Control Your Tone: Fix Vocal Fry, Whisper, and Upspeak for a Stronger Voice - Vocal Training Series

Over the past few weeks we've been talking about voice, we've talked about breath support, projection, resonance, and pitch. And today we are going to be talking about tone. What is tone of voice? Tone of voice is the emotional quality of a voice. Tone of voice will make us think differently about a speaker, either consciously or subconsciously. So thinking about your tone is important if you want to sound clear and confident in different situations. So let's talk about three different tones of voice that I'm going to say evoke strong emotions in people. We are going to talk about vocal fry, the whisper trend, and all right, let's start with vocal fry. What is vocal fry? It is when you hear this quality where people tend to speak from their throat and it sounds creaky and sometimes it sounds like they're maybe running out of air. That is vocal fry. I find that many women I work with will use vocal fry when they are trying to sound more confident and more like an authority in a group situation. This often happens because they are equating speaking from the throat as the solution when it is more about the resonance coming from the chest. So if you do this vocal fry, this is easy to fix, just shift the resonance down a little bit and keep that breath support strong. So that's really going to fix that. Let's talk about how it's perceived. Again, this evokes strong emotions and I think that there are some people who think of this as being cool or being maybe more friendly or casual. I hear this a lot on social media, on different influencers channels. Some people will perceive it in a more negative way as being maybe lazy or unprofessional or unsure of yourself. So again, you may not be doing this consciously, but people are making some guesses about why you are doing this or what you may be like, which is not true. So changing this tone can be very, very helpful if you want to be perceived a different way. It can also be a problem because you could be really hard to hear if you do this. It's also not good because you are holding all of this tension in your vocal cords. You're going to get tired. You're going to have a sore throat at the end of the day because you are just using your throat muscles and your vocal cords so much. It also makes you really hard to hear in a noisy setting and it sort of reduces your vocal energy so someone may perceive you as less confident. So how do you fix it? We've already talked about this a little bit. You're going to shift your resonance down, really good breath support, deep breath in, good posture, and you are going to speak from the chest, keep the air coming out of the mouth for good vocal projection. You do want to keep tension, enough tension in the vocal cords. You don't want to let it like fall at the end of the sentence so then you have the vocal fry at the end. I hear that happening some of the time. You want to keep everything just sort of perfect, working in synergy. So again, breath support, good resonance, good vocal projection, and keep your vocal cords just the perfect tension so that they don't become floppy at the end and then you revert to the vocal fry. Okay, so that's vocal fry. Let's move on to the next one. This one, I have to say, kind of drives me slightly crazy. It is this whisper trend in videos. I want you to put the cinnamon into the batter. Oh, that smells amazing. This is not how people talk normally and it sounds interesting when maybe you are listening to an Instagram video. Might be a little ASMR for some of you but it's speaking with a lot less vibration. It's speaking with less breath support and it sounds calming. So that's the really good news is it sounds very calming but people may perceive it a little differently while some people may perceive it as like more intimate or relaxing when you're watching a video. In real life conversation, it can make you sound unsure, can make you sound weak or difficult to understand. Using this in a meeting may make you sound like you are a junior member of the team, not someone to be taken seriously. So because you're using this lower volume, lower breath support, your voice may sound thinner and it may give the impression again of a lack of confidence. So you want to sound more confident and more clear in your communication, then you are going to focus on using a normal vocal vibration. It's going to sound like a broken record here. We're going to do the same thing. Good breath support, stand up straight, breathe in deeply, allow the air to continue out of your mouth to touch the people who you are speaking with. Keep just the right amount of tension in your vocal cords and project your voice. Resonance starts in the chest. It does not come from the throat. So again with the vocal fry and this whisper, I think the big mistake for a lot of people that I work with, especially women that I work with, is you are trying to lower your resonance. You know that there's something missing, but you're just missing the mark slightly. Resonance lower and that is going to help a lot. All right, this last one that we are going to end on today is more of a pitch difference and this is up speak. This is when you hear a lot of rising pitch and phrases and sentences and just keeps going up and up. It keeps sounding like questions and you're never falling. This is sounding very unsure and it can happen unconsciously. I have done this in my life where I've used a lot of up speak. I actually do this sometimes when I'm thinking in a video. If you watch my videos, you can see this happening. It's almost as if I'm thinking to myself and I'm asking myself a question in my head and then I subconsciously use up speak to be careful of that. This doesn't just happen to me. This happens to other people as well. So when I'm in a class with people, I actually help them to fall by using a hand gesture because if you use too much up speak, people may think that you are friendly or approachable and informal, but that could be taken like the opposite way and then people will not take you seriously because they think that you lack confidence or you're hesitant or you're unsure. So if you're thinking about this in a job interview and you're using a lot of up speak, someone might think you're not really confident. Maybe they don't want to hire you. So for this one, you need to think about using falling pitch more so that you can sound more confident. It sounds more credible and it sounds like you are more of an authority on a topic, that you really know that topic when you use that falling pitch. That is the perception. It also makes you clear because your pitch is going to remain a little more steady and even and you will be able to use your breath support a little bit more. So again, always going back to the basics, deep breaths in, breathe into and fill up the lungs, use good projection, speak from the chest, your vibration starts here, and then think about falling pitch at the end of a phrase and a sentence. For most of my students, just focusing on that falling pitch is really helpful because so many people really know when to use that rising pitch, that if you just think about using falling pitch more, even if it's not perfect, it's great and it'll be perceived as more confident and clear. So again, we're going back to the basics to avoid these three tone choices of vocal fry and the whisper quality and up speak by going back to basics and again, I'll summarize. Breathe into the chest with the diaphragm, fill up the lungs, speak from the chest, vibration starts in the chest, project your voice by hitting the person that you are listening to with your airflow and use falling pitch at the end of a sentence. Thank you all for being here. I've been loving these voice lessons. Tell me, which tone do you choose to use and why? When does it work for you? These aren't bad. We just need to think about when do you use these versus when do you not use these to get the reaction that you want from your listener. Thanks for being here, everyone. Have an amazing day.