Complete Voice Training Program for a Confident and Powerful Voice

1. Inroduction: Do you hate the sound of your voice? Do you get the feeling that others tune out or even cringe at the sound of your voice making you feel less and less confident? Do you wish you had a rich, powerful voice that could command a room at work, creating videos, or even in social situations? Do you get intimidated by great speakers and get the feeling that what they have is unattainable? I'm here to tell you that it is very attainable. You just have to know where to look. Well, your search is over. Hi, I'm Gabriel Burrafato. I'm an award winning Broadway credited voice coach and professional voice actor based out of Los Angeles. I have over 20 years of performing and voice training experience, and I've studied for the best of the best in the industry. I've coached CEOs, presidents, attorneys, doctors, consultants, A-list actors, and many others to stimulate confidence and unlock the true power of their voice. Unlike other voice coaches that regurgitate the same jargon over and over, my voice training for a confident and powerful voice course is designed to give you the edge on your speaking skills. I will be teaching you the exact skills and techniques professional stage actors use to command an audience. Ever wonder how stage actors can grab the attention of an audience for two hours a day, eight shows a week with such articulation and power without losing their voice? That takes a specific set of skills that I will be providing you here. We will unveil the secrets of what makes great speakers great. We will unlock the true power of your voice, and together we will be heard. 2. Let's Get to Work!: Congratulations for taking that first step to being heard. Look, we're not all extroverts. It might come easy for some people to speak dynamically, have full control of their voices, but for others, it's a little more of a challenge. So you've come to the right place because here we're going to be covering all aspects of delivering a powerful, dynamic, attention-grabbing voice, from breathing to proper placement. Finding out where the true power of the voice lies, how to emotionally connect to what you're saying, and most importantly, by the end of this session, you're going to have tangible exercises that you could do on a daily basis to develop and grow that voice. When you're up there speaking to people, the last thing on your mind will be, "Will my voice be there? Will it deliver what my heart wants, what I studied for, what I've been rehearsing for consistently? Whether it's professional, social, or content creation, our voice has to be able to communicate what we have in our hearts. Yes, we have a lot to cover, but no worries. By the end of this video, you're going to have a tangible game plan, a workout routine, if you will, available to you, as well as an audio track of every vocal exercise we're going to do. Remember the voice is like a muscle, just like anything else. I myself, I'm a professional actor to this day. I'm still working the voice. Sure, we stage actors make it look easy, but there's a method to the madness, and here is where we're going to uncover it. 3. Mastering the Breath: It's your turn to speak. You walk up to the podium, the Zoom camera's focused in on you. You're ready to give that presentation that you've been working on for weeks, days, months even. You know the material like the back of your hand. But all of a sudden something starts happening. Your breath starts getting shallow and you start disconnecting, and then you start doubting yourself, and then your confidence level drops. All of a sudden it's like we're losing control of our breath. We start breathing shallow and we're disconnected. We sound like we don't know our material and we come across as not very confident to the viewing audience. But how is this possible? I know the material, I've studied for weeks. Why can I not present it? Now before I teach you all these game-changing vocal exercises to bring power and confidence in your voice, we have to work on the breath. This is one thing that a lot of vocal instructors neglect. It's the foundation to delivering a very strong and powerful voice. I'm going to be sharing with you specific exercises in order to reconnect with your breath so you don't lose control of it under these high-pressure situations. As a stage actor, I know exactly what you're going through. When I opened up Lord of the Rings, it was a $30 million production. Everybody was out there looking at me, spotlight was on me, I had to make sure my breath was in control and on my side. Actors are not born with this. We have to work at it. That's why we spend years in theater school to really hone in our voice and our breath control so when these stressful situations arise, we are in control. Before I teach you these game-changing vocal exercises to have that powerful, commanding voice, let's focus on the breath. 