As you know, the power of the voice serves as an excellent aid in the activities of professional artists who earn their living by using their voice in their work. However, strength and confidence in the voice can serve well not only people, so to speak, creative, but also completely ordinary people engaged in ordinary mundane affairs, developing their own business, advancing in their career, and simply those who are used to and love interacting with other people .
It's no secret that through proper placement of accents in the voice, setting stress and other similar manipulations, you can achieve a truly amazing effect, for example, have the necessary influence on people during negotiations, create a first-class impression of yourself, or influence any person in such a way as to so that it does what you need.
But can people with weak voices somehow influence it to become stronger? Of course they can, because there are many effective ways to do this.
How to make your voice stronger?
Firstly, it should be said that the method of increasing voice strength consists of three important components:
- The first and most important thing is to train the parts of the body that take part in the process of voice formation: vocal cords, muscles of the larynx, chest, etc.
- The second component can be called the work of training competent and correct pronunciation of the strongest sounds found in human speech
- And the third factor is adherence to a special diet, i.e. eating certain foods
Let's look at each of these points in more detail.
What does low voice mean?
Timbre development with age
Low tone of voice means sounding in a low range.
The timbre of our speech is not something constant and stable given to us from birth. With age, the vocal apparatus undergoes functional changes.
Children's voices, for example, are not much different from each other. It is almost impossible to distinguish a boy from a girl during this period.
In adolescence, as a result of hormonal changes in young men, the vocal cords increase in size, changes in the speech apparatus occur - this is why their voice becomes low.
The timbre of girls also becomes lower as they grow older, but only slightly, because the enlargement of the vocal cords is not so obvious.
At an elegant age, the tone of speech changes along with the general state of the body: it can become duller, weaker, lower.
Voice classification
Before you decide to make changes and make your voice a little different, let’s consider what they are, what groups they are divided into.
From low to high range, female singing voices are classified as follows:
- contralto - velvety, lowest timbre;
- mezzo-soprano - deep, rich, medium in sound;
- soprano - high, sonorous, bright.
In men, singing voices from low to high timbre are divided into:
- bass - this is the name of the lowest sounding tone;
- baritone - medium in sound;
- tenor is the highest.
Muscle training to strengthen your voice
To train muscles to strengthen your voice, experts recommend performing the following exercises:
Exercise No. 1
You need to go to the mirror, open your mouth wide and try to see your larynx and tonsils. If you try to tense your throat or say something, you will see that the throat muscles go into a tense state and then relax again. Try to feel these muscles. This will not require a lot of time.
As soon as this result is achieved, begin to purposefully tense and relax the muscles of the larynx. Try to do this procedure without exerting much effort and controlling the pace of contraction.
After a certain amount of training, you will be able to perform these exercises without using a mirror, because you will already have acquired the skill of controlling the tension in your throat.
Exercise No. 2
In the same way, it is necessary to train other components of the voice-forming system. These include resonators that control the sounds you speak. These resonators are sources of sound and there are three types - chest, throat and nasal resonators.
Approach resonator training like this: stand in front of the mirror again and start making long sounds “i”, “e”, “a”, “o”, “u”, trying to change their sound. Try changing the tone from low to high and vice versa.
Keep in mind that the presented sequence of sounds was not chosen randomly, because each of them affects the body in a certain way: the sound “i” improves blood circulation, the sound “e” activates the muscles of the throat and neck, the sound “a” has a positive effect on the chest area, the sound “o” increases blood supply to the heart, and the sound “u” makes the voice deeper and lower.
We should not forget about several important components of the second exercise:
- When pronouncing the most powerful sounds, the facial muscles must be relaxed as much as possible, because this makes voice control much easier;
- Breathing must be correct, i.e. measured and even. Constricted and erratic breathing will prevent your voice from being strong and firm. In addition, when you inhale through your nose, you activate the nasal resonator;
- You need to control your posture - a straight and even position of the spine affects the timbre and quality of your voice. Strive to ensure that your spine is not tight and that you feel comfortable when you stand or walk - it will be much easier to develop the correct pronunciation.
