Gravitas & Authority Voice Coaching is based on me teaching you how to allow your body to use your breath unimpeded, so that it can resonate through your pharynx, from your chest chamber and fill the mouth cavity.
If you wish your voice to have gravitas and authority, your voice sound has to come from your body not just your head.
What I mean by that..
If you are using your tongue, jaw, facial muscles including the lips incorrectly, however much you breath, you have not got a hope in hell of projecting a confident, resonant sound – it’s just not going to happen.
Consider the example of someone who was brought up speaking Chinese as their first language: Mandarin or Cantonese or any other form. The tongue is typically held backwards and high in the mouth producing a fairly highish pitched sound when speaking English – even more so on women.
The tongue is blocking the breath so that when a female Chinese lady might need to project her voice to say more than 5 people, her pitch goes even higher, an efficient way of increasing volume, but not an attractive one.
If and when female actresses do this – and some do especially the ones who are only cast on their looks not expertise – it makes me and a few others I suspect, want to walk out of the theatre! Luckily they are generally surrounded with better voices so one receives respite and variety 🙂
Next time you go to the theatre notice the female lead is often the most stunning looking or the most famous, but the least vocally flexible. Not always so – the late wonderful Helen McCrory was stunning in all aspects and you can catch her amazing performance in 2017 in The Deep Blue Sea by Terrence Ratigan on the National Theatre At Home ‘on demand ‘platform.
Lindsay Duncan is another favourite: beautiful and stunning yes, but /AND what a voice! Another supremely skilled actress.
So the point is..
…in order to have gravitas & authority, you need to be able to access the natural resonance from your body and not keep the cork (your tongue) stuck in the metaphorical neck of the bottle.
Your breath needs to be able to work through your body unimpeded, so that you vibrate with gravitas and authority!
If you study with me
From the very first lesson you will find out, how with a simple technique, you can drop your voice an entire register, learn how you you allow your breath to fill your mouth cavity unimpeded and speak with gravity & authority. Then, it’s up to you to practice. And practice you must do.
Daily Practice
To fill an auditorium with your voice like McCauley or Duncan could and can, you have to spend hours practicing everyday but this is not needed by you as you do not need to fill a large theatre or opera house.
You just need to sound resonant over Zoom or Teams; or in a normal room; maybe a board room and if any larger ,you will have a mic..
However your lungs are muscles, your tongue is a muscle and likewise your lips and they need a daily work out, to increase capacity and strength.
You Don’t Need to Fill An Auditorium
in this modern world of ubiquitous sound systems, unless you are an actor (and nowadays even the National Theatre is ‘miced) it is very unlikely, that you need your lungs to be vast and strong BUT you do need your tongue to be strong, and flexible. And most importantly, working in the right way, out of the way of the breath.
This maximises the breath capacity, you do have.
For you to speak with gravitas and authority, this technique is essential.
A Favourite Voice Request
How to speak with gravitas & authority is a very common question from people before they study with me so I thought I would write this week’s blog on the subject and go someway to explaining how it is achieved.
For more info please do email me for my prices and note I work 7 days a week, days and evenings so so I’m sure I can work around your busy schedule!
You always have a video of our work together so that you can replay, revise, evaluate – and make that money go further!
Best wishes, Rachel 🙂