0509 – Vocal Variety

2022.05.24 – 0509 – Vocal Variety

Variety

If your inflection patterns are too consistent, then you're sounding bored rather than interesting. Depending on the material, sometimes your delivery should be fast, sometimes slower. Sometimes you should be excited, sometimes calm. Sometimes your voice should carry a smile, sometimes you should sound dead serious. By constantly varying your pattern (without sounding like a pastiche) you increase the possibility of being perceived as human rather than automaton… and therefore someone that the listener can connect with.

Variety in your voice will help people listen for longer. In real conversation, inflections vary widely from sentence to sentence. In announcing, people will tend to say everything the same way. It is far more captivating to hear someone who presents with:

·     Various sentence lengths – so you don’t get into a repetitive rhythm

·     A voice which alters in pace and pitch – faster and higher for exciting passages or when relaying content that people know but that helps you get from point A to point C

·     A style which intonates correctly rather than is robotic in modulation – so it is natural and understandable, and people aren’t trying to work out what you said and while doing so miss your next great point.

·     The occasional presentational … pause. To make people engage, to tease and intrigue.

Some trainers say “be unpredictable”. No. That’s just annoying. Look back at those tips above, variety shouldn’t be unpredictable, the variety comes from being natural. All of those points are what we do naturally in conversation, or telling a story to a group of friends, maybe a pause before a punchline.

Whatever the style or the content, you need to deliver the message to the audience in an engaging, memorable way that will make them act: either emotionally or physically. 

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