Voice Training for Clearer Speech: Introduction to the Tarle Speech Voice & Vocal Control Series

What is voice? Voice is the sound we make when we speak. It comes from the air in our lungs and it passes through our vocal cords and it makes the vocal cords vibrate. It is almost like a fingerprint of how we speak. Everyone sounds a little bit different, but there are some commonalities with voice based on your native language. And if your goal is to sound clear, confident, and engaging in English, then let's learn about the voice in English and how it sounds different than your native language. I like to use five terms to describe your voice. Number one is pitch, two is loudness, three is quality, four is resonance, and five is tone. So what is your pitch? Pitch is the high or low of your voice. Some of this is just innate to us. Women tend to have higher pitch and men tend to have lower pitch, but we all have a pitch range that we use and that is like singing high and low notes. We have this range that we use. Loudness is how loud or how soft our voice is. Or it could be like we are yelling to our children, come back! That is loudness, how loud or how soft, the intensity of our speaking. Next, we have quality. This is a little squishier and it's a little harder to define for many people. It's things like smoothness, it could be very nasal, it could be deep, clear. These are words that people would use to describe the quality of someone's voice. Next is resonance and that is where your sound originates from. Does it originate from your chest? Does it originate from your head? Does originate from your nose? Where is your sound starting? Where is it mainly coming from when you are speaking? And then last, we have tone. Many of you message me about tone. This is a little confusing and this can be a friendly tone where I'm using a lot of different pitch changes. They have highs and lows. This can also be that tone that you hear when you're listening to Instagram videos and cooking reels when people speak in this sort of breathy whisper. Or it can be a very loud and direct and assertive tone that you may hear on some podcasts when someone is very passionate about something. So all of these are different things that we do with our voice to be perceived differently. So what are the keys to a good, strong, natural, I'm going to call it American English voice? Pitch is number one. We have a pretty big pitch change compared to some other languages. So my pitch levels really vary. I can start sort of in the middle here, but then I'll go up here if I'm really excited and I might come down here if I am feeling a little more somber. So my pitch range is fairly big. Number two, breath support. Breathing into your chest, filling up your lungs with air, and having a lot of air to push through the vocal cords to have a nice, strong voice. That gets into two things. That gets into projection and tone. When I am speaking, when I am presenting, when I am having a conversation with you, I think about hitting you with my voice. What does that mean? I think about and visualize air coming from my diaphragm and my chest and coming out and touching you so that you can hear me clearly. I'm not shouting. I'm not whispering. I am just directing my airflow towards you. This also gets into resonance. Resonance in English tends to come from your chest. Some other languages, they may speak more from the throat. Some may speak more from the head. Some may have more forward or more back resonance. It just depends. But in English, the resonance tends to come from the chest. That makes us sound a little bit louder as we hit you with our voice when we are projecting. It also allows for that bigger pitch range because I can start lower, but then I can also go higher. This gives me really good breath support so I'm not out of breath when I'm speaking. That allows me to be overall clearer and confident in my speaking. If you are interested in learning more about voice, some ways to improve your overall speaking, and some trends that you may or may not want to adopt, join me for the next few weeks as we explore voice and how to use it to sound clear and confident when you are speaking. Thanks so much everyone for being here. Have a great week and I'll see you soon.