How to improve the talking voice

porte23

Hello,

I was wondering if there is a way to use the singing exercises to improve the talking voice?

The thing is that I have terrible usage of my talking voice and by applying this course knowledge I have come to realize the damage I’m doing to my vocal system during the day.

For example when I speak I just automatically start tensing muscles, closing the throat, run out of air very quickly, etc. and even people don’t seem to understand clearly what I say. Is so frustrating! By the time I get home at night the throat is tensed, hurting and tired as hell.

Maybe is not a common situation but for me it would be such an incredible thing to improve my talking voice. Wish my talking voice would flow casually as I see people do it so nicely and effortless... like Ken on his videos!

Anyway, this program ABSOLUTELY F****** ROCKS!!!! When I wake up on weekends and the throat is relaxed, damn! This program has helped me sing like I NEVER thought I could!!!! I’m soooo thankful I found this treasure!!

Thanks in advance for any suggestion you might have.

Big hugs everyone! Keep rocking!

highmtn

Diaphragmatic support can and should be used when speaking, so that you can limit the amount of air and pressure you apply to your speaking voice. Likewise, when you have gotten to Volume 3 and learn to use glottal compression to cut back the air on your singing voice, you can learn to do the same thing with your speaking voice. And if you wear out your voice less with speaking, it will be in better shape when it's time to sing. Likewise at sporting events. Don't yell without regard for blowing out your voice. Learn to treat your voice like something you want to last and last for a long, long time. Yelling at a ballgame on Thursday can give you problems at your gig on Friday and Saturday.

[Deleted User]

I had the same problem in broadcast school. Everytime I had to speak on camera I would tense up, and get nervous. People couldnt hear what I was saying, etc.........
Anyway, one of my instructors gave me a golden piece of advice, and that advice is also mentioned and used in this course. Open your mouth more when you speak. That was it, and it works like a charm. Now people tell me to shut up all the time lol.

On a side note, I also studied from a book called "30 days to better english".

Peace, Tony

bentk

Speaking too loudly is definitely a problem. Unless you know that you don't have to sing for days, you could shout i guess. (perhaps during sports, party etc.) but i would still advise to not over-do it, or not do that at all. For me, it feels terrible to have this low, deep and broken voice the next day!

I guess you just need the shouting volume now and then to get your message across...

All the best,

Ben

porte23

First of all, thank you all for the great advice.

After I read you highmtn I started to pay more attention to my diaphragmatic support and I can now definitely confirm the lack of clarity and voice reach to that area. Is very interesting how I get to know more and more about my voice instrument. I will continue to do the program so I can enhance the diaphragmatic support.

Thanks videoace! I've been exploring with opening more the mouth and articulating my words. Especially with books related to the one you suggested. I can see great improvement with that! Feels funny as I'm not used to opening the mouth so much (frequency wise), but when I try it in front of the mirror it doesn't look THAT weird. I guess I will get more use to it if I continue to do so. Now I can even see it in some sports narrators when they move their mouth and is true they use their lips and mouth opening constantly. I guess this allows them to be more clear with the sound of every word they say. This was a big eye opener videoace, thanks again!

About talking too loud bentk I think you were right on spot. I'm now trying to speak less loud and really really concentrate on relaxing my throat, neck, tongue and anything I can! haha Is amazing all the tension I do when I (unconsciously) try to speak up. Interestingly, speaking "more softly" is allowing me to sound bigger and louder! Is crazy! I suppose I'm taking advantage of the amplifiers Ken talks about and I need a whole less air. That finding completely blew me away!

Thank you all you guys for sharing this golden pieces of advice. They meant sooo much to me. I will continue to work on my voice as it will incredibly change my life. No exaggeration.

Moftem

That's good advice indeed. @porte23, how is your talking voice doing? I still need to teach myself to use the principles I learn here for avoiding blowing my voice when I go to parties (which is very rare).

porte23

Hi Moftem, I was actually coming to write an update and saw your posting.

Well you see my case seems somewhat special. After trying the course and see great improvement I got stuck somehow. Didn't know why or what I was doing wrong. The advise given in this post was really great and it helped me greatly as well.

Didn’t actually went all the way to the global compression part because I clearly felt I was not ready to push my voice in ANY direction. I was stuck. Trying hard and only getting hurt while simply speaking.

But one day in my continuous search, ended up asking an otolaryngologist in an ear consultation! just out of curiosity you know. And bam! She has this long and cool throat camera and was able to see my vocal chords and tell me EXACTLY my problem!!! I couldn’t believe it! Eureka! I was having a TERRIBLE voice usage and during the day I tensed so much the throat muscles I could barely say anything at night and had no will or lust to just do anything that involved sound with my mouth! Very sad actually now that I see it hahah

Anyway, she told me to do some speech therapy and that fixed it! Which in my case it was just some very specific exercises I needed to my diagnosed condition.

So I don’t go too lengthy I will summarize it as: I should’ve first make sure I had a good use of my voice, then boost with nitro my healthy voice with this program. Don’t get me wrong as this program also corrects many things of the voice usage! I mean, even with my terrible voice usage the program did absolute wonders I cannot still believe.

If you have a fairly normal usage of your voice, which is probably the case, you might not need that last piece of advice. Just go on and enjoy the program, but do EVERY SINGLE THING Ken says. My speech therapist had me do the lip roll and teached me good posture as Ken did! Things that are commonly given for granted or thought as “not so important”. My GOD they are DAMN important”. I cannot thank Ken enough for putting this program together. For what I’ve seen in my speech therapy, Ken is a f*** voice expert beast!

So in my case I needed someone to tell me what I was doing wrong because I was never going to find out by myself. It was invisible to my sensations and knowledge. What I had was something only a professional could detect, guide and correct with clear and total certainty at the very moment I screwed up. Which was a lot by the way.

Ken offers one-on-one coaching so I would recommend that as a feedback measure if you have more doubts.

In my case I chose my local speech therapist due to 2 main reasons. 1. I preferred my therapist in my native language so I can improve my language expressions, modulations, and could better understand the therapists instructions (as English is my second language) 2. The speech therapy is included in my health insurance so I didn’t had to pay for it as it was diagnosed by the otolaryngologist.

Ok, hope I shared some light in your quest my friend. I haven’t got to the part where I speak louder, but that is not my concern for the moment. Im polishing my normal speaking voice and then I will continue with singing and glotal compression. I have the certainty it will be a whole lot more enjoyable and be able to reach there really fast with Ken techniques.

So keep rocking!.. or jazzing!... or... mmh whatever you enjoy! Haha Go!!

You are still reading this post? Go do some voice training! Hahah come on, go, go... that voice is not going to train itself

Peace