Public Speaking – Mastering The Art

A Voice Coach’s Guide to Vocal Excellence

Public Speaking – Mastering The Art

For Public Speaking – mastering the art – your voice is your most powerful tool. It has the potential to captivate, inspire, and influence your audience. Yet, many individuals struggle to harness the full potential of their voices, leaving their presentations lacking impact. As a professional voice coach, I’ve witnessed first hand the transformative power of vocal training. In this comprehensive guide, I’ll share invaluable insights and practical exercises to help you unlock the full potential of your voice and become a compelling and confident public speaker.

Understanding Your Voice

Before delving into specific techniques for public speaking, it’s essential to develop a deeper understanding of your voice. Your voice is a reflection of your emotions, thoughts, and personality. It’s influenced by various factors such as pitch, tone, volume, pace, and articulation. By mastering these elements, you can effectively convey your message and connect with your audience on a deeper level.

1. Breathing Techniques For Public Speaking – Mastering The Art

The foundation of a powerful voice for public speaking lies in controlling and using your breath.

Although this really isn’t as important as it was before the ubiquitous microphone because you don’t need to ‘project’ it can still help you a lot, for emphatic phrasing or if you find you run out of breath at the ends of sentences.

Keep in mind you can always take more breaths. Breath is your petrol/diesal/hybrid system/battery charge. Essential!

Carefully marking out your breathing points like singers do on their music sheets can really help. We all feel nervous so having a reminder to breathe really helps.

Belly breathing, really helps breath control – is great for Asthma sufferers and like the Rib Swing method, can produce a strong and resonant voice. Doesn’t matter which method you use but either helps. I learned the Rib Swing method at drama school for delivering classical text like Shakespeare and the belly breathing method for singing arias (operatic songs).

If you know either one, practice breathing exercises with either your hand on your belly or your cupped hands on the lower part of your ribs. By consciously practising breathing to expand your ribs and fill your lungs or by breathing low into your belly – you will be working the muscles. Worked muscles increase strength and capacity.

Always breathe in through your nose and exhale through your mouth, using words not just breath.

Counting is good as you can build up from 5 to 20. But build up slowly  over weeks, as you could over oxygenate.

This will improve your breath control by expanding your lung capacity AND your ‘release control’.

You want to release your breath in a consistant fashion – by that I mean – think of the people who start voiced sentences with great gusto and then trail off. It’s boring and not very pleasant to listen to..  For eg if you saying numbers on your out breath, your fist figure should be the same volume as your last.

Also if you really do practice this, an ideal rhythm is c- ounting in for 5, hold for 5, out for 5 then releasing all the breath left and then breath in and repeat.

You can build up the breathing in count up to 10, keep the holding count at max 5 and then the out breath can build up to 20 – but honestly PLEASE build this capacity up VERY SLOWY OVER WEEKS or you could hurt yourself.

2. Vocal Warm-Up Exercises for Public Speaking – Mastering The Art

Just as athletes warm up before a workout, vocal warm-up exercises are very effective for preparing your voice before public speaking.

Before going into a voice over studio, I used to whisper ‘Many mighty men make much money on the moon shine’ and  ‘articulatory agility is desirable ability to manipulate with dexterity the lips, the tongue and the palette’.

Whispering really makes your lips work – try it – no voice – literally just whisper on the breath.

It’s a fantastic technique for finding the tricky words or phrases in a speech. You literally stumble in the whispering, re-form the words making the lips and the tongue work harder and then when you come to voice the words, it’s easy!

By the way, if you are in control of the writing – always rewrite/rephrase – if something is difficult to say. Just changing a word or restructuring the sentence can make your life so much easier – and at the end of the day it is the performance that counts – not whether you’ve written a great grammatically correct clause.

3. Articulation and Pronunciation For Public Speaking – Mastering The Art

Clear articulation and pronunciation are essential for effective public speaking communication.

Practice to improve diction and clarity.  Pay attention to your mouth movements: I ask my male and female students to wear lipstick – preferably bright red, though some men prefer to use white zinc ski lip cover.

Strive for precise lip shapes which will result in excellent enunciation of each word.

