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This is an excerpt from a book I have on seduction, called How to Make Girls Chase (definitely worth a buy):
"Basic Vocal Technique
Hyroid: Does speaking ever seem difficult or tiring, almost like you have to force the words out? You’re most likely depressing your hyoid as you speak. The hyoid is a bone in your throat – the only bone in the body that doesn’t touch any other bone in fact – that some people get into the habit of pushing down on with the back of their tongue while speaking. It has the result of making speech more work, and makes the voice “fuzzier” and harder to hear. The solution recommended by voice coaches is to make or feel the back of your tongue floating upward. Then, while still doing this, begin speaking. It takes a little practice, but you can train yourself to speak without putting so much pressure on your hyoid. One side note: there is no way to not put pressure on your hyoid, but you can always train yourself to involve less pressure. So you can always be working on having a louder, clearer, more effortless sounding voice.
Purr : Sexy men have a certain guttural purr to their voice (as do sexy women). A good contemporary example in film of this is George Clooney. Listen to how he speaks, and the “purr” that seems to inhabit his voice. Add this to your voice, and watch women begin to swoon. You will likely want to practice deepening and slowing your voice down first, and add a purr or rumble to it after – and of course, be careful to avoid getting too guttural – we don’t want you sounding like a caveman! Throw a slight purr in your voice, and you’ll do great.
Depth and Resonance : When you speak, you should be speaking from the bottom of your chest and lungs. Focus on adding that depth and the resonance it brings. Your voice will sound much more masculine and intense, creating a more desirable impression.
Boredom : Again, a degree of boredom makes you sound more worldly and experienced. It also tends to unconsciously encourage others and compel them to want to impress you and keep you engaged. The way you make certain remarks – like, “Oh, really?” or, “Is that right?” – while someone else is speaking can quite often spur them to work a little harder to make you more interested. This technique is useful particularly if the conversation is about something uninteresting or that does not move the interaction forward in any way. It’s important to not overdo this, as you can run into problems with attainability (covered in the last chapter of this section). Use it as one of your tools, rather than the only one.
Advanced Vocal Technique
Once you’ve mastered the basics of having a good voice, you can further develop your vocal techniques. The following are a few tips to get you started:
• Make your voice unique. That means getting a unique style all your own. Study men with unique speaking patterns. Robert Downey Jr. is a good example, as are many other actors and even some politicians. The objective is to have a voice that is not only appealing, but also different – something that will catch women’s ears and be distinctive in a positive way.
• Use uncommon, colorful words. People who are captivating speakers use interesting words. Practice using words that are both hip and uncommon – words you don’t hear every day. You will make listeners pay more attention to what you are saying, and you also present yourself as someone who is educated, experienced, and well versed.
• Add a hint of accent to your voice. Unless you’re French, Italian, or Latin, you likely don’t have a very romantic, appealing natural accent. What you can do is add a hint of accent to your voice. This is a little difficult to do – you need to have an ear for accents, and you need to add just a subtle inflection, which will make your accent tough to pin down. Your accent should be sufficiently interesting that people will seem a little puzzled and ask you where you’re from, but not so much that they refuse to believe you when you say, “Oh, I’m from here.”
• Add “bounce.” This is one of the limits of trying to discuss vocal tonality in text. There’s a way of playing out your voice in a way that only very attractive, confident people use; you can say couple of words with this bounce and pretty girls nearby will turn completely around just to check you out. It sounds like a word, drawn out long, that dips down and comes back up again; that’s about the best description of it I can give on paper. All I can say is, play around with tone and be very aware of how strong, sexy men speak and keep an eye out for this. So when you see women turning to look at a man because of the way he’s speaking – that’s bounce."
And here's some input I have on making your voice more attractive: Look into learning how to become a better singer. That will really help your speaking voice to sound smooth and be more pleasing to listen to. Learn to breathe properly. To breathe properly, when you inhale, you should be expanding your abdomen, not your chest, so you can fill your diaphragm up with air. And make sure to loosen up your throat, kinda like when you yawn, so your voice is produced more effortlessly and sounds more full and pleasing. Finally, listen to men's voices that you find very pleasing to listen to, and try to emulate their voices by recording yourself and listening to the recordings.
Hope all of that helps!
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Voice professional here.
The mistake a lot of people make when they want a deeper voice is to "swallow" the sound - depressing the Adam's apple (lowering the larynx) unnaturally. This actually makes things worse. What you want to do is move the sound/vibration of your voice into your face, while keeping your jaw and throat as relaxed as possible. It may raise the pitch a little bit, but it relaxes all the throat tension, and eventually, you'll get a more resonant, authentic sound.
I can't underscore authenticity enough. The pitch range of your voice is determined by nature, just like the size of your feet. You can always improve resonance, but you can't sound like James Earl Jones unless you have a similar throat. Listen to announcers - they don't always have the deepest voices, but they have colorful, resonant, unforced sound.
