Speaking and Communicating Podcast

You can expand your range. You can eliminate cracks. You can improve your tone. You can do all of these things. Welcome back to your Bus Speaking and communicating podcast. I'm your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. And by the end of this episode, please log on to iTunes and Spotify. and leave us a rating and a review. Let's get communicating. Now, one thing about communication, especially our verbal cues, is the big issue of the voice. My guest today, John Haney, has been a voice coach for over three decades. He has worked with big names in the entertainment industry and is here to talk to us about so many strategies and tips on how we can improve. our voices so that our messages are more compelling. And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show. Hi, John. Hi, Roberta. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. Welcome. And tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so I've been, as you stated, been teaching for a very long time. Wow, a long time. And I've worked with thousands of professional voice users. And in the beginning, I only worked with singers and I also trained other voice teachers. And then occasionally speakers would come to me. And as I tried to help them, I realized, you know what I do with singers, these exercises really work when I vary them a bit for speakers, but also the elements that great singers use to make a compelling performance also work for speakers as well. And as I did research, I found that they don't know which came first, speaking or singing. But they're essentially extensions of the same thing. And we've kind of lost touch with singing. Many, many years ago, when we used to travel in smaller groups, everybody sang. Earlier societies, we communicated through song. And now we have a class of people that we call singers. And then we go, okay, I don't sing. But professional sports people don't stop us from playing sports. Tiger Woods doesn't stop anyone from enjoying golf, but for some reason, we kind of decide that we don't sing. And I think that that's to our detriment because not that I want to turn people into singers, but when you discover the music in your voice, you're going to be more interesting to people and you're going to be better able to hold their attention. I would blame that on Simon Cowell because there have been so many people who go to these idol shows and he's like, keep that to the shower, you know, never sing in front of anyone. And so we've come to live at an age where there's so much judgment around our singing, unless you're professionals, of course. You've been in the industry for over 30 years. The existence of auto-tune has rubbed us, those of us who listen to music, of the true nature of the singer's voice. Is that true? It's true in an extent, but the Beatles, going back, really started using the studio and studio effects as a unique instrument and recording back guitar solos backwards and different things. And auto-tune... was initially developed to help save a vocal take that maybe was a really good take, but the singer was maybe underpitched slightly on this one word. And so they could fix and save the take and save some time. And then they started to discover, wait, we can really exaggerate this and it becomes its own sound. So I think people are accustomed to hearing the voice depending on generations, et cetera. Some of us, You know, when I go back and I listened to great singers, 50s, 60s, 70s, before autotune, very often these performances are not completely in tune, but they're absolutely wonderful in their human imperfections. And now we've kind of removed that from music. And it's also happened with tempo. Great songs. Like if you listen to Earth, Wind and Fire, that track September, which I love, that track speeds up as it goes along. And it speeds up. quite a bit by the time you get to the end of the song, but it creates this excitement. That doesn't happen anymore. Songs stay the exact same tempo. It's just different styles of music. So I try not to judge with my older ears what's happening today. But for me, I really love organic vocal performances. making its exit and it's more now the tech, the instruments. So we focus on communication here. The thing about the voice, why are we not fans of our own voices? You know how you record a voice note, I record a voice note to you, but then I play it back and like, ew, I sound terrible, how is John gonna listen to this? Why do we feel that way about our own voices? because we hear ourselves very differently from the listener. When we are speaking, the sound is traveling away from us. And certain sound waves are a little slower, a little more circular, and may hit our ears in a different way. In other sound waves, we're hearing more reflections in the room. And also we hear ourselves a bit conducted through the bone. That's a part of our own experience of our voice. And these are things the listener does not hear. So the listeners experience is different because if you took that voicemail and you played it to me, I would say, well, yeah, that sounds like you. And so it's just getting used to what your voice sounds like. Now, if you don't like the sound of your voice truly and you feel that maybe others don't like the sound of your voice, this is something that can be changed and it's not terribly hard to do. There are just different adjustments you can make to bring out the full uniqueness of your voice. And do you think no matter how well my message is delivered and my speech has impact, if my voice does not sound as great to my audiences, does that impact how well they receive the message itself? It absolutely does. It has to do not just with the tone of your voice, but also the pacing and the range. If you're using these musical devices, you know, I bring it back to music that, that I'm teaching speakers to sing, but I want them to discover how to keep their voice interesting. If I'm talking to you and I change my vocal track, let's say I let my voice get a little lazy and my, my larynx or voice box. sits a little too low, now my voice is going to start to sound like this. And even though I'm imparting the same message, you're going to start to lose interest. And if my larynx is sitting a little too high, now I'm going to get really thin sounding. And that becomes annoying rather quickly. So yes, it does make an impact. So do we have