10 Vocal exercises for a more confident voice | Mastering Vocal Techniques for Confidence with Kaffy
Are you unintentionally holding yourself back just by the way you speak?
Your voice is one of the most powerful tools you have—it shapes first impressions, influences how people perceive you, and even affects your own confidence. Yet, most of us only use a tiny fraction of its potential.
This week, on the Brand New Season of The Unlocked Podcast, I sit down with Kathy Rice Oxley, a voice coach at Voice Confident, to uncover how to make your voice work for you—so you sound more confident, speak with impact, and avoid vocal strain.
In this episode, we’ll show you how to:
✅ Unlock the full range of your voice (you’re using way less than you think!)
✅ Use breath control to sound more powerful without straining your voice
✅ Stop losing your voice after long days of speaking or presenting
✅ Sound more engaging and keep people hooked on your every word
And yes, we even test out some hilarious voice warm-ups live—jaw massages, tongue twisters, and some seriously weird noises included. 😆
Watch the Episode Below
Or LISTEN to the episode on your favorite podcast platform at https://unlocked.captivate.fm/
Key Takeaways
💡 Your voice influences first impressions more than you think
Research shows that up to 38% of a first impression comes from vocal cues like tone, pitch, and speech rate. So if you’re not intentional about how you speak, you might be sending the wrong signals without even realizing it.
💡 Breath control is the secret to a strong, confident voice
Many people take shallow breaths, which weakens their voice and makes them sound nervous. Learning diaphragmatic breathing helps you project your voice powerfully without straining it.
💡 You can train your voice like a pro (yes, even if you “can’t sing”)
Your vocal cords are a muscle, just like any other. With the right exercises, you can develop a richer, stronger voice—whether you’re presenting, networking, or just chatting with friends.
💡 Avoid losing your voice with simple hydration and technique hacks
If you regularly lose your voice after speaking all day, chances are you’re either not drinking enough water (hydration takes 4-6 hours to take effect) or placing too much strain on your vocal cords. We break down exactly how to fix this.
How to Improve Your Voice Every Day
🎤 Practice Box Breathing: Inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold for 4. This calms nerves and improves vocal control.
🎤 Warm Up Before Speaking: Try humming, tongue twisters, or the “Nunga Nunga” exercise (yes, it sounds ridiculous, but it works).
🎤 Improve Your Placement: Push your voice forward (like Morgan Freeman) rather than letting it drop into your throat.
🎤 Stay Hydrated: Drink water at least 4 hours before speaking to keep your vocal cords lubricated.
🎤 Use Silence as a Power Move: Don’t rush to fill every pause—strategic silence makes you sound more authoritative and engaging.
What If…?
What if you could speak with impact every time—whether in meetings, on stage, or just in everyday conversations?
What if you could command attention effortlessly, just by tweaking the way you use your voice?
What if you never had to worry about losing your voice again, no matter how much you talk?
This episode gives you the tools and techniques to do exactly that.
🎧 Listen now: https://unlocked.captivate.fm/
📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7b2-YcYSJM
Let’s unlock the full power of your voice. 🚀
Or if you’d prefer to read the transcript, (read past the links below)
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Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00.278)
So jaw release is good, so you have to sort of let your face go soft, that's right, and then sort of manually, so you're finding this gap of your jaw, and you're gonna sort of manually open your jaw with your hands, so kind of go.
Am I doing this right?
No, no, right, so don't, yeah, there was massage, but to release the jaw, so put your, put the balls in and then just relax your face and you're gonna literally, manually open your jaw.
okay. Like that?
Yeah, with your hands. then if you do that few times, then when you talk, you will feel that your jaw feels looser and you're able to talk more freely as well.
Speaker 2 (00:40.302)
Yeah, yeah, I can feel it. It's like a bit of numbing sensation as well, but it's more open.
can open your mouth and you can have a nice rich tone, a breath supported tone and you're articulating correctly. The sounds that we make are made in all different areas of the mouth depending on which muscles and everything they're using.
Speaker 2 (01:18.478)
Research shows that first impressions are formed within the first seven seconds and vocal cues are a substantial part of this. Studies indicate that a person's voice can be up to 38 % of the initial impression made during a conversation, which includes qualities like tone, pitch and speech rate. So because this is really important, let's have a little bit of discussion about our voice. Welcome to the show, Cathy Rice Oxley. How are you?
I'm good, thank you Ricky, I'm all good, yeah, nice to be...
to be here. Yeah, lovely to have you here. So, Cathy, obviously you're a voice coach at Voice Confident. Tell us just a little bit about what that is that you do.
in all areas of voice training and as you say the voice is something that people do judge us on and if people are going to judge us on our voices then really we want it to be something which really represents us advocates for us that we like the sound of ourselves because you know if you don't like the sound of your own voice your voice allows you to give physical manifestation to your thoughts so if you don't like your voice then that's going to you know put barriers between what you're thinking and how you're able to communicate with people so yeah so I help people with their speaking voices and also with
all of the presentation things around, that's all the non-verbal, the posture and the gestures and the face expressions, everything else that we're doing when we're speaking and communicating with people.
Speaker 2 (02:35.63)
Brilliant, and I'm really, really interested in this because, I mean, we've known each other for almost a year now. And obviously when I met you, there was lots of like synchronicity, synergy, however you want to describe it, because we both do presentation training. And one of the great things that we often talk about is in the Confident Club, we talk about the tools in the toolbox and about how we can make more impact. And I think it's just something that we often see in presentations that people just...
