110 10 Vocal exercises for a more confident voice | Mastering Vocal Techniques for Confidence with Kaffy Rice Oxley of Voice Confident

In this episode voice coach Kaffy Rice Oxley discusses the importance of vocal training, breath control, and the science behind voice production. The dialogue explores how first impressions are significantly influenced by vocal qualities, the mechanics of the vocal instrument, and practical techniques for improving vocal performance. Key topics include the role of diaphragmatic breathing, the significance of pauses in presentations, and effective breathing exercises for vocal endurance. We delve into various vocal techniques and exercises aimed at enhancing vocal performance and resilience. We discuss the importance of vocal warm-ups, hydration, and managing stress to maintain vocal health. The conversation also touches on practical tips for public speaking, including how to handle nerves and dry mouth, as well as daily routines to keep the voice in top condition. The speakers emphasize that confidence in speaking can be developed through practice and awareness of vocal techniques.

Find out more about Kaffy at https://www.voiceconfident.com/

or connect at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaffyrice-oxley/

Chapters

00:00 Jaw Release and Vocal Freedom

01:18 The Importance of First Impressions

02:35 Understanding Your Vocal Instrument

04:57 The Science of Voice Production

07:25 Breath Control and Its Significance

12:43 The Role of Diaphragmatic Breathing

16:27 The Power of Pausing in Presentations

20:49 Resetting with BiSpec Technique

22:08 Breathing Exercises for Vocal Endurance

23:44 Vocal Warm-Up Techniques

35:15 Maintaining Vocal Resilience

41:46 Managing Dry Mouth and Nerves

45:57 Daily Voice Care Routine

Takeaways

• Jaw release techniques can help loosen the jaw for better vocalization.
• First impressions are heavily influenced by vocal cues, accounting for up to 38% of initial judgments.
• Everyone has the same vocal instrument, and with training, anyone can improve their singing ability.
• Breath control is essential for effective communication and vocal health.
• Diaphragmatic breathing is crucial for maintaining a strong and stable voice.
• Pausing during presentations can enhance audience engagement and reduce speaker anxiety.
• The BiSpec technique (Breathe in, Smile, Pause, Eye contact) helps reset the speaker's focus and connection with the audience.
• Understanding the mechanics of voice production can improve vocal performance.
• Breathing exercises, such as box breathing, can enhance vocal endurance and control.
• Practicing breath control can alleviate anxiety and improve overall vocal quality. Vocal warm-ups are essential for preparing the voice.
• Articulation exercises can improve speech clarity.
• Hydration is crucial for vocal health.
• Chewing gum can stimulate saliva production.
• Avoid whispering as it adds stress to the vocal folds.
• Confidence in speaking can be learned and developed.
• Daily voice care routines can enhance vocal performance.
• Understanding vocal placement can reduce strain.
• Managing nerves can prevent dry mouth during presentations.
• Using varied vocal tones makes communication more engaging.

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Speaker 1 (00:00.278)

So jaw release is good, so you have to sort of let your face go soft, that's right, and then sort of manually, so you're finding this gap of your jaw, and you're gonna sort of manually open your jaw with your hands, so kind of go.

Am I doing this right?

No, no, right, so don't, yeah, there was massage, but to release the jaw, so put your, put the balls in and then just relax your face and you're gonna literally, manually open your jaw.

okay. Like that?

Yeah, with your hands. then if you do that few times, then when you talk, you will feel that your jaw feels looser and you're able to talk more freely as well.

Speaker 2 (00:40.302)

Yeah, yeah, I can feel it. It's like a bit of numbing sensation as well, but it's more open.

can open your mouth and you can have a nice rich tone, a breath supported tone and you're articulating correctly. The sounds that we make are made in all different areas of the mouth depending on which muscles and everything they're using.

Speaker 2 (01:18.478)

Research shows that first impressions are formed within the first seven seconds and vocal cues are a substantial part of this. Studies indicate that a person's voice can be up to 38 % of the initial impression made during a conversation, which includes qualities like tone, pitch and speech rate. So because this is really important, let's have a little bit of discussion about our voice. Welcome to the show, Cathy Rice Oxley. How are you?