In conclusion of this section, it can be noted that it is not only individual muscles that need to be trained, but the entire body in general. Only in this case can you achieve a good result in voice production.
Methods and exercises for low sound
Here I will give three main areas in which you should begin to act. This is training the vocal folds, working with breathing and articulation. First things first.
Vocal fold training
The vocal fold is a mucous membrane made up of vocal cords and muscles. These muscles, like regular muscles in the body, can be trained and pumped up. And the thicker the muscles become, the lower the voice.
What you can do for this:
- Talk a lot. It doesn’t matter who is in front of you: an attentively listening colleague or an indoor cactus. Talk about how your day went, read poems, news aloud, repeat phrases after TV show hosts, etc. You can turn on the “nonsense generator” and for 10 minutes say everything that comes to mind about some subject. Even if the words are incoherent, illogical, stupid, allow yourself to say them.
- Think out loud. You need to talk silently, to yourself, but straining your vocal folds in the same way as would happen during a normal conversation. In this way, you can read books or simply think about something, saying words in your mind.
- Sing and shout. This helps warm up the ligaments and makes them more elastic and pliable. You can find audio recordings of vocalists with a low timbre and try to sing along as close to the original as possible. As for screaming, in order not to embarrass your neighbors, you can use a pillow and scream into it.
- Growl. Start growling at extremely low tones, gradually increasing the pitch to a safe, comfortable limit. Then lower your voice again and raise it again.
Breath work
I suggest several exercises:
- Stand with a straight back, take a slow breath and at the same time raise your arms, first to the sides and then up. Hold your hands and breath for a few seconds, and then sharply lean forward with a noisy exhalation, lowering your hands. Perform 2-3 approaches daily.
- The starting position is the same: standing with a straight back, hands at your sides. Lean forward, bending your back and taking a sharp, short, noisy breath. Now straighten up smoothly, allowing the air to slowly escape from your lungs. Take 10 breaths, then take a 5-minute break and return to the starting position. The number of approaches can be gradually increased.
- Take a deep yawn and try to say something as you exhale.
Breathing exercises by A. N. Strelnikova are very popular. Today it is taught by Alexandra Nikolaevna’s student, Dr. Mikhail Shchetinin. I recommend watching his video tutorial.
Here are some more tips:
- Breathe with diaphragmatic breathing. That is, with the stomach, so that the shoulders and chest remain in their places, and only the stomach moves.
- Speak English. This language is much more gentle on the vocal apparatus than Russian, so it will be easier to get used to proper breathing during a conversation.
- Speak more slowly. During fast speech, the ligaments become tense and the tone automatically becomes higher.
- Watch your posture. It is necessary that the head and back are straight. The sound directly depends on the position of the larynx.
Articulation gymnastics
This type of exercise is aimed at those organs that are involved in the formation of sounds: tongue, lips, cheeks, lower jaw.
Here are some examples of such exercises:
- Press your chin to your chest and make the “ee-and-i” sound low, gradually raising your head, but without stopping the sound.
- Close your lips tightly, pull them forward, and then stretch them into a wide smile.
- Alternately raise and lower your upper and lower lips, exposing your teeth.
- Stick out your tongue and try to “draw” different numbers or letters with it.
- Move your lower jaw back and forth, and then open your mouth as wide as possible.
- Regularly pronounce the following sounds loudly and clearly: G, K, HA, O, U, M, N. They help open the back of the throat and lower the larynx best.
You can find even more articulation exercises in a separate article.
Training the correct pronunciation of sounds
Training the correct pronunciation of sounds also involves performing a number of exercises.