4. Redirecting the Breath: Now I want you to stand in front of a mirror and just take one big gulp of a breath. Great. Now what did you notice? Do it again and pay attention to your shoulders. Now, answer me this question. Did your shoulders rise up? If we did that, then that means they were holding a lot of that tension up here. In an essence, it should be down to the diaphragm area. If you watch me in a hail, you'll notice that my shoulders are completely relaxed. I'm not engaging any of my neck muscles, my trapezoid muscles, shoulder muscles when inhaling. It's not a physical thing because that's going to add strain to our muscles, creating the tension that we don't need when we're under stressful situations. By focusing on lowering your breath, it's very similar to meditation. If a lot of you meditate or do yoga, they always tell you to breathe from the diaphragm, well, this is the exact same thing. We want to be able to get all the breath we need by simply breathing into the diaphragm. But guess what? It's not just the diaphragm, It's the whole back air. Now this is new to a lot of people because breathing to my back, who does that? Well, you'll notice that this is an exercise I also have in my singing course for my singing students. When we breathe in, we invade the whole lower abdominal area, upper abdominal area as well as the back. In order to give you that breath capacity you need and not having it up here in your throat or in your trapezoids, creating stress. Literally, it's just focused in this area here and I'm telling you It's like meditating while you're talking. It's quite fascinating. Here is the exercise I want to do with you. Have that breath go into those areas and away from your shoulders. From here I want you to completely relax your neck like, so you're completely dangling. Bend your knees a bit and let's hinge forward is just a tad and I want you to move to the left, to the right and very relaxed, no muscle engagement at all. If you feel any tension, literally just imagine everything is just melting away. Bend your knees, bounce up and down, move to the left and move to the right, really feel relaxed. From here, I want you to take a big deep breath. Now, do you notice that this forces the air to come down to my abdominal area? My shoulders were not engaged at all, there's no way I can engage my shoulder from here. This forces us, well that's fine, I like using the word force, but it relaxes us enough. The airflow goes into the diaphragm, try it again and really focus on that airflow coming into the diagram and into your back one more time. Ready? Here we go. Now it's going to feel kind of shallow at first. But the more you do this exercise, the more you breathe in this way, the more you're going to start realizing that there's more space down there than I thought. Little by little you're going to start expanding that whole area, increasing your breath capacity. Now, let's try that same thing upright. Let's look again into the mirror, just like we did before remembering the exercise we did earlier where we did not engage the shoulders and see if we could isolate it just in this area. Here we go. Good. A deeper breath. Excellent. Now it's probably going to feel because you just started this is going to feel like that's not enough. I can't possibly rely on that, I need a bigger gulp. But that's normal, it's because you're not used to relaxing those muscles enough and allowing the air to come in, so the more you practice breathing this way, the more you start expanding your diaphragm and your back and allowing the air to go in there. When they're doing that presentation and things are getting intense, I'm ready to go, no stress, no visible stress so I don't come across as, Oh my God nobody's talking about looking nervous. Not at all, just complete control. 5. Activity Hissing: Excellent work. Now, adding on to what we just did is we're going to incorporate the hissing exercise. You're going to notice that this is an ongoing exercise I use across all of my courses, whether it's singing, accent reduction, public speaking because it works. But because this is a vocal exercise, we're speaking and having a commanding voice. We're going to do hissing 2.0. We're going to add to it and you're going to be like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm doing this. My neighbors are going to think I'm crazy, but I'm telling you it works. This is what actors do. This is what they teach in all those expensive theater schools while I'm providing it to you here. It's going to completely revolutionize the way you speak and all of your colleagues going to be like, there's something that you've come across as very confident. What have you been doing? You've been taking yoga? It's between you and me. Now. Let's continue on what we did. We're going to bend our knees. We're nice and relaxed or dangling left and right. No engagement in the shoulder at all. From here, I want you to take a nice big breath and I want you to come up on a [inaudible] hissing sound. Now the key to this hissing sound is it needs to be consistent. I