Somewhere between an unhinged "hum-bayo" and a riotous "hi-yoo," one writer learns what it means to sound like herself
How a Voice Makeover Upped My Zoom Game—and Changed My Life
I’ve always squeaked. My voice is high, like baby cartoon high, something that’s been pointed out to me since middle school. Back then, I imagined my distinctive soprano made me seem more feminine, and I leaned into it. It was a voice that suited the times and the expectations—the perfect “girl voice.” Decades later, the times have changed. But my squeak lingers on— forgotten, mostly, save for these last few months of video calls, which have redrawn my scrutiny and resurfaced old insecurities around what premier Hollywood vocal coach Roger Love describes as a pitch that is too dully monotone, too quiet.
Love, by contrast, has a voice like molten honey. Warm and rollicking, it ripples through the Zoom call I’ve set up to try to address the Minnie Mouse situation after all these years. “If I had an airy thin voice that didn’t have any melody, no dynamics to it, people wouldn’t listen to me,” he purrs. Most of us craft a voice to suit a single part of our character, he continues, but it’s never versatile enough to reveal all of who we are. “Here’s you,” he says, launching into a feathery falsetto, and doing a fairly excruciating impersonation. “‘I’ve created this voice that is very good for high tea. Very proper. Classy. Excitable, a little, maybe, but very proper.’” I let that sink in for a moment. “Now, I want you to get louder and edgier,” he commands with the theatricality of a B-movie buccaneer. “Say, ‘I want to fill up the room with me!’” I oblige, and we do this for a while. The crux, he says, is that I sputter along instead of sending my sound out on a consistent stream of breath, a weakness that can be remedied by breathing deeply with my diaphragm. I could transform my voice right here, right now, Love suggests. Then he does the ‘me’ voice for a third time.
That night, sucking down enough air to distend my belly, I tried out the technique on my husband. “Wearesupposedtospeakontheoutbreath,” I boomed. He gamely gave it a try. “Butwesoundsuperhigh,” he shouted back. The next day, I didn’t speak much at all. I nodded at the kids and sat silently through a strategic video call, meanwhile judging everyone else on the screen. Upper left corner: zero melody. Bottom right: shallow breather. Center square: creaky, low volume.
To delve a little deeper, I called my friend Meg Chittenden, a somatic voice educator—and the kind of person who sings while wandering the Maine woods, losing track of whether she is sounding, or the forest is sounding through her. She was a little mystified by my pursuit. “My relationship with the voice is definitely not results oriented in that way,” she says warmly. “There is so much delicate coordination in the throat, and it’s an area that stores traumatic experience, first because the voice is restricted by trauma, but the restriction itself also causes trauma.” Women in particular have vocal constriction, she adds, “due to the way our culture responds to the female voice.”
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Jessica Kerwin Jenkins
