Peter Baker here from Voiceovermasterclass.com If you're dissatisfied with your own voice, here are some pointers that might help you to do something about it.
1 First of all, are you really sure you know how others hear you? Unless you're a professional voice over and listened to your voice played back all the time, many people in life have no idea what they sound like. Maybe the only time they hear themselves is on a family holiday video or something. So make a point of trying to record yourself properly, reading anything from a book or a newspaper. Even if you haven't got professional recording equipment, at least record yourself in a very quiet room, with lots of soft furnishings around to eliminate echo, and record on anything you have, even your smartphone. But the important thing is to playback on some decent quality loudspeakers, and not headphones. So if you have a Bluetooth loudspeaker that's of decent quality. that will be fine, or maybe you have a hifi system you can play your recording back in.
2 Analyse your voice. What is it about your voice that you think could be improved? Look at it from the point of view of actual voice quality - in other words, could it be a little more resonant, is it a bit high and squeaky, what do you think? And then analyse from the point of view of interest for the listener. Do you have a monotone voice, or do you try your best to make your sentences come alive with interesting modulation, where the notes go up and down? Do you stop and start in your vocal delivery? Do you have a stuttering issue, or people are not quite sure when your sentences end? All these are things that can be analysed when you playback your recordings.
3 Read more quality material. So why would reading help you speak better? It's because good speaking is all about high level communication, and it's a highly complex thing us humans do, and we can all always improve our communication techniques. So get into the habit of regularly reading articles or books by excellent writers, people who use the English language well. You don't have to be a bookworm if you're not into longform reading, but try and work out why some writers use a certain form of words or even maybe use new words to you that you should really try to pepper into your own conversation. When you discover a new word, look up its meaning, and write it down somewhere. Now try and put it into a sentence somewhere in conversation with someone that day!
4 Relax and try to get rid of upper body tensions. People who lack confidence, and in particular those who also feel that their voice is annoying or unattractive to others, will tense up their muscles around their neck and this will make their voice lose a lot of resonance and authority, and this upper body tension will make things even worse. So do your best to identify tensed up muscles around your neck and shoulder areas when you are in conversation, and in association with exercises to help voice resonance, such as daily low humming while meditating, your voice will almost immediately sound more attractive without the tensions in your vocal production area holding you back.
5 Finally boost your voice clarity. Clarity is a key part of good communication – many of us are lazy when it comes to even opening our mouths enough, let alone making the tongue and lips work more effectively to produce clearer speech! So daily, really stretch your mouth – pretend you’re chewing a big ball of gum! Then do a few minutes at least of speaking in a over enunciated way, you can read anything you like, it's just taking your mouth and the tongue and the lips to the gym! After ding this, you’ll discover yourself speaking much clearer! If you'd like to know more about how to improve your voice, there are various courses available if you visit www.voiceovermasterclass.com, there's even a free course you can take right now if you like or please subscribe to our membership site where you have access to them all! I hope you found this useful.
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