. This awareness of the shape of your body and the life within it is called a kinesthetic experience. Imprint it in your brain. Take particular note of those areas that needed to be adjusted. Now, turn your attention back to your breathing. Notice how much freer and deeper it is in this stance.

Work on your posture for seated speaking as well. Resist the tendency to cave in at the waist. You will feel energized by your enhanced breath, elongated spine, and strengthened voice.

§ Let the Breath Do the Work

As speakers we are fooled into thinking we produce voice by actively manipulating the muscles of the larynx much as we might activate our legs playing hopscotch. But in fact, phonation, or sound production, is essentially a passive, aerodynamic process. As the column of air from the diaphragm passes through the voice box or larynx, it sets the vocal cords vibrating and generates sound waves. Many speakers exert themselves unnecessarily by trying to use the muscles of the neck and larynx to do the work of the column of air. Such habits result in vocal fatigue, frequent laryngitis, and a harsh sounding voice. It is important to relax the neck and larynx and keep them entirely passive, which allows the diaphragm to provide the airflow that does all the work.

Exercise: First, check your posture, head position, and breath. Keeping the head aligned with the spine is essential. Avoid hanging your head back with shoulders rolled forward and chin jutting forward (a position many people unconsciously adopt when working at a computer or using a phone). Contrast the feeling of the correct alignment, when the neck is flexed and relaxed, with the jutting or tense position, when the neck becomes tight and tense. Place the fingers of one hand gently on either side of your larynx, where the Adam’s apple protrudes, and gently wiggle it back and forth, first in the jutting/tense position, then in the aligned/relaxed position. Notice how much freer it is and how easily it can move in the aligned position.

Now, from this relaxed, aligned position, begin a big yawn with your mouth wide open as you take in the air. Allow the sound of a gentle sigh to float out as you exhale. Prolong this gentle “ahhhh” with each exhalation. Test the muscles again by gently moving your larynx with your hand and try to keep them relaxed even while speaking. Try saying a breathy syllable upon each exhalation: “Ha. Hay. Ho. Who. He”. Notice how relaxed and open you can keep your throat and how effortlessly the sound floats out. Try to keep this easy, relaxed feeling as you count to ten.

Producing sounds in this relaxed way both enhances the aesthetic quality of your voice and increases your stamina. The beauty of a highly trained speaker’s voice comes from her ability to relax and allow both vocal cords to vibrate harmoniously. Tension disrupts this harmony.

§ Control the Breath

Suggesting that you control your breath seems to contradict the preceding advice, which was to let your breath do the work. But think what it means to ride a horse. The horse does the work but you have to keep it from galloping away with you. When the breath is not under control, you are likely to run out of it. If you think of your lungs as bellows that work best by steady and frequent replenishment without ever totally emptying, you may better understand the need to be aware of how much of the column of air you have left at any given point in your talk. Many speakers try to produce overly long utterances on one breath. Read the last few paragraphs of this chapter out loud and notice how many phrases you try to speak without breathing in. Now read the paragraph again with frequent pauses and remember to take a sip of air during each pause. As you learn to provide better breath support, you will notice an improvement in volume and voice quality.

Avoid fading by running out of air. Make sure you breathe and project through the very last syllable of each word and paragraph. If this is difficult for you, practice matching the breath to the phrase by counting and interspersing the intervals with a little sip of air, as explained in the exercise below:

Exercise: First count to 10 several times as follows: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, sip, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, sip, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, sip, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, sip. You should be able to continue indefinitely, without stress or strain, if you are matching the breath to the phrase. Now count to five as many times as you can: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, sip, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 sip, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, sip. If you become light-headed or feel as if you are about to float away, you may be taking in too much air. Try it again. Now try mixing the intervals, always speaking on one smooth exhalation with little sips of air at the pauses: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, sip, 1, 2, 3, sip, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, sip, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, sip, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, sip, 1, 2, sip, 1, 2, 3, etc.