what we call my natural organic voice? You do. Okay. There's a pitch range where your voice is going to work optimally with singers. If a singer is singing the same note as another singer, those notes themselves are vibrating at the same frequency. They are the same pitch, but each person's going to sound unique on that pitch. And that's because we have different shaped vocal folds. So our vocal folds or vocal chords. are going to be different. We also, and this is incredibly important, we have different shaped vocal tracts. And your vocal tract is essentially that tube of your throat and then your tongue is this little divider and your mouth. There's a little bit of spillover into the nasal cavity, but that doesn't really change the voice much unless you're speaking really nasal. And the shape of this vocal tract is really... what gives you so much of your vocal fingerprint and really determines your resonance, how your voice is gonna carry, and the quality of your voice. You can change the size and shape of this. As a matter of fact, as you're speaking and you're going from vowel to vowel, you're constantly changing the size and shape of this resonating tube. And you can just learn ways to make it optimal for your voice. making it optimal, does that come with a certain level of confidence? Does your voice change depending on how confident you are in any situation? Yes, and I believe it also goes the other way. When you gain control of your voice, when a singer walks out and they know that they can just nail this song and they know that they can grab the audience, their confidence goes up. I often tell singers when we're working on technique, this is not the highest level of singing, but this is a tool, technique is the tool to give you mastery so that you will have the confidence to then connect emotionally. When your voice is working well, your confidence level is gonna go up and then you're going to better be able to emotionally connect with the listener. And we know that decisions and persuasion, it's almost all emotion. And then we'll rationalize it afterwards to kind of tell ourselves, yeah, I really thought about that decision, but so much of it really is emotion. Which is what we emphasize when presenting and giving speeches. We want to emotionally connect with the audience. But if we feel that our voice is not on time, we probably haven't trained it. Is there something we can do before we start the speech? in order to coach our voices, so to speak. So one of the really quick things that I encourage everyone to do is go find a space where you can be silly and no one's gonna hear you. And I want you to take a portion of your speech or what you're going to talk about. And I ask people to pretend they're in the world's worst musical. And I want you to go ahead. and just feel as silly and free as you can and sing it. Sing what you have to talk about and just let your voice bounce all over the place and sing it in different ways. Sing it in an up tempo, sing it as a ballad and start to find the music and then take that energy because once you've been singing for a few minutes, you're going to be in a better mood no matter how you feel. And then take that energy and now start to talk. but keep some of that music in your voice, keep some of that excitement, keep some of that range and emphasis and tone. You will find that, wow, this actually sounds better and I'm having more fun saying it. Now I don't sound so silly anymore because sometimes, especially when I started the podcast, I also struggled with listening back to my previous recordings. I don't sound really good. Who's gonna listen to this? Remember the movie Sister Act with Hoopi Goldberg? La la la. So I used to do that before I started recording. I'm trying, I'm coaching my voice. I didn't know at the time that was the right thing, but it's just the first thing that came to my mind. I'm like... Yeah, because what you're doing when you do that is you're engaging more contact with your vocal folds. And so you're creating a more robust sound wave. You're also working pitch. So you're getting these little ligaments and muscles to stretch. You're working more breath. All of these things in that little scale that you maybe felt kind of silly doing, it actually does a lot of good. It does, yeah. It certainly does. What are the usual or the general judgments on... someone who has a deep voice, who speaks with a deep voice. What is the general impression that people have if you come with a deep voice? So psychologically, and this is true, deeper voices tend to project more authority. However, we tend to take that to an extreme. And what I find is, if you are speaking at your proper pitch with proper resonance, You get the fullness of your voice. You're going to have depth in your voice, but you're also going to have higher frequencies. It's going to give your voice sparkle, and it's going to give your voice energy that carries through the room. And very often people will just start to lower their voice. And then the voice kind of starts to fall into this fry. And then the voice doesn't have enough acoustic energy. And so what we end up doing is we start squeezing and we can run into issues of vocal health if we do that. If you speak too low it is going to be harder to be heard. Your voice is not going to carry. It's the high frequencies. It's the higher parts of your voice that get your voice over the ambient sound. That's why people who kind of speak like this are very hard to hear in a busy restaurant. They're talking and you're pretending you're listening but you can't hear them because we need those high frequencies that comes up and over. noise in the restaurant. And so if the impression is that it has more authority, does that mean a soprano voice? If you speak that way, generally you are not taken seriously by whoever is listening. What is their impression of you if you speak with a soprano voice? Usually, yes, it wouldn't carry as much authority. That I find doesn't tend to be the biggest issue. Most people, believe it or not, even if they feel like they're speaking kind of high, they're really not at their proper speaking pitch. They're usually a little bit under, but it's not that I want to speak high, right? Because I'm going to speak at the exact same pitch. I'm not going to change pitch, but I'm just going to change my vocal tract. And suddenly it's very different. So it's getting at