You have an amazing toolbox. // This instrument is incredible, / and yet this is a toolbox / that very few people have ever opened. // I’d like to have a little rummage in there / with you now and just pull a few tools out / that you might like to take away and play with, / which will increase / the power of your speaking. // Register, / for example. // Now, / falsetto register / may not be very useful / most of the time, / but there’s a register / in between. // I’m not going to get very technical about this / for any of you who are voice coaches. // You can locate your voice, however. // So if I talk up here in my nose, / you can hear the difference. // If I go down here in my throat, / which is where most of us speak from / most of the time. // But if you want weight, / you need to go down here / to the chest. // You hear the difference? // We vote for politicians / with lower voices, / it’s true, because we associate depth / with power / and with authority. // That’s register. // Then we have timbre. // It’s the way / your voice feels. // Again, / the research shows / that we prefer voices / which are rich, / smooth, / warm, / like hot chocolate. // Well if that’s not you, / that’s not the end of the world, / because you can train. // Go and get a voice coach. // And there are amazing things / you can do with breathing, / with posture, / and with exercises to improve the timbre / of your voice. //

Then prosody. // I love prosody. // This is the sing-song, / the meta-language / that we use in order to impart meaning. // It’s root one / for meaning in conversation. // People who speak all on one note / are really quite hard to listen to / if they don’t have any prosody / at all. // That’s where the word “monotonic” / comes from, / or monotonous, / monotone. // Also, / we have repetitive prosody / now coming in, / where every sentence ends / as if it were a question when it’s actually not a question, / it’s a statement? // And if you repeat that one / over and over, / it’s actually restricting your ability / to communicate through prosody, / which I think is a shame, / so let’s try and break that habit. // Pace. // I can get very, / very excited by saying something really, / really quickly, / or I can slow right down / to emphasize, / and at the end of that, / of course, / is our old friend silence. // There’s nothing wrong with a bit of silence / in a talk, / is there? // We don’t have to fill it with ums / and ahs. // It can be very powerful. // Of course, / pitch / often goes along with pace / to indicate arousal, / but you can do it just with pitch. // Where did you leave my keys? // Where did you leave my keys? // So, / slightly different meaning / in those two deliveries. // And finally, / volume. // I can get really excited / by using volume. // Sorry about that, / if I startled anybody. // Or, / I can have you really pay attention / by getting very quiet. // Some people broadcast the whole time. // Try not to do that. // That’s called sodcasting. // Imposing your sound on people around you carelessly / and inconsiderately. // Not nice. //