Your Public Best - Lillian Brown [42]
Projection is not done with volume. It is not a matter of talking loudly in high decibels. Projection is a matter of using all of the principles of good voice control so that your natural speaking voice is projected properly.
Timbre
Timbre is how your ear recognizes and identifies one voice from another—how you recognize the voice of one of your children from the others, for example.
Timbre should not be confused with pitch and other voice characteristics. For example, you would recognize Donald Duck’s voice whether it was pitched high or low, whether it was whispered or shouted. You recognize Frank Sinatra’s singing voice instantly because of its distinctive timbre.
Similarly, your voice has its own distinctive overtones—sounds that make it recognizable to your mother when you call her on the telephone.
Expression
To become verbally expressive, visualize the words you are saying. Put life into your sounds and pronunciations and feeling and shading into your delivery.
In everyday life, you are most expressive in informal conversation. Transfer this same eloquent expression into your formal speech. If you have trouble doing this and still find yourself speaking with little expression when you are in front of a group, try tape recording a one-on-one conversation at home with your wife or husband or a good friend. Try to forget that the recorder is on. Later, when you are alone, play it back and pinpoint what you liked best about the expressiveness of your conversation ... keeping an ear cocked for what you didn’t like as well.
Imagine the next speech or presentation that you give to your peers or business colleagues being more expressive.
Or if you do not hear much to like about your conversation, record a conversation between you and someone who does use great expression in his or her speech. Pick out someone who is a ham or a “natural-born-actor,” a person who is known for telling great jokes or stories or anecdotes, or anyone else who is expressive and uses warmth and color in his or her speech.
Of course, the expression of your voice is controlled by your own interpretation of the material. Individual expression is achieved by intonation, changing rhythms of delivery, effective pauses, phrasing, and variations in pitch and range. Practice reading dramatic material, and train your ear to hear the correct expression.
When working on adding expression to your speech, remember to keep it natural, avoiding artificiality or theatricality in your delivery.
Tone
The tone of the voice involves pitch, vibration, and modulation. A good voice uses subtle variations of tone. Intonation involves the rise and fall of the voice. The monotone is tedious to the ear because the single tone is uniform and uses one unvarying pitch. Tone-deaf people are insensitive to differences in pitch. You can change the meaning of your words simply by varying the tone of the voice.
In the throaty, husky voice, the lower overtones are prominent. In the thin, harsh voice, the higher overtones are prominent. In all of these extremes, it is important to use sound principles of voice production—open resonators, a relaxed throat, and clear tonal pitch.
To understand what a big difference a change in tone can make, think of the two contrasting voices used by the character Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, as Professor Henry Higgins turns the Cockney flower seller into a lady. As he teaches her to speak properly, it is not only her accent and the shrillness of her voice that changes, it is also a change in tone.
Nasality
Nasality is unpleasant to the ear. The nasal tone quality is harsh, since resonance is limited to a very small area in the mask of the face. When a nasal sound is being made, the muscles of the neck and throat are drawn taut with tension.
To eliminate nasality, relax the back of the throat as though you would say “yaawwnn.” This puts the correct distance between the back of the tongue and the soft palate. The uvula rises and closes