Tonality, Speed, Emphasis, etc.

What makes the difference between one voice and another is the quality of the sounds. The accent. The tone of your voice. The speed at which you speak and whether you vary your speed. Whether you place emphasis on certain words and phrases. The timbre of your voice - rough, gruff, clear, nasal, etc.

Making major changes to your voice is a somewhat specialist affair. Getting a voice coach is one of the best things you can do if you suspect that you have any big issues in this area.

Do you need to change your voice?

As is often the case though, the biggest issue here is not making the adjustments, it's knowing whether you need to make the adjustments or not.

Generally, people who speak with a monotone, nasal and underwhelming voice are not aware they do. And certainly not aware that they have a voice that isn't helping them to get more dates.

One of the reasons for this is that we all sound different in our own heads to how everyone else hears us. The vibrations created by your voice that permeate through your head and into your ears are only heard by you and not in the voice that everyone else hears. This accounts for why, when you listen to a recording of yourself, a lot of people say,

'Do I really sound like that?'

The answer is, 'Yes, you do to everyone else'.

So if you're wondering how your voice really sounds to others, go record yourself. Then listen back to it, looking for whether or not your voice has enough variation in it to make your conversations sound interesting.

Variation is largely what gives a voice interest in a conversation. Of course, you can take it too extremes. You don't want to listen to someone who sporadically swings from low to high volume, gruff to shrill, speeding up and slowing down as they go. The point is that mono-tone, single speed, no emphasis, nasal sounding voices tend to switch most people off from listening to you.

You are not your voice

If you suspect I'm talking about you, remember, the quality of your voice doesn't make you a good or bad person. Sometimes clients have taken it as a personal attack on themselves. We're only talking about the way you project your voice.

Actors, singers and important public figures all go through voice coaching because they realise that the way they sound has a major impact on how they are perceived. You can't switch on the TV these days with out seeing some singing talent show where they have a voice coach or two to assist with their singing voices.

I still have a tendency to speak way too quickly for most people to hear and need to really focus on my pronunciation. As a professional speaker I've had to work really hard at points to get a voice that people will find engaging rather than just annoying.

Actors get training for their speech as do politicians. Margaret Thatcher may have been unpopular for many reasons but one of the reasons was that when she started out as the leader of her party she had a very harsh edge to her voice. She realised this was doing her public image no good and took voice training. Her new found ability to soften her voice was really quite amazing. From harsh edged to soft and quietly spoken in a much more sincere way, she became a lot more able to persuade with her voice, even if some of us didn't agree with her policies.

Making changes to your voice

So if you've listened to your own voice on tape and you think it needs serious work, seek out a voice coach who can help you.

If you can't bring yourself to do that, but you've heard yourself and you just think you need a bit more variation, then get that tape recorder and play around with the elements of your voice that make a difference. Speed variation, volume, tone/pitch, or even just your emphasis on words or phrases. Notice the things that sound better to you on tape and how they sound in your head and keep practicing so that you can shift your voice qualities when you choose to do so in the future.

As a bonus tip, if you're talking with a woman and she starts getting a little higher pitched it generally means she's attracted to you. There's a theory that it's related to a release in oestrogen, but who knows? If a guy is attracted to someone then his voice will generally go deeper, all that testosterone starts to drag his voice down towards his genitals :-).

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