#506： How to Improve Your Speaking Voice
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170.58655
Summary
Your voice is a big part of what makes you, you, and your influence, yet you probably don t think much about it. Not to mention, my guest argues that you re likely not even using your true voice thanks to bad habits you picked up throughout your life. His name is Roger Love, and he s a voice coach who s worked with some of the world s most famous singers and speakers, and the author of the book, Set Your Voice Free. Today, on the show, Roger explains why having a clear, confident, pleasant speaking voice is important for success in your career and in your life, and how the biggest ways people sabotage their voice, including voice fry, uptalk and being nasally, can be addressed and eliminated. And Roger also shares how to speak in a more masculine way while you re probably not speaking loudly enough.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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And when it comes to your personal presentation, there's one aspect that often gets overlooked,
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your voice. Your voice is a big part of what makes you you and what makes you likable,
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influential, yet you probably don't think much about it. Not to mention, my guest day argues
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that you're likely not even using your true voice thanks to bad habits you picked up throughout
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your life. His name is Roger Love. He's a voice coach who's worked with some of the world's most
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famous singers and speakers and the author of the book, Set Your Voice Free. Today on the show,
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Roger explains why having a clear, confident, pleasant speaking voice is important for success
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in your career and in your life, the biggest ways people sabotage their voice, including voice fry,
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uptalk, and being nasally, and how these issues can be addressed and eliminated. And Roger also
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shares how to speak in a more masculine way while you're probably not speaking loudly enough.
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After the show is over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash voice.
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So you are a vocal coach and you've written a book called Set Your Voice Free,
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how to get the singing or speaking voice you want. How did you get, how did you become a vocal coach?
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Is that something like when you were eight, like you're like, I want to be a vocal coach? Or did
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you, did it sort of happen organically? It happened organically. I was really interested
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in singing, all things singing. So when I was 13 years old, I had convinced my mother to take me to
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have lessons from the most famous voice coach in the world. And when I was 16 years old, he left for
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Canada to teach a masterclass and he didn't have anybody to take over the studio. So he just casually
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asked me if I wanted to take over the studio on Monday. And I casually told him that I had no idea
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how to teach, that I was just doing my best to become a good student. He said, don't let that worry
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you because I'm going to pay you hundreds of dollars an hour. And I couldn't wait to get over to that
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studio on Monday fast enough. So I showed up as a novice voice coach, never having been trained as a
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voice coach. And my first day I was voice coaching the beach boys and, and, and earth went in fire and
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Stevie wonder and all of these incredible super groups that he had already had as students.
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Can you even imagine one by one, the biggest singing stars in the world came into the studio.
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And every single time I thought I should just let them know that I know nothing and we should just
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end right there. But I, I literally faked it. And what happened was a miracle and surprised me just
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as much as anyone. Six months later, when he came back, every single one of his students wanted to
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study with me. They wanted to stay with me because we found that I had an ability to listen to people's
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voices and then make changes to make them better. So are most of your clients, are they singers or do
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you also work with public figures who they don't sing, but they do public speaking for 17 years?
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I stayed as a junior partner with that teacher and only taught singers. And I still have about 50% of
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my roster as singers, but along the line, speakers started coming to me. People like Anthony Robbins and
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Susie Orman and actors like Reese Witherspoon and Jeff Bridges. And they wanted me to work on their
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speaking voices sometimes. So in the beginning, I literally turned them away because I considered
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myself only a singing teacher. And through the process of me taking them as students and learning
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what I needed to learn and create content that I needed to create, I realized that there's really
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no difference at all between speaking and singing. And that I had gotten very, very good at helping
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singers open up their mouths and influence millions of people. And that I realized I could do the same
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Well, that's counterintuitive that singing and speaking are the same because most people think,
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okay, I can understand a vocal coach for a singer, but speaking, like that's something you do every day.
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You've been doing it since you were, I don't know, one. So what, how is it that, like, why do people
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need, why would people need a voice coach? Like what, what, what goes on with when the way we speak
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that we develop bad habits and things like that?
