Translator: Sanja Srbljinović Čuček Reviewer: Emma Gon
I was born singing.
When I was a little, little child,
if ever I was sad,
I would just open out my mouth
and bust out a tune,
and then I would feel better.
I didn't understand all of the science,
the things that I know now,
I only knew that singing made me feel better.
When I was 13,
I finally convinced my parents to allow me to go and study voice
with the most famous voice teacher in all of Los Angeles,
and that was an incredible experience.
And when I was 16,
he suddenly decided to leave,
to go to Banff and teach a master class.
And he said, "Roger,
do you want to come over after school and teach a few lessons?"
And I said, "Sure?!"
So I show up after school,
and my first student is Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.
(Laughter)
And then supergroups,
like the Jacksons
and Earth, Wind and Fire,
and Chicago.
And as you can imagine,
that was very challenging.
(Laughter)
But I realized, even at 16,
that I have the ability to change people's voices for the better.
And I loved it.
And I still love it.
When you help someone find their real authentic voice,
they are overcome with unimaginable joy.
And so the fact that I get to be a part of that transformation,
on a day-to-day basis,
makes me grateful, every day, all day.
With your permission,
I would like to share with you some of the insights that I've learned
over 30 years of working with voices;
offering you the same techniques
that I've taught some of my superstar clients,
and showing you how those ideas actually apply directly
to what you and I need to know.
First,
your voice is the most powerful communication tool that you possess,
and yet many of you are trapped behind voices
that don't even begin to convey or showcase
the very best of who you are.
Second,
I realized that there is really no difference
between singing and speaking,
and once you know that your voice is a musical instrument,
that needs to change the whole game.
And third,
I say that all speaking is public speaking.
So you're responsible for the sounds that come out of your mouth
whether you're talking to one person at the market
or whether you're talking to 1400 amazing people here at TEDxBend.
(Cheers and Applause)
Really.
Let me separate fact from fiction
and help you find the voice that connects you to people
and moves them emotionally when you speak.
Here are some things that you might not know.
For example,
your voice was not designed for you.
I believe - truly! -
I believe that it is something we are supposed to learn,
and then it's a gift that we give away.
So, follow me on this:
If I want to talk to myself,
I do not have to open my mouth.
I don't have to let sound come out!
I'm going to tell myself a joke right now.
(Laughter)
Hah!
That was a funny joke!
But when you do open your mouth,
sound travels away from you in the form of invisible sound waves.
And when those sound waves
hit the bodies of the people that are listening to me,
their brains interpret those sound waves
into thoughts and emotions and memories.
It might surprise you to understand, then,
that your voice, going out that way,
is to make them hear you,
to make them feel something.
Your voice is a gift for them.
Do you know why people have come to me for 30 years
- the number one reason?
It's because they're loosing their voices.
They want to sing or speak all day and night,
and they are getting hoarse.
So if that's anyone of your problems here,
let me fix that right now.
Here's why it's happening:
You're breathing in through your mouth!
We are born supposed to breathe in through the nose.
There are filters in the nose called turbinates,
and when you breathe in through the nose,
the air becomes moist
so it doesn't dry out your throat and your vocal cords.
Try this with me.
When I say "Go,"
I want you to open your mouth and to take a nice slow breath in.
Go!
Do you feel how drying that is?
It made some people want to cough.
Now, close your mouth and take a breath in through your nose.
No dryness.
(Laughter)
Just go back to the way you were born!
Breathe in through your nose,
and you'll never get hoarse again.
Now -
It may also surprise you to understand
that people are consumed
with thinking that if they get a ton of air into their body,
that that'll somehow make them great speakers,
that if you fill your lungs filled with air,
then surely what comes out is going to be amazing.
But that's not the case.
Get all the air you want into your lungs,
that doesn't make you a great communicator.
What is more important is to learn how to send air out of your mouth.
Why?
Because all of your beautiful sound is riding out on that air,
trying to get to the people as your gift.
So let me show you how to do that.
Its called diaphragmatic breathing.
And though you may say, "Roger,
I've heard of diaphragmatic breathing."
Let me show you specifically how to use diaphragmatic breathing
to finally get control over volume and projection.
So, everybody, if they would just sit up straight in their chairs,
with their chest up and their shoulders back and down.
Posture matters, by the way.
Because we live in a world where people are just slumping over all the time.
And when you round over your shoulders like that,
you're blocking air into the lungs
because your ribcage is in the way.
So, chest up, shoulders back and down.
I want you to learn to breathe in through your nose,
like I just showed you,
but then to pretend that you have a balloon in your abdomen.
I promise you won't look fat.
A balloon in your abdomen.
Breathe in through your nose,
you fill up that balloon,
and then, when you exhale,
you let your abdomen come back in.
Try this with me,
and I'm going to give you some words to say.
I want you to say,
"Roger only wants me to speak while my abdomen is coming back in."