Manage Pitch, Volume, and Pacing to Get and Keep Attention

Even if your voice is pleasant and relaxed, the content of your presentation will be lost on your audience if you cannot hold their attention with your voice. Have you ever heard someone speak in a monotone? Can you imagine having to sit through a 20-minute presentation with such a speaker? Of course, a speaker is never literally monotone. But to be an effective speaker, you must vary your pitch, volume, and pace and duration to guarantee that the audience will remain with you throughout your presentation. You may recall from Chapter 4 that the human brain is designed to attend to novel stimuli and ignore ongoing, unchanging background noise such as the hum of the refrigerator. So if you speak in an unvarying tone, a constant volume, an unchanging rate or a predictable singsong pattern, the listener will find it increasingly difficult to stay tuned in. You must become aware of the ways you lapse into less-than-stimulating speech patterns without knowing you are doing it. Then play with these elements as though you were creating a wonderful piece of music, with different movements of allegro, adagio, with moods of tremolando and crescendo. Ideally you express each phrase with a new inflection and tone to convey the nuance you intend.

§ Use Pauses Generously and Rate Prudently

Just as the ‘rests’ are important in a piece of music and blank spaces on a page are important to good graphic design, pauses are an important part of your speech pattern and rhythm. Confident, polished speakers use pauses to add emphasis and meaning to their message. (pause) Can you see how the pause provides time and space for you to process what you have read? And another thing about pauses (pause): They add drama and capture your attention the same way bold face type does. Gain comfort with the silence engendered by pauses. Avoid fillers, such as “um, er, you know.” As the speaker, you, too, can benefit from the pause by using the moment to re-center your breathing and your thoughts.

Your rate of speech also impacts the listener. If you speak too rapidly, she will feel fatigued and stressed. If you speak too slowly, her attention becomes labored and irritating. Try reading this section out-loud, beginning with the subtitle and through the end of this sentence. Time yourself. You should read it in approximately one minute, as it contains approximately 160 words. The average rate of speaking is 145 to 175 wpm (words per minute), with the ideal at about 155 to 160 wpm, depending on the subject matter and occasion.

§ Find Your Optimal Pitch

Each syllable we speak can be played as a note on musical instrument. Indeed, a phrase is like the melody of a song. If you hum a few familiar phrases without the words they would still be recognizable by their tune. Your habitual pitch is the note you most frequently use as you jump up for emphasis and move down to end the phrases, plus it serves as your ‘neutral’ starting point. Many speech coaches mistakenly advise speakers to lower this pitch to achieve a stronger voice. This is hazardous advice. Each person must use the pitch determined by the physical dimensions of her vocal cords. Otherwise she may set up a pattern of abuse and misuse that can result in vocal polyps or nodules, chronic hoarseness, and fatigue. And she will not have relaxed, easy access to a desired range of pitches needed for pleasing variety and expressiveness. There are healthy ways to cultivate a richer, more powerful-sounding voice, which you will discover in the exercises below, especially in the section showing you how to “Turn Up the Bass.” Your optimal pitch allows you to create sound without strain or tension.

Exercise: Try gently saying “mm’hmm” out loud, right now, in a relaxed and neutral rather than expressive voice. Keep it at about the same pitch as a gentle (very gentle) cough. This is your neutral, optimal pitch. Notice how relaxed your throat feels as this mm’hmm floats out. Now intersperse the gentle “mm’hmm” with counting: “mm’hmm 1, mm’hmm 2, mm’hmm 3, mm’hmm 4. . . .” Keep going all the way to 10. Notice what happened on the numbers. Did your pitch rise or sink? The numbers are typically said at your habitual pitch, the pitch you use in conversation. Was it different from your neutral, optimal mm’hmm pitch?

If you were to create a chart that listed your full vocal range, from the lowest pitch you can comfortably produce to the highest, you would find your optimal pitch at about one quarter of the way above your lowest note. This means you can comfortably use three or four notes below your best pitch and between six and eight notes above, which provides a dynamic range of 10 to 13 notes for expressive speech. The upper half of your range is available for singing, but we don’t generally use those high notes in speech. Try the following method to identify your optimal pitch and see if it matches the one you discovered with the “mm’hmm” method above:

Exercise: Using the syllable La, sing down to lowest note that is comfortable for you. Then begin on that lowest note and sing up the scale by counting, saying the numbers on each note: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. You will notice that your voice seems to break through easily on one of the numbers, probably around 4 or 5. This should prove to be your most comfortable note. Try it again. When you are sure where the breakthrough note occurs, continue repeating that clearest, easiest note as though you were chanting, using the syllable, La, la, la . . . . Try saying entire sentences on this same pitch. “This is my optimal pitch. Here I am comfortable and clear-voiced.” Continue until you can stop and begin again on the same pitch without having to go through the range of notes.