Exercise No. 1
First, you should start mastering the sound “r”. To work on the sound “r”, it is recommended to do the exercise in three stages:
- At the first stage, we pronounce “r” very quietly
- At the second stage, we pronounce “r” with medium volume
- At the third stage, we pronounce “r” as loudly as possible
Try to make the sound you pronounce as correct, sonorous and clear as possible - this will allow you to make your voice stronger by adding a somewhat “metallic” sound to it.
But before practicing the sweeping pronunciation of the sound “r”, you need to prepare the muscles for work using the methods that we discussed above, as well as by pulling the tip of the tongue towards the upper palate in the area of the upper teeth. Having given your tongue this position, pronounce any words where the letter “r” is present, or make a loud growl, imagining yourself, for example, as a ferocious tiger.
Exercise No. 2
The second exercise is a rather original technique for increasing the power of your voice through unusual behavior. It sounds a little unusual, but you should start acting like Tarzan from the famous movie.
To do this, stand up straight, clench your hands tightly into fists and begin to pronounce in turn all those sounds that we talked about earlier, or some others.
But remember that you need to pronounce sounds as loudly as possible and while exhaling, and with your hands you should beat yourself in the chest from time to time, imitating the behavior of the above-mentioned hero. If you don’t associate Tarzan with this image, you can imagine yourself as a gorilla - then you’ll definitely succeed.
The "Tarzan" or "monkey" exercise will not only help you strengthen your voice, but will also clear out debris, mucus and moisture from your diaphragm. So, don't be surprised if you suddenly have a cough. And after you clear your throat, be “Tarzan” a little longer to consolidate the result.
It is also interesting that voice training experts advise doing this exercise in the morning, indicating that it will serve as an effective exercise for the body as a whole. And given that you have a long day ahead, this can bring you double results.
Who needs to correct their voice?
In general, the voice, like everything else, is a matter of taste. Some people like more brutal notes, others are attracted to ringing, high-pitched voices.
As a rule, those whose professional or other activities involve influencing the public have to work on their timbre: presenters, teachers, journalists, trainers, managers, businessmen.
There are also those who by nature have a timbre that, it would seem, does not quite correspond to their appearance. For example, imagine a broad-shouldered, two-meter man with a thick beard and an unnaturally thin, shrill voice. Most likely, he has heard from others more than once about this dissonance and experienced discomfort.
It is believed that a low, deep timbre gives the impression of confidence, calm, restraint, and firmness. Some scientists explain this from an evolutionary point of view: a rough voice was associated with strength and large size of its owner, and therefore aroused respect and some fear.
If you work with a microphone and you are not satisfied with your own sound, if your voice causes discomfort to others or you are unable to control it well, if you simply want to improve the functioning of the vocal apparatus, below you will find many techniques and recommendations that will help make the timbre lower and more pleasant for hearing.
Attention! If you are a teenager whose voice is currently going through a period of mutation, you need to do the exercises in a gentle manner. Don't overstrain your ligaments! Allow your body to adjust itself at a pace that is comfortable for it. Give preference to breathing exercises, work with articulation and diction.
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Diet to strengthen your voice
In addition to the fact that today you can find a lot of different diets that have a beneficial effect on physical and even mental health, there is also a special diet that has a targeted effect on the strength of the voice. But if you thought that now you will need to radically change your diet, then we hasten to reassure you: you won’t have to change much.
Today it is known for certain that egg yolk, if consumed raw, has an excellent effect on the surface of the vocal cords and throat, making them softer and more elastic. For this reason, nutritionists for professional artists insist that you must eat one raw egg every morning.
Besides eggs, there are other foods that can help strengthen your voice. First of all, speaking about such products, we need to talk about milk - it, like eggs, makes the vocal cords elastic and soft. But milk should not be consumed cold, but not hot either. It should be warm, i.e. its temperature should be lower than the temperature of the milk that many of us drink for colds, otherwise you will simply burn your ligaments.
