Josh: The Mafia had a gun pointing through a pillow jammed to my face. I muffled out a few incomprehensible words. That’s an image to help you understand what I use to sound like in every conversation before I came across speech coach Carol Fleming.

It’s hard to socialize if your voice is unclear, jagged, and plain boring – common vocal traits of shy people. A charming voice is sexy. It makes people listen to you.

This is a guest article from Carol, a friend of mine for two years. Carol runs her speech company out of San Francisco. She is the best voice coach I know. Read and most importantly practice what she has to teach in this article to develop a charming voice…

Does this sound familiar?

People have trouble hearing my voice when there’s any kind of noise.

When I try to talk louder, I end up with a sore throat.

I sound raspy and flat on my voice-mail.

I need to be able to project when I give oral reports, so people don’t interrupt with, “Can’t hear you!” or “Speak up!”

I want to have a voice people call rich, resonant, and, well, OK – sexy.

I have worked with voice improvement for many years and know there is single golden road to your gorgeous voice: you have to think “Singing“.

Wait! Don’t go! That first step to a charming voice is understanding there really are learnable skills that make a huge difference in the attractiveness of your voice. Yes, you can do something about it.

Singing is a matter of a sustained vocal tone with maximal resonance. In practice, what this means for your speaking is the vowels are more prominent when you talk and you allow chest resonance to build and color your words.

Why Your Voice Isn’t Golden

Reason 1: The problem you are probably up against is that you barely open your mouth when you talk – you retract your voice to the back of your throat and constrict the sound so there is little opportunity for resonance to build.

Reason 2: Most of your speech energy goes into your consonants and not your vowels. Big mistake! While speech sounds are clearly important to intelligibility, vowels are equally vital PLUS supplying a physical, musical element can be attractive and charming to the opposite sex.

Here’s a sentence that uses a lot of noise, just to give you the idea: “Stacie can’t scratch the itch.” Compare all those noise elements to the vocal flow of “Many men will wonder.” in the following exercise.

Reason 3: You spurt your voice inside each syllable instead of providing a steady flow of sound to carry your voice out with a continuous tone underlying all your speaking.

Those who have used my CDs, The Sound of Your Voice or have my book, It’s the Way You Say It, will recognize the concepts of Tonal Support and Linking. (Josh: See my review of The Sound of Your Voice.)

If you use the concept of singing to guide your speaking, you are more likely to allow melodic variation into your speaking.

Did you see the movie, The King’s Speech? The stuttering king produced his best, most fluent speech when he used the continuous flow of voice, with one word linked to the next, to connect his speech.

Place your hand firmly on your throat and say, very slowly, “Many men will wonder”. You should have felt a continuous flow of voice as you moved from one word to the next. This flowing of the voice helped the King speak fluently and will help you sound more resonant.

Reason 4: That constricted throat you habitually use will produce a monotone not yummy.

If you use the concept of singing to guide your speaking, you are more likely to allow melodic variation into your speaking. Listen to the intonation of the famous “homeless” guy with the “golden voice” in the news recently. Notice how musical his speaking is. It is a constant song and people are enraptured by it. Crooning rhymes with spooning, doesn’t it?

If the first step to a charming and irresistible voice is knowing what to do, the second step is actually doing it. To go from “knowing” to “doing”, you need some help. Here are five steps to help you get the most out of your voice.

Practical Steps to Develop a Charming Voice

1. If you can, get yourself some singing instruction from someone who knows how to guide you in learning a new voice. You’ll probably pay for this. It will be worth every cent.
2. Join a church or community choir that provides some instruction in voice production. Just being in a group may give you the confidence to open up and try new behaviors you would never do by yourself.
3. Use my book, It’s the Way You Say It for exact instructions on these techniques and you can use my CDs The Sound of Your Voice to give you the auditory guidance to supplement the book.
4. Experiment with your new voice with people who wait on you in restaurants or the dentist’s office. You can develop more skill and comfort using a changed voice with people who are not emotionally important to you.
5. It is a good idea to learn appropriate poetry so you practice and memorize it in your resonant voice. The poetry could come in handy.

All is fair in love and war, they say. And a sexy voice simply cannot be beat. Use this to develop a charming voice

Here is an interview of me where you learn more tips to make your voice charming:

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