The sound and quality of your voice relies on your ability to control your breathing. The best kind of breathing for producing volume and good vocal control is passive breathing.
Passive breathing starts with the exhale. Hold your fist below your navel. Exactly at the spot where your fist is located, isolate and flex only those lower abdominal muscles and squeeze out a little puff of air. Make sure it is not from your waist but below your waist down by your fist and that it is only a little air. Imagine squeezing the air out as if it is a bubble of air from a turkey baster.
Let the air back in again as if you are hollow below the waist. Let your lower abdominal muscles relax as you loosen your jaw and open your throat, as if you were yawning. Keep your throat relaxed and open so that the air can flow in. Visualise about a fistful of air falling directly down to the bottom of your torso.
Now squeeze the air back out again with a light grip from your lower abdominal muscles.
Keep the process going and you are now breathing passively.
Practice breathing this way and you will notice an improvement in your vocal control.
For more detail on other aspects of speaking and presenting see www.youcanspeakwithconfidence.com
Showing posts with label vocal variety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vocal variety. Show all posts
Monday, 27 July 2009
Monday, 13 July 2009
People don't listen
Do you get frustrated because people don't seem to listen to you - even in everyday conversation?
Do other people talk over you or interrupt before you've finished talking?
This can be very frustrating and demoralising if it happens to you all the time. People can be so rude sometimes even if it is unintentional. So why does this happen and how can you make yourself heard?
There can be many reasons why this happens:
* the listener could be over-excited about what THEY have to say on the topic
* perhaps you aren't confident about the subject
* you might be rambling and taking too long to get to the point
* or maybe your voice is too soft and uncertain
Today I'd like to pick up on just the last point there. If your voice is too difficult to hear or understand then your listener can become frustrated and even embarrassed if they have to keep asking you to repeat yourself.
If you're not sure about how you sound to other people then make a recording of your voice and listen back to it. Think about how it might sound to other people and list 3 things that are good about the way you speak and 3 things you'd like to improve.
This is a good starting point as it highlights areas where you need to do some work and also sets in place the foundations of what you already do well.
Do other people talk over you or interrupt before you've finished talking?
This can be very frustrating and demoralising if it happens to you all the time. People can be so rude sometimes even if it is unintentional. So why does this happen and how can you make yourself heard?
There can be many reasons why this happens:
* the listener could be over-excited about what THEY have to say on the topic
* perhaps you aren't confident about the subject
* you might be rambling and taking too long to get to the point
* or maybe your voice is too soft and uncertain
Today I'd like to pick up on just the last point there. If your voice is too difficult to hear or understand then your listener can become frustrated and even embarrassed if they have to keep asking you to repeat yourself.
If you're not sure about how you sound to other people then make a recording of your voice and listen back to it. Think about how it might sound to other people and list 3 things that are good about the way you speak and 3 things you'd like to improve.
This is a good starting point as it highlights areas where you need to do some work and also sets in place the foundations of what you already do well.
Friday, 20 June 2008
Your voice says a lot
When people find out that I help with presentation skills I often get the comment "You couldn't help our diector/chairman/boss could you? He speaks in such a monotone it's boring". This is a common problem. Our voices rise and fall naturally when we speak with passion but something seems to happen when we have to make a presentation.
I don't know if it’s nerves or the formality of the occasion that causes the stilted style of a lot of speakers. Admittedly there are some people who do have a limited range to their vocal variety, even in everyday conversation, but even these people are able to enrich their vocal abilities with a bit of practice.
I think that some people believe that serious topics require a serious voice and that they will lose credibility if they put a bit of emotion into it. This is not the case - your audience wants to know you feel strongly about the topic you’re presenting. It helps them form an emotional bond with you that makes them more likely to listen to what you’re saying even if they don’t necessarily agree with it. They also want to be informed, stimulated and, yes let’s admit it, entertained!
So what can you do about your vocal style?