If you don’t like milk or, God forbid, you are allergic to it, you can replace this product with sweet warm tea. It is no coincidence that sugar is mentioned here, because it contains glucose, which also affects the elasticity of ligaments.
That's all, actually. Do the exercises we presented at least once a day, and within a week your voice will become stronger and more velvety. And having introduced these exercises into the system, after a while you will no longer remember that your voice was once weak, because... the body adapts and gets used to new stress.
We also recommend reading:
- Storytelling
- Meditation with mantras
- Isometric exercises
- Improvisational exercises to improve communication skills
- Animal Flow System
- Covey's "Eighth Habit": summary
- Methods of mental self-regulation
- How to learn to relax: effective relaxation techniques
- Muscle relaxation: relaxation techniques
- Guide to Developing Concentration
- Oratory: exercises
Keywords:1Storytelling
What determines the pitch and timbre of the voice?
Both in singing and in speech, the pitch and timbre of the voice depends on the structure of the organs of the speech apparatus:
- length and thickness of ligaments;
- volume and shape of resonators;
- habitual movements of the muscles of the pharynx, lips, cheeks.
Therefore, it will not be possible to radically change the pitch of your voice and become a tenor from a bass or a soprano from a contralto. However, it is possible for everyone to enrich the timbre with overtones and expand the range of the voice towards higher notes. To do this, you need to be patient and persistent in training.
Advice from a phoniatrist
Experts who study voice pathologies, as well as methods of correction, prevention and treatment of various voice disorders, claim that there are many people who produce sounds incorrectly. Moreover, the person himself, due to habit, cannot always realize that he speaks in a voice that is unnatural for his physiology.
How to fix it? Doctors give several recommendations:
- Some diseases affect the voice. These are not only the obvious sore throats and colds, but also chronic diseases of the nervous and cardiac systems, spine, lungs, mental disorders, and sexual ailments. Before training the vocal muscles, you need to make sure that the body is ready for such loads.
- Monitor your hormonal levels. The condition of the ligaments is affected by the amount of testosterone: if the level of this hormone is below normal, the voice becomes thinner.
- The larynx is located at the level of 4–6 cervical vertebrae. Considering that there are only 7 of them, it is not difficult to guess what impact they have on voice quality. Watch the position of your neck: during a conversation, it should be relaxed and straight.
- If you smoke, quit the habit for at least a couple of days. Due to the fact that cigarette smoke causes aseptic inflammation of the folds, the voice actually becomes lower, but the result is hoarseness, not a velvety timbre.
- To determine your real voice, you can use this test. Close your teeth and lips, take a deep breath and begin to exhale slowly and evenly with the sound “mmmm”, then lowering and then raising the pitch. At the same time, clasp your throat with your palm as high as possible towards the chin. You should feel at what pitch of the voice your palm will vibrate the most. This sound is your real voice.
- Sometimes high notes in the voice are observed in moments of great excitement and tension. To feel more confident when communicating, you can enroll in public speaking courses.
- Another option is to contact a vocal teacher who will help correct defects and develop an even voice.
I recommend reading the tips for improving your diction. In the article you will even find a ready-made lesson program for the week.
Five rules for a beautiful voice
- The load on the voice should correspond to the degree of its training: do not try to shout over the loudspeaker and do not try to take the A of the second octave if you have an alto.
- Get rid of the habit of clearing your throat by clearing your throat. This leads to microtrauma of the ligaments, and “screamer’s nodes” form on them, which prevent the voice from sounding clear and at full strength. Whispering in large quantities is also harmful to the voice.
- During colds, taking care of your voice is especially important. Don't run out into the cold when you're hot, use a humidifier.
- Do not get carried away with soda, alcohol, nuts, seeds, coffee, fried, fatty, peppered and salted foods. Stop smoking.
- It is harmful to talk a lot after a heavy meal - at this time the diaphragm is “fixed” by the stomach, breathing becomes short, and the chances of damaging the ligaments increase.
