How to improve your voice with voice control

What would it be like to develop some voice control to make you sound better?

When you hear yourself on a recording, do you hear the voice you expect, or does it come as a surprise (pleasant or otherwise)? If it’s a pleasant surprise, I’m delighted for you, and hope it gives you confidence you deserve. If on the other hand you are disappointed in the sound you hear, you are not alone! Many of the people we work with express negative reactions to hearing themselves played back. What is crazy is, often they then say they avoid listening to themselves as a result.

So why is it difficult to listen to your own voice?

Firstly, you’re probably over-reacting. Mostly, we are not as wonderful or not as awful as we imagine, and will adjust our perception in some way. Many of us have an idealised idea of how we sound due to the way we hear ourselves within our own head (literally as well as metaphorically). But this can also mean we then judge the actual tone and quality much more harshly than anyone else would.

Secondly, if you want to develop more voice control and sound different in some way, you can – but this is not best achieved by ignoring the feedback available. Yes, it’s a very personal and emotional thing and yes, it’s also very aesthetically subjective. But like any other skill we need feedback from somewhere and it’s very hard to have awareness of one’s voice quality without checking against a recording. A good recording on a decent machine, that is. Once we learn to link our internal calibration and muscle sensation to the sound we want, we can start to use that as a more reliable gauge, but that might take a bit of time to be relied upon.

So if you want to develop voice control and have a wider pallette of tones and colour in your voice, or indeed to change some sounds, don’t be afraid to listen to voices (or to recordings of voices) you enjoy, and borrow from them. See what you need to do to sound smoother, livelier, more tuneful, and remember that feeling. Use the voice exercises we have already suggested, particularly ‘Making people want to listen’ Part 3. Also keep your voice oiled with our easy audio download too (just sign up on the right), and play about.

5 Voice Tips to develop resonance, which will benefit from listening back!

1. Sing a sentence or line of text on one note – like chanting – and then go straight on to speaking it, without pulling back or topping up your breath in between. Try and keep the spoken words in more or less the same pitch as the ‘sung’ words. You are listening out for a smooth supported unbroken line, and a rounded sound.

2. Repeat on different pitches.

3. Read poetry, great speeches, newspaper articles to yourself and listen back.

4. Try different ‘performances’.

5. Be prepared to be playful. Nothing so kills the voice as taking ourselves too seriously!

Would you like to develop voice control?

Get in touch and find out what Voice Ltd can do to help you.

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