Set Your Voice Free: How to Get the Singing or Speaking Voice You Want

by Roger Love

Listen to a favorite song and then record yourself singing it with the emotion turned up to 10. When the line seems sad, go way over-the-top and see if you can showcase that. Anger, same way. And if there’s hope, joy, or pleading, make that as huge as you can. If you’re a speaker and want to try this, go way, way past what you think you need in volume, speaking from loud to soft, really fast and really slowly to absurdity, and pumping in melody. Listen back, then cut the emotion and variations in half as you record again. What you hear is probably not that absurd at this point. The idea is to overact until you are believable. No one ever steps onstage or in front of a camera to underwhelm the viewer. Relaxed and casual doesn’t work. Give your audience more energy, more excitement, more emotion, more entertainment than they bargained for. The other key piece is matching your physiology to your song and, once more, doing it in a big way. When you’re singing about something happy, it has to show on your face. Your eyes have to smile, your cheeks rise. If you’re sad, the, eyebrows come down. If you’re Eminem angry, the movements of your hands will be faster and stronger and end with something hard, like a karate chop. And if you’re singing about sweetness and beauty, the motion of hands and body should be more fluid, flowing from one gesture to another and using the whole body.