We speak in that kind of modulated tone in that same voice and just we believe that that's all we can speak about and that's all that's how we speak. But my question is this, Kathy, could I sing like Beyonce?
That's a really difficult one. I'm tempted to say... You are male, so this is a difficult one. But you're actually right. So your voice is an instrument. We've talked about this. Your voice is an instrument. Your voice can do amazing, amazing things. Most people with their spoken voice, they're only using a fraction of what this instrument is capable of. And I always say to people, have to think that your vocal instrument is the same as...
all the great singers, all the opera singers, Beyonce, Whitney, you your vocal instruments the same as all the great singers who've ever lived, all the great actors, all the great impressionists. mean, think of all the actors we know on TV that can show up in completely different ways just by changing their accent and the voice and the way it's produced. We all have the same vocal instrument. So it's just a series of, you know, muscle movements and, you know, things interacting in this very complicated instrument and habits, physical habits. So yeah, you can pretty much learn to do whatever you
want with your voice. Singing, absolutely everybody can sing. It is physical, it's just a case of learning how everything works and learning to produce things in a certain way. So all this, can't sing, I've never been able to sing, rubbish, everybody, everybody can sing and everybody should sing because it's really good for you, it's good, it's good for the soul to sing.
Speaker 2 (04:27.15)
Oh, thank you. You fulfilled my dream now because I used to believe like, you know, like it's one of those things like, you know, you're from Lincolnshire. You can't you can't sing, you know, in those tones that you have. obviously, yeah, absolutely. We can write. We've all got the same thing. So I'm interested to talk about. know that this is a big impact. So first, let's just talk a little bit about the science here because unconsciously I'm speaking right now. I'm not even having to think about it. It's just coming out. I might be, you know, adding a few phrases or a few inflections and stuff like that to make it more of an impact. But what's actually happening right now as I'm speaking? What is the
science of what's going on.
Well, you've got lots of things going on. Your system is supporting your voice. You've got a steady flow of air, which is passing your vocal folds, which are housed in your larynx, and that's making the sound. And then you are curating that sound using your articulators in your mouth. So your tongue very heavily is involved in almost all of the sounds that we make, but your tongue is interacting with movements of your lips and your jaw. You've got your hard palate, your soft palate. You've got various different types of resonance. So the sound itself is being made
but it's being changed into speech sounds with everything here. that's a lot of science chat for you there Ricky.
That's all.
Speaker 2 (05:40.172)
Yeah, so that's my fault thing. What's that elaborate on that? So to create like a visual picture for me in my mind, what does what is that?
So you've got vocal folds and they are sort of mucous membrane, they're vibrating very, very, very quickly. So as the breath comes through, it's to do with the rate that they're vibrating and they stretch and relax. So when we have them stretch, this is the higher pitch and then when they relax, we get the lower pitch. So there's a lot going on. Also our larynx moves up and down, you might not be aware. There's a lot of very complicated movements. But as you say, see, most of the time we're not thinking about this at all.
probably you are a singer or you're using your voice professionally, you don't tend to think very much about what you're doing. If an actor, say, needs to develop a new accent for a film or something, they will work with a speech coach and they will look at the whole thing. They will look at how the breath is coming through, they'll look at the position of the lines, they'll look at the placement of the sound in the mouth, they'll look at which areas of resonance they're using, because all different accents.
or do things in a slightly different way. So when people put on an accent, for example, it's not just a case of making the sounds differently in their mouths. There's a lot more to it than that, right down to the movement of the legs and what you're doing with your vocal cords.
Right, brilliant. obviously, there's a lot going on there that obviously we're just not thinking about unless we're actively, you know, we're a singer, we're speaking or we do some recording and that kind of thing. But one of the things that is really impactful that you mentioned about this is about how the power of the breath really helps with this. So I'd love to take a bit of a dive into why is breath control so important for a strong and stable voice?
Speaker 1 (07:25.536)
Yeah, it was quite interesting because the phrase breath control has become a bit contested in singing circles. There are some styles of singing where you're taught to sort of set the muscles in your abdomen and stuff and we wouldn't generally advise that. So when I talk about controlling the breath, it's about being able to breathe properly using your diaphragm. So you've got this massive muscle, sorry you can't really see my hands, but you've got this massive muscle sitting just beneath your rib cage, above your internal organs.
we don't have to think about breathing, obviously this is something that we just do, but interestingly we can also control the diaphragm, so we can also choose when we breathe in and out. So we can for example breathe all the way out and then wait a few seconds before we breathe back in, or we can breathe in and we can hold it and then we can breathe out. And it's these muscles that enable us to do that. The reason that breath is really important with spoken communication is that when, well,
probably particularly with nerves. So when people get nervous, they tend to take very shallow breaths. And if you take very shallow breaths, you tend to have to take more breaths. then, so when you were saying earlier that you were running out of, you were losing your voice, it may be that through that day, you've not had the breath support that is...
properly, it's a breath pressure thing as well, so probably the breath pressure hasn't been correct on the air that's been coming through your vocal folds. So perhaps you've been breathing too shallowly, perhaps you've been speaking without enough breath pressure support, and this is all very wearing on the vocal folds. So then by the end of the day, if you've been sort of doing that...