the proper pitch, but then it's also finding the fullness of the resonance of the voice. your resonance, the deeper parts of the voice will be there. You talk about breathing in your YouTube channel when it comes to voice. When they talk about the diaphragm that you have to breathe from the diaphragm, is that for singing and can it be applied for speaking as well? Yeah, that's a really interesting one because it's rather controversial because the diaphragm only is a muscle of inhalation. What it does is it sits at the bottom of your lungs and it's like a dome and when you flex it, it drops when it contracts and it pulls down on the lungs, which then creates a vacuum effect and pulls air in. And when you're breathing out, it's going back to a relaxed position. Now in controlling the diaphragm, what they're generally talking about is when we take in a breath, right, our ribs expand, our tummy expands, our diaphragm drops. We don't want this whole housing of the breath to just suddenly collapse because then breathing becomes very weak and you have to breathe up and down with the chest. So if you're holding a more noble stance, yes, that your chest is up a bit, you're not sway back, but you're just, you're standing nice and straight, your ribs are open and you just allow the breath to drop in and then you don't wanna over breathe. This usually doesn't happen for speakers, Sometimes when speakers think, oh, I got to breathe more. No, no, you don't want to over breathe. Because if I take in too much air, well, now there's an elastic recoil in the lungs. And the lungs are going to quickly dispel of that excess air. So you're going to suddenly air is going to come rushing out. And you're going to lose control. What you want is just a nice surprised breath. Like you suddenly run into a friend you haven't seen in a long time. Oh, hi. That's all the air you need. And then the key is if your vocal cords are coming over and closing and you're getting this nice compression over this hair, then it's very, very efficient. If the vocal folds are closing all the way, now you're going to run out of air really quickly and the other thing we don't want to do is go the other way and compress and when you start to run out of it, you almost feel like you're going dizzy as well when you've taken in too much. Yes. Yep. You analyzed one of legendary Barbara Streisand songs on your YouTube channel. And you said something about you can hear the smile in the voice. Would you explain that to us? You know how sometimes you're on the phone and I could actually tell they were smiling on the phone. So what happens when we smile? You can play with this. You can do a vocal fry, which is just that uh sound. And if you round your lips, it'll be rather deep. But if you go ahead and then take it to a smile, it gets bright. And so when we smile, we're actually changing the resonances within our vocal tract. The science of this is rather fascinating. But what we hear is we hear an enhanced brightness in the voice. We can tell emotion just from the voice. There was a study done at Yale University and they had subjects speaking to each other. What they wanted is for the listener to be able to tell what the other was feeling, their levels of empathetic understanding. And when they removed the visual element, when they put a divider between the two or they turned out the lights, their ability to correctly understand what the other person was feeling went up. The voice is the carrier of emotion. The voice, all of these little subtle cues that we're only now beginning to understand that is within the voice. It's just so profoundly important. The sound of your voice carries so much. So many people, they don't spend any time thinking about their voice. And if they don't have a particularly nice voice, they think, oh, well, that's just the voice I've been given, which isn't true. everyone's voice can be improved. Just like singers practice for their singing, we can also practice our voices for speaking. That's right and of course we all have certain limitations and your voice is you know I can't turn everyone into Morgan Freeman yeah but it sounds like God yeah exactly but your own voice is enough you know singers they all cannot have incredible range. because there's actually in the cartilages that move when we're going for higher pitches, depending on the type of joint you have, you'll either have more range or less range. So if you have a type of joint that gives you more limited range, it's not that we can change the joint that you have, it's that we can find the best expression of you within that range. Let's talk about pace. We emphasize it a lot in public speaking, you know, that it helps you with remembering what you're going to say next and let the audience digest what you just said because that's the first time they're hearing your speech so that you don't rush it. What about pace is so important? Usually when somebody has to get up and speak for the first time and they're young, this is new to them, they're generally going to get nervous and they're going to speak too fast. Then they go, okay, I'm not going to do that. And then they try and slow everything down. And you will notice in great music, in great vocal performances, it's a mixture. You go, you build, you're coming up to a point and then you pull back. You let the audience hear it. And so when you start to find the music in your voice and you start to use your voice like a great singer, and you begin to craft these performances and I say the word performance not in some artificial way, but when you are infusing your voice with emotional intention, when you're connecting with the audience, when you're reading the audience, you'll know when to speed up, you'll feel when to pull back. You're like a great jazz performer. You're making music in the moment and pace becomes something that is organic. so that you're not trying to force a pace that worked on one audience on another, or that you're in one emotional state, or that you have one emotional intention, and the pace is being artificially shoved into it. No, you allow your message, you allow the music of what you're saying to help dictate the pace. I don't know if you've been in the music industry for too long, but as I'm watching you, every time you speak, There's this rhythm, this perfect dance between your voice, your gestures, and the way your body moves as you speak. Is that