- How you use your voice can change your life

 The Power to Persuade can create unlimited success. Our voice is the engine of that success. We can use it to create empires or a successful life, or to complain and explain why we are victims. Our tone of voice is very often a reflection of how we view the world. If we’re nervous and up tight the voice often has an edge and puts people off. Whether a person wants to be a voice over artist or more successful in their own profession it is extremely important to look for the good or opportunity in all situations and be patient. The things we say to ourselves control our mood and tone of voice. It is useless to do voice exercises to improve how we sound if we are saying negative things to ourselves because the voice will reflect the sound of mistrust that is in our minds.

We want to be optimistic, but not delusional of course. It’s important to use our voice to bring a positive experience to other people; To work at being pleasant. Then we notice that we have positive experiences ourselves. We really do attract and create the situations we are in. All of this is a process and takes time.

It is perfectly natural to say things like, “why can’t I do that,” “I wonder how to do that”, oh I could never do that.”

In order to develop greater ability to persuade people we must practice and be patient. Learning to allow for process is one of the most important things that we can practice in in our lives. Process is how the earth was made. Process is how math, science and art achieve all their great accomplishments and inspirations.

If we don’t allow process because of impatience we are literally making the choice to NOT understand because we have interrupted the process of building up familiarity, understanding and skill. Voiceover artists, teachers, sales people and everyone can become more persuasive and successful as we improve how we speak to others and the things we say to ourselves.

Very Real Sounding Is Often Very Dull. It Still Has to be Compelling.

People will rightfully tell you that you have to sound more real, more like the person next door. Well of course that makes sense. The person directing the project wants the voiceover artist to sound sincere and honest and authentic. But there is a funny flip side to all of this. I hear a complaint from many pros that I coach, that people will say to them... “No its gotta sound more real!” and then they tell me about their frustration that when they try and sound more real, they then often get criticized for sounding lackadaisical or uninspired, or unenthusiastic about the topic.

So what the heck is going on? On the one hand a director says be more real, more conversational, on the other hand they then seem to be complaining about the tone of voice when the person follows the directions that are given.

The answer is this: Often when a person backs off to become more conversational or more real, the energy drops so much that the pace is a little too slow... the cadence looses its bounce... and the melody a little too flat...

Because it’s a wholesale drop in energy it really just does sound unenthusiastic. So it seems like the read has lost all of its life.

When a person tries to be more conversational, not hard sell or not announcery, the effort should focus on smoothing out the delivery and tumbling the speech more so it feels a bit more like a stream of ideas. 

This makes the energy in the vowels and consonants more even and that is exactly what makes us sound MORE REAL AND CONVERSATIONAL.

When we try and become more conversational we are often just backing off on the energy we are using. This usually flattens the amount of rise and fall in our voices, which is what happens when we aren’t passionate about something. 

So the proper approach is to talk at low levels but to maintain a slight urgency. There is a greater rise and fall in the melodies we use when we are excited about a product or story. This will usually restore the rise and fall of the voice.