Practicing Voice Improvement: Record Your Voice

00:01 Let's hop right in. The first thing you have to do if you want to improve your voice is you have to really diagnose it and make sure we know exactly what the problems are. That means you're going to have to record your voice and listen to it.

00:15 These days, it's very simple to do.

00:17 Every smartphone has an audio recorder.

00:19 Your webcam will do it.

00:21 Nothing else. Call your own phone and leave a voicemail, and you can hear it for yourself. Now, chances are you have heard your voice before, and that's what's made you decide you don't like it.

00:32 A word of caution.

00:34 Most people don't like the sound of their own voice.

00:37 And here's why.

00:39 We're used to hearing our own voice all day long, filtered through the bones and flesh in our skull.

00:47 So we're hearing our own voice in a profoundly distorted way.

00:52 But when you hear your voice coming through speakers on a cell phone, on speakers on the other side of the room, you're hearing it in a way that's much less distorted because it's not going through bones, it's not going through flesh. It's just going through the air.

01:09 That's how everyone else hears your voice.

01:13 Now, again, you wouldn't be in this course if you didn't dislike your voice.

01:18 But I want to throw one possibility out in front of you.

01:22 The problem might not be that you have a bad voice.

01:25 The problem might actually be that you're simply not used to hearing your voice.

01:32 And if you simply heard it more, then you'd get used to it.

01:37 It wouldn't seem strange or alien.

01:38 So here's your first homework assignment.

01:41 I need you to record yourself talking.

01:45 Maybe just record a phone conversation with someone.

01:48 I wouldn't try to read from a phone book because that's likely to sound very mechanical. But just talk to someone.

01:54 Talk to a friend or family member, talk to a business colleague and record it on audio.

02:01 So that's the first step.

02:03 Just get a minute, preferably 2 minutes.

02:06 Let's really get it all down.

02:08 Don't listen to it yet.

02:09 I'll tell you what to do in the next lecture.