***Good Voice Training Means Discovering the Voice You Don’t Know You Have

There are various approaches to voice training that you should be aware of if you are interested in improving your vocal image. Even some coaches who are published will not teach you the basic fundamental of good voice improvement because they are working with the voice you already have. Good voice training means discovering the voice you don’t know you have. And the only way that will happen is when you are taught to use your chest cavity as your primary sounding board.

You have 5 cavities in your body responsible for voiced sound – 5 cavities that will vibrate when you speak. The problem for the majority of the population is that they are only using 4 of those cavities: the voice box, throat, mouth and nasal passages. These 4 are very important in the production of voiced sound; however, if you are not using the 5th and largest of your vibrating cavities, then your voice will be thinner, young-sounding, possibly whiny, nasal, reedy, throaty, wimpy, and most definitely higher in pitch than it should be.

The chest cavity is responsible for the great voices like that of James Earl Jones, Cher, Kate Beckinsale, Julia Ormond, George Clooney, Peter Coyote, Fred Thompson, Kathleen Turner and Sean Connery. You cannot have a voice with the qualities you hear in these actors’ voices unless your chest cavity is involved.

Because the majority of the population – possibly as many as 99% - are not breathing with the support of the diaphragm, so too that same percentage are not aware of and not using their chest to power their sound.

Shallow or lazy breathing, which is the opposite of diaphragmatic breathing, does not allow for the chest to get involved in voice production because the air inhaled is sitting at the top of the lungs and is not being taken down to the diaphragm. If you were to breathe properly, you would discover that your diaphragm would move down and out instead of up which is one of the results of upper chest breathing.

I cannot tell you how many people with whom I have worked who have discovered their ‘real’ voice and were just as gifted as those mentioned above. You have a better voice inside but if the program you are interested in pursuing does not first teach you how to breathe correctly, do not waste your time, your money, or your energy.

Don’t settle for working on the voice you already have – discover the voice you don’t know you have.