don't want any [inaudible] I don't want it too loud at the beginning and then fading off at the end. I want you to imagine it's a laser beam. I'm going to do it first, you watch, and then we'll do it together. I'm bending my knees, I'm completely relaxed from here. I'm going to take that big breath I was talking about that invades both my diaphragm and my back [inaudible] and I'm going to come up on [inaudible] . At first, of course, you're going to lose your breath. It's not going to be as consistent. It might only last for a few seconds. That's normal. Remember, we're at the voice gym, I'm your personal trainer. This is about endurance, practice, daily practice to build that breath capacity. The key here is, you want to make sure that hiss is consistent. I don't want [inaudible] , no laser beam [inaudible] . What that's going to do, it's going to equalize your breath delivery, keeping it going on that even plane, that cloud I was talking about earlier where your voice can be supported and it's going to carry it through. This is something I do before that big audition or if I have a big monologue or a prayer and I'm very nervous. This is the one thing I do before going on just to myself. Just doing that alone, just calms me down. Puts the focus back on my breath and it pinpoints the energy to where it needs to be versus [inaudible] I have no control. We have control, good. Now, let's do it together. Here we go, bending your knees, big breath [inaudible] , coming up on [inaudible] . I don't want to be here all day doing that because it's going to take too much of your time. But how did you do? What's the timing on that? How many seconds were you able to hold that? Time yourself, beat your record, get better and better at it. Mark your progress and try to beat your record. Remember I'm giving you tangible exercises here. This isn't about fluff and talking and lecturing. This is about getting up, doing it, getting your body involved. You will see physical results, excellent work. Now let's do the hissing 2.0. 6. Activity Hissing 2.0: Excellent. Now people here 2.0, they get intimidated. Oh my God. What do you mean? Remember how I was saying at the beginning of this breathing lecture that when nerves kick in, we tend to lose control, room boys. We could do the hissing exercises all day long in the comfort of our home, but when we're out there, when you're in public, when you see all those people on Zoom or in the audience, things will change psychologically. We're going to get nervous. Our breath will change, our heart starts beating, our palms start sweating. We can't fight, it's just the way it is. I still suffer from this. Many stage performers still suffer from this. It never really goes away. We just have to learn how to manage it. Here's another exercise I want you to add on to the hissing exercise we were doing. Now, bear with me. It's going to be a bit intense, but just follow me. I want you to just jog in place. Do what I'm doing. Good. Keep on doing this for awhile until your heart starts beating. What this does is it simulates a situation where, oh my God, there is my boss, oh there's my ex-wife, oh my God, if I don't mind this interview, if I don't get this job, if I don't impress this girl, my life is over. This is where that panic, we're simulating that panicky feel. Our heart beats. Our hearts doesn't know why it's beating, it's just beating because there's stressful situation. What we're doing now is we're creating that artificial stressful situation. I'm losing my breath here, but keep up with me. Now, from here, let's do the hissing exercise. No need to bend down, we're just going to breathe in from the diaphragm from here. Oh my God, I'm tired. Ready? Here we go. [NOISE] Nice and relaxed and [NOISE]. Do you see the difference? You see how much more challenging that it is now in order for us to keep that laser beam focused on that air while jogging? This is a great way to control your breath no matter what situation you're in, unless you're running away from a mountain lion or a bear, we don't really care about breath at that point. But add this to your repertoire of the breath exercises. Let's try one more time. At this point, our heart is top. Good. Even better. Here we go. [NOISE] It gets easier and easier as you do it. Now, of course, there's the bouncing of the body, so you're going to hear [NOISE]. Fight it. Your job is to keep that hissing sound to be as consistent as possible, regardless of the bumps, regardless of the heartbeat, regardless of our lack of breath. Good. [NOISE] Perhaps some water. Relax. Great job. This is what I mean by hissing 2.0. We want our breath to be there no matter the situation, no matter how stressful we think we are, no need to panic because our breath will be there. 