Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE
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A Voice Like Honey
Tom Baker
The quality of our voice in my opinion is a vastly under-rated and under-used aspect of ourselves and I'm pleased to see that this week BBC Radio 4 gives it prominence in a two-part programme. Jan Ravens, actress and vocal chamelion will look at voice and whose voices we most like or dislike, based on 4,500 respondents to a recent Radio Times survey.
Tom Baker, ex-Doctor Who and voice in 'Little Britain' comes out favourite with his fruity and dark mellifluous tones, and Absolutely Fabulous Joanna Lumley is described as soft and beautifully modulated with a bit of 'Posh'. Janet Street-Porter is uncompromising, Fiona Bruce is smouldering and seductive, while Stephen Fry's voice is beautiful and perfect for story-telling, Terry Wogan has depth and warmth and Ray Winstone is sexy with a lovely lived-in quality to it. The programme will show during experiments visual representation of voice patterns and how they vary from one person to another and if we imitate people, the visual display of frequencies gets close to that of the person we're copying.
Joanna Lumley.
But the sound of our voice is such a persuasive and influential tool, it can clinch a deal, sway an argument and have people drooling at our feet. I shall be interested to see if this BBC programme indicates this aspect and how much we can change or improve the quality of our own voice.
Vocal sound is not something that's a particular part of us, but more the product of our physique and how we use our 'vocal mechanism'. We can see various influences on our voice such as accents, language and characteristics we may have picked up from our parents. These are habits just as any other postural habit we may develop. In my work with the Alexander Technique, I help people such as TV or radio presenters and actors to release unwanted tensions and habits, so they can allow their voices to be free, full, resonant and expressive. But these aspects are just as important in business and social situations.
We can change how our voice sounds if we change the way we use our muscles and vocal mechanism that produces the sound. I may write a bit more on this later....
A Voice Like Honey, Part 1/2, BBC Radio 4, Wednesday 1st March, 9.00pm.
The BBC should pay me commission!
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