Your optimal pitch is your starting point or home base. It is like a pitch pipe helping you to find your key. From there you will modulate when it is appropriate for emphasis or inference, but you will always return to your starting point. You may find that it seems higher (or lower) than the pitch you are accustomed to using for speech. But by practicing and modifying your pitch even slightly toward the optimum, you help eliminate vocal burnout or problems with a voice that is unpleasant or hard to hear. Try beginning these sentences at your optimal pitch by starting with a gentle, “mm’hmm”:

“mm’hmm It’s a beautiful day.”

“mm’hmm She’s a wonderful speaker.”

“mm’hmm That’s an interesting idea.”

Does your voice sound and feel different from when you use your habitual pitch? This slight adjustment in pitch makes a dramatic difference for some speakers.

Use this “mm’hmm” technique as a guide when you begin speaking. You may find that sometimes, especially when you are nervous or excited, tension builds up in the throat and you end up speaking at an extreme of your pitch range. Your voice comes out screechy or squeaky and adds to your nervousness. If you remember to stop, center, breathe, and imagine yourself saying “mm’hmm”, you will get off to a much better start by speaking at your optimal pitch.

§ Vary Your Pitch

Now that you have found your optimal pitch, you are ready to experiment with a variety of pitches within your normal range, which will add interest to your speech. Unemotional, factual speech that is appropriate for everyday occasions includes a range 10 of notes--three below, one at, and six above the optimum, or modal pitch. When the speaking situation is more emotional or personal, it becomes appropriate to extend the range to 13 notes by going higher by two more notes and lower by one. If you reduce the range to just seven notes by cutting off the upper tones, you might sound apathetic. If you reduce it by cutting off the lower tones, you risk sounding indecisive and lacking in confidence. If you restrict the range to four or five notes, you give the impression of speaking in a monotone.

Imagine all the possible ways to say, “Please sit down.” First, picture the speaker as relaxed, calm, and speaking politely to an honored guest:

“Please sit down.”

Now, imagine her commanding an errant student with considerable exasperation and anger after several requests:

“Puleeease sit dowwwwwnnnnnn!”

What are the differences? Pitch, plus volume, rate, and tone quality are used with a much greater range in the latter, angry example. The duration of each syllable and pause between is longer, everything is louder, the first word is higher in pitch, and the final word is lower in pitch. The tone of voice is gentle and relaxed in the first case, whereas it is brittle and harsh in the latter.

§ Convey Authority and Confidence Using Appropriate Pitch

As we discussed earlier, the absence of the higher (also louder and longer) notes conveys apathy. As you listen to various speakers in the coming weeks, notice that they convey emotion, especially positive enthusiasm, by jumping up in pitch and making some syllables louder and longer. Note also that they convey certainty and credibility by controlling the pitch and ending statements with downward inflection. The following exercise allows you to use your own voice to hear how important appropriate pitch is:

Exercise: Read aloud the sentence below, following the pitch levels indicated. Compare the impression each leaves:

Rising inflection: indecisive

ver tant

This y por

is im

Falling inflection: definite

ver

This y por

is im

tant

Did you notice how the absence of the lower tones imparts indecisiveness and a lack of authority? Leaving the last syllable at a neutral or rising pitch leaves the thought hanging uncertainly, as though suspended in mid-air. When a thought is complete and an idea is firmly held, you must drop the pitch at the end of the sentence. The rising inflection is appropriate for yes/no questions, such as “Does this make sense?” The listener will feel compelled to create closure by providing the downward inflection with their firm “yes” or “no.” But if the rising pattern is used in a statement, you reduce the impact of the idea.

In addition to ending your sentences with a clear fall in pitch, it is vital to project your voice through the very last syllable. Don’t swallow your words or fade out at the end of sentences as so many speakers do. Remember to use good breath support and keep the air flowing out and down, like a wave. Don’t allow the last word to fall back and down.

An important time to remember these guidelines is whenever you introduce yourself. Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to catch somebody’s name? When you have never met a person before, her name is an abstraction because there are no associations to help you remember it. Yet most of us tend to hurry through our names and fade away in a flat or rising tone, as if apologizing or questioning who we are.