all day, yes by the end of the day you are going to feel fatigued. So yeah, so with spoken we don't think so much of breath control but we think about breathing properly. So we would take a nice breath in through the nose and as you do so you would feel your lower ribs and your floating ribs sort of expand so they go out, they go out forwards and they go out to the side and this is to allow your diaphragm
Speaker 1 (09:29.9)
which will then push down. This is why your tummy moves out when you're breathing properly, because it pushes down on your internal organs. So your belly sort of moves out and your ribs rise and expand. And this gives you the most air you can. And then when you breathe out, the diaphragm then, it's like an elastic sort of thing. So the diaphragm sort of springs back into place and your belly comes back in. But yeah, if at any point you're, if you're breathing right up here,
Yeah, you are going to get just too much air going in and out all the time. We don't actually need a lot of breath to speak on. You know, most of us speak without a lot of breath, but yeah, that's the danger is if you're sort of breathing, you've got far too much coming in, far too much going out. And of course a breathy tone as well. If I put a lot of breath through my tone, I might start to sound either very anxious,
You can sound really excited. if you talk to, know, if your daughter comes home from nursery, whatever, done something really cool, she'll be like, daddy, daddy, daddy, you know, this is what we do when we're really excited. But it also can make us sound very anxious. And if you do that over a period of time, you feel it is, it is drying to put that much air through your tone is, is drying. So yeah, being able to breathe properly using your diaphragm and to moderate the amount of airflow is important. Yeah.
So interesting then, I think I see a video quite recently of a singer on stage, somewhere like, you know, Glastonbury, and he had his top off and the video was like diaphragmatic breathing at its perfection. And what happened was his belly. Have you seen this? Yeah.
It's where his belly like inflates, but it like pops in pops out like really quick Which you don't you don't really see like when when singers are singing so obviously he's obviously breathing and it's like you see his tummy inflate He's a thin guy But he's me starts to inflate and then it pops back in and then obviously as he's doing his singing then next breath comes out So that's him mostly diaphragmatic breathing getting that airflow into projecting his voice
Speaker 1 (11:35.382)
Yeah, I've not seen that video. the sound of it popping back in is slightly concerning to me because that maybe indicates...
That's probably me exaggerating.
He's tensing but yeah, yeah mean this is why we singers wear a lot of flowing gowns because you know if you are breathing properly you are expanding your mid region which you know but this is what some people do you see when they are talking with other people say you're stood up and you want to look your best and you tend to you know suck the stomach in and you know and you're trying to stand looking looking your best and therefore you're you're not breathing properly because you're holding these these muscles
around your abdomen and it all needs to be quite relaxed in order that you can take the breath that you need to. And it feels like, see, people say breathe into your belly. You're not breathing, you can't breathe into your belly. You're breathing into your lungs, yeah. But it feels like you're breathing into your belly because your lower organs move out as they're pressed down by the diaphragm and they move out. So it's a helpful thing to think, breathing into the belly. Or sometimes I say try and breathe into your toes. So when you're breathing in,
Think of the breath, particularly if you're standing up, think of the breath going in and then right down into the toes and then right out again. So you breathe in. It goes right down into the toes and then you breathe out again. So it's the feeling of the breath sort of going through your whole body as opposed to it just being the signal. We don't.
Speaker 2 (13:02.754)
Yeah, which is like, yes, you know, my daughter does this now where she's like, and that kind of thing. It's like all that shallow breathing because, know, she's sympathetic nervous system, that kind of thing. So I'm interested to obviously to discuss this more because we talk about this in terms of presenting the vagus nerve and how diaphragmatic breathing help us get into parasympathetic nervous system. I tried this now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I tried this a couple of weeks ago. was in the car thinking, when I have this chat with Kathy and I
I tried just like saying something, but I did it with like a conscious thought about up here, you know, it like a shallow breath. And what I was listening to was like, so if I was just say, hi, my name is Ricky. Okay. And then if I did it with the diaphragmatic breathing, like, hi, my name is Ricky. There's such a difference between that. And is that just because of the airflow that's coming out?
Yeah, and as I said, it's partly to do with this thing called breath pressure. So it's to do with, yeah, the rate at which the breath is coming. I mean, you make a really important point there about the vagus nerve. And of course, when I'm helping people, as you do with anxiety, this is my absolute go-to technique to move from fight or flight into rest and to jest is diaphragmatic breathing. It's like, are loads of other things. There's some great eye techniques, but the root of it is the diaphragm. mean, and I only learned relatively recently
why that the diaphragm literally is physically stimulating the vagus nerve. I mean, it's, you know, it's absolutely amazing really to send that very powerful message to the brain that, you know, no, we're okay. As I say, I've said to you before, it's all about tricking your brain really. When you're in a stress response, it's about tricking our brain. No, we are not stressed. We are fine. And so yeah, having that, being able, having done the practice previously to know where your diaphragm is, you know, how to breathe into it. And it is,
It's so powerful, it makes such a difference. But yet in terms of tonal quality, absolutely. I mean if I breathe out and then try and talk, so if I talk to you now Ricky and I've got kind of no, so there's no breath here, I mean can hear, it's not a very attractive sound. So I sound really very nervous, but that's what people do. Oh that's better. So yeah, conversely if you have too much breath, because sometimes people say, just take big deep breaths. If I speak with too much breath, I'll try and do this.
Speaker 1 (15:23.246)
Hi Ricky, my name's Kathy and I'm a voice coach. So again, I can't, because I've got too much air. Reset. Because I've got too much air there, I also can't control it. So if you take too big a breath, you know, at the beginning you think, oh, I must take a deep breath, a huge breath, and then you try and talk, that won't work.
either and in fact if you're a person that has a naturally breathy tone you don't in case if someone's listening that has a naturally breathy tone or if they find that when they're nervous they speak with too much breath actually breathing out a little bit of breath before you start to speak so if you breathe in just a little bit of it go and then start to speak it will help you sort of correct that
breath pressure. mean everybody, it's a bit like personal coaches for fitness. Everybody is so different. So you can always give general tips and tricks, but you know, if people have particular issues, you need to work with a coach because they will be able to hear what you're doing and it can be anything, you know, with the voice, can, there can be all manner of things going on. yeah, few tips.
