39. Understanding Your Voice

Welcome to the Influency Podcast. I'm Hadar, and this is episode number 39. Today we're going to continue to talk about the voice in English. Hey, everyone, thank you so much for being here for another episode of the Influency podcast. I'm really excited to have you here. And by here, I mean here in the room with me because, you know, that's how I imagine it, right? I imagine that you are sitting right next to me and I'm just speaking to you now. In the intro, I said, we're going to continue the conversation about the voice. So if this is the first episode you're listening to about the voice and you have no idea what I'm talking about, let me give you a little background here. On Tuesday, I released a video about how to improve your speaking voice in English, an episode in a YouTube video. And that same day, I also had a live broadcast on Instagram about the voice and how we manipulate the voice in English and why we do that and what we can do in order for us to use the full potential of our voice.

And I explained about the voice and.

How it works and what are the things that prevent us from using our voices fully. And I got such incredible questions. And people were super excited about this topic because it is often not discussed. I mean, in this industry, right? Like, people usually don't talk about the voice. They talk about the vocal placement of English.

But it's not a real.

In a deep discussion about the voice. And the voice is like our true expression. That's what we use to express ourselves first and foremost before we work on our grammar or vocabulary or pronunciation. It's the voice that comes out. Right? And I feel that people don't have the tools. I have the tools because I've learned acting. And that was like 1500 years ago. I wanted to say 15, and then I thought, I think it's more than 15 years. And then it just feels like 1500 years ago. But I had access to this knowledge, knowledge that I think every single person in this world should have access to in particular speakers of other languages, speakers of English as a second language. There is so much we don't know about where to place our voice and how to use it so we can become expressive and persuasive and interesting. So it's really not just a conversation about intonation. It's a question about that immediate expression of ourselves, the voice. And I just went live having this.

Idea that, yeah, let's talk about the.

Voice and the questions that came up and the responses. And people really wanted to learn more about it and to understand better why it is so difficult for them to feel comfortable in their own voice. We always say you wanna get comfortable in your own skin. So your voice is even more intimate than your skin. And if you don't feel comfortable hearing your voice, it's definitely going to compromise your communication in your native language and. And in English. Even more in English. This is why I decided to share the audio of that broadcast. It's like a one hour long broadcast where I answer questions and I talk about the voice and it's a really deep conversation. So I figured that you, my podcast listener, would enjoy this conversation too. I also talk about my podcast voice and how it is different and why it is different than my video voice. I gave a pretty good explanation there. So stick around and listen to it.

I hope you enjoyed it.

If you do, come on over to Instagram and send me a DM to let me know that you enjoyed it. And if you have any questions, you can also ask me there. So enjoy it. Have fun.

Speak up.

Hello. Hello.

Hello. Nice to be here. It is Tuesday, and on Tuesdays we have coaching over coffee and today we have voice over tea. Because tea is better for your voice. I'm kidding. Just do whatever. Whatever feels good. Whatever feels good. Hi, everyone. I'm starting to see your names coming up. It's always really nice and fancy. I love it. I don't know if you know this, but today we're going to talk about the voice. And I said that and then I swallowed the word the voice. This is a bad example of what you want to do with your voice. So you don't want to swallow the words like I just did. Dude, I'm not perfect. So today we're going to talk about the voice. See how I carried it over? See how like more effective it was? That's what, see, that's what I was doing. I was giving you the bad example so you can know what to do and what not to do. I'm a very, very considerate teacher. The reason why I wanted to talk about the voice is because I feel that people don't talk about it enough. And not only that, we need to talk about it in the English learning industry, English as a second language industry, we need to talk about it in our native language as well. Because the voice is something that we often feel that this is something that we're stuck with and that's our voice and that's it. And there's nothing we can do about it. But at the same time, like, the voice is one of the first things that you can change. And we often change it. We're just not aware of it. Right. Like, have you ever noticed that sometimes your voice is just like stuck and it doesn't come out? And you know that it's because maybe you're nervous or you're shy. Maybe it gets stuck. Like it just. You start speaking and then like it gets stuck. Or all of a sudden you hear that this is your voice and there's nothing really you can do. Or maybe sometimes you speak and people are like, they can't hear you and you try to go a little louder, but it's just. It feels like you just need to work so hard for people to hear you. And the thing is, that's not how it works. Like your voice, you don't have to shout for people from across the could hear you. Like, our voices, like, our voice is an incredible thing. Person. I'm kidding. Tool. It's such an incredible way of expression and it's frequencies, right? We can't see it. And it really depends on where we're at. Like if we're in the open field, of course, or voice is going to behave differently if we're in a small room with no furniture. Our voice is going to behave differently if in a room, if we're in a room with a lot of furniture, then all of a sudden, like, the quality is going to be different. You sound different when you speak into a mic. I just recorded a podcast today. So today's video that is going to be released as we speak is about the voice. And as I recorded, I was recording the podcast for the video. I usually do an intro. I talked about the fact that when I speak to the microphone that is right here, when speak to the mic, my voice is different than when I speak to the camera that when I speak to you here. So we do manipulate the voice all of the time. We just don't do it consciously or most of us don't do it consciously. So if we can manipulate it subconsciously, why shouldn't we be able to do it consciously if we know that it serves us better and we are heard more? And yes, ultimately, if we work on our English and our grammar and pronunciation and fluency, vocabulary, everything's great. But if people can't hear us because our voice is too low, then what have we done with that? Right? Like, what is the purpose of being a person that is able to speak if people can't hear us? And again, we want to know how to use our bodies. Like, we have two feet. We walk on our legs. So we know how to use our legs. Great. Like, it would be so stupid if we had those two legs and we would walk on our knees or our hands all day long. Like, right. Why should we do that? Like, we were built a certain way, so why shouldn't we use what we were born with? And this is exactly what I'm trying to get to when talking about the voice. Because we have all these beautiful elements in our body that should allow us to resonate and to place our voice so it can carry over to people around you. We are all born with the same features. Unless you were born with, like, unless you have a problem with your vocal cords. Right? Like, unless it's something physical, then I'm assuming that's not the case. If it is, there are ways to do that. But I'm not talking about people with injuries, vocal injuries, or notes on their vocal cords. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people who are bored and they just can't find a way to express themselves in a very versatile, loud, proud way. And it's pretty much understanding how the voice works there. And this is what we're going to talk about today. And that's what I talk about in the video that I released. So go watch it. After. In the video, I actually give you some exercises, and we are going to do it together in the video and maybe here today as well. But I'm going to also answer questions that you may have for me. And if someone has a specific question, then just put it in the question tab.

