Last week, one of my clients greeted me by shaking his head and making a bubbling sound like Lionel and the King in the Oscar-winning film, The King’s Speech.” We laughed and then he asked, “Why did they do that?” Great question! My answer? Because it worked to create the voice the King wanted! “ The deeper question is, “Why did it work and how?”
Physical training requires an extreme use of muscles
In the King’s Speech, the teaching techniques were designed to emulate those which were popular at the time of King George IV. However, almost anyone who has gone through voice training will tell you that they have had to make some strange sounds. If you think of voice training as muscle training, you understand that those funny sounds are actually vocal “push ups” and “squats.” Just as you get your body into unusual positions in order to train your gluts and pecs, your arytenoids and cricothryroids are exercised by creating sounds that are different from everyday speech. Some of those exercises do sound odd. OK. Weird!
Extreme training tactics help you let go of the voices in your head so that the voice in your heart can be heard
To train a voice, you have to learn new approaches to communication. Specifically, you have to learn to make new sounds that project who you are to the world. This is not necessarily easy and even if someone wants to make changes, they still may not be able to give up the voice that has represented them all their life. This is true even when they have vocal challenges like the King in The King’s Speech.”
Years ago, I was inspired to adopt this approach by my mentor, performance skills coach, Eloise Ristad. She gave workshops to help people get beyond their well-rehearsed fears and psychological road blocks. She suggested that her workshop participants move out of their old ways of seeing and hearing themselves in order to allow their talent and skills to come through. Just like Lionel, she often resorted to crazy activities like having someone roll on the floor or even stand on one’s head while singing. This approach was designed to trick the person into a new perspective, and it worked over and over again. In her wonderful book, A Soprano on Her Head: Right side up reflections on life and other performances, she describes the results:
When my sopranos responded to head-standing (by freeing their voice to sing as they wanted), they set the stage for brain-joggling freshness. .. From there, they had to work themselves back up to an acceptable position without losing their new insights. Neither of them found an “answer” while standing on her head, but rather a way of shaking off the crusty accumulation of habits from years of overzealous training.”
How to trick yourself into the voice you want:
1. Silence your inner critics. Just say “no” to those voices in your head that tell you that you can never create the voice you want.
2. Listen to the voice inside that says you have something to say and find a way to say it even when faced with odds such as stuttering, tone deafness, or debilitating stage fright.
3. Give yourself permission to make ugly sounds instead of always trying to sound great. Stand on your head while speaking, roll on the floor while practicing your talk, and jump up and down to get the energy you need to deliver your song with elation instead of trepidation. Then take those feelings with you into public.
4. Stop the using the word “should” to describe where you want to be with your voice. Open the door to new possibilities and bring joy into the process by being your own best judge of your progress. It’s your voice, after all.
5. Find a mentor/coach you can trust to help you with your vocal transformation. A good coach has the skills and expertise to free your authentic voice…the one you’ve been wanting to use and the one the rest of us have been waiting to hear!
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Say it in your own voice, girlfriend
I was rehearsing a client who had a keynote speech to deliver at a conference. It had been a long day of meetings, and his speech was the next morning. We had just grabbed a bite to eat backstage, and were about to do a final run-through at 10PM. The problem was that his voice was just about gone from so much talking. What to do? He needed the time on stage and running through the talk because he had not had a minute to think about it all day. The stakes were high for this to be a great presentation. I looked at our drinks and suddenly remembered a great way to get his voice feeling much better so that he could still do the run-through and have a better chance of being ok in the morning. All I needed was a straw.