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Well, here's the thing. People believe that they are the voices, the speaking voices that they were born
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with. But the truth is it's not true. What happens is as we grow from babies, we just imitate the sounds
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that we hear. And so if mommy speaks with a really nasal voice and I really want to get breast milk,
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well, then I say, hungry, hungry. And if dad speaks with a really airy voice and I want to be carried all
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the time, I say, up, up. So we imitate the sounds that we hear as we learn language and that's our way to
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survive. And then suddenly we're adults and we think that's the voice that we were born with, that voice
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that we hate on our voicemail message, that voice that doesn't seem to be getting us where we want in our
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careers or in our personal lives. We think that's the voice we were born with. But I teach people that you can just
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decide from today. You don't like your voice, it's not working for you, and you can learn how to use
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it so that your voice becomes your greatest communication asset that you could ever have.
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Yeah, a lot of people don't talk about it, but there's a lot of people who don't like their voice.
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If they hear the recording of themselves, like, oh boy, I don't like that at all.
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Join the group. About 95%, if not higher, of the people who listen to their voicemail message,
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even after they've bought a brand new, really expensive phone, they listen to it and they're
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like, ugh, who's that? And then they try to re-record it. And then they still don't like it.
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And they try and try and try. And about 30 minutes later, your average person says,
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I'm an executive. This is ridiculous. I can't possibly spend any more time recording this silly
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message. And then you settle and you leave your phone alone. Well, that voice that you don't like
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that you settled with on your voicemail message is the voice you're using all through your business
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dealings, all through your personal dealings. And maybe other people don't like it that much either.
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And that's the hard thing about voice because you use it all the time. So there's a disconnect.
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You don't notice it until you actually listen to it as a third party.
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That's right. We're not in the habit of recording our voices. But we also don't realize that the
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sounds we make are making people believe us or like us. This is so interesting because in 2017,
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Yale did a groundbreaking study to try to prove once and for all, when I speak to you or you speak to me,
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what makes me believe you and like you? And they found after interviewing and studying hundreds and
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thousands of people, they realized that we've learned to lie with our words. So you can't trust
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what people say and that we've learned to lie with our physicality and our body language. So if you're
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miserable and you put a smile on your face, you think you're convincing the person you're talking to
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that you are the happiest person in the world, but you're not because words lie and body language
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lies. But the study proved that the only thing that people believe are the sounds of your voice.
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Somehow people can perceive whether you're telling the truth, whether you're honest, and whether you're
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likable and believable just from the sounds of your voice.
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That's powerful stuff. So it pays to think about it a bit. So you mentioned the way we develop these bad
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habits, vocal habits, is just imitation. We imitate our parents, we imitate friends, we might even imitate
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people we watch on TV. In your course of working with people, what are the most common bad vocal habits
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you see? So you mentioned speaking with an airy. Is that a bad habit, speaking with an airy voice?
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Some people think that speaking with air is speaking because you care. So you go to a psychologist and
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they say, it's all about you. Roger, talk to me, talk to me. And they get all airy. And though the
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airy sound might sometimes work in the bedroom, it does not work in the boardroom because air, when it
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comes out of your mouth, dissipates in the air. And when people are listening to airy voices, they're just
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thinking weakness. They're not thinking love. They're thinking lack of strength. So airiness is
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one. Here's a couple of other things that people need to immediately think about their own voice and
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then make the changes. We were taught when we speak to get to a comma or a period and then go down. So I'm
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speaking and then I get to a comma. And I go down in volume and I go down in pitch to a lower note. So
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every time I'm speaking and I get to a comma, I go down or I get to a period and I go down.
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But here's why that is absolutely crazy. And we should have never been told that when you go down,
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when the melody goes down from highs to lows, it makes people sad. Check this out. I love my wife.