Okay.

How do you do. I manipulate when I'm feeling nervous. Okay, this is a really good question. So how does it work? Your voice is frequencies, and your voice is carried on your breath. You use your breath. If you don't breathe or if your breath is not deep enough, your voice is going to be affected by it. So that's the first thing that affects your voice. And ideally, you do want to be able to take deep breaths and to breathe into your belly. It's called diaphragmatic breathing. And if you do a little bit of yoga, you know what it means? That where you breathe into your belly rather than to your chest. Now I want you to look at your. I don't know if you can do it, but if you have a mirror or look at your webcam or phone camera right now and take a deep breath with me right now. Let's do it. Good. Breathe out Good. Breathe in, breathe out. Now, when you breathe in, do you feel like this part is going up your shoulders? Do you see this, your chest? Or do you see that? There is no difference, really, in your posture. Because right now, if you look at me, I'm taking a really deep breath, but you don't see my shoulders moving. You don't see me get taller, unfortunately, because I'm a little short. You can't tell, but I'm short. So this is why I decided to open a YouTube channel and not develop a career as a speaker coach, because then they would see that I'm really short. I'm kidding. Don't take me seriously. But when I talk about voice, take me seriously. So when I breathe in, I breathe into. Right now, I put my palm on my belly, and that's when you see something moving. I breathe in, I breathe into my belly. Then my hand is moving. What happens is that I. I think my diaphragm, I drop it down and I allow more breath to come in into the space here into my diaphragm. This is why my belly is going out. This is a much deeper breath. And then I'm able to inhale a lot more oxygen. That will allow me to carry out longer sentences. And then I would have more breath to speak. Because when I run out of breath and I keep speaking, I may start injuring my voice. Okay, so if I'm running out of breath and then I'm still continuing now, every now and then, if you do it, that's okay. But right now, what I'm doing, I already ran out of breath, but I'm still speaking. A lot of people still do that. And then there's this, right? Not healthy for your voice. Remember that, like, this is not something that you want to do. You are like. What happens is that you're starting to vibrate your vocal cords and they start touching each other and. And then you start injuring them. And this is where you feel this vocal exhaustion, and you feel, like, really tired and hoarse, and you may lose your voice. So it really has to do a lot with your breath. That's one of the things that I want you to pay attention to. So breathing in, our faces turn red. That's right. It's not very good and not very static, especially if you put some blush on first, and then you're really, really red.

Right?

