Sugar Blossom

How To Improve Your Voice

Your voice is just as powerful a weapon as your gaze. It can charm and soothe, or irritate and repel. Ideally, your voice should be calm, without putting other people to sleep!

Many of us are afflicted with voices which society, inexplicably deems unpleasant. We are referring especially to shrill, high-pitched voices.

If you’re one of those people, you surely regret having a shrill voice, and do your best to lower it.

Stop! Unless you use your voice at its proper pitch, you’ll dam­age your vocal chords. Accept the voice you were born with. It’s yours, it matches your personality, just like the color of your eyes automati­cally matches your skin color.

Despite the hasty judgments which are simply the result of a snob­bish attitude in society, some high-pitched voices are rich and well modulated, and possess none of the shrill, piercing, strident tones usually associated with them. They can be very pleasant to the ear. On the other hand, a deep voice can be rasping or snarling, inciting a desire in whoever is listening to help the speaker before he or she succumbs in a fit of coughing.

So whether your voice is high or low, don’t be too hasty in judg­ing its merits or faults!

A pleasant and soothing voice is certainly an advantage in life. If you drew up a list of the people you know whom you admire, you’d probably notice that one of the qualities that draws you to them is their voice.

Practice on your voice

Anyone who aspires to a career in theatre must study diction.

But courses in diction are not open only to actors! If you think your voice needs work, sign up for an elementary course in diction. In a short time, you’ll see people turn their heads to listen whenever you start talking in a group. The improvement will be nothing short of miraculous!

You must know that other people don’t hear your voice the same way you do. Therefore, to know exactly what kind of voice you have, you have to tape yourself (using a good quality machine). If you’ve never listened to yourself on tape before, get ready for a little sur­prise. You’ll be hearing your voice as others hear it.

The voice adds certain connotations to a verbal message. It can even transform a message completely. The story goes that Sir Lawrence Olivier was able to make his friends cry by repeating the alphabet!

If you haven’t got the inclination, or the means, to pay for a course in diction, here’s a short exercise that will help you improve the qual­ity of your voice.

How to train your voice

1. Using a tape machine to record your voice, read a text of about 300 words in your mother tongue. (You may also want to work on texts in other languages).

2. Listen to yourself. Take notes, deciding what you don’t like about your voice.

3. Read through the text again, keeping your notes in mind. Cor­rect yourself. Take your time. Try to slow your pace down, and enun­ciate carefully, while sounding natural.

4. After a few days, stop reading the text. Sit down with your microphone every day after work, for example, and talk about your day. Try to stick to the point, without being too dry. Listen to yourself talking, articulate carefully, be natural.

If you do the exercise regularly for a few months, you should notice a significant improvement in your diction and voice quality.

You can send cassettes to your friends instead of writing to them. Tape stories for your children. Learn to dictate your mail. Rest as­sured that an articulate, calm, collected and friendly voice will be of enormous use to you throughout your life.

People will like you, they’ll listen to you and trust you much more easily, if you know how to use your voice to charm them.