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It's my birthday. I didn't get any presents. So when I go down, it makes me sound sad. And then it
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makes you sound sad. And it makes you feel sad. And yet that's what people are doing. We're not
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supposed to go down all the time. Can you imagine telling Mozart that every time he, before he got to
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rest, he'd have to go down in his melody. Nobody would tell Mozart that nobody would even tell Ariana
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Grande that. So, so the melodies create emotions on the other side. If you just went up, I love my
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wife. I love my dog. I love chocolate going up makes people happy. So how many people listening today
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are going down at commas and then wondering why people are falling asleep or getting sad when they're
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listening to them? No, that's interesting. So related to that, one thing I've noticed in the
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past few years is this like this idea of up talk. Is that when you go up, like it's whenever, whenever
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people do it, it's like, I love this. And it, it like, it turns like a statement. It makes it sound
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like a question. Perfect. I'm so glad you asked that question because there's a difference between up
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talk and going up in melody. And let me show you how simple it is. If you slide from one note to the
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next, you like chocolate. It's my birthday. I'm okay. That's bad. But if you don't slide and you just
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say, it's my birthday. I like chocolate. If you just go up instead of slide, then it's only bad if you
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slide. And all those articles were written by non-musicians who didn't really understand how
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emotion and music create thoughts. So you're absolutely allowed to go up. You just can't slide.
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Like, how do you think that started? I mean, I've just, I've noticed it in like the past five years,
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particularly young people do the slide thing. The, the origins that I believe are from the San
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Fernando Valley in California where Frank Zappa had a daughter named moon unit Zappa. And she used
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to speak like that and she would slide. That's okay. Let's go. And then she actually became a
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celebrity. One of the first media celebrities, at least a daughter celebrity. And then that voice
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became known as Valley talk before it was known as up talk. But I'm dispelling the myth that going up
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is bad. As long as you don't slide going up is amazing. When I go up, I'm signaling to the listener
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that I'm not finished. So they don't interrupt me. And how many people are sick and tired of being
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interrupted? And the only reason they're being interrupted is because they're going down. And
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when you go down, the other person you're speaking to thinks that you're done. So of course they jump in.
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So if you don't want to be interrupted anymore and you don't want to make people sad,
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you better learn the difference between Valley talk and just going up in melody called ascending
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melodies. That's fantastic. That's an example of how singing is the same as speaking.
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Exactly right. When you think about it, singing and speaking, what we use the same vocal chords,
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we use the same control over air. And when a singer sings, they have melody so that there's a melody line.
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Well, when we speak, we should have a melody line better than the ones most of us are using.
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Because as I just showed you, most people are doing melodies that go down, melodies that go down all
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the time. So we have melody. A singer has volume changes. Sometimes it's loud and sometimes it's
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soft. And we should do the same thing for speaking. A singer gets loud sometimes, sorry, a singer gets
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fast sometimes. And slow sometimes. And we should do the same thing for speaking. So when you think
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about it, almost every variable that exists in singing, pitch, pace, tone, melody, and volume,
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they should be considerations in the speaking voice. But here's the problem. You and I weren't born with
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the manual that told us how to use our voices. I didn't get one. There was one missing from my crib.
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And you have a nice voice, but I bet you didn't get one either. So I've spent my life writing the
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manual of what people should use their voices to achieve. And if they want to influence people,
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and if they want to be perceived a certain way, and if they want to have great relationships with
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themselves and with other people, and they want to have great business dealings, and they want to be
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able to get into an elevator and in three floors, make a pitch that turns into a great business,
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then they need to start thinking about their voice and stop worrying about a lot of the other things
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they're worried about. Well, so another common complaint that people have about their voice
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is like, well, I just, I'm very nasally. And they think, well, it's just the way I am. There's nothing I
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can do to change about it. So is nasally speaking, is that just a matter of habit? It's not a matter of
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anatomy, or does anatomy play a role? Anatomy plays the role because as sound heads through
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the throat and then goes towards the sinuses, the size of your nasal cavity, the size of your
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nostrils, they play a little role, but it isn't definitive. In other words, no matter, you might
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have the smallest nose or the biggest nose or the smallest sinuses or the littlest sinuses,
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but you can immediately get rid of nasality. And let me give you the simplest fix right now.
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When people have a nasal voice, it's because their Adam's apples are actually too high.