So you want to manage your breath, and you don't want to manage it. You just want it to happen naturally. If you look at little kids, how they breathe, you see their bellies moving. But then we grow up, and then we start manipulating our breath, and then we start breathing into our chest, and that really, really reduces. Also, first, it creates a lot of stress because you inhale less oxygen, and the more oxygen you have in your body, the less stressed you are. So when we breathe in deeply, then you actually inhale, and you get more oxygen into your body. Now, one more thing that might affect the quality of our voice is our nervous system. And I talk about it in the video today. But, like, when we're nervous, right? Like, when we're with a friend, especially when it comes to speaking English as a second language. So let's agree that your voice might be different. Our voice is different in English than it is in our native language. And it's okay because first, English has a different placement than your native language. But maybe that's not the real reason why we change it. We change it because sometimes we think that we need to change it, and we change it. We manipulate it. So maybe it's a little higher, it's a little lower. So pay attention to that. And sometimes we're just nervous about speaking. We don't feel like ourselves. And then we change the voice, and then the different voice creates more tension, and more tension creates more tension, and. And that affects our voice even more. And then we get stuck, or we kind of like, the voice is not there. It's really kind of. It feels like there is something there blocking your voice from being heard. For example, what I'm doing right now. Okay, like, and then for me to be heard would mean that I would have to push my voice, which is, A, not healthy for my voice. B, it doesn't sound natural, doesn't sound good. And C, you would really get tired really quickly. And I think I'm red now. I love my brown complexion. So you don't see me getting red really easily, but I do inside, right? So it happens to us. Why does it happen to us? Sometimes it's just ideas as to how we need to speak English. Sometimes just habits. Sometimes it's that nervous energy that we have because speaking in English makes us nervous. But that's a different story. Like, we need to tackle that, and we need to work on the confidence and the mindset. And you guys know I have a lot of videos about that. So. So if this is something that you struggle with and you don't know, you're not familiar with those videos, then go to my YouTube channel and check out the playlist where I talk about confidence, mindset, and all of that. Because that could help, too, because when you're less nervous, obviously it would affect your voice. And I just want to give you the example of, let's say you're sitting with a friend over a glass of wine, and that friend is, you know, like, speaks a different language. So you communicate in English, and you feel comfortable with your voice. You're okay. Like, you don't judge yourself. You don't feel that you are not heard, and you don't feel like your voice is. Is injured. But then the next morning, you attend a meeting, and you speak for 30 minutes, and after that, you're like, I don't want to speak for the rest of the day. And you feel like your voice is hoarse. You've lost it. You even lost your voice. You feel exhausted, and you feel like your voice was not present. And it just shows that the mental state that you are in really affects the quality of your voice. And breathing in deeply can help you with that nervous energy that you experience. So it's not only to support your voice, it's also to get into a state where. Where that nervous energy doesn't affect your voice for the worse. Now, the last thing, I want you to remember it. So we talked about breath. We talked about the mental state, emotional state, okay? Being nervous, feeling like we are that people are watching us or feeling that people are judging us will affect the quality of your voice. So this is like the mindset, and you need to reframe, like, this idea that people are judging you, or if you make mistakes, that people are not going to appreciate you or respect you. But the last thing is, where do you place your voice? So, as I said, we're born with all these great tools to express ourselves fully and to have this nice, beautiful vocal quality, but we're not using it because we've never learned how. So you need to understand that you use your voice, you have your breath, and you have the vocal cords that vibrate, like guitar strings that are right here that vibrate as you're speaking. And that's like, if they vibrate really quickly, then the voice is a little higher. If they vibrate a little slowly, then we're talking about lower notes. But in addition to high notes, low notes, we also have the place where the voice resonates. What does that mean? If we think of a ukulele versus a cello, these are two instruments, and they look the same. Same idea, right? But they sound completely different. One has a really high voice sound, and one has, like, a deep, low sound, right? The cello. Why Is that. That's the resonance box. Because the cello is a lot bigger to hold it like this, right? And the ukulele is really small. So the resonance box of the ukulele is a lot smaller than the cello. This is why the sound is different, even though it's pretty much the same instrument, strings and a wooden box in a certain shape. And why is the shape like that? Because it creates that nice resonance. Our bodies are created the same way we have. The voice cannot exist if it's just the frequencies of the voice. What we hear is the result of the voice bouncing back and forth between walls. So as a result, we need to understand the voice needs spaces to be heard, to be expressed to sound, for people to hear it. This is why when you're in the open field, you feel like, you know, and you're standing six foot away, six feet away from a friend, because it's COVID 19, you know, like, and we need to stand six feet away and they can't hear you. But if you're in a small room, you can hear each other clearly because the sound bounces back and forth between the walls, so it's a lot louder. You haven't changed your voice, right? But it's what happens as your voice comes back to you. But when you're in the open fields or on the