No, no, thank you. So that's really lovely. And it's really interesting to talk about this because whenever we coach people for presentation skills, it's almost like they feel they can't take a breath during their presentations. It's okay to just pause.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:41.004)
Take a breath. I use this as an example all the time when I coach delegates, which is one of the greatest things we always talk about. The most important part to any presentation is the beginning and the end. You've got to get people in the room. Morgan Freeman did this wonderful, wonderful exercise where he walked out on stage as in America and everyone's expecting him to speak with the voice of God, that really low, husky voice that he's got. And he didn't. He just stood there and went.
Speaker 2 (17:11.342)
and immediately just got everyone's attention. So not only is it a great way just to help people relax and it's okay to take a breath, rather than go, I need to get this presentation done really quickly. So here's my slides. You know, just pause is a really good way just for you to help with your voice, but also to help with nerves as well. So, yeah, challenge me on this one then. Oh, sorry, Kathy, go on.
Just on that, I have a thing that I call BiSpec. So it's B-I-S-P-E-C. And I suggest that people use it before they start, but also when they get a natural break in anything. So it stands for breathe in, smile, pause, and eye contact. Because if you've got a room of people, so when you first go on, so you take a nice breath in into your diaphragm, obviously, because this is going to calm your whole system down. So you take a nice breath.
Yeah.
and you pause because that's sort of saying to people, ooh, something's about to happen, and you smile, and if you smile, we've not actually talked about this yet, but when you're smiling and you're lifting all the muscles in your face, particularly if you can smile with your eyebrows and your eyes as well, this is also gonna help you with your vocal tone that's about to come out and your eye contact. So if you're walking into big room, you're looking around the room, and this is like a, know, hello audience, this is me, I'm smiling at you, gonna have a great time today, the pause says something is about to happen, and then you start.
And again, you can try that. You can do that again when you have a natural pause, you know, whatever it is. Say you've just asked a rhetorical question. I usually take that sneaky opportunity to, by spec, breathe in, smile, pause, eye contact, and then you continue. And it's just, it's a natural reset for you. It's a natural reset for the audience. It sort of reconnects you and them. So that was probably, he was doing a sort of version of that. And the pause, as you say, the pause, which says something's about to happen here, you know, hello, hello folks.
Speaker 1 (19:02.86)
I'm here, something's about to happen and everybody gets prepared in the room for what is about to happen and then it happens.
Commanding very yeah, it grabs authority doesn't it because I think most people think that I have to start my presentation off we're Hi, my name is Ricky. I am a confidence coach and Today today Yeah, yeah slide number one, please, you know, but actually just even just standing there saying nothing is great So just to recap on that, so I've got that correct So because I was like holding my breath and when I smile like wait, wait, what do I breathe out? So breathe it
about
Speaker 2 (19:37.526)
Pause? When do I breathe out?
Well, you see, me, obviously I've been doing this a while, so I tend to do it, it's all kind of a one thing for me. So it's a breathing and a smile and a pause and a looking around the room and then we go on. So it's like, does that make sense?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was hoping. So as I breathe in through my nose.
No, no, no. So as I breathe in through my nose, I will also be smiling and lifting, because sometimes, especially if you're sort of halfway through a talk and maybe something's gone wrong, or maybe you're thinking, I didn't say that quite right, or maybe you're thinking, that guy's asleep, or whatever it is you're thinking, and your face, forget, sometimes you can forget to be doing the eye contact and the smiling or the appropriate expression. So it just gives you that moment of reset.
you know, you get to a pause, you ask your question or you know, you've just changed your slide or whatever and then you're like, and then we go on. And you know, it's just a momentary thing, but because you get the combination, because as you know, that the smiling mechanism as well also sends messages to the brain that we're okay, because we don't smile when we're under threat. the diaphragm, vagus nerve, we're okay. The smile in the lift.
Speaker 1 (20:49.998)
We're okay. And the eye contact, you're making personal connection again to the brain that says, is good. I'm looking at one person we're connecting. This is good. And all of these messages, it's like a sort of real, you know, hormone boost. Yes, we're good. And then you can carry on. And if you practice it, it's everything, you know, it takes practice, but if you practice just the doing of it is a memory in your brain. Oh yes, this is what, you know, this is what we do when we're resetting and we're okay. And then you go, so, you know, every, every
Yeah.
If you work on that as a technique, it gets better and better. then you can, I I actually do it in conversation sometimes if I realize I'm not focused or my face has fallen or whatever, then I'll, and then I'm back.
That's nice. Yeah, that's a way, isn't it? To like I trick the brain, the physiology there, you know, I'm smiling to the brain goes, oh, great. He's happy. So let's make him feel great. And I've just realized that Daniel, who's my my teammate, confidence coach, he does this at the end of the workshop. So on the end of day two, he stands there. I've just realized what he's doing. So now know that's that's fantastic. I'm gonna let him know that. So obviously, we talked about the power breath, how that's really important. Is there a another breathing exercise that can help with vocal endurance? So we've obviously done the bi spec. Is there anything else that you feel like is
natural thing or would you say it's just the diaphragmatic breathing is probably the most beneficial thing to do that.