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So if you put your index finger on your chin and you slide it back down to the first bump that you
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find, can you find your Adam's apple, Brett? Yes, I'm doing it right now. Okay. Now swallow,
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whoa. And you'll notice that your Adam's apple jumps up. And then it comes back down. Okay. Most
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people, when they speak, they let their Adam's apple come up really high. And that's, then that closes up
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the back part of their throat. And then when the back part of the throat is closed, the air goes
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towards the sinuses. It's a super simple, easy fix. Put your finger back on your Adam's apple and say,
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mum, say mum, normal. Mum. Now say mum like Yogi Bear. Mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum. Did you notice
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how your Adam's apple went down? Yes. Now, if you would, if you had a nasal voice, you don't. If any
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of your listeners have a nasal voice, they need to put their finger on their Adam's apple. They need to
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practice for a few minutes with the Adam's apple down, making this Yogi Bear low larynx sound, I call it.
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And then the Adam's apple just jumps down and the throat opens. So they do this for a few minutes,
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even though they feel totally silly, but it's telling the Adam's apple to stay down. And then
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they let go a little bit of the, the Basie sound and let go a little bit more and let go a little
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bit more, but try to keep their Adam's apple down where their finger is. In a few minutes,
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after you practice it a few times, you'll learn that you can keep your Adam's apple down and it'll
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stay there by itself. And when the Adam's apple stays down, when you practice it just a little,
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your throat sounds open and full and rich and all the nasality goes away.
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That's amazing. That's a, that's a great tip. And, and is that like that,
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that you say that's the person's true voice once they get that, they eliminate those bad habits.
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Great comment. I believe most people have no idea what their true voice is because they're so busy
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imitating all the people they grew up with. And the only way you find your true voice
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is to bump heads with somebody like me who says, here, let's do this. Let's learn how to breathe
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better. Let's learn how to drop your jaw. Let's learn how to go high and low. And it's really simple.
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And then when you've built an instrument, which takes minutes, then you can find your true voice.
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We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
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And now back to the show. I think for a lot of men's the art of manliness podcast,
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one thing that they're trying, they, they do with their voices. They, they lower it a lot.
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Exactly. Right. Here's what happens before puberty,
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a man and a woman's voice is exactly the same. It hits the same notes on the piano. If I,
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if you said hello and they said hello, it would be the exact same notes, same frequencies.
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So that's also why I believe that little boys and little girls get along so well,
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because when they, they make the same sounds, so they feel very similar. Then puberty happens and
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a male voice drops an entire octave, which is a huge direction down, lower.
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And a woman's voice does not drop. So a woman stays on the higher side and a man goes lower.
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Well, when that happens, a man usually doesn't even pay any attention to the high parts anymore
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and just focuses on the bottom part of the range because it's new and it's exciting.
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And, and, and not only is it already lower than women's voices and already louder and thicker
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because it, the chords are longer, but it's, it's, it already sounds different. So most men
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don't really need to then, well, I'll just make it lower or I'll make it more husky.
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There it's, it's, it's not true that they need to make it louder and thicker and bassier because
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it's already in the basement and they're already on the penthouse, but there are sounds that men
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should learn how to make that don't separate them from women. So point one, yes, that chest voice,
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that lower part of a man's voice is very appealing. So every man needs to know how to access it and
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create volume and thickness without any kind of shouting or angry sounds because people don't,
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do not like listening to people who are shouting and angry, but yes, a man should learn how to find
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this beautiful, open, low chest voice. But a man who is stuck there all the time ends up scientifically
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is being proven to be less attractive to women sometimes because not only does the woman, for
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example, want to have, hear a sound that proves he can go out and hunt the buffalo and bring it back.
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A woman also wants to hear sounds in a male voice that shows honesty and trust and caring.
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So a man who only stays in the very low part of his range and sounds like a caveman is not allowing
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those caring, loving feelings to actually vibrate against his partner some of the time. Does that
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make sense? That makes sense. And also I've heard, maybe correct me if I'm wrong, is that if you try to
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artificially stay down in that very low range, like it can actually damage your, like you can
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lose your voice. It hurts your vocal cords. Anytime you try to push your voice too low or too high and
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you create pressure, you can damage your vocal cords. But there are really simple ways to create
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thickness down at the bottom part of the range. Let me give you one right now. Most men have too much
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air at the bottom part of the range. So it's not just about being low, but they're low and airy.
