Find and Power Your Authentic Voice – Lesson 2 – Pitch
Are you aware of your vocal range, your pitch?
How many times have you struggled to stay attentive while listening to a presenter, teacher or colleague with a single-note monotonous voice? On the other hand how varied is your voice? How wide-awake are your audiences when you speak? How actively engaged are your audiences in your presentation?
We come into this world with the capability to have three voices and the mechanisms to control and choose which voice to use. A human voice has the capabilities of 36 pitches. Think of pitch as a black or white key on the piano. On the other hand, not everyone can take advantage of that many pitches. Most people are capable of 10 to 15 different pitches.
Let’s keep it simple and start with the basic three voices we are capable of. There’s the head voice —the voice with a high pitch. Then there’s the chest voice —the voice with a deep pitch. Finally there is the middle voice—the throat voice in between the head voice and the chest voice.
What’s your voice capability?
How frequently would you eat at a restaurant if it served the exact same meal all day long every day? Continual research shows that on average people communicate with only 3 to 4 different pitches. That’s like painting with one color. Or singing a song with only one note.
Here’s a way of reaching inside your vocal toolbox to power your voice by increasing the number of pitches when you speak.
Use a real piano keyboard or a piano app on your digital device. Practice saying or singing scales as you play up and down the keyboard reaching for different pitches. Practice do, re, me, fa, so, la, ti do. Practice using the short vowel sounds for a (ah), e (eh), i (ih), o (oh), u (uh). Record yourself when you start. With a daily 20 minute practice you will hear the results when you record yourself in three to four weeks.
Here is a handy ‘listen or watch’ 2 minute practice clip.
Remember, as pointed out in Lesson 1, – no breath, no voice.
Practice, Practice, Practice.
As a coach, trainer and consultant, Larry Blumsack partners with people and organizations on the move and those already there to accelerate their communication, presentation and speaking skills to be on par with their ambition. Through one-on-one coaching and group training Larry helps leaders and aspiring leaders elevate their presence and communication skills to influence more people, sell more products-services-ideas and inspire others more successfully than they ever imagined.
Larry is the bestselling author of Face-to-Face is The Ultimate Social Media and founder of Zoka Institute and Zoka Training®. Zoka Training® — Mind/Voice/Body/Mindfulness in sync — is the result of Larry’s 45 years as a coach, acting teacher, actor, voice-over artist, theater and TV director/producer, radio & TV commentator and show host, speaker, trainer, serial entrepreneur, and syndicated columnist. Larry was a founding member of the theater department at Northeastern University.
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