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I want a deeper voice!
ege02
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In general I'm pretty comfortable with myself, but one thing I get self-conscious about is my voice tone, which is a little thin.
Is there anything I can do to make my voice deeper? I am aware of things such as voice training and whatnot, but I am more interested in things I can do on my own for the moment.
Is there anything I can do to make my voice deeper? I am aware of things such as voice training and whatnot, but I am more interested in things I can do on my own for the moment.
ege02 on
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Make sure it's not just your self-confidence beating you up
Supposedly it's what actors do to deepen their voices.
It's just one of those things I wish to have.
Here's a start: http://www.wikihow.com/Improve-the-Quality-of-Your-Voice
Hopefully he has secondary goals of smelling awful and having yellower teeth too.
Maybe it really is nothing and you just think it is.
In fact, this woman forced me to speak (as in when talking) with a deep voice which sounded ridiculous to me at the time, as a technique to improve singing. By the end of the week it was no longer strange, and that speaking voice is pretty much the one I have now, ten years later. Obviously there are limits, and not everyone is built to be James Earl Jones, but the change you can bring about is huge.
So have a look at the singing websites, learn how to breath, learn how to open your chest properly to get the resonance, experiment with different voices, then force yourself to speak with a deeper voice when you've worked out how to do it. Amazingly, it's one of those things you can pretty much change just by thinking about it.
PS Smoking kinda works, in that it scars your vocal chords, but you have to do it a lot for a very long time, and generally the other side-effects of tons of mucous etc will make you sound more like Harvey Fierstein than Clint Eastwood.
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
man I am very angry at you right now
but this isn't a smoking thread so I will just >: (
I'm sure Rainy dos smells like peaches and strawberries!
you know
bathe
so I don;t smell like cigarettes after about 5 minutes of having one
personal hygiene etc
How dangerous is it anyways to spray like deoderant in your mouth?
To the OP; have you recorded your voice and played it back? Most people hear something completely different to their real voice in their head.
Is this what someone else has commented on, or what? Smoking just to get your voice deeper sounds like a really dumb idea. Is it worth cancer, yellow nails and teeth and black lungs just to make your voice deeper (as well as scratchy and taking away any singing ability you may have)?
www.rockmidgets.com
Edit: In terms of smoking, I would say it's a bad idea but not completely out of the question. Ya there are a lot of drawbacks (like, the fact that you'll be smoker) but smoking in itself isn't that bad for your voice. It's actually coughing that really fucks you up. If you have smoked for a long time then you can still have a decent voice. Probably the best tenor I know is a heavy smoker.
Thanks for the suggestion though.
The full bodied tone you hear in professional singers and male actors comes not just from tone placement (the use of one's voice accurately) but by a type of vocal conditioning. Essentially, one screams and shouts at full pitch enough to break some of thier vocal chords, and they grow back thicker, resulting in a deeper more resonate tone.
The most famous example of this is Rock Hudson, glamour era movie star, who tells a story about how he rented a cabin in the woods for two days and screamed and shouted until he went past hoarse. It took him a few weeks to recover, but in the end he achieved exactly what he was looking for.
This method must have inherent risk, anything that intentionally breaks your shit tends to, but in the end any aggressive use of your voicebox conditions it in this manner. Some singers do indeed lose their voice altogether, but the majority of singers recognize the larynx is a kind of muscle, and so the stress/break/heal effect is very similar to the process which makes biceps bigger when you work out. Much in the same way, too much and you tear something, too little and nothing happens. Caution is advised.
Total, complete and utter bullshit.
I trained as a classical singer for a decade, and acted & directed a lot in theatre in the latter part of that. The above is not true in any way shape or form, and it will mess you up.
Also, the larynx / vocal chords are no kind of muscle at all, though they are controlled by muscles. Stressing the (quite fragile) vocal chords will only produce lesions called nodes, which if bad enough, have to be surgically removed, which can result in a complete loss of vocal function.
Please don't listen to that moron, you will get hurt.
EDIT: Nice, one fish on the hook already. Mods, seriously that guy is basically advising people to bungee jump without a cord. I'm hardly one for censorship, but that post deserves to be deleted.
i know you don't like me and all, but this?!?
That's a worst case scenario, you'd have to do it regularly for a fair period of time, and the lesions would have to be severe and diagnosed late - ie often non-trained rock/pop etc singers get this problem, since they don't learn how to use their voices properly and often sing in bizarre, strangled personal styles. Even when I was a chorister, there was a kid who developed nodes (though he didn't go mute, it did affect his voice), simply because he tightened up his throat and sang with bad technique, and that matters when you are singing 3-6 hours a day all year round.
But, 1) it is bullshit, and is not going to help, and 2) it will do damage, which, outside of building muscle, is rarely a smart idea.
EDIT: Apparently they call them 'nodules' these days
Try recording your voice and listening to it.
Afaik something about your bone structure or shit like that, medical stuff, means you perceive your voice to be much higher pitched than it actually is when you hear it out of your own mouth.
This is true for me, I sound really whiny when I talk but my voice is quite deep.
Hey!
I gave warning that there were risks, and pointed out that extreme stress on the larynx will bust your shit up. How many godamn red flags do I need to put into something before it fucking triggers?
As I'm sure you're aware, being a pro and all, even the stress of performing can cause the vocal chords to snap, and when they heal, the sound of the voice is different. This difference in sound is a husky, gravelly difference which is actually a part of some singer's and actors voices. It takes a voice from being 'thin' and gives that earthy, been around the block timbre.
