3 Simple Voice Tweaks To Captivate Anyone

Neodorgrass Tyson is amazing because he's an astrophysicist and people love to hear him speak. And if you think back to your high school science class and how bored you probably found yourself, that is a true testament to his skill as a speaker. Today we're going to analyze his most powerful tools so that you can learn how to make totally mundane topics extremely fascinating. And if you're the type of person who struggles to make even really interesting stories, captivating this will help too. Just a reminder, if you're a long time viewer of Charisma on Command, you might have seen a similar video. We're actually updating the old ones in a Throwback Thursday series to make those old videos more punchy. So let's go ahead and get started by breaking down Neil DeGrasse Tyson's voice.

What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the universe? The most astounding fact?

The first thing to note is that Neil DeGrasse Tyson has a beautiful, silky smooth baritone voice. And there's part of this that is impossible to copy. But everyone can learn to create a lower and more resonant tone depending on how they train themselves to breathe and speak deeper. More resonant tones come from breathing deep and contracting the diaphragm when you produce sound. And that means that the expansion occurs in your belly and low back, rather in your chest when you breathe in. So let me show you what the two sounds sound like. This is what it sounds like when I breathe deep and speak from my diaphragm. This is what it sounds like when I breathe shallow and contract more from my throat. So the slower you speak, the deeper you breathe, the lower your voice is going to sound. And you'll notice that at the beginning of my videos, mine tends to get pinched because I speak so fast for the YouTube audience to try to make people people stay. That makes my breath more shallow and my voice higher pitched. Anyways, I'm going to link to a good exercise below that's going to help you condition your voice. But for now, let's continue with how Neil uses silence to create tension.

The most astounding fact is the knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on earth, the atoms that make up the human body, are traceable to the crucibles.

So you're going to notice two big things here. One, the first thing is how that silence gets you hanging because he places it before completing his thoughts. And this gets you leaning forward in a way, saying, go on, go on. It is fantastic for capturing Attention. Now, I don't use it a whole lot on YouTube because clicking away here on YouTube is a lot easier than walking away from someone in real life. And attention spans here are very, very short. But in your normal speech, play around with slowing your cadence down and see if that gets people listening more attentively. The second thing here is his range. So let's listen again to that last.

Phrase are traceable to the Crucibles.

The Crucibles has such a breathy quality. This is something you'll start to see a lot from Neil. He has incredible vocal range. Now, I don't just mean that in terms of pitch, but I mean that in terms of style. He shouts, he speeds up, he emphasizes certain syllables and he whispers. In fact, you'll notice that when someone has your full attention, builds it up to a big point and then whispers, it drags you in even more. You can see in the next part how he actually plays with these pauses. And sometimes he even rushes through the end of a sentence. He actually blows right by periods, as he does in this next part when he says these stars that cooked light.

Elements into heavy elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars, the high mass ones among.

Them, you see that he actually shifts the speed and the rhythm. He doesn't always pause after his periods and he doesn't always connect words right next to one another. Sometimes he adds a giant pause in the middle of a sentence that makes his speech much more interesting. So just watch now how he plays with the cadence. The rhythm and the style in this.

Next clip went unstable in their later years. They collapsed and then exploded, scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy. Guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become part of gas clouds.

That people talk about speaking in monotone. And that's when you talk like this the whole time. It's the same tone. It puts people to sleep. What they don't realize is that you don't want to talk in mono anything. You don't want to talk mono speed and always talk at the same pace. You don't want to be mono rhythm them and pause only at commas and periods. And you definitely don't want to be mono style. You want to experiment with breathiness and punctuated syllables. That variety is what makes a good style. Now, I can't play this entire clip, but you get the idea of how a mix of these different elements is going to create Neil Degrasse Tyson's unique style and unique voice. But you shouldn't just copy his style. You should simply pay attention to how he uses each of those elements for different effects. Think of it kind of as colors on a palette. Your own speaking style will be determined by how you use those different colors. You just want to make sure that you have access to the whole palette. So alter the speed, alter the tone, alter the rhythm, alter the volume, alter the breathiness and the style. Each of those, when compounded and added together, is going to give you 10 times more expressiveness in your voice and help you to command the attention of rooms full of people, no matter what you're talking about. Anyways, I hope that you guys have enjoyed this throwback video. I'm going to include a link to an exercise that I love from Elliott Hulse that's going to help you speak more from your diaphragm as well as a link to the original video because Neil's answer here is really very beautiful. Both of those are going to be in the description. Now, if you like this and want to learn more about speaking with confidence, we actually have another video set up that's going to help you to do that. It covers an exercise that you can do before any big event, whether that's a presentation that you have to give for work or just speaking to someone that you want to impress at a job interview or a date. So if you want to see that exercise at increases confidence in about one minute, go ahead and click the annotation here or the link in the description. It's going to take you to a page where you can drop your email and get immediate access to that video. For the rest of you, let me know if you want more throwback videos on Thursdays in the comments. I know that some of you may have seen the original, and I only want to continue to do these if they're genuinely helpful. So please let me know what you think. If you're new to this channel and haven't already, please make sure to subscribe. You're gonna get notifications whenever we release a new video so that you don't miss anything. Plus, I just get really excited at the speed that the channel is growing and it means A to me. So I hope that you all have enjoyed this and I will see you in the next video.