I'm good, thank you Ricky, I'm all good, yeah, nice to be...

to be here. Yeah, lovely to have you here. So, Cathy, obviously you're a voice coach at Voice Confident. Tell us just a little bit about what that is that you do.

in all areas of voice training and as you say the voice is something that people do judge us on and if people are going to judge us on our voices then really we want it to be something which really represents us advocates for us that we like the sound of ourselves because you know if you don't like the sound of your own voice your voice allows you to give physical manifestation to your thoughts so if you don't like your voice then that's going to you know put barriers between what you're thinking and how you're able to communicate with people so yeah so I help people with their speaking voices and also with

all of the presentation things around, that's all the non-verbal, the posture and the gestures and the face expressions, everything else that we're doing when we're speaking and communicating with people.

Speaker 2 (02:35.63)

Brilliant, and I'm really, really interested in this because, I mean, we've known each other for almost a year now. And obviously when I met you, there was lots of like synchronicity, synergy, however you want to describe it, because we both do presentation training. And one of the great things that we often talk about is in the Confident Club, we talk about the tools in the toolbox and about how we can make more impact. And I think it's just something that we often see in presentations that people just...

We speak in that kind of modulated tone in that same voice and just we believe that that's all we can speak about and that's all that's how we speak. But my question is this, Kathy, could I sing like Beyonce?

That's a really difficult one. I'm tempted to say... You are male, so this is a difficult one. But you're actually right. So your voice is an instrument. We've talked about this. Your voice is an instrument. Your voice can do amazing, amazing things. Most people with their spoken voice, they're only using a fraction of what this instrument is capable of. And I always say to people, have to think that your vocal instrument is the same as...

all the great singers, all the opera singers, Beyonce, Whitney, you your vocal instruments the same as all the great singers who've ever lived, all the great actors, all the great impressionists. mean, think of all the actors we know on TV that can show up in completely different ways just by changing their accent and the voice and the way it's produced. We all have the same vocal instrument. So it's just a series of, you know, muscle movements and, you know, things interacting in this very complicated instrument and habits, physical habits. So yeah, you can pretty much learn to do whatever you

want with your voice. Singing, absolutely everybody can sing. It is physical, it's just a case of learning how everything works and learning to produce things in a certain way. So all this, can't sing, I've never been able to sing, rubbish, everybody, everybody can sing and everybody should sing because it's really good for you, it's good, it's good for the soul to sing.

Speaker 2 (04:27.15)

Oh, thank you. You fulfilled my dream now because I used to believe like, you know, like it's one of those things like, you know, you're from Lincolnshire. You can't you can't sing, you know, in those tones that you have. obviously, yeah, absolutely. We can write. We've all got the same thing. So I'm interested to talk about. know that this is a big impact. So first, let's just talk a little bit about the science here because unconsciously I'm speaking right now. I'm not even having to think about it. It's just coming out. I might be, you know, adding a few phrases or a few inflections and stuff like that to make it more of an impact. But what's actually happening right now as I'm speaking? What is the

science of what's going on.

Well, you've got lots of things going on. Your system is supporting your voice. You've got a steady flow of air, which is passing your vocal folds, which are housed in your larynx, and that's making the sound. And then you are curating that sound using your articulators in your mouth. So your tongue very heavily is involved in almost all of the sounds that we make, but your tongue is interacting with movements of your lips and your jaw. You've got your hard palate, your soft palate. You've got various different types of resonance. So the sound itself is being made

but it's being changed into speech sounds with everything here. that's a lot of science chat for you there Ricky.

That's all.

Speaker 2 (05:40.172)

Yeah, so that's my fault thing. What's that elaborate on that? So to create like a visual picture for me in my mind, what does what is that?

So you've got vocal folds and they are sort of mucous membrane, they're vibrating very, very, very quickly. So as the breath comes through, it's to do with the rate that they're vibrating and they stretch and relax. So when we have them stretch, this is the higher pitch and then when they relax, we get the lower pitch. So there's a lot going on. Also our larynx moves up and down, you might not be aware. There's a lot of very complicated movements. But as you say, see, most of the time we're not thinking about this at all.

probably you are a singer or you're using your voice professionally, you don't tend to think very much about what you're doing. If an actor, say, needs to develop a new accent for a film or something, they will work with a speech coach and they will look at the whole thing. They will look at how the breath is coming through, they'll look at the position of the lines, they'll look at the placement of the sound in the mouth, they'll look at which areas of resonance they're using, because all different accents.

or do things in a slightly different way. So when people put on an accent, for example, it's not just a case of making the sounds differently in their mouths. There's a lot more to it than that, right down to the movement of the legs and what you're doing with your vocal cords.