beach, it doesn't happen. Your voice is just lost. So that's the same idea. And luckily, we have spaces in our bodies for the voice to resonate, like in only open spaces. So it doesn't resonate in the ear or the chin. It resonates when it. Wherever there is voice. So the mouth, obviously. Right. But not just the mouth, because if I resonate in the mouth, it's going to be very, very. A very limited voice. And that's what I'm doing right now. Because right now I'm only placing my voice right here in the throat. But you also have the chest. Now, what does it mean to resonate the voice in the chest? That means that most of the vibrations, like where the voice goes back and forth, right? Happens mostly in the chest. But you also have other spaces in the body. Like your nasal cavities right here. Right. Like the sinuses here. There are a lot of spaces. And the voice likes to resonate here as well. If I bring my voice here. So let's try this. Let's try to do this. Do this with me. And kind of like tap on your nasal cavities. So that's another place for you to vibrate your voice. And you can vibrate your voice in the nose, because the nose has a lot of spaces, and those spaces are blocked when we have a cold, right? Like when everything's congested here. So it really changes our voice because it doesn't resonate in the nose anymore. So try it out. Hello. What's up? But if you only resonate in the voice, that's how you sound. Like right now, I'm placing my voice in the nose, and this is how it sounds. And some people do speak like that, right? And some people place it in the head, like I'm doing right now. So I'm using. I'm kind of like resonating the voice here in the nasal cavities. Now, I'm not expecting you to know how to do that right now. I'm just showing you the different places. And here's the thing. If we choose to resonate the voice only in one place, just the nose, just the cheeks, just the. Just the mouth or just the chest, the voice is going to be limited, right? It's going to have one layer or one quality. And also, the smaller the space is, like nose or just head. The smaller the voice is just like the ukulele, right? The smaller the resonance box is, the smaller the quality is, the higher the note is. So the larger the resonance box is. Chest. Lot of space here. Especially if you breathe in deeply and create more space, right? Then you have more room for the voice to resonate, and then your voice gets bigger, like the cello. So you want to be able to know how to direct your voice from your chest to your head to your nose. Just. Just to try it out. Let's try. And I do it in the video as well, so you can go watch it after. And you can keep it. But, you know, one of the ways for you to resonate the voice in the chest is, first of all, to find those lower frequencies, because it's harder to find your chest voice when your voice is up here. So you want to go down, like, large spaces, like lower frequencies. And you want to just. Maybe just start by placing your palm on your chest and try to feel tickles and vibrations all the way down here and lower it. And one of the things that you want to do is to wake up all this area by kind of tapping on your chest and. And bringing your voice, kind of like freeing the voice that is locked in a very small space here, maybe here in the throat. And you want to bring it here. So start tapping on your chest and put thumbs up if you're doing it with me just so I know that I'm not alone. Right. Go low and in. Kite tap. Thank you, Kelly, for doing this with me. All over your chest up here and a little lower here. You want to free your voice. Like, really start to see how your taps are changing and affecting your voice. If you don't feel the difference and you don't feel vibrations here, you don't feel vibrations, try to lower your voice. And really, it's like you can think it and it will happen. You don't need to do something physically, I can't tell you. Now hit this button and then your voice goes down. I'm really, really happy to see that people are doing this with me. It makes me feel a lot better, and I know it's going to work for you. So you want to really direct your voice here to shoot it down to your chest. Sometimes a thought is all you. Maybe go a little higher. Now we're going to the mid range. And here. The voice in the mid range likes to be here. Your chest, your mouth. Paula says the vibrations go stronger as I move my palm closer to my throat. Yes. Okay. It means that it vibrates here. This is exactly where it needs to vibrate. Sometimes you can also vibrate your voice here. If it's just the throat, the quality is really tight. Now there are people who speak like that, and that's the quality of their voice. And sometimes, you know, it could be like a language that likes this voice placement. Like, the quality of the voice for a certain language can be here, right? And some speakers can be more here. And sometimes speakers can, like, only use the head voice. So right now let's do this. Let's go up here and try to bring it. Maybe start with a nose. It's a little easier. So put your fingers on your nose and try to feel vibrations. Start with a M for an M or an M. You always feel vibrations because the air comes out through the nose. Now do and feel the vibrations here in the nose. And now just try to speak like this, where the air keeps coming out through your nose. And like the voice mostly vibrates here. Now if you put your hand on your chest, you won't feel any vibrations. But if you bring it back here, you'll feel vibrations. So beautiful. I'm always in awe by this. So you bring it back here. But now when you bring the chest, you don't feel any vibrations. But now if you bring it back to the chest. One, two, three, four, five. Let's do it together. One, two, three, Four, five. Chest. You want to feel it here. One, two, three, 4, five. Only nose. