Become A Great Speaker with Powerful Presentation
By Peter
To understand how tension and effort get in the way of correct breathing, you need to know a little about what’s happening inside your body. We’re lucky enough not to have to think about how to make all the parts mesh when we inhale and exhale, but bringing some consciousness into this automatic process will help you step in and make the adjustments you need.
In a nutshell, this is what the essential breathing equipment looks like and how it works: Your lungs rest on your diaphragm, a large muscular sheet that separates the chest cavity from the abdomen. The diaphragm is attached to your spinal column, lower ribs, and breastbone. It naturally arches upward, but when you inhale, it contracts, moving down an inch or two. That little movement sounds insignificant, but it powers the breathing process. It not only gives the lungs more room to expand; it also changes the pressure within the lungs. Imagine that the lungs are a container with a false bottom. When the diaphragm drops, the “false bottom” falls out and air rushes in to fill the vacuum. When the diaphragm relaxes and begins to rise, the air in the lungs becomes more compressed in its smaller space, and it rushes out.
If the lungs are allowed to hang freely in the chest, and if the diaphragm is allowed to drop and rise, you’ll be breathing like a baby, fully and naturally. That’s the goal.
Now you try it. The instructions below are aimed at removing the obstructions that many of us allow to get in the way of deep and easy breathing. I’ll stop to explain each basic step of the process, so you’ll be aware of any “extras” you’re unconsciously adding.
By Peter
I hope you’ll keep in mind that at every point you heard a sound you didn’t like, or noticed a flaw, you were actually listening to the sound of a bad habit. Our work together will be a process of making you conscious of the bad habits and directing the body toward a more natural means of expression. Step-by-step we will exchange bad for good: pressure for ease, tension for relaxation, constriction for freedom, and pain for pleasure. Without the obstacles we’ve inadvertently set in the way of the voice’s free
flow, its real beauty can surface. The careful listening you’ve just done is a crucial foundation. Now follow along with me, and have a bit of faith. Your voice already sounds better. Read more »
By Peter
Singers, I know this is what you’ve been waiting for. Speakers, I’d really like you to stay with me and give this a try. Follow me through these exercises and you’ll gain a wealth of vocal characteristics that will immediately and forever enrich your speaking voice. It’s important for all of us to stop drawing a line between speaking and singing. Remember, your brain thinks they’re almost the same thing, and I hope you’ll regard the work we’ll be doing next as sound exercises. They’re simply vocal exercises attached to musical notes, and they’ll help you, as nothing else can, to make your voice its most resonant and beautiful.
Every student I work with starts here, and students often ask me why I choose such a difficult first test. The answer is that I hate wasting time. I want to cut right to the heart of the situation, with sounds that bring all good and bad immediately to the fore. The reason I’ve chosen the ah sound is that it opens up the back part of your throat and sends a lot of air to the vocal cords. It takes great skill to control that much air, and as you try to do it, you’ll get a quick, vivid picture of the pluses and minuses in your voice. Read more »
By Peter
It’s always disconcerting to hear someone speaking a range that doesn’t seem to suit the person - like a Mike Tyson with a high, childish voice, for example. Our voices naturally want to fall into a particular pitch range as we speak, but often we’ve developed bad habits, or made unconscious choices, that force our voices into uncomfortable areas of the range, the equivalent of a shoe that doesn’t really fit.
How do you know if you’re too high or too low? First try this: Go to the lowest note you can comfortably hit with a certain amount of volume (your rendition of “Ol’ Man River” might help you get there). From that place, say “Hello,” holding out the o sound. If you’re doing it right, you should hear and feel a low, rumbling voice coming out of your mouth. Recognize it? If this is anywhere near the normal sound and placement of your speaking voice, it’s way too low. I’ll show you how to reset it in a more comfortable, and natural, range.
Put your four fingers (no thumb) on your stomach right below your sternum, the area at the top of the stomach where your ribs come together. As you say that drawn-out “hellooooooo,” press with your fingers in a rapid, pulsating motion that pushes your stomach in. As you do this, your voice should jump from the low pitch to a note that is much higher. Concentrate on the higher pitch and try to let go of the low one altogether. Read more »
By Peter
Less common than the qualities we’ve seen so far, but an occasional standout in the sea of troublesome vocal traits, is the guttural, raspy, Louis Armstrong sound. My demonstration of this sound is on track 9 of the CD. Grating and often unpleasant, it’s produced when the forces that produced the breathy voice and the ones that produced the brassy voice come together. For this sound to happen, the larynx must rise and partially block the windpipe. At the same time, a tremendous amount of air must be pushed through the vocal cords, forcing them apart so that only their outer edges vibrate. As the excess air pushes through, it combines with phlegm and natural moisture and begins to rumble. This sound is a cord killer. When I demonstrate it for even a few seconds, I feel my throat start to hurt and the cords beginning to dry and swell.
But if it’s your habitual sound, you probably don’t even notice the constriction of your throat or the irritation in the cords. It’s a sure bet, though, that you have a little trouble with hoarseness and occasionally lose your voice. If you hear even small traces of this quality in your voice when you listen to your tape, pay close attention to the sections of this book that deal with breathing, larynx work, and reducing phlegm. All of them will move you out of the vocal danger zone that the husky voice places you in.
By Peter
What would a band be without its horn section adding bright, concentrated sound? In the mix of vocal qualities, a little bit of brass provides a jolt of energy that can make you memorable. But when your voice is all brass, the effect can be just a wee bit … irritating.