7. Activity Breath through Emotions: Excellent work. Are you all rested? Did you get some water? Are you okay? Good. Now, getting serious for a moment. Other than nerves and this affects a lot of people, myself included, because being Italian, Latin, I'm emotional by nature. What happens is that when emotions kick in, our breathing disconnects, and it has that same effect as if when we're nervous. It's like when you're trying to talk, when you're crying or you're emotional, it's the same thing. How do you think musical theater artists like myself, I've sung many emotional ballots where I was on the brink of tears. You need to be in order to deliver an effective song to the audience, but we as actors have to train to control that emotion so it doesn't affect our breath and our voice. You see it all the time on Broadway when they're singing, but they're in the brink of tears, but their voice is in complete control. That's what I'm going to teach you here. How to control your breath even under a very emotional situations. Now, I'm not going to have you stand up and sing a ballad, but getting serious now. I'm going to use myself an example. I recently asked my dad, I'm going to do this here with you. I'm going to break down. Yes, I'm an actor, I could do that. But just to show you how to do this. I'm going to go into that state of somebody I lost, I just told you my dad. I'm going to think about it, I'm going to let the emotions flow, but I'm going to control my breath bringing in that hiss that we did earlier, even through these very sad thoughts. Do with me, I'm thinking of my dad. You can think of whomever, whether it's a loss in your family, your dog or pet or a relationship that didn't go as planned, whatever it is, it's just between you and yourself. Let's sit down. I'm going to do this with you. I'm going to go there just so I could demonstrate how to do this exercise. [NOISE] Sit down, take a few deep breaths [NOISE]. With each exhalation, we're going deeper and deeper into this thought [NOISE] and deeper. Now, I'm noticing that my breath is starting to change. You notice that? The more emotional I get. From here in this state, give me the hiss [NOISE]. Same objectives as before. We want to keep that nice and consistent. Yes, it's getting heavy. We want to hiss our way through these emotions one more time. As you're doing this, really put your mind there. As you're doing that, really focusing on that situation that brings about this emotion [NOISE]. Good. I didn't want to bring us there. This isn't a psychological class. We're just trying to train our breathe to be there for us under any and all situations, because once that goes, once we lose control of that, we have no cloud for that voice to ride through. This is part of the daily vocal exercises. I don't want you to be thinking of very sad situations every day in order for you to build this breath capacity, you'll be so sad and depressed all the time. We could do the opposite. We could think of very happy moments, things that make you laugh a joke, the one joke your friend did that made you fall to the ground. We all know, we all have that. Bring that up. Smile. [LAUGHTER]. Remember how it made you feel, and then try to hiss through that [NOISE]. See that has its own challenges. We are training our breathe to be laser-focused and there when we need it. 8. Linking the Diaphragm to the Voice: The compliment I get most as a stage actor is, wow I really love the sound of your voice, it's so rich and so powerful, How can I emulate that? Well, let me share to you where the true power of the voice lies. It's not where you think, everybody tends to push it from the throat [NOISE], to create a very shallow sound that does not resonate, puts a lot of pressure on your vocal cords and eventually, your voice will die off. You'll only be able to speak for a good half an hour if you're lucky. The true power of the voice lies in one place, the diaphragm. I want you to put your hands between the space between where your ribs and your hips start, that mushy part, literally, put your hands right in there, tuck it in there. Look at the engagement of my diaphragm when I speak. [NOISE] Hello, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for coming. Even when I'm speaking piano. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for coming. You might not be able to see it, but I'm really engaged. This is where the true power comes from [NOISE]. Also dropping the sound, when you're doing those hissing exercise that we were doing earlier, you'll notice [NOISE] that, that area I was telling you about really gets engaged. [NOISE]. You can't have one without the other, [NOISE], no power, no flow, no control. [NOISE]. That's where the power is, the diaphragm singers do it all the time, and I get to be sharing with you some exercises that we as stage performers, singers do to develop the power of the diaphragm. Those hissing exercises we were doing earlier does exactly that, but in terms of speaking, It's the same thing, it's the same power source. So I want you to do me a favor, put your hands right here, in that mushy part I was telling you about, and just speak. Hello, my name is Gabriel Bravado. Do you notice how my voice drops all of a sudden when I'm engaged here