Speaker 1 (22:08.074)
Yeah, mean box breathing is probably, so the four in four hold, four out four hold is really good just to get you to understand.
where your breath is and sort of be able to control it a little bit. And then as you know, one of the best things for stress and anxiety is the exhale emphasized breath. So you're trying to get the exhale longer than the inhale. So if you're confident with the box breathing, which is the like the equal in and out, you can then practice maybe breathing in for four and holding for four, but breathing out for six and, you know, so you can try and get this exhale longer. And that's
That's a really good one to practice. you're not used to where you're dying from is, a good exercise to do is to breathe in and you breathe out on hard Fs. So, and you keep going and at the end you can sort of feel, so you go like this.
Speaker 1 (23:03.904)
Almost until you can't do it anymore. And go on, try it Ricky. then it's... And then you just go f-f-f-f-f. So you go...
Bring me through, through my mouth.
Speaker 2 (23:16.133)
yeah, you can feel, yeah, yeah.
And then you feel this sort of like stab here.
Yeah. Ages. breathing out going F F F F.
And that just sort of
Yeah and if you keep doing it right till the end you sort of feel this bit of a stab here and that's you know that's the movement of your diaphragm and then so after that that sort of just sort of engages your diaphragm like if I need to I need to warm up very quickly I normally start with that. Do you want me to run you through if I was doing a really quick warm up? So if I'm doing a really quick like five minute warm up I would do that.
Speaker 2 (23:44.974)
Let's do it, yeah, let's go for it.
Speaker 1 (23:53.122)
few times just to engage and then I would do some exhale emphasized breathing just to make sure that we've just talked about. So we've talked a little bit about the line. So to warm up our vocal folds in a gentle way, the best ways to do this are either humming, because what we're trying to do is, if I were to go straight to singing, this is quite hard because you're getting a lot of air through the folds. So to warm up the folds without a lot of air coming through, we can do humming, we can do what we call lip trills like,
You know that kind of because again you've not got as much air coming through and my particular favorite is a Nunga Nunga Nunga so if you imagine N-U-N-G-A Nunga Nunga Nunga Nunga because what you're doing there is you're moving the resonance from so you're moving from your like nasal resonance to your your laryngeal resonance so you're going
Speaker 1 (24:49.742)
So you're from that mm which is a type of resonance to that mm which is like laryngeal resonance.
Okay, cool. So that's kind of like those throat singers, know, the, I can't do it, you know. Okay.
If I'm driving I'll be like singing along to something but not singing I'll be going... So I listen to all of OneRepublic so I'll be going...
Speaker 1 (25:22.062)
Yeah, that you can do. And then I would move on to my now we've not actually talked about articulators at all. So your articulators, the way you articulate the sound is really important. A lot of us talk very quickly and people say, I talk to you quickly. A lot of the time it's just that we're not actually articulating enough because if we were articulating properly, that would necessarily slow us down.
So as I said, your tongue is your main articulator and I know this is one of your favourite exercises, Ricky. So we have the eight. So what we're going to do is we're going to polish our teeth with our tongue. It's not very attractive. We're going to go...
Speaker 1 (26:09.166)
So pick a corner of your mouth, that's one. We won't do this now, but you do eight in one direction, eight in the other direction, and then four in that direction, four in the other direction.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:27.104)
two two one one now by the end it's kind of pretty agonizing particularly if you don't do this very much but it's so important so what this does is this literally releases your tongue so your tongue is a massive muscle if you see a like a cut through of the you know a diagram the the tongue is huge so this releases the tongue muscle and when you've done that you find that you have a lot of saliva in your mouth and you have to swallow and also you kind of want to go
because you you can feel it under here it's quite uncomfortable but then if you talk after that your tongue feels a lot more free in your mouth so you know i know you've tried it i hope people are watching the podcast will try it because it's a really interesting one and you you know and when you see people doing it they'll be going because it's so painful by the end but it really does release the tongue and then you can make all of your speech sounds much more effectively you could also you know i would also
maybe do a quick jaw release, I would. Quick massage. So jaw release is good, so you have to sort of let your face go soft, that's right, and then sort of manually, so you're finding this gap of your jaw, and you're gonna sort of manually open your jaw with your hands, so you kind of go.
Let's do it, let's do it if you want to.
Speaker 2 (27:39.854)
Am I doing this right?
No, right, so don't, yeah, there was massage, but to release the jaw, so put your, put the balls in and then just relax your face and you're gonna literally manually open your jaw.
okay. Like that?
Yeah, with your hands. And then if you do that few times, then when you talk, you will feel that your jaw feels looser and you're able to talk more freely as well.
yeah, yeah, can feel it. There's like a bit of numbing sensation as well, but it's yeah, like more open.
Speaker 1 (28:15.758)
Yeah, but you see, again, when people speak, very often you see people who kind of do this, they sort of set their jaw and then all of the speech sounds are being made in a very small, and people do this when they're stressed as well, they sort of tense everything up and they don't breathe and so you've got this poor vocal quality and you've also got just all of the sounds being made with the lips and the teeth and the tip of the tongue and it's just not very attractive, it sounds like a very closed tone.
If you can open your mouth and you can have a nice rich tone, a breath supported tone and you're articulating correctly and the sounds that we make are made in all different areas of the voice, of the mouth, depending on which muscles and everything they're using. In terms of placement, so we talked about nga nga nga nga nga for resonance.
