Resources.Understanding voice is complex. There are 14 muscles at play that affects your voice quality. So the DJ voice you aspire to have requires deliberate practice and coaching. This section contains resources for you to better understand your voice.
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Coaching Questions |
Why is this coaching program called "Own Your Voice"?
The premise of this coaching is really moving away from being reactive to your environment to being proactive in shaping your environment. How do we proactively shape our environment? By understanding what is available to you. Most of the time, we associate voice to power, pitch, pace and pause. However, we cannot increase power by just increasing the volume. You need to understand that it takes two elements to interact with each other to produce your intended voice. For instance, you cannot play the guitar with just strings. It has to vibrate against the body of the guitar to produce sound. The first step is to understand these elements so that you can control it with free will. What are the elements of voice production and how does it work? There are many elements in play but can be categorise in three broad areas which are the power (breath), source (anatomy) and filter (phonetics). Say if you would like to add more resonance in your voice, the two elements that can be brought out to play is the "NG" sound interacting with your vocal folds. So by understanding this, when you say "I am goiNG to be giviNG him this", you can now consciously add more resonance to your voice. Are there other examples of elements of voice production Certainly, other than the "NG" sound, the "V" is also a powerful one because we typically use "haVe" in our sentences. By working on the "V" sound for it to be voiced, it can exponentially improve the listening experience. How about other examples that are not related to phonetics or syllable? Words usage and vocabulary is a huge one. If your vocabulary is limited to say "you are good", no matter how much projection you put to your voice, it will still be limited. Hence, we also need to interact our words with our voice production. Consider saying "You are masterfully brilliant". Now that will give a different experience altogether. Expanding vocabulary is one of the most important element of voice production. Is there such thing as a good sounding word? There is but we must also balance between it being a jargon or overly complicating your message. Some good sounding words that I like are "seamless" or "effortless" which conveys and experience rather than an explanation. "Alive" which has the play of the "V" sound can add resonance. Examples of a sentence "that gushing waterfall in all its brilliant" sounds better than "the waterfall is nice". What do you mean by moments that matters in your coaching program? How we use our voice is also driven by the context of environment that you are in. For instance, when you ask someone out for lunch "where do you want to go for lunch?", the style changes based on your relationship with the person. How you sound when that is directed to your boss, friends and siblings changes. Hence, how you sound must be wrapped around the relationship you have with the audience and the environment in which you are operating in. Can you give an example of moments that matters? If you are a manager that overlooks the South East Asia region, the moment that matters to you could be "facilitating quarterly updates" session. Hence, your voice must embodies a "leadership" type of vocal image. Likewise, if you are a professional coach or a team manager, your moment that matters could be "review sessions" in which your voice must embody a "empathetic" or a "coaching" type of vocal image. Every profession has specific areas that if voiced well, can dramatically elevate their career position. What is a vocal image and why is that important? Vocal image is your style and rhythm in specific situations where it is called for. Typical vocal images are "coaching" "empathy" "movitating" "showmanship". Everyone will need to consciously develop and understand their vocal images because that sets the intention of the situation. If you sound the same in all situation, then you are not proactively shaping the environment. Is there such thing as a wrong voice? Unless your are physically impaired, there are no such thing as a wrong voice, only unexplored voice. Imagine you playing a music, you can play "happy birthday song" in just 8 keys. Now imagine if you can explore further into 32 keys and play the same song. Both presents the same song but with 32 keys, you are better able to trigger emotion. Our role is to work on exploring the 32 keys available to you. |