because when you engage from the diaphragm, you are freeing up the muscle an untrained speaker will use. All of a sudden your voice drops, it sounds deeper, richer, more powerful. [NOISE]. I want you to imagine there's like a funnel going from the back and the top all the way to the back, right down to the ground because remember, when you ground yourself, that's where true power is, the bigger the tree, the deeper the roots. Same thing, we're dropping that sound, and when you combine that with the support of the diaphragm, you have yourself a very rich, powerful, free tense free sound. So do me a favor, put your hands right here where the diaphragm is, and I want you to recite the ABC's nice and clear with engagement. Here we go, together. A, B, C, D, E, F, G breath H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, breathe, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z. Do you see how I'm engaged with that diaphragm, it works in conjunction with speaking. The more you practice this way, speaking with the engagement of the diaphragm, you're going to notice your voice is going to drop more. It's gonna sound richer, more powerful, and most of all, you're going to relieve the stress from the muscles of your soft palate in your tongue, and you'll be able to speak longer. You know, when you get that sandpapery feeling and that Oh my God, my throat hurts after speaking for a while, again, it's because lack of engagement of the diaphragm. Implement that exercise if you have a presentation, a Zoom meeting, anything you have planned going on, read that out loud with your hands in the diaphragm. So you could really start linking the action of speaking and engagement of the diaphragm together. So then it becomes automatic, and you don't have to think about it anymore, you don't need to walk into a meeting like hello everybody, thank you for being here in the Zoom meeting. We don't want that, we want it to happen together now it does naturally, we were born that way. When babies cry, as I was saying, they can cry for hours and never lose their voice because they naturally have that engagement of the diaphragm. So we have to retrain ourselves to bring back that balance, that dance, that gift from mother nature to create a very full, rich, supported sound that will always be there for you, supporting your voice on that cloud I was telling you about earlier. What is the force that holds that cloud up? The diaphragm. 9. Drop That Sound!: Now in my previous lecture, I mentioned something called dropping the sound, grounding the sound, growing the sound as if you were a tree, into the ground and out. That's where the power is. I'm going to teach you a few exercises to drop that sound. Imagine our body is split into two hemispheres. We have the northern hemisphere, which is just below the ending of our neck, up and down. Untrained speakers have a tendency of speaking from the upper hemisphere, [inaudible] hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for coming. We covered a lot today in this meeting and I'm glad to say, not very powerful, sounds like you're not very confident, and it's not a very pleasant sound to listen to for three-and-half hours if you're doing a long lecture. I want you to start thinking of speaking from the lower hemisphere of your body. Do you see what happened just there? When I just imagined speaking from the lower half, all of a sudden my voice dropped. Just by mentioning it. Do this with me. Let's split the hemisphere and I want you to imagine, with the engagement of the diaphragm, that we are speaking from the lower hemisphere of our body, and just give me a couple of hello, hi. That sound drops down into the ground and grows deep roots, grounding your body and your sound. Do you notice that when people are speaking in front of a podium, people who are trained speakers, stage actors, they stand with confidence. Why? Because they're rooted to the ground. They've done the exercises I'm teaching you here on a daily basis to create that confident sound. Another thing that will help is what I normally do when I'm rehearsing, say, a scene or speech is, I will put my hands right here, in the center, where it goes in right there between your chest, and speak into your hands, hi, hello. All of a sudden, that focuses my sound to a pinpoint below the hemisphere. It's literally ripple of hemisphere. Think of it as the center point of our body. Put your hands here and just start speaking; hello, hello, my name is Gabriel. I'm happy to be here. You want to imagine your hands vibrating. Do you see how it vibrates? What that does, it redirects the sound to the lower hemisphere, so as you're rehearsing your speech or talking to somebody or even if you're on the phone or if you're in a Zoom meeting from head up, put your hands there and just make sure we are re-engaging to the lower hemisphere of our body. What this is going to do is it's going to create more of your natural sound. You might have spoken from the northern part of your hemisphere