In terms of placement, lot of particularly England, well, you've just been to America, so know, people have nice sort of nasal voices over there, but in England, sometimes, particularly with all these Zoom calls, we get very lazy. So we tend to slouch a lot and we talk a lot off of our throats. So we get a lot of this, what we call vocal fry, which you can do for a little while and makes a sound, you know, maybe quite...
relatively chilled, but it's not particularly good for the back of our throat. So we want to get the sound forwards in terms of placement. You're aiming to get the sound behind your front teeth.
So to try to get the placement there as opposed to here, because this is going to be really tiring for my voice. So I want to get the placement up here behind my teeth. So to do that, the best thing for that is to do a nya or a nya. So if you go nya, nya, nya, and think, nya, and think about it, it's coming out of this region. It's not nasal exactly, but it's coming out of the middle of your face. Nya, nya, think about it, think about it pushing at whatever you're looking at now, Ricky, think of it, the sound going directly sort of.
Speaker 1 (30:05.358)
out of your top teeth in a straight line and then try and go and then say I'm Ricky
Yeah
Speaker 2 (30:17.994)
Yeah, I'm Ricky. Yeah, I'm Ricky. Yeah.
Yeah and then try and say I'm Ricky but put say the same placement of the sound. I'm Ricky. if you do do you see do you can you feel can you feel where the placement of the sound is now?
Okay.
Speaker 1 (30:36.366)
Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah I'm Ricky nyah So it's about doing the nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah Yeah, and then you want to obviously transfer it into what you're saying So with people who have real placement problems, I would get them to, you know, say whole sentences with nyah at the front So like nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:02.696)
I'm Ricky. So until they can sort of feel the placement in the correct, I mean, you must know as well, because when you, if you're doing a whole day wedding, whatever then, but by the end you're getting lazy and it falls down. A lot of people also have that thing they do in speech where they start here. So when they're talking to you, they start here and the end of every line is sort of relaxing into here. And then they'll come back and speak correctly, but every just sort of falls back and back and back. And this is a...
It's a pattern that a lot of people have and as I say you can do it occasionally and a lot of singers I do a lot of singers we use vocal fry as a as an effect in singing you can use
Like metal, metal singers use vocal for a lot don't they?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a technique and you can use it. But if you are routinely, if you are routinely speaking on your larynx like this, you are going to do your vocal folds. You know, you have to be you have to know when to use it, when not to use it. And honestly, when to use it is not all the time, not all the time. You need you know, you need to be able to place the sound correctly and then make choices about when you're going to use that. I mean, I think I've said to you before, when when actors need to to cry on
film or on stage, this is what they go to because this again, this sends a message to our brain that we're upset. If you've ever spoken to someone who's about to cry, very often you hear the crack in their voice first before the tears come.
Speaker 1 (32:27.276)
So someone will be talking and they'll be fine. I do this myself. You know, I lost my dad last year. So I do this myself. If something pricks my memory and I'll be talking, I'll be absolutely fine. And then you'll remember something and it cracks and then you can come back, but you can hear that crack in somebody's voice very clearly. So this is one thing that actors do is that they, know, actors have such control of their voices. They can choose where they're placing it. And I've even heard, I once walked past an actor backstage who was going,
and was literally you had to then go on and be very upset. this is a trigger for your brain that, you know, that we're upset that we're feeling emotional. Similarly, so this is one of your confident people, similarly then to make yourself feel confident.
We smile, we exactly the same. We have the breathing, the vagus nerve, the smiling, the muscles, all of these messages are going to our brain. And also, if I produce a very nicely placed, a forward placing tone and my breath pressure is fine, all of this is sending messages to my brain that I'm feeling confident. So if you can learn how to do the correct voice placement,
that will help you to feel confident. It's a biofeedback thing. Learn how to do this technical thing. Place your voice correctly. You will feel more confident because you'll sound more confident to everybody, but literally you will actually be more confident because the confident hormones, the mood boosting hormones will be flying around.
Interesting. Wow. so yes, we obviously talk about a context of that in terms of a feeling in a good state, you know, so changing your physiology. So you realize that also changing your physiology also affects the voice too. So it makes sense, doesn't it? Really didn't think about that. But that vocal fry thing is really funny because I love metal and it always surprised me. I absolutely love singing in the car and I don't do any vocal warmth at all. It's probably why sometimes I get to the end of a yeah. And I can't do the vocal fry, but I saw a really
Speaker 2 (34:26.138)
funny video where someone's like to the vocal fry you go like meow like a cat yeah yeah and then you can start I mean I'm not as good as Ollie Sykes from Bring Me the Horizon but like it's great but amazing tool but we're capping because I appreciate we could we could talk about this all day and it's really important but
So obviously we talked about these voice techniques. We talked about strengthening it. One of the things that I wanted to talk about was that and I've my own worst enemy of this about how do we ensure our voices remain really resilient even under heavy use? I speak a lot. I present a lot. I host weddings. I'm talking quite a lot, especially if I'm doing a series of events where I haven't really planned any rest time in between. I can lose my voice and I lost my voice a wedding twice in two years. And it was horrible because as the host you are the go to pass.
And I'd love to hear about what's the benefits or what should we be doing to stay more resilient? And is it something to do with? Hydration how do I make sure that I don't lose my voice again?