Do it! Breathe in through your nose,
pretend you have a balloon,
"Roger only wants me to speak while my stomach is coming back in."
If you did that,
you'd be sending the perfect amount of air out of your lungs
to the vocal cords and then out of your body,
and it really would be a gift.
But most of you are holding your stomach tight,
and then you're basically holding your breath!
So you'll never find the right volume.
You'll never find the right projection.
You'll never get the right tone.
OK, next.
A myth: The words matter.
People are thinking that if they have the right words to say,
then that person would marry me or that person would give me a job.
But the words hardly matter at all.
Decades ago, Stanford researchers already proved this.
They said that the words you use only count for about 7%
of whether or not anyone believes a single thing that you say.
(Laughter)
But that over 90 % of whether anyone connects with you,
whether they like you enough to listen to you,
has to do with the sounds that come out of your mouth,
aside from the words!
The pitch, pace, tone, melody and volume,
and what you're doing with your body while you're making those sounds.
So you can have all the perfect words,
right sitting there on the tip of your tongue,
but nobody's going to remember what you said.
But they may remember how you made them feel.
The theme of this TEDxBend conference is Dream Forward,
so let me make a little illustration.
Imagine, if Mike Tyson, with his high pitched, feminine voice,
had delivered Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech,
(Laughter)
"I have a dream!"
(Laughter)
I really bet that a lot less people would have marched on Washington.
(Laughter)
So, let's be serious.
Is it possible, that your voice is getting in the way of your dreams?
Is it even possible that your voice might be ruining your life?
(Laughter)
I know that your voice is a musical instrument.
So what kind of music are you actually speaking?
A lot of people speak on the same note, over and over and over,
this is called monotone.
And you're saying, "Roger, I would never do that.
I never speak on the same note, over and over."
(Laughter)
Except when you record yourself and listen back,
that's exactly what you do.
And some of you are even more bold than that,
you like throwing a note here and there: "I'm bored, I'm bored, ... Hey!"
And then you go back to where you're safe.
(Laughter)
But when you speak on the same note over and over again,
the listeners think they know what you're going to sound like.
When they think they know what you will sound like,
they think they know what you will say!
Then they disconnect from you
because they figure they're way smarter than you.
(Laughter)
So you have to mix it up: You have to have melody!
Do you know that most people hate -
and I use that word seriously -
hate the sound of their own voices when they hear it back, recorded?
When's the last time any of you listened to your outgoing greeting on your phone?
Do you like the way that that sounds?
Because most people don't.
And yet that voice that you do not like
(Laughter)
is what everybody hears.
(Laughter)
Not only on the phone.
When you just meet someone - that's the voice!
If you don't like it,
what in the world makes you think that they like it any more than you do?
(Laughter)
So let me fix your voicemail message right now
and give you a hint about melody in general.
We are apologizing for our names!
We record this:
"Hi, this is Roger Love."
And we go down on Love!
"Hi, this is Roger Love."
So we go down two ways:
We go down in volume,
and then we go down in melody -
it's a lower pitch.
So what is that giving the impression of?
I really don't like my name.
(Laughter)
I don't even believe in love.
(Laughter)
And, worse than that: I'm so sad.
(Laughter)
Stop apologizing!
At the very least, stay on the same note:
"Hi, this is Roger Love!" Happy!
"Hi, this is Roger Love!"
Why do you want to make people sad?
(Laughter)
Change your voicemail greeting tonight,
and watch how many more people leave you positive messages.
And let those messages turn into relationships and business deals.
It will happen!
Monotone. We talked about that.
But I want to help you figure out what melodies you should be using.
It's really, really simple.
There's only three directions you should go with melody.
I can be walking up the stairs.
Here I am walking up the stairs, from a low note to a higher note.
Now I'm going to walk down the stairs,
and now I'm going to stay on the landing.
Now most of you are really good at staying on the landing,
so you only have to work on "I'm going to walk up the stairs."
(Laughter)
Well, I'm going to walk down the stairs.
When you go from a low note to a high note,
that's called an ascending scale, and it makes people happy.
"I really love golf."
As opposed to, "I really love golf."
(Laughter)
"I love you so much!"
"I love you so much."
(Laughter)
My name is Eeyore.
(Laughter)
All I'm asking you to do is to get better at walking up the steps.
Spend more time walking up the steps
because it makes people happy!
Spend less time walking down the steps
because it makes people sad,
and spend a whole lot less time standing on the landing
because you're boring the heck out of everybody you're talking to.
(Laughter)
Now that you know that your voice is a musical instrument,
and it is the most powerful communication tool that you possess,
you need to think about it and use it differently.
Together, we should be breaking down borders
and resolving conflicts
and connecting to people all over the planet
who don't even speak the same languages that we do.
I really am trying to make the world a better place,
one voice at the time.
Will you join me and work to change your voice,
and then let that change change your life,
and then let that change potentially change the world.
Thank you so much for listening.
(Cheering)
(Applause)