Record yourself speaking and write down any words that aren’t supper clear. eg isn’t; can’t; but – make sure those t’s are very audible.

When you speak English is is essential that you pronounce your end consonants and this is particularly important when public speaking. The end consonants need to be loud and clear.

4. Vocal Variety For Public Speaking – Mastering The Art

Monotone delivery can quickly bore your audience and diminish the impact of your message. To keep your audience engaged, vary your pitch, tone, and pace throughout your speech. Experiment with inflection to emphasize key points and convey emotion. Incorporate pauses strategically to allow your audience to digest information and build suspense.

To introduce more musicality into your voice, buy a basic keyboard, a kid’s toy will do and talk matching the pitch of the notes going up and down the keys.

Please use the white keys only. This is because using the sound of the black notes – which some people do for effect for a character or because they’ve had a dodgy voice coach like Rishi Sunak must have done, make you sound really phoney.

5. Projection and Volume For Public Speaking – Mastering The Art

Effective projection is essential for commanding attention and reaching all members of your audience in public speaking.

So this is why taking as many breaths as you need is important – please don’t think public speaking is based on having the lungs of an opera singer or a stage trained pre mic era actor. You simply need to breath when you feel you need it – and not when you think you should.

You do not need to be able to project to a full auditorium without electronic help or speak long complicated phrases written 500 years ago like Shakespeare. When I was young I was flat on my back every day improving my rib swing or singing for hours to increase my lung capacity because we were expected to fill theatre auditoriums with just our own breath control – you do not need to do that.

What you need to focus on for public speaking is this: you need make sure that you release the breath at the same rate, rather than loud at the beginning and then trail off.

Honestly, you can do this by simply taking more breaths – please don’t be conned into buying breath lessons – this is 2024. You do not need a six inch rib swing like I had – irrelevant and not needed. It’s more important that you make sure your end consonents are audible.

But, never shout, use your breath to project. A tight throated sound which shouting is – is very difficult to listen to – open your mouth and breathe as much as you want, the microphone will do the rest.

Always do a sound check though – a sound level check in the space you will be speaking – and make sure they are standing at the back of the venue – in the furthest seat or standing place available.

Obviously you will need to ask the venue to turn their sound system on for you.

6. Confidence and Presence For Public Speaking – Mastering The Art

Confidence comes from practice and so developed skill. You would not ask somebody to do a heart operation and say – oh just pretend your confident and everything will be fine!

Practice speaking to a full length mirror. See what they see. Hear what they will hear. And you edit your text and modify your behaviour accordingly.

This will help you develop confidence because you will know what you look and sound like when you come to stand infront of other people.

Remember to look into your own eyes as well as that imaginary audience. Your own eyes will scare you (yes!) and it will prepare you for other eyes staring at you 🙂  .. this works I promise you 🙂

Remember that authenticity is key ie be your best self that you have projected on to that full length mirror you have practiced infront of – and do practice – this will allow you to be more relaxed on the day.

The more practice you do, the more relaxed you will be on the day and so the more of your best self you will be able to convey, because you won’t be so terrified.

ALWAYS PRACTICE TO A MIRROR – PREFERABLY FULL LENGTH IF YOU ARE STANDING.

7. Vocal Health For Public Speaking – Mastering The Art

Maintaining vocal health is crucial for sustaining long-term vocal excellence. Eat carbs before your performance because they keep water in the body – an excuse for your favourite carb treat I would say – or at the very least – bread!

Stay hydrated and have a glass or bottle of water by your side. Always do this, if possible.

Remember foods like bananas, pastries, bread, salty food or pasta, will keep your water in your body which is what you want to keep your vocal chords moist.

You do not want to be desperate for the loo when it comes to your time to speak. You really don’t. That will not help you or give you a sense of urgency, it will make you sound on edge.

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Mastering the art of public speaking is a journey that requires dedication, practice, and ongoing refinement.

By  honing your vocal skills and practising to a mirror,  you can captivate your audience and deliver memorable presentations that leave a lasting impact.

Embrace the power of your voice, and unleash your full potential as a persuasive and influential communicator.

With perseverance and commitment, you can become a confident and compelling public speaker capable of inspiring others and effecting positive change.

And we all need that!