As for steadiness, this is a breath control issue. Learn where your support is by taking in a full chest of air, then slowly hissing it out. Then recreate this feeling while talking. It will almost feel like you're holding your breath and keeping expanded while speaking. This will be easier to do if you're producing your sound correctly.
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Singing. Taking singing lessons will teach you about different vocal registers, chest voice and head voice, how to breathe properly, control your voice and speak with a smooth uninterrupted sound. Singing for a while before you are about to speak (e.g. in the car) can be a big help. If you "sing everything you say", this will help with enunciation and intonation. Humming is also helpful.
Breathing. Learning to breathe properly and using your breathing to support your speech is important, but easily overlooked. You shouldn't be holding your breath in while you speak; instead, breathe out as you speak. See comments by makeme and G9A5.
I can give you a few tipa as i did 3 years of voice and speech training at acting school. First of. Breathing it the most important thing. Practice breathing from your diaphragm by placing your hands on your stomach and pushing them out with your breath. Once you have got that down and can comfortably tell the difference between breathing with the diaphragm and not lifting out your chest as you breath you are good to start with the exercises. you should start by finding and using a text or a tongue twister with sounds you have a hard time pronouncing. Always keeping your hands on your stomach start saying the text and try to get as far as you can into the text before you have to breath. Stopping as soon as you notice you do not have enough air to support your words. and never strain your voice, rather use the breath to let the words sort of flow out of your diaphragm.Then repeat over and over again until you get the feel for it. Do not get tempted to stop and take deep breaths unless it is unavoidable. This strengthens the necessary muscles needed for proper breathing and you will feel light headed. All of this will make your voice softer and smoother. You can also start trying to open up your throat and find the break in your voice that distinguishes your head voice ( high keys ) from your chest voice ( low keys ) that will help you better control your voice. Also find and practice the difference in voiced and unvoiced sounds. as in you form the s and z sounds the same way in your mouth the only difference is that you can not make the z sound without applying your voice. This all is a long and boring process but i promise that if done right will show great results. What kind of sounds do you have the biggest problems with? And In what country are you? If you have any questions on the subject then ask away.
Imitation. You can improve your voice by imitating someone else's. If you like someone's accent, whether it's an actor, news anchor or someone you know, study the way they speak (tempo, pitch and melody, accents, intonation, inflections) and try to imitate it. This will give you greater awareness of how you are speaking, teach you good habits, and also be a good party trick. See realityisoverrated's comment.
Enunciate. Lip movement is key. Open your mouth more, and strain your lips slightly to say each word perfectly. Try to make each syllable recognisable, and don't slur. Over-pronounce when rehearsing so that it will be easier when you're actually speaking to someone.
Speak slower. One of the most important tips. It helps with clarity and makes people listen to you. It also gives you a chance to focus on enunciation and to plan your words, eliminating gaps and speech disfluencies like "uh..."
Speak louder. Another important one. If people often ask you to repeat yourself, chances are speaking slower and louder will go a long way to fixing it.
Practise! Read aloud whenever you get the chance (reading books to kids is great). Talk to yourself in the car. Practise in the mirror, to work on body language too. A job in retail, telemarketing or college radio is perfect. Do a public speaking degree at community college, or join Toastmasters. Record yourself with a voice recorder and listen back; make notes on what you want to work on and try again. And speak more with friends. This is perhaps the most critical step.
Some other tips from the thread:
See a speech therapist or pathologist, or vocal coach of some sort. Asking about Resonant Voice Therapy has been suggested.
Be aware of the rhythm and inflection of your words (no monotones), as well as body language.
Pretend you're speaking to someone whose first language isn't English.
Look at the person you're talking to.
Speak as if you are reading.
Imagine that you're speaking from the top of a mountain.
Start speaking from a yawning position; this opens the vocal chords.
Follow Demosthenes' example, and practise with pebbles in your mouth.
More realistically, practising with a pen or cork between your front teeth can be very helpful. Clothes pin on nose has also been suggested.
Get an acting audiobook to help with enunciation and accents.
And finally, recommended by several redditors: whisky and cigarettes
I've worked with choirs for the last couple of years and here are a few tips I have to drill into people all the time. But this is mostly for choir, so obviously, if you're the solo singer you have your own style.
Practice. Every day. Even if you have to just hum something. Work those muscles. You don't have to do boring scales if you don't want to. Just something. Hour a day. Go. Start now.
Breathe properly. Singers usually breathe with their diaphram and use it to support the notes they sing. Look in the mirror when you breathe. Did your shoulders move? You're breathing with the wrong organ. Lie down and put your hand on your stomach. That's the part you want to breath with. It'll take some getting used to.