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So the low and airiness is not perceived as manly. It's the low and edginess, that edge sound that is
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actually perceived as manly. How do you go from air to edge? Because they're both on the same note.
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Here I am down there low thinking I'm super manly, except it's all airy. And now I add that edge and I
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really understand what being a man and having a male voice is all about. You do this. Say the word
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Now, when you did that, that was awesome. When you did that, did you feel like a little
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buzz, a little rumble in the back part of your throat?
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Awesome. As opposed to brat, which sounds all airy, right?
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So the difference between brat and brat is that edge sound, the sound of the vocal cords vibrating.
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We need to learn how to use that edge in every word. So say this for me.
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I, I, I can, if I want, I can, if I want. Almost. I can, if I want. Edgy all the way through.
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Here we go. I can. Oh man. I can. No, I'm not doing it. I'm like,
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but you're closer than you think. Stay down low. I can.
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I can, if I want. Awesome. Most people listening sound more like this when they're trying to go
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low. I can, if I want. And then that doesn't sound masculine because air dissipates in the air
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and has no strength. So you're not going to be able to lift the mountain unless you have some of
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that edge sound that makes all the difference in the world. It's amazing. Well, here's kind of
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related. I can see this going that the edge thing going into another voice trend I've seen. And I
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think it's come out of California as well as the idea of voice fry where you're like,
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like, you know, it's like the Kardashians do it, but I've also seen, you know, dudes do it as well,
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where they just like, and they do it with uptalk as well. What, what is voice fry? How is it
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different from that edge? Okay. Again, great question. Vocal fry happens when the vocal cords
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are vibrating with no air. So vocal fry is this. I'm talking to you and then I run out of air and
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then I feel like I'm getting paid by the word. So I'll just add a few more. And the Kardashians are
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princes and princesses of this. They run out of air and then it goes to vocal fry. Vocal fry has no
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air. Vocal edge has air coming out of the mouth. Totally different. Edge fry. Fry sounds like you have a
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sore throat or a throat infection. You've got no air and you've got no power. Edge has air and
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thickness and power. Completely different things. We should lose that fry all together. You want to
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know how to, to lose it? How do you lose it? Just breathe? You're so right. But specifically one
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thing that you need to do with breathing. Most people, let's do this and have all your listeners
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listen to this as well. Take a breath on the count of three. One, two, three, a big breath. One, two,
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three, breathe. Now you're smart, Brett, and you probably let your tummy come forward as if you had
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a balloon. Yes or no? Correct. But a lot of people let their chest and shoulders go up. That's called
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accessory breathing. When you breathe, you take a big breath and your shoulders come up and then you
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exhale and your shoulders come down. But that's the way to get the least amount of air into the body
00:26:00.740
and that's the way to use the air in the worst way because it doesn't give you a good sound.
00:26:08.880
We're supposed to do a thing called diaphragmatic breathing, which means we breathe into our nose,
00:26:14.040
we pretend that we have a balloon in our stomachs, we breathe in, the balloon inflates so it gets bigger,
00:26:20.740
and then all the time we're speaking, we're supposed to be letting our stomachs come in.
00:26:28.040
That's just the same way a car works. You put gas in the engine, you drive by pushing the accelerator
00:26:35.580
pedal. So there's always gas, gasoline getting to the engine and the car runs and wins races.
