Improving Your Voice

Hi folks,

By way of introduction to posting content here... I thought I'd focus on an area in which I could contribute the most. On developing a more hypnotic and effective speaking / hypnosis voice.

I was surprised to do a search for "voice" and "voice quality" here and not find any number of threads yet. After all, our voice is one primary instrument for delivery of your skills, isn't it?

So... towards that end... I'll begin with a handful of suggestions... that you can use from home, today... to begin improving your voice, now.

(1) Build rhythm into your voice. Possibly the single most hypnotic addition you can make to a normal speaking voice. Become vocally rhythmic, and entrain your listeners. Get your cyber-butts over to this fab free site: http://www.metronomeonline.com/ and begin speaking inside or between the beats. Not with a 'rap' effect of hitting the beats, but letting the beat infuse itself inside of what you're saying.

(2) Learn to pause after each connective word rather than between each phrase, because... it puts people on hold and... you could become curious and yet... not seem to need to know fully while... many things are happening concurrently which means... you listen with more open ears.

That's a good start for a set of beginning assignments. :) Go play.

Best regards,

- Jonathan Altfeld
Mastery InSight Institute of NLP

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Permalink Reply by Synapse on July 13, 2008 at 5:11pm

That's such a cool site! I'm going to have lots of fun with that. Thanks for sharing!

:o)

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Permalink Reply by Richard Nongard - NLPBoard.com on July 13, 2008 at 6:43pm

Jonathan! Great to see you here, I ran accross an old CD of your today on voice, put it in my car this afternoon so I can review it later this week. Great stuff. And that is a cool website....

My voice seems to tire and be much more "gravely" in my old age... any tips on voice fatigue? Seems like I used to be able to speak 8 hours a day at a seminar, three days in a row. Now I get real tired and blow my voice out after 6 hours and two days....

Richard

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Altfeld on July 13, 2008 at 7:24pm

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the kudos on my Voice CDs. I'm guessing you're referring either to my Finding Your Irresistible Voice CD-set, or my Irresistible Voice 2 set. Either way, I'm glad you're still getting value from them.

As to your question about our voices tiring out, with your naturally deep gravelly voice that combines strong timbre (the gravel sound) with deep resonance (the stuff that makes the ladies swoon)... you're particularly susceptible to that gravelly sound taking over if or when your voice tires out. Your voice hits all the extremes, and probably relatively quickly goes from powerfully resonant and hypnotic -- to tired & gravelly.

However all is not lost. I highly recommend glycerin throat/nasal sprays. For the professional speaker, there's nothing better than "Entertainer's Secret." Here's the cheapest place I've found it on a recent 5 minute search.

And if you rush to make a flight to travel to a gig, and you happen to forget your spray -- in a pinch you can use Chloraseptic or the like, which contains glycerin (and unfortunately, a numbing agent). But even the glycerin in Chloraseptic will help protect the moistness of your throat while speaking long hours.

Lastly whenever a throat is especially dry or damaged, I do not drink any alcohol, only water or water-based non-alcoholic drinks like iced-tea or green tea, etc.

Next question I'd have for you is -- what are you doing with your voice on your off days? If you're doing less & less talking on your off days as you get older, that may be the reason for increased voice fatigue. It may not be age-related at all -- it may be just that in the past, you kept your voice more active during off days.

Lastly for the moment, if your voice is indeed getting more tired more quickly at your current age, then, I'd get myself a Countryman (unobtrusive) microphone, and use it everywhere, speaking more softly than I would without a mic.

Hope these ideas help!

- Jonathan

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Permalink Reply by Synapse on July 13, 2008 at 7:29pm

Many years ago, when I used to work in the theatre, the staff there used to regularly use a home-made mixture to help during the tour. Singing night after night for 14 days or more can put a hell of a strain on your voice. I can't remember everything that went into the mixture, but I seem to remember honey being mentioned.

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Altfeld on July 13, 2008 at 7:43pm

Very interesting. I know honey does soothe a tired throat, but it's probably more relevant and useful after stopping speaking. The stickiness of honey might make things worse during speaking, if you have to keep going on. I'm not sure though -- it might be just the ticket.

So if it were me, I'd use glycerin while speaking to keep things moist, and honey afterwards to soothe...

Thanks Synapse! This is turning into a great thread here.

- Jonathan

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Permalink Reply by Richard Nongard - NLPBoard.com on July 13, 2008 at 9:06pm

Your insights will be great to have here, you are one of the most gifted NLP trainers I know...

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Altfeld on July 18, 2008 at 10:44am

Here are some additional suggestions for more voice improvement work.

(1) Get a personal recording system or a PA system. Nothing helps to improve a voice more than amplifying your voice, real-time, louder than you would normally hear your own voice. Some people recommend recording your voice & playing it back, which can help a little, but even the benefits of Recording & later Playback, pale by comparison to the benefits achieved through real-time feedback (whether through headphones or speakers). Speakers are better than headphones, if you have a choice. This real-time amplified feedback loop allows you to make instant changes, test results, and change accordingly. It's the fastest and most impactful way to change your voice on your own.

Is there any downside at all to using this method? Not really! The only downside I can think of is that there will always be a limit to how much you can improve your voice -- when using your own ears. The PA system will give you the most possible juice for self-improvement, using your own ears only. The most 'bang for your buck' when working alone, so to speak. And of course, if you're looking for every ounce of improvement you can get, then you stand to gain immensely from external feedback, preferably from trained ears.

(2) Do voice impressions. Why is it that some people think they can't dramatically change their voice at all, and then occasionally they can do voice impressions that represent significant changes to their voices? Doing impressions is one of the easiest ways to stretch your vocal instrument. I'm known not only for doing a wealth of impressions shockingly well -- but also for training other people HOW to do them well, as well. If we meet somewhere, feel free to test me! Ask me to do my...
Sean Connery, "Doctor Evil" or "Austin Powers", Christopher Walken, Ahnold Schwarzenegger, most of our recent presidents, Yoda, Chewbacca, Kermit, Grover, Alan Arkin, William Shatner, or any of several foreign accents (nearly perfectly). I'm probably forgetting quite a few...

More suggestions to come!

Regards,

- Jonathan Altfeld

P.S. Hey, have you yet done any work with the pausing, and the rhythm work I suggested back on July 13? If not, what's holding you back? I guess you don't want to be sexy...

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Altfeld on July 21, 2008 at 7:08am

Here's another hint at something our voices are capable of doing.

Many of you will be familiar with "dual binaural beat" technology, whereby if a tone is played in one ear, and a different tone is played in the other ear, but they're both played close enough together in time, the brain doesn't consciously hear the difference in tones, but the corpus collossum gets busy with unconscious recognition. Do that repeatedly, with changing tones, rates, differentials in tone, differentials in time, and you can induce a vast array of cognitive shifts & experiences.

I do (& train) something similar that we can do with our voices. I call it the Dual Tone voice -- where we can produce two distinctly different resonant pitch/tones in our voice at the same time. And we can learn to modulate these tones independently. Most people not trained to listen for it would never know you're using a dual tone voice, but they'd get the experience, nonetheless. It's highly trancy.

It's vaguely similar to some of the effects found in tibetan chanting, but taught and practiced completely differently, and can be done conversationally.

Something new to play with today!

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Permalink Reply by Fable Goodman on July 21, 2008 at 9:53am

Now that sounds facinating Jonathan, and I just talking about something similar yesterday with a friend, and hypothesising, wether or not it was possible for a person to get a controled split voice effect by using mongolian chanting techniques.

I'll certainly play with that.

Love and hugs,

fable