2b. Don't sing louder by pushing with your throat. Imagine your voice like a pilot light. Feed it gas with your diaphram. This is what gets you heard from the othet end of the room.
3. Ennunciate clearly. Imagine your consonants as bread and your vowels as beef patty. You want to sing on vowels and not on consonants. Nobody can sing holding on sssssssssss or rrrrrrrr (unless you're into country music I guess, and that's your style). When possible, delay your consonants to the next word. "I want sandwiches at noon" becomes "iw-aaaan-tsaaaanwiche-saaaa-tnoon".
4. Pitch. Being in pitch means singing the same note as it's supposed to be, but it's hard to do it and hear yourself at the same time. There's a little stubby part right outside your ear hole (tragus) that you can push to cover your ear hole. Do that while singing and make sure you're doing okay. Singing is as much about listening and adjusting yourself as it is about making sounds.
5. The shape of your mouth and placement of your tongue matters. The sound echos from your mouth. Most singers have their mouth closed... but the easiest way is to have it wide open like you're eating a quadruple patty burger. You can experiment with just holding on to a note and making funny mouth shapes. Different vowels will affect the pitch. Different mouth shapes will affect the pitch. You need to be aware and make constant adjustments along the way.
6. Your posture and position matters. Support your instrument, sit up... stand up if you must.
That's all I can think of right now. r/singing will probably have better tips than I do. But this is like 80% what I drill into choir members. The most important thing is to sing with your ears: listen, understand what you're listening to, and make adjustments.
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First step: Do you have Amusia? (sometimes called being tone deaf) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusia If you do, learning to sing will be a struggle. You can improve with lots of training but it will be hard.
Step 2: Matching pitch. Play a note and match it with your voice. Or use an online game like this one http://trainer.thetamusic.com/en/content/matching-pitch
Step 3: Breathing and posture. http://youtu.be/PJzflvDTWno
Step 4. Vocal exercises. http://your-personal-singing-guide.com/vocal-warmup.html
Step 5: Understand your vocal range and vocal register. http://lifehacker.com/find-your-vocal-range-in-2-minutes-with-this-video-1652758850
http://m.dummies.com/how-to/content/vocal-register-the-parts-of-your-singing-voice.html
Step 6: Practice. Sing in the shower. Sing in the car. Sing while doing house chores. Go to Karaoke. Join a choir. Try out different types of music and singing styles but be careful not to stretch your vocal range too far out of its comfort zone because you can damage your voice.
Edit: My first gold! :D It's so shiny! Thanks person!
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What they say is true: It's all about how relaxed you can sing. People want to hear an effortless singer (yes, even Cobain was an effortless singer, as you'll learn when you become more advanced and can analyze his singing style) The hard thing is understanding what it means for your voice to be "relaxed".
Don't bother learning how to sing better vibrato, it cannot be learned in isolation: If you have a relaxed technique, vibrato is effortless, so work on the other stuff first.
You have to put in a lot of hours in practice to become a good singer, but you don't have to worry about doing it every day- In fact, regular and longer breaks will help you get out of ruts and can actually improve your singing. FYI, if you have a car commute, use that for your practice sessions.
If you can't sing 3 hours straight and still have a perfectly normal talking voice, you aren't a relaxed enough singer yet.
You will need to learn to keep your larynx stable: With practice, you can touch your larynx (voice box) with a couple of fingers to detect if it's moving up or down as you sing, without it feeling uncomfortable to do so. Get over the initial discomfort of touching your larynx asap.
I'm a proponent of "speech level singing" which says that good singing is possible at a low volume: Yes, you can add color to a song by singing louder, but a great singer can sing at a whisper and still sound great (yes, even really high notes) A bad singer (i.e. a singer with poor technique) HAS to sing loud. If you can't sing quietly, you have poor technique. Believe me, even Cobain could have sung "smells like teen spirit" at whisper volume and he would have sounded good.
Singing high notes is easy if you just practice enough, but people will hate listening to you if you don't sing high notes well (i.e. you can sing them in a way that is independent of volume and with a low larynx)
Good vocal coaches can make a huge difference.
Singing relaxed by yourself is 1000% easier than singing relaxed in front of an audience. Karaoke is your friend. Notice when you sing karaoke that the mic doesn't need you to sing loud- Get practice singing more quietly and let the microphone do the work for you of amplifying your voice.
Singing well is a weird process of triangulation that progresses in levels: Often, you will need to LEARN something to advance a level, then UNLEARN that exact same thing to advance to the next level... that's why becoming a good singer is so laborious. (For instance, one day I figured out how to do a squeaky falsetto and it helped me greatly extend my upper range with additional practice. Then, I had to stop doing the squeaky falsetto and achieve the same range with a more natural, relaxed singing voice)
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