We use our voice every day without even thinking about it. During our interactions with others, we express our thoughts, feelings, and ideas through a series of oral movements. We produce sound with our lungs, the vocal folds in our larynx, and our voice boxes. These organs mold our basic vocal tone into decodable sounds.
Verbal communication is 23% of how we communicate. Our vocal timbre, speaking pace, tone, and volume affect others’ perception of our speech. The vocal tone has a huge impact on the effectiveness of our communication.
As soon as we open our mouth, we’re judged on our intelligence, confidence, and power. Having a pleasant, low voice influences the way we’re treated more than we might think. Most of the time, the way we speak our ideas is more important than the ideas themselves!
Why Get a Deeper Voice?
To get more money
A lower voice can be your asset to your career, helping you to get more recognition, promotions, and raises. People with lower voices are also seen as more credible. This analysis showed that CEOs with lower voices often manage larger companies, and hold onto their jobs for an average of five months longer than their higher-voiced counterparts!
To get more sex
There is no doubt about this; the sexiest way for a man to talk is deep and slow. Not surprisingly, studies show that deep-voiced men are preferred by women – particularly when they’re at their most fertile. Scientists believe that a deeper voice subconsciously signals to a woman that a man weighs more than other men. Of course, a man with a deep voice could be short, fat, and totally lacking in muscles – but that doesn’t change the fact that a lower voice is simply more attractive to women.
To get more attention
Individuals with high, shrill voices are often not fully listened to because their voices sound unpleasant. People naturally eliminate unpleasant sensations in their environment, meaning that high-pitched people’s ideas and services are less likely to be selected – no matter if they’re good or not.
5 Techniques to Lower your Voice
Technique 1: Analyze your speech
Most of us have no idea of the way we speak. Get familiar with your voice and take care of it as if it were a part of your body. (It actually is!) Record yourself and listen to the way you speak. Don’t worry if you feel awkward listening to yourself – almost everyone does.
Stand in front of a mirror and speak while recoding your voice on your computer or another device. Pay attention to the tone of your voice. Is it too shallow, shrill, or airy? Too quiet or too loud? Understanding the way you speak can be the first step to eliminating vocal mistakes and gaining better control of its depth.
There’s even an app called Vocular which measures how deep your voice is, so you know when you’re successfully hitting those lower notes.
Technique 2: Exercise and learn proper breathing
We suggest exercise and learning to control your breath as a solution for many problems. Your breath is related to the way you speak, the way your body reacts to stress, and even your sexual performance!
Why is breath THAT important? Simply put, breathing is an activity we do all the time – so we’d better do it properly.
Our body is an interconnected system. The way you breathe and the posture you maintain influence other functions, including speech. Training yourself to breathe deeply and fully make you more relaxed. When your throat feels relaxed, it will be easier for you to speak in lower tones than usual. When you’re nervous and not fully conscious of your breathing, your voice is more likely to crack or get irritated.
The first step to improving your breathing is simply to be aware of it. Mediation and physical exercise (especially yoga) help a lot with this. You can start right away. Take a few minutes just to breathe. Listen to it and concentrate only on the air inhaling and exhaling into and from your body. Put away any thoughts that come to your mind and simply focus on your breath. Isn’t that pleasant?
Make sure there’s enough saliva in your voice and drink warm beverages. Water or light tea helps relax the muscles of your throat. However, cold beverages cause a tightening of the vocal cords which makes your voice higher.
Breathing well can be especially useful in stressful situations. For example, when you’re approaching a new woman you may have a habit of not breathing deeply.
In addition to meditation, exercise is very useful. It opens up your chest and helps you breathe deeper. Check out Elliot’s exercises for stretching your body and getting a deeper voice:
Technique #3 Breathe from Your Diaphragm
If you are like most people, you’ve been breathing wrong for most of your life.
After getting accustomed to the natural tone of your voice and raising your breath-awareness, try breathing with your diaphragm. This technique gets you even closer to the deep voice you desire. Standing with a good posture opens up your diaphragm, providing more space for air to move freely through your body. This also helps you speak more clearly.
First, test yourself by simply taking a breath. Observe your chest and the way it moves. Did your chest and your shoulders raise up? Wrong! You failed the breathing test.
A proper breath starts in the diaphragm. You know you’re breathing correctly if your belly moves in and out and your chest and shoulders stay still. If your chest and shoulders rise, it means you’re breathing with your chest. This sort of breath is weak and squeezes the throat area, causing strain on your voice.
