Finding your voice in the world can be tough, but for those who use it as a job, it is their most powerful weapon. How can you use yours for your advantage?
Men with a deep, gravelly voice find mates easily. So says research.
Interestingly, the voice serves to determine the outcome, be it dating, advertising or even day to day matters.
Males endowed with a deep voice are instantly perceived as more sexual and attractive the moment they open their mouths. And if this is followed by an interesting conversation, humour and the ability keep their date engaged, you’re looking at a lethal combination.
These males are thought of as fundamentally more masculine with a greater ‘reproductive capability’. Evidently, they go on to find more sexual partners.
Studies further go on to say that both women and men think of men with a deep voice more attractive. Similarly, females with low pitched voices instantly get a better response from males and are thought of as more alluring and charismatic.
Notably, women who are ovulating not only gravitate towards males with deeper voices but also have a lowered pitch themselves.
And you know what? Women who are nursing automatically find themselves drawn to men with high pitched voices. It is said they feel safer in their company.
A Deep Dive
Where do deep voices come from? It’s mostly genes or just that nature has been kind. Deep voices come from vocal chords that are thick and long.
Imagine a cello compared with a violin or a viola or even a bass guitar which has a longer neck and a scale length.
How a person’s voice sounds, regardless of what is being said can be a dossier of information about the speaker, for example social, behavioural and biological.
Now let’s see what the other areas where the voice matters are. In advertising the trend has always been to employ male voices more often than not since it has long been accepted that male voices convey more credibility when selling a product.
In fact, there is a whole study on this and the study also covers why there is this discrimination that women have to live with. Similarly, what has been said by a man with a deep voice remains on the mind longer.
Whether true or not, the almost absolute situation is that the number of male voices in advertising are disproportionately high. We hear male voices three times more often compared with female voices. In many countries it has been found that even those products that are typically sold for use by women are backed by male voices in advertisements.
The Power Of Speech
Perhaps there are some social aspects to this depending upon the cultural requirements of the country?
Apart from the internet it is the television and radio that are the major instruments for reaching out to those millions of consumers. For the older age group television is thought to be the most important source of information and thus good and great voices go at a premium.
After all, these are the people who persuade you to buy and those who are able to create not just credibility but are able to establish a connection with the consumers, all based on the inflection and the voice to create an impression that lasts in the mind, go on to earn millions of dollars and euros each year.
Before our readers start dreaming of becoming millionaires purely based on their voice let me tell you a vast majority of voice actors earn about $35 for a quickly spoken radio spot and around $150 for a 15-second recording that may be used in a website.
Finding Your Voice
If you’re selected as a storyteller for an audio book you’ll make between $2,000 and $7,000. For corporate or educational non-broadcast voice-overs, you can be paid between $300 to $2,000 for a narration that can be five to 10 minutes long. All said and done not everyone sounds like Morgan Freeman so the money is more modest.
There are several free tutorials available on the internet that guide you to train your voice. Pauses and inflection matter a lot. There are also professional voice coaches who will teach you to speak those punch lines and narration. The good ones charge anywhere up to $20,000.
Now let’s say you plan to earn your living by virtue of your voice, one of the most important things to do is practice speaking in a modulated voice for 10 to 15 minutes each day even if you have the best voice in the world, read aloud books and magazines, remember to pause at punctuation marks and this also will be your opportunity to breathe since you will have to train yourself to breathe consciously.
Always enunciate well, articulation and inflection is extremely important and whatever the weather, drink water which is warm or tepid frequently.
Maya Angelou very appropriately said: “Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.”
And if you’re gifted with an exceptional voice, they mean even more, much more.
Photos: Shutterstock
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