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. No, no. And then you don't feel so many vibrations in your nose. Now, if you only speak here, let's try it out here. So if you speak with your very like with your head voice, right, for those of you who sing, it's like. Ah, right. It's when you speak here. Ah. Hi, Saskia, how are you doing? So this is your head voice, right? And it's something that is nice to have. Now, if you speak only here, because it's like the ukulele, then obviously it's not going to be carried over to the end of the room when you're speaking. If you're only here, so you want your chest to support it. However, if you only speak with your chest and resonate your voice here, down here, then your voice is also not going to be that varied. So what is the secret? Now that we've discovered how to move from your head voice to your nose, to your throat to your chest, what is the secret? The perfect ring. Ta da. I'm kidding. What is the ring? What is she talking about? The ring? No, the ring. When something rings, do you know, like when you have a triangle and you click on it and then you hear the ripples of the sound tum. I might have it on my computer. I'll look it up just to play it because I'm geeky that way. I'll look it up. I'll give you time to ask questions in the meantime. Okay. Yeah, I can find it. There it is, the triangle. Did you hear it? I'll come closer with the mic. The ring where you balance between your lower frequencies and your chest and your higher frequencies, your voice. When and where does it happen? When you find the optimum pitch level. The optimum pitch level is the most comfortable placement for your voice. It's a balance between the head voice and the chest voice. Where does it happen? On your. Usually on your. So when someone speaks to you and you're like. And you go like, mm, yeah, I totally get it. Mm, mm, mm. And when you speak here, this is usually the place that balances both the chest and the head. Because when your voice is down here and it's too low, below your optimum pitch level, it might be too low and stifled, stuck. And when it's up here, it might not have that backup, that power, that confidence. Oomph. Oomph. I said oomph. It was like Hebrew oomph. Now I use the American sound, right? Like, you have that oomph that's the lower tones. So you don't want to. Ideally, you don't want to get stuck in one place. Now, a voice is a very sensitive issue because, like, of course it has cultural. Like the culture you grew up in has its impact. Right. Like in some cultures, and I talk about in today's video, in some cultures, it is not allowed to speak out loud, to speak up, to raise your voice. So this. This is considered to be the norm. If you speak that way, let me know if you come from a culture where speaking loudly like I am right now is considered inappropriate. And let me know if. When you grew up, people kept shushing you and telling you that you need to be quiet, because if that happened to you, of course it's going to affect your voice. Of course it's going to affect the way you express yourself and how comfortable you feel with speaking up and, like, being heard. Right? And like, hey, I'm here. The thing is. Iran. Yeah. The thing is that English is very expressive, vocally expressive, and good communicators are very expressive. Like, you have a lot of variation and, like, you go from up to down. And it doesn't happen in all languages. So when you walk into English, you need to be able to use these features that. So it serves you. Remember, it's not about your listeners. It's not about the people who see you. It's not about the people who judge you, who say, yeah, he or she sound American, good job. It's not about sounding American or British or Australian. It's about owning up that space of spoken language, like, allowing your words to be carried over and to communicate like a professional. And it doesn't mean if you work in English or you don't, like, you know, to communicate like you deserve to communicate now in Russia. Yeah. Okay. So, like, if you were, as a kid, like, people told you to be quiet. So obviously. And it's true that, like in Russian, in the Russian language, you do hear that people. I don't. I'm not sure it's related. It's also the quality of Russian in and of itself, but, like, the quality of people and women in particular who are. Who speak not just Russian, like many different languages, but women in particular tend to have softer voices and tend to focus the voice in the chest, in the head. Not because it's like our physical features. Okay. It's not a physical trait to have a head voice. If you're a woman. Look at me. I don't have a head voice. It's just the quality of my voice and the tendencies and the culture I grew up in and my training, because I have trained as an actress and we had vocal training, okay? So I have learned how to use my voice. So you need to understand that, like, having a head voice is not because, like, if you speak a little higher, it's not because you're a woman. That's your voice. You can control it. You don't have to if you don't want to. So culture has something to do with it. Speech patterns, even in the U.S. okay, someone mentioned here upspeak. I think it's Paula, but someone mentioned upspeak, where you go up at the end of sentences, and sometimes it's great because it's not intimidating. And people feel more comfortable when we speak that way. The question is, how much does it serve you when you need to be authoritative and confident and certain? Because going up and using that really softer voice doesn't create any. It doesn't trigger people as much as going down being assertive. But as part of you creating that vocal power, you need to be aware of that. You need to be aware of that feature where you go up, that it makes you sound less certain and sometimes less confident, especially if there are other reasons for you that prevent you from sounding confident. Right. Like speaking English in general. Vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, like, all these elements. So we do deal with a lot of things when communicating in English. So you want to find that perfect ring. We said that hum place. This is a place where we want to train our voice or to start using our voice when speaking. So you can do something like, hey, it's nice to see you. Hey, it's nice to see you. Right? And then if you hum and go into, hey, it's nice to see you, and your hum is a little lower, then you want to ask yourself why what that happened. One more thing I wanted to say about cultural differences. Like, I said that women sometimes tend to have a higher tone. Sometimes women in particular, and men, too, force their voices to go lower because they think it's more authoritative and they sound more confident. And the powerful voice has male tendencies, like male quality, which is lower.