Right, brilliant. obviously, there's a lot going on there that obviously we're just not thinking about unless we're actively, you know, we're a singer, we're speaking or we do some recording and that kind of thing. But one of the things that is really impactful that you mentioned about this is about how the power of the breath really helps with this. So I'd love to take a bit of a dive into why is breath control so important for a strong and stable voice?

Speaker 1 (07:25.536)

Yeah, it was quite interesting because the phrase breath control has become a bit contested in singing circles. There are some styles of singing where you're taught to sort of set the muscles in your abdomen and stuff and we wouldn't generally advise that. So when I talk about controlling the breath, it's about being able to breathe properly using your diaphragm. So you've got this massive muscle, sorry you can't really see my hands, but you've got this massive muscle sitting just beneath your rib cage, above your internal organs.

we don't have to think about breathing, obviously this is something that we just do, but interestingly we can also control the diaphragm, so we can also choose when we breathe in and out. So we can for example breathe all the way out and then wait a few seconds before we breathe back in, or we can breathe in and we can hold it and then we can breathe out. And it's these muscles that enable us to do that. The reason that breath is really important with spoken communication is that when, well,

probably particularly with nerves. So when people get nervous, they tend to take very shallow breaths. And if you take very shallow breaths, you tend to have to take more breaths. then, so when you were saying earlier that you were running out of, you were losing your voice, it may be that through that day, you've not had the breath support that is...

properly, it's a breath pressure thing as well, so probably the breath pressure hasn't been correct on the air that's been coming through your vocal folds. So perhaps you've been breathing too shallowly, perhaps you've been speaking without enough breath pressure support, and this is all very wearing on the vocal folds. So then by the end of the day, if you've been sort of doing that...

all day, yes by the end of the day you are going to feel fatigued. So yeah, so with spoken we don't think so much of breath control but we think about breathing properly. So we would take a nice breath in through the nose and as you do so you would feel your lower ribs and your floating ribs sort of expand so they go out, they go out forwards and they go out to the side and this is to allow your diaphragm

Speaker 1 (09:29.9)

which will then push down. This is why your tummy moves out when you're breathing properly, because it pushes down on your internal organs. So your belly sort of moves out and your ribs rise and expand. And this gives you the most air you can. And then when you breathe out, the diaphragm then, it's like an elastic sort of thing. So the diaphragm sort of springs back into place and your belly comes back in. But yeah, if at any point you're, if you're breathing right up here,

Yeah, you are going to get just too much air going in and out all the time. We don't actually need a lot of breath to speak on. You know, most of us speak without a lot of breath, but yeah, that's the danger is if you're sort of breathing, you've got far too much coming in, far too much going out. And of course a breathy tone as well. If I put a lot of breath through my tone, I might start to sound either very anxious,

You can sound really excited. if you talk to, know, if your daughter comes home from nursery, whatever, done something really cool, she'll be like, daddy, daddy, daddy, you know, this is what we do when we're really excited. But it also can make us sound very anxious. And if you do that over a period of time, you feel it is, it is drying to put that much air through your tone is, is drying. So yeah, being able to breathe properly using your diaphragm and to moderate the amount of airflow is important. Yeah.

So interesting then, I think I see a video quite recently of a singer on stage, somewhere like, you know, Glastonbury, and he had his top off and the video was like diaphragmatic breathing at its perfection. And what happened was his belly. Have you seen this? Yeah.

It's where his belly like inflates, but it like pops in pops out like really quick Which you don't you don't really see like when when singers are singing so obviously he's obviously breathing and it's like you see his tummy inflate He's a thin guy But he's me starts to inflate and then it pops back in and then obviously as he's doing his singing then next breath comes out So that's him mostly diaphragmatic breathing getting that airflow into projecting his voice

Speaker 1 (11:35.382)

Yeah, I've not seen that video. the sound of it popping back in is slightly...