00:26:42.500
But we don't do that with our breath. We hold our breaths. And if your stomach is not coming in when you
00:26:49.440
speak, that's what creates the vocal fry. That's what creates nasal voice. That's what creates a
00:26:57.060
small, thin voice. We should learn to only speak while our stomachs are coming in. Take a big breath
00:27:05.160
with me. Pretend you have a balloon in your tummy, take a breath and say, Roger wants me to only speak
00:27:11.400
while my stomach is coming in. Do that with me. Roger only wants me to speak when my stomach is
00:27:17.560
coming in. Great. When you do that, you can't possibly go into vocal fry. And you can't possibly
00:27:24.720
sound like a mouse because that air is pushing the sound out. So you have great volume without
00:27:31.680
sounding angry. Oh, I wanted to talk about that. People don't realize, I already mentioned that when
00:27:37.780
you go down, I love my wife. I like chocolate. When you go down, you sound sad. People think the emotion
00:27:45.700
you're exhibiting is sadness. And when you go up, people think you're happy. But what's the vocal
00:27:52.000
sound of angry? Because men need to really know this. Because women and everyone in general is just sick
00:28:01.360
and tired of people yelling at them as if they were angry. Nobody likes that. So you might just
00:28:06.880
have a thick, strong voice and people are saying, who are you mad at? Are you mad at me? Why are you
00:28:11.740
arguing with me? Or why are you always trying to mansplain by getting louder? So when there's phrases
00:28:18.040
like mansplaining that's happening in the world, we need to deal with that volume thing. Okay, here's
00:28:24.780
the sounds, the components of angry. When you get louder, but you get faster. When the words get
00:28:32.820
faster and you get louder, those are two elements of angry. So if you get louder and then you get
00:28:40.100
faster while you get louder, and then the third element is you don't have any melody at all. So
00:28:45.460
it's all just one note. So if I get louder and I stand monotone, I don't have any time for notes.
00:28:50.040
This is the only note I'm going to give you. And I speak really fast. It sounds angry. So again,
00:28:56.380
this is all simple stuff. When you sound angry, it's because you're saying the words really fast.
00:29:01.260
You don't have any melody and you're louder. But if you just took one of those ingredients out,
00:29:09.000
you wouldn't sound angry. For example, let's say I was really loud, but I had melody. So I was going up.
00:29:16.680
Well, if I was really loud and I had melody, I don't sound angry at all. I sound happy.
00:29:22.800
So volume, if I mix a little bit of melody in it, immediately takes away all of the anger.
00:29:30.600
Also volume, if I just slow down the words, I don't sound angry anymore. So simple trick,
00:29:40.980
but this, this solves a lot of problems and this will make everyone realize you're not trying to
00:29:48.180
argue with them. All you got to do when you get louder is add a little melody or slow down your
00:29:54.260
words. And then no one will ever think you're angry. Well, in speaking of volume, you write in
00:30:00.220
the book about most people, when they speak, they, they undershoot the volume. They speak
00:30:05.680
quieter than they, than they need to. Yep. Most people are speaking as if they were always on the
00:30:11.700
phone or they always had a microphone right in front of their lips. Even public speakers do that.
00:30:18.000
They're like, well, I'm going to be miked. So I don't have to make very much volume. But the truth is,
00:30:23.380
is that people don't understand that speaking is supposed to be a physical connection. Let me explain.
00:30:31.100
When I speak to you, my sound leaves my mouth in the form of invisible sound waves. Okay. This isn't
00:30:38.180
science fiction. This is true. And those sound waves exit my mouth. And if I'm a great speaker,
00:30:44.560
those sound waves vibrate your body. So they leave my mouth and then they travel across the air a few
00:30:51.100
feet or however far you are. And they vibrate your body. When you feel my sound, we're actually connected.
00:30:59.020
And then that sound, some of it goes into your ears and goes into your brain and gets processed.
00:31:04.940
But if my voice doesn't physically get over to where you are, we're actually disconnected.
00:31:12.300
We're not connected. This isn't really having a conversation. And most people are speaking
00:31:17.640
in a way with less volume and less edge. So they're, it's like they're talking to themselves.
00:31:23.780
The sound is coming out of their mouths and lucky if the sound is going an inch in front of them,
00:31:30.800
but it isn't going two feet or three feet or six feet, however far away the person is or the people
00:31:37.700
are. So we have to learn to do that because we not only want people to hear us, we want them to feel
00:31:45.420
us. It's a physical thing. Isn't that interesting?
00:31:48.580
That is really interesting. Another issue that people have with speaking, so there's the tone
00:31:53.860
part sounding nasally and things like that, but people also are insecure about their enunciation
00:32:00.620
and how they pronounce things. You know, they say, well, I just speak like I have a bunch of rocks in
00:32:05.340
my mouth. What can people do to get better at that aspect?