Partnow

I’m Susan

Contrast that weak introduction with this one, saying it slowly, firmly, strongly:

I’m Part

Hi Su

san

now

Try this exercise with your name. If your name is unusual, be sure to pause slightly after your first name to help the listener distinguish your first name from your last name.

§ Crank Up the Volume to Energize Your Audience

When you speak before a group, the listeners are inclined to match their energy level with the energy conveyed by your voice. Volume is one measure of energy, so it is almost always advisable to crank up the volume beyond your usual estimation of what is appropriate. I think of my voice as the battery supplying all the “juice” in the room. Of course, you must adjust the level according to how many people are listening. If a small group of people is sitting close to you, you can speak more softly than if a large group fills a large room. But remember, you want to make it easy for the listeners to hear you, not just possible. Louder is better.

Be sure to vary the loudness with which you speak. Really punch out the key words and phrases. To see how good you are at it, try speaking into a tape recorder that has a volume meter. See if your voice makes the dial move dynamically, with some phrases quieter, some louder. Remember, however, to let your breath do the work in regulating volume. Forcing volume from the muscles around your vocal chords produces only a screech. Bringing volume up from your diaphragm produces a pleasing sense of authority in your voice.

§ Project Your Voice Where You Want It

Where do you direct your voice when you are speaking? Obviously, in one-on-one conversations, you stand or sit facing your partner and speak loudly enough for her to easily hear you. When you are speaking before a group, you have to project your voice in a way that makes it easy for every person in the room to hear you. Projection becomes a matter not just of volume but also of tone and focus. Think of filling the room with your voice, sending every sound you make to the back of the room, to reach the ears of the farthest listener. Many speakers have a tendency to “speak into their collar,” as a Spanish saying goes, holding the voice close to the body.

Exercise: Experiment with this notion of focusing your voice. First try saying a sentence close to your body. Don’t whisper, but, in a normal tone, speak “into your collar,” saying, “I’m holding my voice right here.” Now aim your voice toward someone across the room and, without shouting or trying to speak louder, say, “And now I’m sending my voice to you.” Can you feel and hear the difference? Try the two phrases again. First the wrong way, then the desired way. Do you see how focusing your voice properly helps it to fill the room? Develop an awareness of where your voice is focused at all times, and then, whenever you are speaking to a group, aim your voice out, towards the listener who is farthest away.

While doing the above experiment with focus and tone you may have noticed that your mouth and throat opened more, allowing the air to flow more freely. Increased airflow allows the voice to be heard more easily, even at lower volumes. These are good voice habits. Yet, when asked to speak loudly you may find yourself using different voice habits. Let’s try another experiment.

Exercise: First speak in your usual voice, but notice the pattern of your breath and the sensations in the muscles of your throat, neck, and diaphragm. Say “How does this feel?” Remember these sensations. Next, try speaking in a very loud voice, and notice what you do to increase the volume by paying attention to how your breath, throat, mouth, and jaw feel. Imagine that you are speaking so loud that the people in the next room will hear you. Say, “Hello out there!” How did you make your voice louder? Did you push harder in your neck and tighten your throat? Although this works, it is a form of vocal abuse that can damage your vocal cords. Ideally you will have noticed that you pushed harder from the diaphragm, sending out more air more quickly while you actually relaxed and opened your throat and mouth. Indeed, using your mouth like a megaphone to amplify the sound is a healthy way to project your voice.

§ Turn Up the Bass

Most people do not like the way they sound on a tape recording. Indeed, many do not even recognize their voice when they hear it for the first time. Rest assured, the recording does sound different from the way you hear yourself because when you speak, you hear yourself through bone conduction and through air waves. When you hear yourself on a recording, you can hear yourself only through the air waves. The recorded signal seems tinnier and higher in pitch. Because bones are excellent conductors of bass tones, a recording misses a rich component that you are accustomed to hearing in your own voice. But brace yourself. That tinniness is the way others hear you. Alas, they can’t hear the bones vibrating in your head. If you want others to hear you the way you hear yourself, you have to turn up the bass in your voice.

