To change your voice for a recording or for professional use, you need tools, high-quality microphones, or just a simple voice changing mobile app. But when you want to exercise on how to position your voice the right way, you only need one tool.
Yourself. Ok, and a voice recorder. “How?” you ask? Keep reading to find out. Let’s change your voice without a vocal coach or fancy, expensive, high-end equipment.
- Make a recording
First things first, you need to understand how you sound like. How does your voice sound like to other people? Search a short story or an article on Google and read it out loud. This will enable you to experiment with different talking styles, speaking options, and voice positioning.
Express emotions as you’re reading, color your voice and produce as many sounds as possible. Talk in your newscaster’s voice, your serious voice, your everyday voice, and your phone voice — we all talk differently when speaking on the phone, right?
Then, play your recording.
We know you’re going to hate it, and as stated above, there’s a whole science explaining why this is happening, but this will allow you to keep track of things you love, like, or dislike about your voice.
Keep notes, and you will have a list of things you want to change.
- Speak from different areas
You have a lot of voices. The whole human species does. Typically, there are three types of people: those who talk from the nose, those who talk from the throat, and the few who talk from the diaphragm.
Think of your body like a map. The lower you go, the lower your voice gets. As a result, your voice sounds much deeper when talking from your diaphragm than when talking from the nose. However, you need all of these voices because this will allow you to have a broader range of possibilities.
Close your eyes and visualize your voice moving as you speak. Think of it going higher, and you will instantly notice the pitch changing. Same if you picture it going lower.
Let’s see how you can engage different body areas to change the way you sound:
– To speak from your diaphragm: Touch your abdominal area above your stomach, and take a deep breath. Feel the area filling with air, and pay attention not to puff your chest while inhaling.
– To speak from your throat: Take a deep breath and start talking while pinching your nose. The trick is to speak but not sound like you have a stuffy nose. Keep in mind, though, that you can only do this with vowels. Hold a sustained note while saying “aah,” and you will notice that your voice is coming from your throat.
– To speak from the nose: Now you need to change things a little bit. Take a deep breath from through your mouth, and as you’re speaking, focus on exhaling through your nose and don’t open your mouth wide.
- Imitate someone else’s voice
As we’ve already said, the voice is part of an identity. And as you might remember the color of the hair of a person you admire, you might as well remember their voice. Try to imitate it to see what areas you’re required to use.
But there’s a tiny little secret you need to know. When imitating another person’s voice, go big. Really big. Listen to the voice carefully and try to produce the exact same sound. Mind the pitch, diction, tone, color. Make a complete impression and then slowly start toning it down by incorporating features and characteristics of the voice you like into your actual voice.
- Be theatrical
If you’re wondering how to change your voice, you’re not just wondering how to change the way your voice sounds but also the way you speak. Speaking is a complex process, and it’s not just about the way your voice sounds. It’s also about the way you use your sentences.
So, to change your voice, you need to be more theatrical and add emphasis when you need to tell a story, be kind of silly when you’re telling a joke, or sound deeper (and speak from your diaphragm) when saying something profound.
Listen to TV or radio ads, or even movie trailers, for example. See how the way a voice changes depending on the product or movie that is being advertised. This is what you need to do: act a little bit.