You obviously need to practice, but your colleagues would find it a bit strange if you suddenly started putting on silly voices or speaking like Laurence Olivier, particularly if that's the complete opposite to your normal style. I’ve found that children make a good audience to choose for practice as they expect to be entertained and they love anything that is silly and makes them laugh.
An ideal time to try out new ways of speaking is the bedtime story for your children or grandchildren. You can afford to be as wild and whacky as possible with the different voices you use for the characters. There is usually a variety of emotions involved in a story so you can also practice how these will sound. This helps you to expand your vocal comfort zone and you get instant feedback!
If you don’t have access to any children you could perhaps find a ‘speaking buddy’. This is someone who also wants to improve their vocal skills. When there are two or more of you in the same boat it is easier to be supportive and to get feedback. You need to agree to support each other in being as outrageous and silly as you can so that you can expand your comfort zone.
A good exercise when working with other adults is ‘emotional expression’. Take a couple of words such as “I’m fine” and take it in turns to say them. Before each person speaks the other one must state the emotion that the speaker is attempting to use and then feed back if they achieved the goal after the words have been spoken. The aim is to use as many different emotions as possible and to work towards fine graduations of emotion so that you can differentiate between angry and annoyed for example.
Another exercise is to stand at opposite ends of a long room and practice shouting at each other and then whispering so that you can still be heard. The trick here is to use your breath control. You actually speak on the out breath so you will need to take in a lot of air to increase volume. Remember to use your stomach to produce volume not your vocal chords.
If you can do all this in a ‘safe’ environment it will seem a lot easier to do more toned down versions when you are in a ‘scary’ environment making a speech.
I don't know if it’s nerves or the formality of the occasion that causes the stilted style of a lot of speakers. Admittedly there are some people who do have a limited range to their vocal variety, even in everyday conversation, but even these people are able to enrich their vocal abilities with a bit of practice.
I think that some people believe that serious topics require a serious voice and that they will lose credibility if they put a bit of emotion into it. This is not the case - your audience wants to know you feel strongly about the topic you’re presenting. It helps them form an emotional bond with you that makes them more likely to listen to what you’re saying even if they don’t necessarily agree with it. They also want to be informed, stimulated and, yes let’s admit it, entertained!
So what can you do about your vocal style?
You obviously need to practice, but your colleagues would find it a bit strange if you suddenly started putting on silly voices or speaking like Laurence Olivier, particularly if that's the complete opposite to your normal style. I’ve found that children make a good audience to choose for practice as they expect to be entertained and they love anything that is silly and makes them laugh.
An ideal time to try out new ways of speaking is the bedtime story for your children or grandchildren. You can afford to be as wild and whacky as possible with the different voices you use for the characters. There is usually a variety of emotions involved in a story so you can also practice how these will sound. This helps you to expand your vocal comfort zone and you get instant feedback!
If you don’t have access to any children you could perhaps find a ‘speaking buddy’. This is someone who also wants to improve their vocal skills. When there are two or more of you in the same boat it is easier to be supportive and to get feedback. You need to agree to support each other in being as outrageous and silly as you can so that you can expand your comfort zone.
A good exercise when working with other adults is ‘emotional expression’. Take a couple of words such as “I’m fine” and take it in turns to say them. Before each person speaks the other one must state the emotion that the speaker is attempting to use and then feed back if they achieved the goal after the words have been spoken. The aim is to use as many different emotions as possible and to work towards fine graduations of emotion so that you can differentiate between angry and annoyed for example.
Another exercise is to stand at opposite ends of a long room and practice shouting at each other and then whispering so that you can still be heard. The trick here is to use your breath control. You actually speak on the out breath so you will need to take in a lot of air to increase volume. Remember to use your stomach to produce volume not your vocal chords.
If you can do all this in a ‘safe’ environment it will seem a lot easier to do more toned down versions when you are in a ‘scary’ environment making a speech.
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