There is a way to naturally find your lowest speaking voice that does not require much practice.
Usually, forcing out a lower voice will damage your vocal cords regardless of gender. It is almost the same as belting without actually knowing how to belt in terms of severity.
Both require an understanding in the proper form of breathing: breathe in and out. Are you breathing from your diaphragm, or your shoulders?
The diaphragm is the actual muscle that does the breathing in your body, not your lungs, chest, nor shoulders. So to see if you are breathing properly, try to breathe in with the intention of filling your lungs and not so much taking a breath. Your ribcage should lift, and your chest may expand, but your shoulders should not make any large movements.
Identify that muscle a little below your rib cage that seems to tighten your core — that’s your breathing machine, the diaphragm. This is what you are supposed to use when the yoga instructor says to take a deep breath.
So, let’s move on to the voice itself!
To find your naturally lowest speaking voice, without any thought, go ahead and hum, “m-hm”.
Yeah, like the agreement tone.
The “m”, you will find, is lower than the “hm”, and can be considered safe to use as the lowest tone. As you hum, you should notice that the vibration of your voice does not come from the bottom of your throat nor the nostrils of your nose, but instead at the intersection between your throat and your mouth, somewhere behind your palate. This is good and exactly what you should be looking for.
If you feel the vibration from the bottom of your throat, there is a possibility that your voice is causing your vocal cords stress, and you may feel pained after a long day of speaking. If you feel it at the nostrils of your nose, your voice will be nasally and difficult to project powerfully. Hitting that sweet spot between those two points allows one to project and speak in a powerful low tone.
To get used to speaking in this lower voice, continue to hum “m-hm” while repeating single-syllable words in between each hum. Get a feel for it.
That’s a nice low voice.
TBC: From voice acting to transitioning, Cheshir had always had an on and off relationship with their voice. For some times, it simply wasn’t deep enough. For others, it was simply too weak and quiet to be understood properly. This made it very difficult to learn the proper pronunciation habits from other languages, so Cheshir always found themself looking up ways on how to change their voice.
We think that that journey is pretty cool, Cheshir. Keep it up, buddy!
Let’s sing without any meaning at all today.
