Imagine you see, from some distance away, someone trying to break into it your parked car. Instinctively you shout loudly: ‘No! What are you doing with my car!’ Try it now if you can.

It’s likely your voice sounded very different from your normal speaking voice. But the tone quality of any sound you make can, with practice, be incorporated into your voice: it’s yours to use as you want.

Exercise 22: Discovering hidden voice qualities

• Taking care to maintain a head-focused tone, try out some scenarios that involve you vocalising a phrase as you imagine yourself in the grip of a strong emotion such as anger, excitement, joy, love or fear. Record yourself or use ‘listening ears’. What voice elements can you hear that you don’t normally use, or even think you have in your voice? Just enjoy trying out different sounds.
• Then focus on one quality you’d like to develop – a more authoritative tone from a shout perhaps, or some of the energy from an enthusiastic whoop.
• Repeat the relevant phrase until you’ve really got the feel of that quality.
• Then, while keeping the quality you want, gradually start toning down the way you deliver it until it sounds more like ‘normal’ speech.

Exercise 23: Practising different voice qualities

You are now developing a palette of sounds. Enjoy experimenting with them by reading aloud. Choose:

• texts from newspapers, magazines or books that interest, excite, even disgust you, and
• dialogue from books or plays with a number of characters you can voice.

Get inspired by listening to good actors, and to audiobooks read by masters of the art of character voices, such as Miriam Margolyes or Martin Jarvis. Act roles just as they do.

Then:

• Imagine yourself in various situations at work – or elsewhere. What are you going to say, and how are you going to say it?
• How can you best adapt to both the physical environment and the ‘character’ you want at the time?

Having a range of roles you can act out, and being able to convey appropriate emotion as necessary without feeling it in your body, will not only enhance your communication skills but help you stay healthy and reduce your stress levels.