Breathing from your diaphragm gives your voice more power and deepens it, without the adverse effects of speaking from your throat. Your voice will have more resonance and sound deeper as you learn to breathe correctly.
Technique #4: Get more volume in the low registers
Stand in front of a mirror and speak naturally for a few minutes (It doesn’t matter what words you use). If you’re not sure what to say, describe the room you’re in or say some song lyrics.
Next, hum deeply from your throat. Your lips should be parted and your chin pointed down toward your chest. This will warm up your voice. Then, raise your chin slowly while humming and speak with that deep, humming voice. Add some nasal tone to make the sound stronger. Play with your voice and modulate it; add more and fewer nasals and make the tone lower and higher.
The next step is to imagine you hear your voice in front of yourself. Speak mindfully and voice all syllables slowly. Remember to breathe from your diaphragm. Let the incoming and outgoing air move your upper abdomen and stomach area, not just your chest.
Technique #5: Fill the lower part of the lung
This technique enables you to speak louder and stronger. You can use it to increase the volume of your natural voice.
Lay down with your back on the floor. Relax your body and stretch out your joints. Breathe normally with your mouth slightly open. Observe how your abdomen goes up and down as air fills the lower part of your lungs.
Do this exercise for several minutes and increase the effect by putting a heavy object on your stomach. (I suggest a thick book.) Breathe in the same way as before, slowly increasing the weight on your stomach. If you do this exercise correctly, you’ll feel the air going directly to your stomach, which strengthens your lower-abdominal breathing.
Technique #6: Strengthen your neck muscles
Ever noticed how your voice is higher when you’re stressed out? This is because your neck tightens up with stress, which pulls on your vocal cords. And just like with a guitar string, tension means a higher note.
This happens throughout your daily routine as well. You might wake up with a deep, manly voice after hours of sleep, but as tension works its way into your throat your voice rises.
However, you can fight this tension and keep your nice morning voice with one trick: strengthening your neck muscles which run down either side of your voice box. To do this, lie on your back with you head hanging off the end of your bed. Then lift your head up, tucking your chin in, almost as if doing a crunch with your neck instead of your abs. 3 sets of 10 reps should be enough, once every two days.
Your voice will initially get higher for the first week, as your neck is tired and weak. But after two weeks your voice will start to deepen. I’m three months in now and my voice is deeper than it’s ever been.
Tips for better speech
Tip 1: Speak louder
Your speech volume is very important. Here’s an interesting experiment:
Ask a person to say the same sentence quietly and then with full voice. Most people will give the second version more credibility, even though the words were exactly the same.
People who speak louder (but not too loudly – you don’t want to annoy anyone) seem more confident. Our brains consider louder people to be more secure. Confident people rarely speak quietly because it doesn’t suit their nature. If you’re stressed before a speech, simply speak louder. You’ll not only seem more confident, you’ll feel more confident, too! When we speak loudly, we feel more confident about what we’re saying.
Tip 2: Speak more dynamically
Watch TV presenters or any person you consider to be a good speaker. One common quality of these people is the dynamism of their speech. Their words are spoken at a varying pace and they use pauses effectively. Dynamism of speech affects the audience more, focuses their attention, and exposes essential points. Simply put, it gets them more interested in what you’re saying!
Tip 3: Add a bit of breathiness to your voice
A recent study looked at the voices women find most attractive and found quite a surprising result. A deep voice wasn’t the most attractive kind. Rather, breathy voices were. And this preference was so strong that women chose a high-pitched, breathy voice over a deep, non-breathy one.
No one really has an explanation for this, but the point still stands. Think of a broadcasting legend like David Attenborough. His voice is quite high but it has a warmth and breathiness that makes it famously easy to listen to.
Tip 4: Lose the intonation
Another shocking study came from a ‘dating game’ experiment where men had to introduce themselves to women, then tell other men why they were admired and respected. Weirdly, researchers found that the ones who spoke with the most monotone voices had had the most sexual partners on average, especially the ones who spoke to other men with very little intonation.
This may sound like a contradiction to the point about “speaking more dynamically” but there’s an important distinction. Monotone voices were not rated as being less dynamic than any other voice – they still vary in pace, volume, rhythm, content – but they were found to be more dominant-sounding and more soothing.
Tip 5: Speak with your mouth, not your nose
Finally, there’s one feature which has been shown to be kryptonite to an attractive voice: nasality. The sad side of this is that many men with nasal voices technically have deep voices too, but because this voice comes out of their nose it sounds weak and ‘nerdy’. Try pinching your nose and reciting sentences without the letters m or n, if you’re having trouble getting the words out, then this is something you should work on.