The Sound of Your VoiceThe Sound of Your Voice

In addition to your appearance and your body language,the other major factor which influences your impact is your voice tonality. If you want to boost your impact,master your voice tonality.

What specifically do I mean by voice tonality?

There are seven components of vocal impact:

1. Frequency / Pitch

• How high or low is the pitch of your voice?
• Are you a man with a woman’s voice or a woman with a man’s voice?!

2. Tempo / Speed

• How fast or slow do you speak?
• Are you a ponderous,slow talker,or rapid-fire,barely stopping for a breath?!

3. Timbre / Quality

• What’s the overall quality or resonance of your voice?
• Is it clipped and clear or smooth and resonant?
• Is it nasal,gravelly,brassy,breathy or husky?!

4. Volume / Loudness

• How loudly or softly do you speak?
• Do people struggle to hear you,or protest “There’s no need to shout”?!

5. Origin

• Which part of the body does your voice seem to come from?
• Clearly the sound ends up coming out of the mouth,but as you’re speaking,from what zone within your body does your voice seem to originate –stomach,heart or head?

6. Rhythm

• Does your voice flow melodically with a natural rhythm,or is it halting,monotone,monosyllabic and staccato?
• How much does your voice tonality vary –do you vary pitch,tempo,timbre,volume etc to maintain interest and/or rapport,or are the above factors the same throughout your communication?

7. Content chunks

• How much do you say between breaths?
• Do you break up your sentences into small pieces,or tend to run one sentence into another before eventually taking a pause?

Which factors you choose to work on will depend on the sound of your voice,and what your voice currently says about you. Two actions you can take immediately to boost your vocal impact are:

1. Record yourself (on your Mac/PC or Phone or Voice recorder),be honest about how you sound –as if you were listening to someone else for the first time –and then practice out loud how you would like to sound instead.
2. Notice the tone of voice of people around you. Do they have impact? What do you like? What don’t you like?

In Wright Time this week I’ll be featuring “How to get people to fall in love with your voice”which will include some specific practical steps to move you towards the voice of your dreams.

“A voice is a human gift;it should be cherished and used,to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.”Margaret Atwood

Martin

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