something that comes with your vocal coaching? That's a great question. I was a voice teacher for a number of years and I had performed in rock bands in different situations. But I went to an... acting class and it was acting through song. I walk in the class and there's an Oscar-winning actress sitting in the seat just in front of me. I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I'm completely out of my element here. But I got up to the front and I was kind of just doing these artificial gestures. I remember the teacher very, very gently but firmly told me, leave your body alone. Let your body. come naturally and your movements come naturally. She said, you're not thinking about what you're doing with your hands and your body when you're talking to a loved one or a close friend and you're telling them a great story. And so I encourage and I coach my clients that just let your body naturally move. Don't try and create these imposed power stances and moves. It's sure you can have a few things. And we know that as we step forward, That is projecting energy, right? When we start talking, we don't want to start walking backwards on stage because that will show weakness. But we do want to just allow the body to move. It's music, it's rhythm, it's dance, it's communication. We communicated with music, song and dance, perhaps even before we communicated with speech. So allow it back into your person. Time to change those public speaking courses because we so crucify people for their hand gestures and body language when they speak. And we say, don't do too much of this and not enough of that. And hardly anyone says, you know what, just incorporate some of those, but let yourself be and how your body moves. This is the first time that I've heard it being put that way. Well, in defense of those courses, I will say when people first get up, it's very hard to get to that natural place because being in front of people, it feels incredibly unnatural. And there's also, we can have fight or flight going, there's the fear of rejection, there are many things going through our minds. So to have something that you can say, okay, I'm going to step over this way, I'm gonna move my hands this way, that can be helpful. in the beginning and that can give you some type of grounding. But ultimately the more natural you are and the more honest and just connected. And we've all felt like that with speakers where there are some speakers and we feel like, okay, it's a bit of a performance. And then there are other people where we forget that they're doing public speaking. They just have us entranced and we're listening to everything they say. And there's an honesty and there's a connection. That's really the level that you want to try and get to. Authenticity is much more memorable than the theatrics. Not to knock anyone who does theatrics, by the way, sometimes that can be entertaining and the audience would love it. Sure. Just be yourself. Yes. And then one last thing. I don't know how many people are back at the office, but there's still a lot of work on Zoom and virtual meetings. Is there a perfect voice? for being in a virtual meeting? Is there a way you can train your voice for your Zoom meetings? What I think one of the keys, number one, is to reestablish your energy in a Zoom meeting. When we're with people, there's a natural give and take of energy. And one of the things that I will do when I go into a room, if I have to speak, is I'll look at each corner of the room. And I think about projecting my energy to all four or all the corners of the room. So that there is that I'm really including everyone. When we get on zoom, there's this camera and we kind of don't include the camera in our energy. We just kind of pull back and maybe our eyes are a little unfocused and we're not always looking right at the camera and our energies is a little more contained. And what you need to do is Embrace that camera. That camera is a person included in your energy. In fact, push your energy beyond the camera. And when you feel that energy, it's going to help your voice. So that's the first thing I would do. And then the other things of the voice, finding the right pitch, all of those little devices still apply. But just keep the camera in your energy. Project your energy to the camera. And I'm sure that applies for speaking as well. John? First, please give us last words of wisdom for someone who is singing regarding their voice and improving their voice. My advice for singers is to really keep your voice healthy and really respect your instrument. And if you find areas of your voice where it doesn't feel right, where you're going for notes and you think, I know I should be able to do this better, maybe it hurts a little bit or it's making you hoarse, seek out professional help because you can expand your range, you can eliminate cracks, you can improve your tone, you can do all of these things. I mean, I study with my own voice teacher. I still take lessons. So it's having someone to help you. Every coach needs a coach. And then what we focus on public speaking, what's your piece of wisdom for anybody who's speaking know that your voice is what is going to truly connect you with the listener. And so when you walk out, I always have people just have a very clear emotional intention of what it is that they're going to do. So rather than just before you walk out, go, okay, I'm going to be real hyper. I'm going to be excited. No. What you say is, you know what? I'm going to go out and I'm going to inform. or I'm going to teach or I'm going to celebrate. And you have these very strong action words that then can infuse your energy and infuse your voice and infuse your connection. Words of wisdom from John Haney, the voice coach of over three decades who has worked with some big names in the entertainment industry. John, not just singers, but us public speakers as well. We truly appreciate. your insights and your expertise. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you so much. And before you go, where can we find you so that if we need more voice coaching, we know where to go. Yep, my main site is johnhenney.com, J-O-H-N-H-E-N-N-Y. And for speakers, it's compellingspeaker.com. Excellent, johnhenney.com, compellingspeaker.com. Thank you so much, John. And don't forget to subscribe, leave a rating and a review on iTunes and Spotify. And stay tuned for more episodes to come.