VOICE

Your Connection with Your Sound & Self Expression

Your voice can be a powerful and direct channel of information – the words you speak can convey stories, relay facts and opinions, report events, persuade, enlighten, and advise. On this level alone, it is important to have good command of your vocal skills, if only to able to convey this information clearly and audibly, so that it can be received effectively by your audience.

However, your voice is capable of conveying information in a number of other ways and on a number of different levels, all of which converge to make having strong vocal skills that much more important. First, your voice can also be very much an indirect channel of information: your tone and expression (or lack thereof) can indicate the relative importance of the information, its level of urgency, its reliability, its potential impact on the listener, etc., as well as your own feelings and attitudes towards it.

Your voice can also be a very good direct and indirect channel of information (whether real or merely perceived) about you. Your audience will make conscious and unconscious assessments of your health, your energy, your comfort vs. anxiety levels, your familiarity with your material, etc., via your voice alone. They can also, however, make conscious or unconscious judgments of your likeability, your intelligence, your competence, expertise, experience, skill, strength, credibility, leadership ability, authenticity, etc., this very same way.

For these reasons, looking closely at and working on our voices can make us feel very exposed and vulnerable; to do so is also to look closely at ourselves, and the ways others may perceive us. On the other hand, however, doing this work can be immensely empowering. It improves our self-knowledge and allows us to replace fears and insecurities with skills.

In doing voice work, you can expect to work on and develop:

Resonance (your vocal quality or ‘tone’)
Vocal Dynamics & ‘Expressivity’
Vocal Power & ‘Projection’
Articulation & Clarity of Speech

And you can also expect to discover:

Useful exercises for warming up the voice
Vocal ‘hacks’ to help you be heard effectively in any space
Important tips for protecting your voice and keeping it healthy for the long-term