OK, let's be honest.
Are you avoiding speaking up sometimes
because you don't like the sound of your own voice?
Perhaps you even avoid recording a voicemail because you can't stand
listening to yourself back after recording an audio or video.
People are faced with the reality of what they really sound like to others.
And they usually say, oh, my God, do I really sound like that?
The answer is yes.
That's what other people hear when you speak.
But don't panic.
Your speaking voice and sound can change.
As a holistic voice coach with a master's
degree in voice production, I deal with these types of issues all day, every day.
So relax and settle in, because today I'm going to help you
improve the sound of your speaking voice with three affective exercises.
Stay tuned
Q&A Tuesday or your voice questions answered.
Hi, I'm Elisa James,
founder of The Voice of Confidence Public Speaking Course,
and I help people look, feel and sound more confident
and competent on stage, on podcast and on camera.
Today, we're going to dive right
in to improving the sound of your voice so you can feel more confident about the way
you sound when you speak tip number one record and analyze.
The best way to do this is with a voice memo recorder on your phone.
So I want you to grab your phone right now
and grab a pen and a paper also to write notes.
This is what we're going to do.
Step one first, simply read a passage from a book into the phone for one minute.
We're going to analyze that shortly.
Step two this time,
I want you to record again for one minute, but this time just speaking off the cuff.
No preparation.
Just talk about anything that comes to mind for one minute.
Are you ready? Go now. Feel free to pause the video while you're recording, off you go
Why are you still here?
Go, go. Do you recording.
I'll see you in a sec.
Whew, made it, OK.
Now that you've done those two exercises,
you're going to now listen to them both back and write some notes.
The very first place that we're going to start is with the reading passage.
Have a listen to your recording for the following things.
Does your voice sound raspy or croaky?
Or perhaps we canary.
Is a pitch too low or too throaty?
Perhaps it's a little hard to understand or follow.
I want you to listen to it a few times
with your eyes closed and write down then what you hear.
Now, let's listen to the second recording.
This time we're listening for different things like this.
Do you ramble?
Are you using filler words like
one of those a lot, or are you articulate and clear sounding?
Do you sound pleasant or not or worse?
Does it sound boring and flat?
If you need some help with getting quality
feedback on your speaking voice, play the recordings to a friend or
a colleague and ask them to write down some of those descriptives as well.
It's always good to get someone else's opinion as to what you could improve.
Tip number two, playing opposite
our voice is like a musical instrument.
A piano, for example,
has eighty eight keys that make beautiful sounds from high pitches to low pitches.
Our instrument doesn't have quite so many
notes, but we can use at least eight to 12 notes
easily when we speak, which makes our voice sound very interesting.
So if you are only using one or two notes,
it's going to sound very dull and boring when you speak.
So let's play with some opposite's now
to find out some more interesting and engaging ways to speak for you.
For instance,
if you heard in your recording one or two that your pitch was too high pitched,
try the opposite, try a much lower pitch and feel and hear the difference.
And that would make when you speak, if you felt that your voice was too tight
sounding and you were squeezing your sound, I want you to go the other way
and make it more open sounding by adding more air flow.
Try a completely opposite approach of what you heard in your recordings.
Another problem that I hear a lot is
someone sounding a bit too nasaly when they're speaking.
It sounds a little bit too much on the nose and is when it sounds
in the noise, it's going to make you sound like you're a little bit overly posh.
Or maybe you're not interested at all in what the other person is saying.
In that case, you are giving your listener a very bad first impression.
If you're too nasaly,
you want to make the sound more oral, more sounds out of the mouth.
So listen back to your recordings, write your descriptives.
And then I want you to try the exact opposite of what you heard.
Tip number three, Goldilocks airflow. Do you remember the children's story
Goldilocks and the three bears? inside the cottage
There were three bowls of porridge.
One bowl was too hot.
The other one was too cold. But the third one.
With just right
now, this is one of the most important elements of a balanced speaking voice.
It's something that a lot of people don't
really think about when they're speaking, and that's air flow.
Airflow causes the magic in the sound.
And this is what I mean.
If I actually stop the flow completely or
partially and try to hold it back, you'll hear that I get it very squeezed
and tight sound if I'm trying to speak or sing like that.
And believe me, I hear this a lot.
There's literally not enough air flow flowing through the vocal folds.
The more air flow we have flowing through
the vocal folds makes it sound aesthetically pleasing.
If the air is too little, it's not flowing.
The more air flow we have, the more relaxed and pleasing our voice becomes.
Now, this takes a little time in practice, but anyone can use good balanced air flow.
Anyone guaranteed.
If you found this video helpful today, please share with your friends
and subscribe to my channel so you don't miss the next video.
See you there
If you're interested in improving the way that you speak and communicate.
Check out my next video.
How to improve your communication skills.
I look forward to seeing you there