How to get your voice ready for public speaking
Hi, I’ve got some great tips for you today on how to get your voice ready for when you need to go and speak in front of a large group of people.
There’s nothing worse than standing up and feeling as if your voice might give out or as if somehow things have tightened up, and you just want the ground to swallow you up. Well, these little warm-up tips will help you to make sure that your voice is really ready to speak clearly, with a nice projected tone.
The first thing is always to think about how you’re standing, make sure that you’re standing really tall, and that your alignment is really good. Watch out for anything that involves hunching forwards or just dipping out of that lovely, tall, open, proud alignment does compromise our voice. After all, the larynx is mobile, it moves up and down, it’s controlled by number of different muscles around here. And if we’re out of kilter, it’s like trying to take a violin and play it upside down. It’s never going to work. So make sure you’re standing tall. And make sure you’ve got your breathing under control.
Your breathing is what fuels that voice. It’s what makes it work. And good breathing also settles nerves. So that is your key. So we’ll just start by getting that breath moving a little bit. And you can do this really simply just by saying a few ‘vvvvs’ as in the video, just around the range of your voice where you normally speak. You can then try taking a slightly deeper breath and just extend that siren up and down a little more.
You could even take the opening of your speech or your speech or song and just try saying that on a ‘vvvv’ sound. For example, ‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, I’m here to tell you about my product.’ ‘vvv vvv vvv’. It seems a small thing, but actually that really does bring your voice together. It makes it really clear and strong.
Then you just need to just move your face muscles a little bit. Just get everything alive and ready to go. Perhaps a little tongue twister and you’re good to go! Good luck!