Yeah, so hydration is absolutely key. We need, so the vocal folds need what we call systemic hydration, which is what comes from the inside. And as you know, you you need to be drinking water four to six hours before for that to have an effect. You can't just sort of have a glass of water before you go on. So if I'm singing at two o'clock, then from eight o'clock in the morning, yeah, I'm, it's pretty hard if you have to sing in the morning because you've just had a night where obviously you've not been drinking water and then you get up. So, yeah, so you want to be thinking four to six hours before.
to get you to water for your systemic hydration then of course the superficial hydration so yes sipping water gargling is particularly good I saw chewing gum myself sorry
Speaker 2 (36:07.214)
Salt water or normal water?
No, I just go normal water. Okay. just lots of normal water and gargling. you know, nip to the loop, water bottle, quick gargle before you go on. Gargling is sort of better for the vocal force than just drinking. Drinking is great. Do lots of drinking. What was I saying? I forgot what I was saying there. Gargling.
So it's a guy who four to six hours before.
Superficial hydro, yeah, superficial hydro. So we want to keep sipping water. I was saying chewing gum, that's right. Yeah, I start by chewing gum because chewing gum, which is, know, getting your jaw going and your tongue going. So we get the saliva production, which is what we need. When you get nervous, as you know, Ricky, so our rest and digest system sort of closes down. Rest and digest is what produces saliva because it's to do with chewing food. So when we're very nervous about something, saliva tends to go. So chewing gum.
I find that helps keep the jaw moving and keep the saliva being produced. Gardening, steaming, so maybe home before you go out, steaming is really good. yeah, water, water, water, water, water. And the other thing is the placement. So as we've talked about, the thing that fatigues most people is that they're not thinking about where their voice is being placed and they get tired and they get slouchy.
Speaker 1 (37:22.738)
And particularly for you, it's the same with me with singing, sometimes you're in very loud environments. so say you have your break and people come and talk to you in this very loud environment and you don't have your mic and so you're having to talk over a very loud environment. so we tend to sort of push the voice. Yeah, you tend to be sort of pushing and that's quite hard on the vocal folds.
So yes, it's thinking all the time. The least stress you can put, the higher you can place your voice, and actually when people have colds and things, if you can almost make your voice more nasal, like the Americans do, the more nasal you can make your voice, the less pressure, the less work your vocal folds are having to do because the more nasal resonance you're using, it sort of cuts through. It might sound a bit funny, but you will be heard.
you can be heard, which is the important thing if you're having to perform or speak, you know, when you feel that you're losing your voice. But yeah, you're not causing much damage. So the worst possible thing that you can do is think, oh, I think I'll just speak really quietly. I'll just whisper, I'll just put like, you know, whispering's really bad, you know, so people say, oh, I'll just speak really quietly, I'll just whisper. No, don't do that because that's just putting like extra breath through your vocal folds and extra stress, and that's not what we want.
We want to get the voice as forward as you possibly can, use all the resonance in your face, take the pressure off of your cords. Yeah. So it's basically water and placement is the two most important things.
So that's really interesting because as if I do close up at an event Quite often if it's a corporate event or even at a wedding where you've got a wedding singer playing in the background It is very loud. So sometimes you know, if this is someone's ear, you're like, sorry. What was that? Yeah. Hi, you know, yeah, I'm Ricky I'm here to entertain you and then over time, you know If that's like then I'm hosting later on by the time I get to about six o'clock. I'm like, oh my god And then you start to feel run down as well
Speaker 1 (39:20.982)
Yeah, to sound really sciencey what you're doing there as well when you when you said hi I'm Rookie and you sort of you lifted your pitch there but still in your sort of so you're actually lifting your you're lifting your larynx there so you'd be lift so your larynx would be higher and tighter and your jaw you know everything is going to tense up because you're like you're trying to make yourself heard so you're sort of high yeah so you get all this you get all this tension we've not really talked about that but yeah and sort of muscle tension neck tension is bad for the voice as well so bizarrely the probably the best thing you can do is try to undercut the noise
And this is particularly for women because we tend to speak at about the babble noise. You we tend to have the same pitch. Men normally find it easier because you can just go deeper and you can undercut the noise. So it's a tip for women as well is to, instead of trying to go over the top, try and go underneath it. So actually make your voice more resonant. So use more resonance, slightly lower your pitch. Don't talk on your throat. Slightly lower your pitch and use more resonance and try and talk underneath the pitch of the babble.
It's very hard, it's very hard when you get loud environments and you don't want to lose your voice.
It's one of those things isn't it? think, you know, like take responsibility where I've had to do this before and I've mentioned to people that if loud music is, it's in my contract, if loud music is too loud then the performance will have to stop because I can't do my job if it's too loud. Quick fire question then, ice in water I've heard dries your throat out, is that correct if you have a glass of water?
I've not heard that, I'm not familiar with that myself. I don't use iced water, I just have room temperature water. Also if you're ill and you lose your voice, I do swear by honey and lemon. I'm definitely a honey and lemon girl. Not just before you talk, but know, of beforehand for the antibacterial qualities etc. So warm honey and lemon, but no I'm just a room standard water kind of person and lots of...
Speaker 2 (41:16.526)
I just realized, Kathy, I think that, because I lose my voice quite a lot. And I think because sometimes where I've done like a series of weddings, then I'll rock up and deliver a Compton Club workshop. And some of the coaches will know this, where my voice is going, probably because I got a bad cold, because of nursery bugs and that kind of thing. And then you start to feel run down, chest infection. But I believe that I'm probably damaging the voice because of those events where I'm going, sorry, hi, my name's Ricky. Hi, yeah, hi, yeah, who are you? And over time, I'm just damaging it and I'm not really giving it.
