hold the room.

Glossary

Register

Whether you feel your voice more in your chest (deeper, fuller) or your head (lighter, higher).

Register is which part of the voice is doing the work. Chest voice is lower and resonates in the chest; head voice sits higher and thinner. Under pressure most voices climb into the head register, which is why a nervous voice sounds higher than the same person chatting in the car. Breathing low and speaking on the exhale brings it back down.

From the lesson

The toolbox you can actually control

Many people change their voice in exactly the wrong direction under pressure: faster, higher, flatter, with the ends of sentences trailing up or trailing off. The clearest map of what you can actually control has seven parts: register (chest or head), timbre (warmth), prosody (the melody), pace, pitch, volume, and silence.

Day 5 · The Voice People Lean Into: How to sound more confident when you speak: pace, pauses, and landing sentences

Where it comes up

Related terms

  • Lip trillBlow air through loosely closed lips so they flutter, like a motorboat, while you hum. It warms up your breath and voice together.
  • Vocal fryA creaky, rattling sound at the end of sentences when the voice runs out of energy. It can make you sound less competent.
  • UptalkEnding a statement with a rising tone, as if it were a question. It can make you sound unsure.
  • ProsodyThe melody of your voice: how it rises and falls. A varied melody holds attention; a flat one loses it.
  • TimbreThe colour of your voice: warm, bright, thin or rich.

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