00:32:08.840
The number one reason that people mumble and other people can't hear them is because they don't drop
00:32:15.140
their jaw. Eighty-five percent of the population speaks and their upper teeth are too close to their
00:32:23.920
bottom teeth. It's like they're clenching their jaw. They have tension in their jaw. They're not opening
00:32:28.840
their mouths. And so they somehow have learned to speak like ventriloquists and they, they don't move
00:32:34.580
their jaw. They don't drop their jaw and they think they can get all the words like that. But when you
00:32:38.080
don't open your mouth and all the words get all mushed together. So people think it's because they speak
00:32:42.600
too fast. It isn't. It's because they're not dropping their jaw more. You're supposed to drop
00:32:50.520
your jaw when you speak. And then that separates word from word, vowel from consonant. And then
00:32:58.540
people will totally understand you when you learn to drop your jaw more. Super simple. Also, you know
00:33:05.460
what I forgot to mention? We live in a world because you're talking about words now and people don't
00:33:09.840
understand the words. Well, I also wanted to mention that science for the last 50 years has proven that
00:33:17.940
the words you say don't really even matter, but that everyone who's listening to us today is of the mind
00:33:27.380
of thinking that if I had the right words, I could convince this person to hire me. If I had the right
00:33:34.840
words, I could make this company go forward. If I had the right words, this person would go out with
00:33:41.680
me. This person would marry me if I had the right words. But science proves now that the words matter
00:33:48.580
the least and that the sounds of your voice matter infinitely more than the words you use. So those
00:33:58.060
people that are still just trying to learn the right words, they're already behind the eight ball. You need
00:34:02.940
to learn what sounds to make so that people feel things when they hear you. Nobody's going to
00:34:08.700
remember the words you use, but they will remember the way you made them feel. And you can only do that
00:34:16.080
with the sounds of your voice. And this doesn't take a lot of practice, a lot of time. Some people
00:34:22.340
think, well, if I'm going to improve my voice, I'm going to have to dedicate hours a week. Do you need
00:34:26.280
to do that? No, that's what's great about it. You want to learn how to play an instrument like the
00:34:30.520
piano? You better set aside six, 10, 12 hours a day to practice piano. If you want to be an amazing
00:34:36.600
pianist voice is so easy to change because I immediately break all of the bad habits that
00:34:44.720
people have. And when you just break a few of the bad habits, boom, all of a sudden the true voice
00:34:51.100
starts coming out. And I have people do what are called vocal warmups, super fun sounds that they do
00:34:58.620
for minutes, a few times, a few times during the week, just two or three times a day, two or three
00:35:06.660
times a week, once a day. And they're super fun and they warm up the voice. And after a few minutes,
00:35:14.040
you feel like your voice is an instrument and you can play it. And everyone else seems to be
00:35:20.220
wanting to hear you because they're, they're realizing that you're suddenly speaking their favorite tune.
00:35:25.840
So what does that look, what does that sound like? Exercises are fun, like gug, gug, gug, gug, gug, gug,
00:35:31.020
gug. So I've designed these exercises to put the vocal cords in the right spot and to fix how the air
00:35:38.460
goes to them. So just a few minutes of gugs and gugs and some other little warmups that I have people
00:35:45.380
do and a little bit of breathing practice, you're good to go. You can go out and conquer your day based
00:35:50.900
on knowing that you're going to sound the best and everybody's going to want to talk to you.