So I thinking about because I'm conscious for time a Question I wanted to ask you which is in relation to this as well. It's about dry mouth So I've seen this before where speakers will often go You know dry mouth when they're presenting they might get the little bit white there sort of thing dry mouth is that linked to nerves or is it just not enough hydration earlier on the day like that four to six hours
think when you see people do it in performance, it's normally nerves. mean, yes, obviously your mouth will dry if you're not sufficiently hydrated, but it happens very suddenly. And if you've ever had a sudden shock, I had it happen to me once, I had some bad news, and almost immediately, it was like my tongue was sticking to me. It's quite an extraordinary thing when it happens. So if you get on stage and you're very, very nervous and that stress response kicks in, and as you know, your whole system is just, know, where is the oxygen?
loads of energy and everything else just stops. Saliva production just sort of slowed down and stopped. So yes, you get a dry mouth, then you can't move your tongue as well, so your articulation goes and then people are thinking, and then sometimes you have to clear your throat, because this is the other thing, if you're dehydrated you actually get thicker mucous secretions, so then you get this like...
All the time and then you think I've just like coughed on stage. no This is going really wrong and you know, it's like it's a horrible spiral Isn't it when you can feel these sort of things happening and you have a sip of water But it makes no difference because this is your stress response. This isn't to do with you know, needing a sip of water So yeah, I think the dry mouth thing which as I say, I use chewing gum for that myself It's part of my sort of getting ready for show routine is that I would have gum to keep my saliva going But yeah
Speaker 1 (43:33.262)
We've not actually talked much about controlling the stress response, but I think it's all mixed in with that, that if you do some work to control your stress response, that's going to have an effect on everything, including your mouth not drying. I guess I would say if that happens to people on stage, you have to take things like that in your stride. Just keep having sips of water. It happens to everybody and keep doing the bispec thing, the pausing and the smiling. Try to get those messages to your brain. No, it's okay.
I'm okay. Generally people in an audience, don't mind if there's a two or three or four second pause. They don't actually notice it. You think it's really noticeable. It isn't, you know, take a second, have a sip of water, reset, smile, try and indicate to the brain we're okay. You know, these things do come back. And as you know, once you can get that parasympathetic system going again, things come back very quickly. Your heart rate goes down very quickly. The shaking stops very quickly. Your mouth, you know, goes back to normal very quickly.
Yeah, yeah. There's a lot you can do. mean, you and I are the same in that confidence is something you can learn it, you can develop it, there are skills. We don't want anybody out there saying, no, I could never do that. Or it's not for me, I'm not confident, can't do It's like, no, you can learn it. It's like anything else. just learn the skills. apply them, you develop them, you get better and better and better over time. And you never stop learning, do you?
You and I were both performers. You never stop learning. Every performance is different. You learn something from every performance. You get better at controlling yourself and your nerves and your vocal abilities every performance.
Yeah, it's a strategy isn't it and I love that and I think that To kind of wrap this up because we've gone into some really great detail about this and there's loads of stuff I want to talk about because I know like maybe we have to come on for a second conversation about nonverbal communication because Yeah, 55 % of that makes the impact as well. So although our voice is really important we think about nonverbal, but I guess if
Speaker 1 (45:35.334)
Just on that, Mickey, I was going say there are non-verbals of the voice as well. So as well as all the non-verbals of this, there are what we call vocalics, which is all the little sounds you make, like mm-hmm, mm-hmm, and the er's and the yeah's, and then there are paralinguistics, which is the how you say stuff. So yeah, that's like a whole other piece, is the how you your voice to influence, persuade, to encourage, console, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, sorry, carry on.
We'll definitely do an episode two. here we go. So just for all the listeners then, could you recommend maybe a daily routine or two or three things, maybe a checklist that we can do every day to maintain a healthy voice so we can communicate with confidence?
I would say practice your box breathing so that if you are nervous you can bring that out and it's something that you're familiar with that your brain is happy with and that's going to really help to calm you down. I would say the resonance stuff so just humming along humming along to music singing along to the radio the nangangangang stuff to get your your resonance moving and the placement exercises the nyanyanyanyanya you know try to
learn, do the nyat nyat nyat nyat, try to feel that nyat nyat, try to sort of physically feel it so that then you can use your speaking voice, try to put the speaking voice when you use it into that same placement. And yeah, before you're speaking, definitely the tongue exercise. Just use your voice, play with your voice, your voice is amazing. If people sort of played with their voices a lot more and did more singing and made more silly noises and silly faces and you know.
you'd find them when you do your public speaking, which as you said right near the beginning, a lot of people, get up to do public speaking and then, you know, the radio voice comes on and people feel that they, it's just like, oh my God, know, like, where have you gone? Sometimes you meet people and they're fascinating and then they get on the stage and they're so boring. But people feel like they have to produce the voice in a certain way and they don't. Like our voices are crazy and interesting.
Speaker 1 (47:33.514)
And actually if you can get on stage, or just in conversation, if you can be using all the different colors of your voice and the tones and know, bit of vocal fry just for a bit of variation, know, bit of everything, that's gonna make people interested and it's gonna make you memorable, make people wanna hang out with you and work with you.
Love that. Cathy, if people want to find out more, maybe they want to take a step into confidence to improve their voice. What or where can they find you?
So I'm Cathy Rice Oxley on LinkedIn and my website is www.VoiceConfident.com. And yeah, it'd be lovely to hear from people. Very happy to give some advice out if you want some help.
Thank very much. Kathy, thank you for coming on the Unlocked Podcast. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ricky. Thank you for having me.