Okay.

Yeah. The female voice is generally higher. That's sure. That's for sure. But it doesn't mean that it has to be a head voice. But people tend to go really low. And the result is that we either go too low and we're not heard because our voices are not, or we leave ourselves a really, really limited range speaking, and then our voice becomes Monotone. Or we fry our voice, like I'm doing right now.

Okay.

Which is something that happens at the end of, like, when you really tired. So when your voice is too low or at the end of sentences where we kind of like, we stop the breath a little sooner, then the voice starts, gets into that vocal fry. Or sometimes it sounds really cool to speak like that because it's like the opposite of, oh, my God, so good to see you. Right. How are you doing? So sometimes we deliberately go down so we don't sound, like, cheerful and cheerleadery. But the question is, does it serve our voice? Like, do we use our voice to its full potential? Are we heard as well? Are we varied? And what I'm saying now is relevant for all speakers. Like, I can. I could say that to native speakers as well. I could say that to you, you know, talking about your first language, your L1. But when it comes to English, we tend to reduce ourselves anyway. We tend to become more monotone because of many different reasons. And if we add voice to it, then we don't leave ourselves a lot of room for variation. So being able to shift from head to chest creates more room and more range. So a few of the exercises that I share, because I want to go into questions, and we do have limited time, so I'm not going to do the exercises here. I'm going to ask you to go to the YouTube video that I think is released by now and do the exercises there. They're fun and they're freeing, and it will help you to explain, explore the quality of your voice. But what I'm saying is, like, identify how you shift from head to throat to chest to nose and identify that optimum pitch level. So, as I said, one of the ways for you to do that is to hum. Another way is that if you go and then you take your fingers and you press your diaphragm harshly a few times, like this. Do it with me. Go to your lower tone. You see how you shift from, like, your lower tone to. That's usually the optimum pitch level. And then you stay there. And then you want to identify to find out what that voice is and how it sounds. And then just stay here for a little bit. And then you want to use your head voice sometimes, like you want to use your chest voice. So you want to move from head. What? What are you talking about? I never said that. I'm not going to the party like my friend did. Right. So when you have variation and you move from your head voice to your Chest voice, It creates this variety, versatility, interest. You can make people laugh, you can engage people, they'd be more curious. Whereas if you just speak here in your chest voice and there's not a lot of variation or hear in your head voice, sometimes different words come out. Like, I wanna say one word and then another word comes out. And then I watch my YouTube videos and sometimes I do one take and then I'm like, why did I say that word? It does not make any sense. Just sharing with you. Cause you're my friends. Okay? So when you are able to control your voice from, you understand your optimum pitch level, you understand where it is to place your voice in your head, you understand your chest voice. There isn't one placement for your voice. You want to shift like a ballerina from one place to another inside your body, right? And that's how you become expressive and that like. Yeah. Then we go into, okay, what words do I stress? Where do I go up? But if you listen to me just now speak about, I constantly go between the high notes and the low notes, right? Which makes you more engaged and intrigued. And you keep on listening to me. Imagine I would do the entire video speaking like this, right? So you would have to really, really focus on what I'm saying in the content. And I'm not saying it wouldn't be as exciting, but when I'm doing this, I'm making it easier on you to listen to me and to hear my voice and to hear my message and to not get bored and to not zone out. Like, we all know those university speakers or those teachers that we kind of like, they're really good, but they speak and we're like, didn't he say that already? Or, why do I fall asleep? I really need to pay attention now, but I'm falling asleep. So when you vary your intonation, when you vary your voice, it keeps your listeners on their toes. Like, they never know what you're going to do next. And like, I'm not saying I'm great. Like, sometimes I record a podcast or a video or I speak to my students and then I'm like, why am I repeating the same pattern again and again and again? Like, we need to also develop that external ear to recognize when we go into this. Like, when we do use the same pattern so it doesn't have to be on the same note, but when we do use the same pattern. And like I'm doing right now when I'm speaking and like, I hear the same melodies pattern over and over again now I changed it. Melody's pattern again and again. And then I'm speaking. And then you feel like I am changing my voice, but I'm using the same bit again and again again. So you need to develop that external ear and then you can change it and then you can kind of like all of a sudden pause, Right. Like if you feel that you're in a pattern. But the idea is that it can only happen when you are in control and you're comfortable with your voice. Which is why you need to do the exercises that I created for you on the video. That includes the power speech. My friends, for those of you who are in accent makeover, you know what it means because you're working on it right now. It includes singing out loud. It includes dancing, laughing. Okay, questions. With the time that we have left, I remember my Korean teacher, she takes voice lesson before she's able to teach using men and women voice. Okay. So she. I'm assuming that was a speech coach or an English coach, so she was able to teach. Well, that's great. Like, I think that it's a skill that people should have, like, not just teachers, not just lecturers, not just public speakers, anyone you want to sound persuasive, even if you're talking to the clerk or the bank teller. Especially the bank teller. I change my voice when speaking English. I feel like I'm another person because I'm imitating someone else's voice. I can't see the rest of the question. So I'm just going to answer you and say that when we change our voice in English, first of all, it's because we don't know how to use it, but also because sometimes we have this idea of, like, how the English voice should sound. And there are a lot of teachers out there who teach you how to sound in English. And I feel that sometimes it's doing a disservice to non native speakers. Because if you don't know how to control your voice and you don't have that flexibility and confidence, so then you try to restrict yourself into, okay, they say it's in the chest. Great. And then you, like, go just really, really low. And you're like, I don't understand why it's not working for me, or I don't understand why I'm not feeling like myself. I feel that in the hierarchy of sounding American or feeling good and using your voice, even the vocal placement of your true voice or your native language is not exactly like that of English. That wins big time. Okay. Because again, if you Listen to native speakers. It's not like they all have the same voice. Some people have a nasal voice and a strident voice and a hoarse voice and brassy voice. And, like, there are different qualities of voice of people, you know, like. So it's not like, oh, I need to do this to sound American. So it's very misleading if you don't know how to control your voice. Yes, English tends to live more in the lower resonance, but you need to know how to do that. And sometimes, even when you listen to men. To men? Not a. Even if you listen to men, they use their head voice a lot, especially expressive voices of men. Listen to Jerry Seinfeld. Let's agree that he's a man, right? And he often goes here. Does that make him feminine? No, it makes him expressive and funny and engaging. So it's like, this is why I'm, like, I'm really against any concept of this is how you should do it. You have to understand where you are coming from. You have to understand your native language and your ability to use your body. So I know what I'm saying now is a lot more confusing because I'm not telling you this is how it is. Do it. I'm saying I'm giving you something a lot more broad. What I'm offering you is the ability to control it and to make it your own and not to push yourself into a box that makes you sound not like yourself and makes you feel uncomfortable with who you are. Because that's a lot worse. Because if you don't feel like yourself, oh, it's going to affect your fluency. You'll get stuck. You'll start making mistakes. You'll judge yourself a lot more. You'll feel like people are judging you a lot more. Okay, so sound like yourself, even if it's not the perfect placement for English, but sound like yourself, feel good. And then get comfortable with more places in your body, right? More qualities of your voice, and then see how you can make your own. It's like learning pronunciation. At first, your pronunciation is really like when you try a new sound, it feels really weird. It doesn't feel like yourself. It doesn't feel like you'll ever be able to do it. What are people going to think?