00:35:54.480
Would there be a benefit for people who don't want to be singers, but they just want to improve
00:36:00.460
their, their, their vocal, their voice, uh, or the voice voice, the talking voice, would there
00:36:06.500
be any benefit of taking singing lessons? There is a benefit taking singing lessons. Yes,
00:36:11.700
because you learn how to breathe. You learn how to find the high notes and the low notes,
00:36:16.060
but I've taken 17 years of being a singing coach, teaching the most famous artists in the world
00:36:24.000
and condense that into what speakers know into what doctors and lawyers and teachers and, and every man
00:36:33.760
and every woman actually needs to know about their voice so they can have the same benefits that great
00:36:39.640
singers get. That's awesome. So they're not necessarily have to, they can, they don't have to do the
00:36:44.180
singing class. They could, but you've, you've distilled it for them. Yeah. And, and most people
00:36:48.180
believe they can either sing or they can't, but everyone can have a musical speaking voice and
00:36:54.380
then use that voice to achieve the things that they want out of life and the things that they're
00:36:59.660
not getting now. And they've tried everything else. They've tried another degree. They keep reading
00:37:04.540
more books, but yet they don't have the success that they want. And the last thing on their list
00:37:09.940
that they're thinking about is the sound of their voice. And yet that is the greatest makeover that
00:37:16.820
you could ever have. It takes minutes. I get thousands and thousands of emails a month from
00:37:24.500
people that just read one of my books or got one of my online programs, never met me, but completely
00:37:30.960
changed their voices and then changed their lives based on that.
00:37:35.340
I mean, have you ever had an experience where someone changed their voice for the better,
00:37:39.040
but then they had the, like their friends and family, like, what, what are you doing? Why are
00:37:42.100
you, that's not, that's not how you sound. You're, you're trying to be someone different.
00:37:45.660
I usually do it so gradually that I don't shock the people. So they come to see a lesson with me,
00:37:54.660
or they buy one of my products, they change their voice, they go home. It's so open and rich and
00:38:00.960
thick and strong with no anger. And it's got so much music in it that usually just the opposite happens.
00:38:07.180
People say, wow, you, you sound so happy today. Or did something good happen to you today?
00:38:14.080
Because again, I'm going to quote one of my students and a project that I did this past year.
00:38:20.240
One of my jobs was I took Bradley Cooper and I taught him how to sing for the film,
00:38:27.020
a star is born. And he did an amazing job. And of course it won all kinds of awards and the public
00:38:34.760
loved it. It was a super, super hit movie. And his voice sounded great. He sounded,
00:38:39.200
didn't you think he sounded like a, like the singer he was supposed to?
00:38:43.600
So he told me after the process was done, he said, Roger, the thing I've learned the most
00:38:47.900
is you can't lie with your voice. That finding your voice really is the key to figuring out who
00:38:57.320
you are as a character, as a person in life, that you can't lie through voice. And I thought that was
00:39:05.400
beautiful. That understanding that, that if you want to be perceived as believable, if you want to
00:39:11.520
be authentic, if you want to showcase the best of who you are, you have to use your voice. They used to
00:39:17.480
say that your eyes were the mirror to your soul, but it's not true anymore. Now your voice is the mirror
00:39:25.020
to your soul. And if you want people to see inside of you, to see your best parts, to see why you
00:39:31.660
deserve the promotion, to see why they should go out with you and, and have your babies. If you want
00:39:37.180
any of that, then you have to use your voice and you have to start today to say, my voice could be
00:39:44.120
better. So I'm going to use my voice to make my life better and make every communication I have
00:39:50.140
mean something. I love it. Well, Roger, where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:39:55.020
Well, the good news is that I have prepared a very special offer to your listeners and it's $50 off
00:40:03.820
of my perfect voice, complete collection. And it's, it's just for listening today. So if you go to
00:40:10.700
the perfect voice.com, the perfect voice.com and you enter the code manly. And when you write it,
00:40:19.520
write it, say it with an edge, manly, not manly, like airy, manly at checkout, and you'll get $50
00:40:27.360
off of what already is the most cost-effective program and effective program on voice on the
00:40:35.340
internet. Well, fantastic. Well, Roger Love, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:40:40.440
My guest today was Roger Love. His book is Set Your Voice Free. It's available on amazon.com
00:40:44.280
bookstores everywhere. Also find out more information about his work at rogerlove.com.
00:40:48.580
Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash voice.
00:40:58.780
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website,
00:41:02.400
artofmanliness.com where you can find our podcast archives. There's over 500 there,
00:41:06.220
as well as thousands of articles written over the years about personal finance, physical fitness,
00:41:10.300
how to be a better husband, better father, you name it. We've got it there.
00:41:12.940
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00:41:20.280
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00:41:23.820
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00:41:27.720
not only to listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.