The sound waves generated at the level of the vocal cords are actually quite feeble. As they pass through your throat and mouth, they are amplified. The way you position your jaw, tongue, and lips and contour your throat profoundly alters the output of sound. Sound waves have a physical reality to them, with variation in depth and length according to frequency. Low, bass tones are big and long, and they require a lot of space. Treble tones are small and short. Imagine a row of jars before you, graduated in size from very small to very large. Which one produces a low, bass tone when you tap it? The large jar can accommodate the larger sound waves of the lower frequencies. The sounds we produce are equally affected by the volume of space we create in our vocal tract. A third element that impacts the mix of bass and treble in the output tone is the texture of the walls of the resonating chamber. For example, woodwinds are soft and permeable and produce a mellow tone, whereas brass instruments are hard and reflective. The sound waves literally bounce off the hard walls, thus creating an excess population of the smaller high frequency treble tones. The walls of your throat impact the tone: brassy if tense, mellow if relaxed. Let’s experiment and see what we can do to maximize that mellow “FM” sound and minimize a thin, tinny, brassy sound.

Exercise: Prolong a gentle “ahhhh” sound, well supported by breath. Keep the sound going while you slowly open and close your mouth. Notice how the tone quality changes. Which sounds deeper and fuller? The open position, right? Now you have the first key to a resonant voice: get your mouth and throat open! Next contrast the tone quality produced when you pucker your lips and say “ooo” (rhymes with two) with the sound of “eee” (rhymes with tea) with your lips pulled back, almost in a grin. Can you hear it? When you add the length of the lips to the vocal tract, the sound is much richer, full of bass tones. The second key to a resonant voice is: use your lips to round the sounds. Try saying the following phrases while striving for a different feeling in your throat. First say, “I am feeling stressed and edgy,” while tensing the back of your throat. Now say, “My throat is opened and relaxed,” with the throat velvety and relaxed. Did you notice the change in tone quality? This sense of relaxed softness is the third key to a resonant voice.

Integrate the following habits into your speech patterns. Try reading a poem aloud while you practice each one. Go back to the earlier exercise on saying your name and add these elements to the downward inflection you were practicing.

· Open the mouth and throat to expand volume.

· Activate the lips and round the vowels to add length.

· Relax the throat to soften and mellow the voice.

When films or plays caricature a woman as a “dumb blonde,” they often portray her with a thin voice. Carol Channing has played such a character in movies such as The First Traveling Saleslady and Thoroughly Modern Millie, where she sounded young, immature, and not very credible. You might remember her wide, toothy smile? She does not use her lips to give length and volume to the vocal tract and thus turn up the treble in her voice. So, ladies, smile with your eyes but use those lips to round your vowels.

Many people hold tension in their jaws, making it difficult to speak with an open throat. Do you tend to grit your teeth or grind them at night? Notice how they are right now while you are reading. Are they slightly apart, or are you clenching them? The only time your teeth need to touch each other is when you are chewing. Try to increase the space between the back molars to help get your throat as open as possible, like an inverted megaphone with the widest point at the back of your mouth and the narrow point at the lips. Many of my students think of this as orienting their speech in a vertical north-south plane rather than the typical American horizontal east-west twang. I think of it as my “French face” because it’s the facial posture I use to speak with a French accent. Some voice coaches have students practice with a slice of cork between the back teeth to encourage this posture. Try this gentle stretch:

Exercise: First become aware of the tension in your jaw joint, the hinge where the lower jaw, or mandible, attaches to the skull. Say “Oh, Oh, Oh,” several times while you turn your attention to this area. Then allow your jaw to drop open in a relaxed way, as if to say “AHH.” Now keep the jaw open while you move lips only to form the “Oh”. Does the jaw joint feel freer to move? Just this slight shift, a kind of release to allow the jaw to slide forward, can help relax the jaw and allow you to increase the internal volume which in turn enhances the bass, mellow quality of your voice.

Increase Your Stamina

Are you suffering from vocal burnout? How many of the following symptoms do you experience?

· Tired or strained voice.

· Frequent throat clearing or coughing.

· Rawness or burning in throat.

· Sensation of lump or tickling in throat.

· Pain or discomfort in throat or neck area.

· Dry or scratchy throat and mouth.

· Frequent sore throats.

· Hoarseness or huskiness.

· Voice breaks or skips.

· Weakening or loss of voice.

· Change in voice quality vs. a year or two ago.

· Reduced pitch range.

· Neck muscles bulging or tense.

· Avoidance of speaking situations.

