No, I am not going to teach you how to talk. This comes naturally for people who are not mute. However, the way you talk can be influenced by the people around you, and the environment. Environment comes to play if you grow up around ethnicity with strong accent or peculiar speech pattern/impediments. If you are Yoruba, you most likes have the H factor; some part of Igbo have the L and R factor; and the Southerners have the nasal consonants issue. For these issues you should talk to a speech therapies or a trained voice coach.
In this post, I will teach you how to talk attractively from how you talk now. People often attribute beauty in speech to extremely low pitch – especially in men. This is not totallycorrect, if it were, then females with extremely high pitched voice should be acceptable as beautiful, but it is a pain to listen to someone speak in extremely high pitched voice. It is good to have depth in voice for men, but there are ways to go about it than forcing your voice to deepen unnaturally. This will create a guttural sound that will, in the long run, cause you vocal fatigue and even spoil your voice.
Below is a list of things that make an attractive voice.
Pitch (I know)
Placement
Tempo
Breath control
CLICK TO READ MORE: How to Control Breath When Singing
Pitch: I know I said low pitch doesn’t necessarily make a good voice. If you have this depth naturally, great. If you don’t, don’t force it. This is when it is bad. To speak attractively, you want to talk just at the middle of your range. Too high pitched voice will have audibility problem, and extremely deep voices can cause aural discomfort. Speak at the middle of your range. At this pint, you won’t feel any pain or stress.
Exercise: hum for a long time, then immediately talk, allowing your words flow from that hum. This is most likely your natural middle pitch.
Placement: this involves where the voice is placed during phonation. If you place your voice higher, it will be too pitchy and cause you stress. Find you middle range and try this exercise.
Exercise: Do a lip trill on any comfortable scale in pitch 5-4-3-2-1, and make an ‘ah’ sound on the 1 pitch. Repeat this up and down your range.
Tempo: you don’t want to talk too quickly, for you most likelywon’t be understood. And if you speak too slowly, you might lose your audience. To speak attractively, you want to speak with moderate speed and equal pace. Not like a robot, though.
Exercise: organize your thoughts before peaking. Take breaks between sentences and avoid filler words like ‘ehm’ or ‘very’.
Breath Control: Yes, good ‘ol breath control. When people lose breath between sentences, it breaks the sentences and makes their speaking unattractive if it happened regularly.
Exercise: always breath before sentences. Punctuate you speaking properly so that you can take short breaths at commas and longer ones at the end of the sentence.
Do all this and you will be amazed at the transformation that your speaking will undergo. Lastly, do not forget to maintain oral hygiene. No one wants to hold a conversation with a person with bad breath.
John is a Nigerian Baritone, Falsettist, and a Writer. He is the first runner up for the Kingsley Inuope Idegun Memorial Award for Countertenors. His literary works have been published on online magazines like KalahariReview, PraxisOnline, AfroAnthologySeries, et al. He blogs stories on nighttalesng.wordpress.com
