How to Speak Louder and Deeper

YouTube subscriber Ann made an inquiry about how she could learn to speak louder and deeper.  Here's a quick run at the basics of breath support.  You need breath support (abs!) to speak louder, and these exercises will usually lead people to speak with a deeper voice, too.

Just like most things, this isn't an instant permanent fix.  It does require that you continue to practice feeling this additional resonance and work in your abs, but it can transform your voice if you work at it!

Let me know if you've got a question!

----------

I had a question from someone, and she was asking, "how do I speak louder and deeper?"

Pitch and "Deepness" Are Not the Same

Well, handily enough, the fix for both of those goes really hand in hand, so that's good. The challenge is that often times if I tell someone just to speak louder, what they'll do is they'll actually go up in pitch, so that may seem like it goes the opposite of what you're after. However going up in pitch doesn't necessarily mean you're losing a deepness. You can go higher in pitch and still hold on to the deep part, part of a longer conversation. But let's get to the specifics about how to speak louder and deeper.

Breath Support

The biggest thing that you need to speak louder is you need breath support, and breath support the short answer for breath support is abs. What's going on with your abs? Your abs have to engage during the out breath for you to be louder. That's the biggest key for loudness.

There's another element that will tend to make you sound louder as well, and that's that deepening of the tone, which will tend to happen when you do breath support.

Actions to Cause Breath Support

So there are tons of things that you can do for breath support, that, and they're all about really engaging your body in a way that's going to engage your abs. The challenge is that sometimes when you engage your abs in that kind of work, your throat will want to close up, so you want to try a few different things to see if one of them gets you to engage and go louder, and usually then deep in the resonance, and, without closing up your throat, without being sort of too much work for you.

So one simple one to try is just standing there and then bend your knees and try saying something like, "When in disgrace with fortune in men's eyes." And then try bending your knees even deeper. "When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes." And then go down so far that your heels actually come up off the floor and try it again. And that sort of thing will usually kick in the breath support get your transversus, which is one of your ab muscles engaged in such a way that you've got more support underneath your voice, and that's what will tend to make you louder. So that's a big element in it.

You can try pressing on the wall, you can try lifting an object that's a little bit heavy - not too terribly heavy - something like a chair. Maybe you can try pressing down on the back of a chair. You can try all kinds of things: simulate a situp or a crunch, go into a plank position, which is the top of a pushup. Anything along that line that gets you to engage in work should help you with this. That doesn't mean that they all will again, make sure that you try a few different ones and see what seems to kick it into gear for you.

One other tip that I'll give you that will tend to help you to make that happen is if you try to do whatever physical effort you're about to do, try to do it in a way that makes your whole body try to take it on at the same moment. So it's not all about your shoulders getting tight or something like that. Try to get your whole body to work simultaneously to do that press on the wall, so that you're working as efficiently and centered as you can, which should engage your abs and usually that deepens the voice.

Opening Across Your Chest

Just in case it doesn't, quick side note is that anything that opens you up across your chest will tend to do that. So you could put your hands out to the side, palms towards the ceiling, and extend your arms all the way out, and then try to say something. "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes." And then move your hands back a little bit. When in disgrace with fortune..." And often times that will open up more chest resonance and deepen the voice as well.

There's also more things that I can go into on really breeding chest resonance vibrations, which are throat resonance really. So anything that opens the throat will tend to bring out that low end of the voice.

I'd suggest you start here with the breath support actions though, like the knee bends and such, and see how far that gets you. Thanks!