You may want to seek the services of a certified speech therapist to work on changing your voice habits if you experience many of these symptoms chronically. In fact, if you suffer hoarseness that persists for more than two weeks without an infection, you should consult an ear, nose, and throat specialist. If medical examination reveals any tissue change in your vocal cords, medical insurance and/or workers’ compensation may cover voice therapy. If good speech is essential for current employment, voice training may be a tax deductible business expense. You can find speech therapists listed in the yellow pages or through larger hospitals. Make sure they are certified by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (CCC - Certificate of Clinical Competence).

In addition to practicing breath support and relaxation plus using proper head alignment and optimum pitch as described above, there are many other things you can do to enhance the durability of your voice on your own. Try observing these guidelines:

· Keep the vocal tract moist. Maintain humidity in your environment and drink lots of water.

· Eliminate misuses. Frequent throat clearing, screaming, harsh laughter, grunts, or guttural sounds aggravate the vocal cords.

· Control abuses. Alcohol and cigarettes are irritants to the vocal tract.

· Manage the sound environment. Eliminate competing noises, turn down the radio, refrain from lengthy conversations in noisy environments such as cars or planes.

· Practice moderation. Avoid speaking at unusually high or low pitches or volumes. Use amplification when appropriate; allow the voice to rest before and after speaking on demanding days.

Here’s another voice tip: like any other muscles in the bottom, you can prevent strain and promote better performance by warming up. Have you noticed how frog-like you sound first thing in the morning? A good warm up routine begins with a posture and breathing check and then gentle humming that you move up and down the scale, as for arpeggios. Vary the vowel. Start going up the scale as for do, me, sol, ti: “me, me, me, me,” now head down the scale as for sol, me, do, “me, me, me;” then ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, and so forth, continuing with moe and moo. Try some phrases that get your lips lively and your mouth open, “How now brown cow” and “The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain”. Next try some tongue twisters to awake your tongue to crisp sounds: “Tickle Tune Typhoon sings the best songs for tots.”

These suggested adjustments to your voice are challenging. Don’t expect to use them all of the time. In fact, wait until you have mastered a new pattern in practice sessions before trying them out in the real world. Aim for frequent but short practice sessions. Two or three minutes of practice implemented numerous times throughout the day are much more effective than one session of twenty to thirty minutes. When you practice, keep your standards high by urging yourself to exaggerate. Each time you repeat a phrase in practice, define the goal narrowly, and then judge each of your attempts to determine whether you are meeting the goal. Set small, specific goals for each practice sentence so you plan for success, not failure. For example, if you are trying to increase resonance, lower your pitch at the end of phrases, and improve projection, choose just one of these components to focus at a time. Close attention and awareness of ‘how it feels’ to produce the new pattern will maximize the effectiveness of your practice sessions.

Reading out loud is an excellent way to practice new patterns. Poetry and plays are especially suited for oral practice, but you can use whatever material you are currently reading. Write up lists of key phrases that you use in a typical day. Read a sentence several times, each time zeroing in on a different goal. For example, the first time just think about getting your mouth open. Next, work on posture and breath support through the very last syllable. Then pay attention to rounding the vowels and really using your lips. Now read it again, putting all three patterns together. Keep a card with practice phrases in your briefcase or purse, or clip one to the visor of your car. Whenever you are waiting in line, stopped at a red light, or walking alone, take the opportunity to practice enhancing your voice patterns. Once a week, get out your tape recorder and practice until you can hear a noticeable improvement.

When you are ready to bring the patterns into the ‘real world,’ choose a particular time during your day when you can give your voice your full attention in a speaking situation. A phone call that you initiate is a good place to practice. If you are unsure, think about the phrases you are likely to use and practice modulating your voice ahead of time. Feel successful just for trying and being focused on your goal for those few minutes. All this hard work will pay off. Before you know it, you will begin to notice improvement. Then, week-by-week, you will get better and better. Congratulations! You are learning to put your best voice forward.

^[1] Taken from Everyday Speaking for All Occasions: How to Express Yourself with Confidence and Ease, by Susan Partnow, Doubleday Direct, c. 1998. You can order this book directly from Susan.

Put Your Best Voice Forward[1]

Stand Tall

Use Pauses Generously and Rate Prudently

Start with the Breath

Hi Su

Put Your Best Voice Forward^[1]