Right?

And then you do it again, again, again. Then your mouth doesn't know to do anything other than that. And then you make it your own. And then you start using it spontaneously. Let's see. Another question. How can you adjust your voice? Well, I think. Watch the video that I released today on YouTube. And that's how I teach you how to move from one placement to another, which is pretty much what we talked about. English has huge flexibility. Lovely to hear others saying this. Yes, absolutely. It's huge. It's so beautiful. If you listen to, like, what's compelling about great space speakers, like, we don't know it. We're just drawn to people who speak well. Right? Like, we're just like, they're so good. Like, you can't stop. What is it that makes them so compelling and so great? It's the variations, the versatility, it's the flexibility, it's the unexpectedness. I don't think you can say that, but I just invented it. Unexpectedness, right? Like that you don't know what's going to come next. So you're constantly eager to hear. And you know what's important because they help, you know that by slowing down, by going higher in pitch, right? That's what makes it like it. So it's easier for you to understand. You don't need to kind of decipher. Wait, what? What was that? When everything is kind of flat and monotone, everything sounds like it's equally important. And then your brain is like, after a few minutes, you're like, I don't know what? I don't know. I don't know. So it's also, like, easier to understand. Another question. Would you say that you have a podcast voice? Are you talking about my podcast voice? It happens to be here. I didn't prepare it in advance. I didn't know that that's going to be your question. I don't have a podcast voice. It's my intimate voice, if that makes sense. I said at the beginning, like, when I record a podcast, I have my headphones, and every little thing that I make, I hear it immediately. Right? So the fact that I hear it, I'm in my own head. So I automatically kind of, like, lower the quality of my voice and it is softer because if I'm going to shout, my ears are going to explode. So obviously it affects the way I communicate. The technology causes me to change the voice and I hear it, and I'm much more in control because I see, like, every time I'm doing something, how it sounds when I speak to the camera and the mic is far further away from me, then I need to project. So, yes, usually when I project, my voice is a little higher, right? So I carry it over, because if I'm going to be here, you're not going to be hear me as Loudly. Like, right now, my microphone is here, so it's not going to change much. But if you were sitting across the room for me, then you wouldn't hear me as well as you would if I would be speaking up here. Right? Like raising the pitch. But at the same time, if I would only go here, you wouldn't hear me either. So I'm projecting my voice there. Therefore, I'm changing my voice when I'm speaking to the camera or I'm speaking in class or I'm speaking in the live right now. Not when I'm speaking to the camera. Like, you know, if my girls are sleeping in the other room and I'm speaking to my partner, I would be like, I wouldn't be projecting my voice as I would. I would use. I would be using my podcast voice. But, like, I'm not manipulating. I'm not, like, creating this sexy voice that, you know, I feel people would want to hear. It's just like my relationship with the voice and the equipment that I have here causes it to change a bit. But it's okay, right? Like, I don't feel it's not my voice. Do you put it on the podcast, too? Yeah. The video of today is going to be on the podcast. Is it normal our lips to hurt after spending a long time practicing English? Yes and no. If you've been practicing only oo you food and you're like, you're not used to rounding your lips, then yes, it's okay. But if you're practicing the th and your lips hurt or you're just speaking, then it might be because you're holding extra tension in your lips that you shouldn't. Or in your jaw. Right. Same thing happens if you feel, like, a lot of tension here. And then you need to ask yourself, am I holding tension in places I don't need? It's very important for your voice, too, because when you hold tension in places you don't need, it will affect your voice. It does create tension. Tension brings tension. Tension in your body, tension in your soul, tension in your mind will create tension in your voice. Tension in your muscles will create tension in your voice. How long does it take to get comfortable with one's English voice? I don't think it needs to take much if you're doing the right exercises and if you're giving yourself the permission to speak. By the way, there is a podcast that I recommend about the voice called Permission to Speak, and I want you to look it up, and it's really, really good. I'm going to create a post about it really soon. But it's about the voice. Voice quality, vocal hygiene, powerful voice. And I highly recommend it. They do not talk enough about the voices like the voice of the non native speaker, which I might actually write to them and tell them to discuss it more. But I think it's really interesting. What should we do when we are out of breath? First of all, breathe. Breathe in. Don't get to a place where you're out of breath. If you're out of breath, that means that you haven't been taking pauses and catch breaths. A catch breath is, okay, so a deep breath at the end of the sentence. Or you want to think of it as if like you're writing an email and then you're at the end of the paragraph. You can take a deep breath, drop your diaphragm down, diaphragm down, and you like, breathe in. However, like sometimes in the middle of a sentence, if you have a really long sentence, you see what I just did when I speak in the middle of the sentence. And I know that I still have a lot to go and I don't want to run out of breath. So I take a little catch breath, which is what I did now. And I keep on speaking. So it's not really noticeable, but now it was because I didn't need it. But I want to take those catch breaths. When I feel like I'm running out of breath. When I would put a comma, okay, that would be the intonation. Something else is coming up. I take a quick breath and I continue and then I take a deeper breath. When I. Technically I have, like, I have put a period at the end, okay, Like I have this intonation as if something is. Or I want to take a pause for emphasis. So taking catch breaths. But sometimes we kind of like feel like we're hyper, hyperventilating. And we have, like, we have. We feel like we have too much breath. That's because we're taking too much. Like, we take deep, a lot of breaths because we feel like we need it. We get nervous. Especially when we get nervous and then we have too much air in our body. My recommendation then would be just to slow down a bit. To slow down, to take it easy, to allow yourself to breathe, maybe to acknowledge the fact that you're nervous. It happens especially when you speaking. When you're speaking in public, even if it's a zoom call and all of a sudden they ask you something and you need to answer it, and then you feel like you're running out of breath. Sometimes it's just because you have a lot of breath. So slow down and kind of like speak on your breath slowly and allow yourself to calm your breath down. Because when your breath is balanced, everything's a lot easier. Okay, how do I manipulate my voice when I'm feeling nervous? So usually it becomes a little either it's like we stuff it down. It feels like we don't want to take a lot of space. Audible space, Right? So it's kind of like people who are really tall, especially teenagers who are really tall, you know how they always hunched over because their friends are shorter than them? I was that friend. If I haven't told you yet, I am short. So, like, you know how they're hunched over? They don't want to take up a lot of space. It happens as well. Like, we do it subconsciously. So we kind of like, make our voices a little soft, softer, because we're ashamed of our maybe accent or mistakes, or maybe we don't really want to be heard, but we have to speak. So that's how we manipulate the voice. Or sometimes we get nervous, and this is how we start speaking. Like, we just push the voice and it sounds, like, really loud. Okay. That's another way of manipulating the voice. And then I would kind of breathe in and remind myself of that optimum pitch level of that perfect placement of the voice. Okay, so always remember, where is your 0? Where is your starting point? Where was your voice as a kid when you were laughing, right? And you had that, like, wholehearted laugh? Where was that voice placed? And that's the voice that we're looking for. Okay, one last question before we end. Do you teach English online? Yes, I do. How to breathe between thought chunks? Well, it's pretty much what I said. If it's a place where you can take a long break, catch breaths like that, and then it would go into your chest. But when you end an idea, you want to make sure that you fill it up so you're able to carry it through. So when you take the catch breaths, it's not because you ran out of breath. If you run out of breath and you take a catch breath, that's not going to be enough. Like, what happened to me now, right? Like, I ran out of breath. I had to pause to breathe in. But if I'm speaking, I still have a lot of breath. But I would take a catch breath just to allow me to carry over until I get to the end of the sentence. And sometimes I still have more breath, so I might need to exhale and then take a deeper breath.

