Be your own speech coach

How to be a great speaker

Be your own speech coach by using these great tips to improve your voice to help you deliver the perfect wedding speech. The first step is to become aware of every nuance of your voice so you can play to your strengths and get rid of any bad habits. The easiest way to do this is to record yourself and listen to the sound of your own voice.

Most people don’t like the sound of their voice – in fact, when they hear their voice on a recording for the first time they may actually cringe. The good news is that your voice can be trained. All it takes to improve the quality of your voice is a little effort and practice. Just 15 minutes a day spent practicing will help you dramatically improve the quality of your voice. You only get tongue tied when you haven’t practised!

Speech Coaching Tips & Techniques

Breathing
The single most important thing you can do to improve the quality of your voice is to breathe properly.

We speak on an out breath and we breathe on an in breath. The body needs oxygen to function to pump the blood around the body for movement and to feed the brain. Yawning is the way that your body is asking for more air.

A very simple exercise is to stand up, feet shoulder width apart. Take a really deep full breath in. Really fill those lungs. As you breathe out, open your mouth wide and make a sound as you do it. The easiest way is to count up to seven getting louder as you go up the scale.

Actors and singers know how important their voices are and they treat their voice as an instrument that needs to be looked after. Many have speech coaching to help train their voices. They will also use breathing exercises.

Actors also know the value of practice and they rehearse over and over again. Don’t leave it till the big day to be the first time you speak about it out loud.

Tone
The first thing you want to do is to develop a modulating voice to make it more interesting and easy to listen to. A flat, monotonous voice becomes very boring, very quickly and you don’t want to send you audience to sleep, do you? Use your tone to add interest. Give your voice rhythm.

Clarity
It’s not just what you say but how you say it that’s important. If you want to project a positive image and speak with confidence you need to speak clearly. Make it a pleasant experience for people to listen to you.

Your voice box or vocal chords are located in your throat. Your throat needs to be open to allow your vocal chords to create a proper sound. So open your mouth when you speak.

Speech coaches will tell you to be conscious of opening up your jaw otherwise you will limit the movement of your jaw and your voice will sound like you are mumbling or even a bit nasal. This then becomes a distraction to what you are saying and makes it very difficult for people to listen to you. By opening the jaw it automatically makes your voice sound louder and richer.

Pitch
The key to getting your pitch right is breathing. If you find your voice is getting higher when you are nervous it’s because you are not breathing properly. You need to breathe from your stomach in order to control your voice. Do the breathing exercise above every day to help you. The lower your pitch the more authority you will give out.

Volume
Use your voice as a powerful tool to connect, captivate and move your audience.This doesn’t mean you have to shout– this will put a strain on the voice box and may result in your voice sounding hoarse or you may even start to lose your voice.

Make it easy for people to listen to you.

If you are using a microphone for the first time it can be a bit of a shock. The microphone amplifies your voice and that can make you feel very uncomfortable as your voice seems so loud. As a result you may decide to speak more softly.

Unfortunately all that happens is that the audience experience you speaking softly into the microphone which can make you sound uptight and nervous. The advice from any speech coach would be when using a microphone it is essential to practice.

Pace
Pace is all about balance. If you speak too quickly it will be difficult for the audience to understand every word. Your words will all merge into one another and you will lose the interest of your audience. If you speak too slowly you will come across as boring and the audience will be reaching for their drinks and checking their watches.

Use your breathing to help pace yourself. On a scale of 1 – 10, 1 being slow and 10 being fast, aim to be in the middle around about 5. Listen to yourself and decide if you need to speed up or slow down. Speak clearly and deliberately.

Pause
Of all these speech coaching tips this one is a really underused skill yet it delivers dramatic results. There are 3 different ways you can pause for effect…

1. Stop and breathe. This is the most effective way to calm your nerves. Use this time to take a sip of water. This will stop your tongue from sticking to the roof of your mouth! The added bonus is that it makes you look in control.

2. Pregnant pause – stop before you say something to increase the sense of anticipation. Particularly effective when you are reciting a speech ode or comic verse because the audience is working out in their minds what words rhyme with your previous line.

The secret of great comedy is timing. Using a pregnant pause exaggerates certain points and builds anticipation. Your audience will be laughing before you’ve even finished the joke!

3. Let the laughter die down! The audience are looking for any excuse to have a laugh.

Voice training
Be your own speech coach and focus on one thing at a time. If you are saying a lot of um’s – decide to reduce these as you practice. Re-record yourself in a week’s time and see how much you have improved.

Use the above vocal techniques to help train and improve your voice. Use the breathing exercise as a vocal warm up before the big day.

And finally….

Be yourself. Develop your own style. Your voice is unique.

Remember the golden rule…

practice, practice, practice

Good luck!