What exactly do I mean by a brassy voice? Say the word brassy. Now say it again, this time holding the aaa sound. When you do that, you’ll probably get a rendition that has too much extra buzz. Listen to track 7 on the CD and you’ll hear my over-the-top demonstration of various brassy renditions that sound as though I’m hitting a buzzer when I speak. It’s the sound of a bratty kid or a person who can’t, or won’t, soften her sharp edges.
Brassiness happens when your vocal cords are vibrating fully, like the long strings of a piano. Under the right circumstances, that kind of vibration is the basis of a wonderfully resonant tone. Here, however, there’s not enough air flow to produce great resonance. Instead, your body is actually swallowing up the richness before it can come out.
Remember that there are two passages in your throat, one for air and one for food. When you swallow, one function of the larynx, the house of the vocal cords, is to rise, blocking the air passage so no food or liquid gets in your lungs. You can feel this happening if you put your finger on your chin and slide it backward down your throat until you get to the first bump, your Adam’s apple, which is the front part of the larynx. As you swallow, you’ll feel how it goes way above your finger and then back down. At certain times that “swallow, rise, block-the-throat” motion may be a lifesaver - none of us needs food in the windpipe - but when it happens at the wrong time, it cuts off the air passage and stops the production of great vocal sounds.
To find out if your larynx is rising too high, closing up your throat as you speak, try this. Put your index finger back on your Adam’s apple and read the next few sentences aloud. If the larynx jumps substantially above your finger, as it did when you swallowed, that’s too much movement. The larynx is allowed to move up and down between one-quarter and one-third of an inch as you speak, but any more than that places it in a blocking position.
A high larynx is one of the most common problems affecting speakers and singers, but it’s very simple to get the larynx to its proper position with a series of low-larynx exercises. Let me give you a quick hint here of how easy it is to lower your larynx. Listen to track 8 on the CD. The exercise I’m doing here is specifically designed to move your larynx down. As you imitate my sounds, you should feel your Adam’s apple move to a very low spot in your neck. You’ll be happy to know that the larynx is one of the parts of the body that has great sense memory. Once it gets used to sitting in its normal position, it stays there, even if you aren’t doing an exercise. And with the larynx in its normal, healthy speaking position, you will have effectively turned down the excess brassiness of your voice.
By Peter
I always used to laugh when I called my friend Jeff at his office and got his answering machine. He’d gotten his secretary to record a short message in breathy, Marilyn Monroe-like tones, and when she said, “Jeff can’t come to the phone right now,” it was easy to imagine that the reason had something to do with what was going on in the bedroom instead of the boardroom.
I became interested in studying the effects of using the breathy side of the voice in junior high, when a friend and I decided to make a documentary at a religious retreat in the mountains. As I interviewed the monks, I was immediately aware of how calming their light, airy voices were. They spoke so softly that the sound of my camera often seemed to drown them out, but they still somehow commanded attention. Read more »
By Peter
Apply the blacksmith’s homely principle when you are speaking. If you feel deeply about your subject you will be able to think of little else. Concentration is a process of distraction from less important matters. It is too late to think about the cut of your coat when once you are upon the platform, so centre your interest on what you are about to say??fill your mind with your speech?material and, like the infilling water in the glass, it will drive out your unsubstantial fears.
Self?consciousness is undue consciousness of self, and, for the purpose of delivery, self is secondary to your subject, not only in the opinion of the audience, but, if you are wise, in your own. To hold any other view is to regard yourself as an exhibit instead of as a messenger with a message worth delivering. Do you remember Elbert Hubbard’s tremendous little tract, “A Message to Garcia”? The youth subordinated himself to the message he bore. So must you, by all the determination you can muster. It is sheer egotism to fill your mind with thoughts of self when a greater thing is there??TRUTH. Say this to yourself sternly, and shame your self?consciousness into quiescence. If the theater caught fire you could rush to the stage and shout directions to the audience without any self?consciousness, for the importance of what you were saying would drive all fear?thoughts out of your mind.
Read more »
By Peter
You may have noticed that as you were reading the text for your progress tape, the quality of your voice varied. Sometimes it felt smooth, and at others the smooth, mellifluous tones seemed to break up into particles that crackled like a creaky old door hinge. I describe this sound as gravelly.
You’ll notice that as I read, using my gravelly voice, I seem to fall into a consistent pattern. I start out strong at the beginning of a phrase, as full of fuel and power as a jet at takeoff. But as I go on, the sound seems to peter out and get harsh. This tonality can actually take on a dark, even sinister, edge. If I use it through the entire course of a sentence, it’s about as appealing as the sound of paper being crumpled. It’s problematic, too, because the process of producing it makes the vocal cords red and swollen. Read more »
By Peter
There are a lot of misconceptions about how and why our voices sound nasal. Many people imagine that too much air being expelled is going into the nose, echoing around and giving their voices a nasal quality. And that’s partly right. As you go higher in the range, a certain amount of air is supposed to be directed below the roof of your mouth, and a certain amount is supposed to go above the soft palate into the sinus area. (Anatomy lesson: Put the tip of your tongue right behind your front teeth and run it over the roof of your mouth. The hard section you feel in the front is the hard palate, and the softer area toward your throat is, you guessed it, the soft palate.)
Some nasal sounds come about when a speaker tightens the back of his or her throat, which keeps the air from freely flowing into the mouth. With that escape route from the body blocked, unnatural amounts of air are directed toward the nasal area. That produces the rather harsh, trebly nasal sound of Jerry Lewis playing the Nutty Professor. Read more »
