Communication Skills Tip: Intonation for vocal strength

In Lanartco's tip of the week March 4th, 2009, I wrote about maximizing your communication effectiveness through intonation. Over the years so many people have been surprised when I told them that monotone is actually considered to be the use of four tones or less in your speech. They were also surprised when I told them that you need eight tones just to begin being effective vocally. I am a mezzo soprano--that means the range of the female singing voice lower than soprano and higher than alto. Or in layman terms it means I can sing high and low. I've always noticed, however, that when I go to sing high I don't always have enough confidence. I think the same is true for us as speakers. As women, especially, we may have been told that having a low, raspy voice is attractive or we think having a high voice is not strong. When I talk about using eight or more tones in your range to be an effective speaker, it doesn't mean to speak high or low all the time, but to have the ability to go both high and low as necessary. When do you need to use the higher tones? On key words. And when shoud you use the lower tones? When you are finishing a sentence and want others to know you are done speaking. One exercise that will help you increase your range is to use any vowel sound and start on the lowest pitch you can. Sing a scale by thinking of the sound a fire truck might make. Start low and carry the pitch as high as you can go, flip the sound over and come back down to the lowest pitch you can. And have fun doing it while you are at it. To be added to Lanartco's Communication Performance Tip of the Week, please connect to this link or send your email address to info@lanartco.com