Ege didn't ask about professional training, he said he was looking for a quick difference, and what I supplied is accurate in that regard. I gave no less than five, count 'em, five fucking indicators that there are serious and non-trivial risks involved, so don't go goddamn knocking down my door saying I didn't put a warning label on that shit.
Three days of screaming your head off will have a noticable change with minimal repercussions, and yes there are long term risks to breaking your shit on a daily basis - I said as much. Go have your cow on someone else's porch, though I do thank you for time in pointing out and emphasising the serious nature of the risks involved.
When we establish a self-image of ourselves using a mirror, we're not actually seeing what everyone else does. Features are reversed, though you don't look any different to people you know (as this is how they always see you) on film, you will look "different".
The voice you hear, isn't the voice others hear. My suggestion is no matter what you try to deepen your voice, you may be better off just talking into a recorder and practicing enunciation. Read aloud for 5-10 minutes, then go do something else, come back a couple of hours later and listen to yourself. Make sure the changes (if any) you make in your tone aren't uncomfortable or cause you to crack and wheeze.
Everyone has things they wish they could change about themselves I guess, and if your thing is your voice... have at it. I just wouldn't expect to go from Screech to James Earl Jones.
Out of curiosity, at what age did your voice start changing into what it is now? I know lots of people who hit 30 before they got a well rounded tone to their voice. It's one of those things that matures at an odd rate for some people.
People used to think I was my mom on the phone when I was 19, and at 26 there's no mistaking it now.
because of reverberation in your head or somesuch
Thank you for taking the time to point out and emphasise how totally ignorant you are on this subject. Aside from the fact you are giving dangerous advice, the other half of my point was that you don't have a clue what you are talking about, and thus it is probably not a good idea to listen to you.
I could dissect exactly why this is so, but I don't think I need to. I'll just stick with your own words:
No. If they snapped (not that they ever will) you would never speak again.
Just no.
Most famous, eh? Give us some other examples then, please.
No they don't, and no it isn't.
I really don't need to even explain my reasoning, because anyone here can look up even the most basic article on the larynx / vocal chords and see that what you are saying is total rubbish. Oh, also; exactly what experience / training qualifies you to be giving this advice?
For me it's higher. To me, I sound like a school boy, but when I hear a recording of my voice I sound like a moronic barry white.
It's an individual thing depending on how you are made, and partly a perception issue (how you want to sound). For men, I believe it generally sounds lower, but it's not a hard rule by any means.
There are other little medical things which will affect your voice too. Just as having a cold will make you sound nasal, keeping the sinuses etc clear will deepen & widen your voice, essentially because it gives a clearer path for the air and increases resonance (like learning proper posture etc as actors / singers do).
Also, an extreme example and this isn't a recommendation, having tonsils removed will alter your voice - takes a big chunk of flesh out of the back of your mouth, and gives more space as above. However, the effect it has will be unpredictable and permanent, as well as leaving you more vulnerable to infection etc, so it's a silly idea for someone healthy. I've known a couple of people with chronic sinus / tonsil infections who had them removed, though, and their voice changed & stabilised completely afterwards. Not always for the best (particularly one girl).
Work out how your voice works, too, and what makes it sound like you want. For example, I sometimes wake up after a heavy night out, and my voice is several miles lower than usual, and working perfectly. This is down to alcohol, a bit of rest and a clear system combining to give total relaxation of all the muscles & airways involved. During the morning, I'll naturally mess it up by talking, eating and doing all the things we do to tighten up our voice. A large part of vocal training for actors / singers is learning how not to constrict your voice, and to reproduce that relaxation. This ideal relaxed state is also how babies can scream for hours on end without losing their voice - they are simply doing what comes natural, and don't have any of the bad habits that we develop & impose on our voices when we get older.
Whatever. Here's someone who read the exact same story I did. [/end]
Same article, this is nearly word for word what I remember and that was from over 9 years ago.
Let me get this straight though; your 'proof' is an uncorroborated random poster from Wikipedia saying not that she knows about this technique, but that she read the same urban mythesque story in a biography of an actor (ie highly likely to be apocryphal). So essentially, your answer to me saying, "That's an urban legend", is to reply '"No it's not, someone else has heard the same story!"
...and from that you got...
Interesting how suddenly it's professional singers and actors, plural.
...and this is why I asked for other examples. You don't have any, do you? Let me fix that for you.
Were you one of the intelligence guys who proved there were WMD in Iraq, by any chance?
Most annoying.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
One of the fourth-year singers at my school got extremely sick and got those 'nodules', but she's professionally trained so it wasn't from improper singing. I thought she'd never sing again, but she's back and seems to be fine so I guess it is possible to recover from that.
Generally speaking, if your throat ever hurts from singing, you're doing something wrong. If done properly people are capable of singing, or even screaming, for hours. I mean, look at babies. They can cry for what seems like forever. Their breath control is perfect and it's only from watching chumps like us that they stop breathing properly and lose their ability to properly use their vocal chords.
lol! No, I meant the story is in Rock Hudson's biography. I had thought it credible. I had also heard of nodules affecting voice quality, and in the manner I described. 'Lesions' are breaks in the fibrous tissue, and there are also tales of light scarring also affecting voice quality. Everything seemed to fit.
Ya, but it shouldn't hurt. Also, when you're singing in a musical it's a different style of singing that, if overdone, can actually be bad for your voice.
Is all over projection bad? Even when using proper technique, I mean. What's the difference between a shout and a loud-as-you-can manage tone?