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October
15, 2002:
Improving the Quality of Your Voice
Interview
with Dr. Morton Cooper, author of Stop
Committing Voice Suicide
Mike
Carruthers:
A lot of people use their voice incorrectly.
Dr.
Morton Cooper:
And we suffer the consequences: hoarse voice, raspy voice,
difficulty being heard, people don't know what we said. They
ask us to repeat.
Dr. Morton
Cooper, author of the book Stop
Committing Voice Suicide, says too many people talk from
deep down in the throat.
Which
means it doesn't have the believability, the intelligibility,
and listenability when I talk to you like this. It may sound
like I believe that I am getting across, but what is it saying
to you?
Dr. Cooper
says for your voice to sound as good as it can, it should come
from one place.
You talk
around the face, up in the lips and nose where all good and
great voices come from. The great voices have a marked degree
of nasal resonance, but they're not nasal-y. They don't talk
like this, they talk with a buzz. If you listen to good voices,
you'll hear that buzz.
And to find
that buzz, simply say, "Hmm-mmm." Dr. Cooper says
that's where your voice should come from.
So you
go, "Hmm-mmm" and you have a built-in system that
focuses your voice right in the face, around the lips and nose
where all good and great voice are, away from the lower throat.
Now if you talk in the lower throat, like I talk like this,
when I say "hmm-mmm," can you hear the change? Good.
All voices should be up in the face, the two-thirds solution,
not up there, but in the face, a blend of all the nasal resonance.
You can
link to Dr. Cooper's website
from ours, somethingyoushouldknow.net. I'm Mike Carruthers and
that's "Something You Should Know."
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