Okay.

If I feel like I'm already. I already have a lot of breath. How can I start liking my voice? I love this question. I'm going to end with that question. You can start liking your voice by liking your voice, by changing the thought that originates inside your head that says, my voice is not good. My voice is weird. My voice is funny. My voice is bad. I have a bad voice. I have a funny voice. That thought creates the feeling of not liking your voice. So if you want to have the feeling associated with liking or loving your voice, you need to start with a thought that is a positive thought about your voice. Now, I'm not doing like, do the work. Explore your voice. Find where you're comfortable. Make sure that you're not manipulating your voice. But at the end of the day, it's not something external because I'm sure there are people who have the same voice quality as yours that love their voices. I would just tell you it's not a secret. People tend to not like their voices. People tend to not like their voices. People hear their voices and they cringe because the way we hear ourselves in our head is really different than how it actually sounds outside. So when we hear it recorded or when we hear a video, we feel like, is this my voice? So this is why we tend to not like our voice. But the more we do it, we get comfortable with that new voice, which is your voice. Just how it sounds when you record it into a machine. So don't have a lot of ideas about your voice. Just start loving it and do whatever you can to gain that power and strength and confidence, right? Because at the end of the day, your voice is your true expression, and you want to have that. You want to have this feeling like you do take up that space and you do have your presence and people hear you. But for people hear you, they need to have your voice get to their ears, right? So let's take care of that first and just tell yourself right now, I am learning to love my voice. I'm not saying I love my voice because then your brain would be like, I don't. What are you talking about? But I'm learning to love my voice. I'm learning that my voice matters. I'm learning that people love my voice. I'm finding out. I know that it is possible to love my voice. And we will end with that. Thank you so much for being here. I love you all. It was such a pleasure talking to you. I love that you are excited about this and if you want I will do my best to create more content around voice and about vocal power and presence and go watch the video on YouTube. I hope it's up but if not it will be soon. And take care. Stay healthy, stay safe. I love you all. Bye. Sam.