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If you would ask me if singing techniques improve or change speaking voice, I would say, It does! Moreover, learning the proper techniques when singing like breath support, good articulation, projection, and speaking from the diaphragm will surely improve your speaking voice.
Demosthenes, for example, was stuttering when he was a kid, but he diligently practiced vocalization every morning along the beach. Soon after, he became one of the greatest orators of all time. What he did, of course, was similar to the vocalization and warmups done in voice lessons. Hence, any person who wants to improve his/her speaking voice would surely benefit from voice lessons’ vocal techniques.
How Does a Trained and Untrained Vocalist Differ in their Voice Projection?
Most persons use their throaty chest voice when they speak, which provides them with a limited speaking voice range. This speaking voice doesn’t imprint a good impression on others because, more often, a throaty voice is weak and breathy.
However, you can improve your voice if you join a classical music tutorial. You will immerse in the different vocal techniques meant for strengthening your voice and making it more impressive. Once engaged in these techniques, you will get to improve voice projection.
Such vocal techniques include proper posture and alignment, proper respiration or breathing management, proper phonation and registers, resonance, correct diction, and accurate expression (dramatic communication of written text and phrasing). Once imbibed, these vocal techniques can transform not only your singing voice but also your speaking voice. These vocal techniques are the main reasons why there is a remarkable difference between the untrained and trained speaking voice.
Untrained in Singing Techniques
If you are untrained in various singing techniques, you only tend to breathe using your upper chest cavity. Moreover, your voice only emanates from 40 percent of your chest’s potential volume capacity. Hence, you feel much pressure in the frontal part of your throat.
The sound you create, therefore, is constricted and harsh. Besides, your posture tends to be poor, and your head tends to move up to gain the upper pitch when you sing. Your tone and intonation also tend to suffer a lot.
Trained in Singing Techniques
On the other hand, if you are trained in classical music and vocal techniques, you tend to develop different speaking habits. You develop a breathing habit from your lower lungs (diaphragm), and you also fill up with air your upper lungs. In this way, you get near a hundred percent sound capacity. You also learn to use your diaphragm to gain power instead of focusing your vocal resonance on the throat and upper chest.
As a trained vocalist, you would also not stress your throat much because your voice emanates from down under and is projected upward via your body’s rear side. Hence, your vocal cords tend to relax while you sing or speak. You also produce a sound that is relaxed, full, and open.
What Would Changed In Speaking Voice If You Train Your Singing Voice Properly?
How you project your voice is crucial to the quality of your speaking voice. So, if you don’t know the right placement of your voice, your voice becomes weak and raspy. However, if you are cognizant of the singing techniques and practice them diligently, you would enhance your speaking voice. Here are the things you would develop if you are assiduous in employing the different vocalization techniques:
1) Proper Vocal Projections
I remember Demosthenes every time I hear the term “vocal projection.” He had a weak garbled voice. Yet, he wanted to become the greatest orators of all time. So, he practiced daily early in the morning with pebbles in his mouth, shouting at the top of his lungs. Of course, he became one of the greatest orators of all time.
Demosthenes was not a classically trained singer. Nevertheless, he practiced and developed proper vocal placement and adequate breathing with his daily practice along the seashore.
With proper vocal placement and breathing, your voice will become stable and resonant. You can project it better, and soon, you will be confident to speak without any difficulty, even if you would talk for an extended period.
You may feel awkward, at the onset, when you engage in vocalization. But vocalization can be advantageous to you. It can open up your vocal cords, and if you do it before every speaking engagement, you do your vocal cords a favor while improving your voice projection.
2) Vocal Consistency and Stability
Another thing you will develop, once you practice daily vocalization and other singing techniques, is vocal consistency and stability. You produce voice by letting air pass through the vocal folds. The air, of course, comes from the lungs. So, you need proper breathing when you sing and speak.
If you know the right vocal techniques and practice them well, they will become second nature to you. You can carry over these techniques onto your speaking voice, allowing you to have a more stable and consistent voice.
Correct breathing, for example, will let you speak consistently. It also strengthens your lungs, which are vital organs in voice production. So, without a doubt, knowing how to sing well will enhance your speaking voice as well.
3) Enhancement of Your Vocal Tone
The tone of your voice is the color or timbre of your voice. Given this definition, we can say that every voice comes with a specific color. We can describe some vocal tones as dark, strident, or warm. Because of the different vocal colors and timbres, two singers may sing the same song using the same key. Yet, they will sound differently. The reason is that each of them has a distinct voice tone.
Some people come with a great vocal tone. However, other people need to work themselves out to come up with a beautiful vocal color. Their timbre and color may be pressed and tight. But they can improve their voice by engaging in singing exercises to make their tone more pronounced and better. If you can improve your singing tone through vocal exercises, you can also work out your speaking tone using those vocal exercises.
Conclusion
Your speaking voice and singing voice may vary because singing is different from speaking. But you can also use different vocalization techniques and employ them to improve your speaking voice. Since the same physical mechanism and structures are used to produce your speaking and singing voice, whatever vocal habits you’ve gained to improve your singing voice can also be used to improve your speaking voice.
Moreover, even if you don’t consciously apply what you have learned in your singing lessons to your speaking voice, they will naturally come out when you speak. Thus, it is reasonable to maintain that your singing voice improvement would also improve your speaking voice.
