hold the room.

Glossary

Timbre

The colour of your voice: warm, bright, thin or rich.

Timbre is the colour of a voice, the quality that makes two people saying the same word sound different: warm or thin, rich or scratchy. It comes mostly from breath support and an open throat. A tight throat under pressure thins the timbre; breathing low and relaxing the jaw warms it back up, which is why the Day 9 breathing drills change how you sound.

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

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