for years and all of a sudden your voice is up here. But when you try to focus on the lower hemisphere, all of a sudden, your voice is going to change on you. You're going to start sounding like what you were naturally intended to sound like, and that's what we want to find, a more grounded confidence sound. That is our objective, to find your natural sound, grounded, supported with a diaphragm, centralize it and you're good to go. 10. Activity Hopping to a Grounded Beat: Another exercise I like doing to ground that sound, to drop it down in the hemisphere is jumping up and down. Your neighbors are going to wonder what's going on up there, but just try it for me. Put your hands here in the center part I was telling you about below the hemisphere. My camera's probably going to be bouncing, but just deal with me. Just go [inaudible] . Those of you who have a very high resonance sound, a very disconnected sound, what you're going to start noticing when you start [inaudible] dropping that sound. You're going to notice that once again, naturally your voices want to go to the lower hemisphere. [inaudible] good, let's do the ABCs again with this exercise. Hands in your middle hemisphere. Here we go together starting with a, b, c. Here we go, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z. Do you see how your voice is starting to drop? It's sounding richer, more grounded, that's what we want. This isn't a one-hit-wonder, these are things you've got to do every day, but don't worry, I'm going to have all of these exercises listed for you by the end of this video with all the exercises we've been doing in this video listed for you to do on a daily basis and you don't have to spend a whole hour or day doing it, it's stuff you could knock out while you're cleaning dishes, [inaudible] taking a shower. [inaudible] these are not very life intrusive exercises that you have to lock yourself in a room for two hours, it's stuff you could do on your own to find, realign, re-engage, ground your sound, remind you of that because the next thing you know when you start talking to people or if you're telling the kids to stop fooling around, "Hey, stop that." All of a sudden your kids will be like, "Where did that come from?" More grounded sound. It's going to start being a part of you, being one with you so then you don't have to think about it. When you're doing your presentations and talking, it's going to be a natural, easy flow and your voice is going to sound creamy, silky, grounded, rich, and people are going to want to listen to you. You're going to leave them wanting more. 11. Activity ZZZ Vocal Exercise: Welcome to my vocal studio. Now that we learned the power of the diaphragm, the power of centralizing the voice into the mothership, anchoring it down and of course, the power of the breath flow, now we're going to do physical exercises here to enforce all of those elements together sort of works in unison. Now my favorite exercise is the zzz. Try that with me, zzz. See how much energy we need to create that sound? We need to engage the diaphragm, we need to keep it anchored and there's airflow, we're creating that cloud. Try with me again and zzz, this forces our engagement of the diaphragm and forces us to keep that airflow because once you cut that airflow zzz. Here's the exercise. We're basically going to do a slide from her. Now, if you're not musical, it's okay. Try your best to just follow the tone here as we go up. The whole point of this is having the airflow go through in all ranges of our sound because when we speak we use all ranges of our sound. We don't always talk from here, we can be very animated. Well, the numbers came in and it looks like we're up 30 percent. See what I mean by using our entire range. So this is going to help us work through that airflow diaphragm engagement in all areas of the sound. So here we go. I'll do the first one with you. Keep that energy moving forward, engaged with the diaphragm, keep it anchored in. Now, also a side note, I'm going to have all of these exercises for you on this course as a separate file with me uninterrupted so you have it for you to practice each exercise consecutively. One more time together. Good. Keep the energy moving forward. Yeah, fueling your diaphragm. Very good. You should feel that pressure right in here. Now, here is a trick as we go up, our tendencies wanting to go up because were going higher. That's what we create tightness. When we speak high, "Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for coming in today," we tend to go up, "Ladies and gentlemen," we tend to really put strain on the voice. This exercise will help you lower that sound, anchor it down while going up. As we go up, I want you to think going down. Here's an example. That relieves the tension from wanting to reach up, it's like an opposite way of thinking. Physiologically, we're going down. I had a camera put down my throat when I was on Broadway visiting an ear and throat specialist and I saw on the diagram what the muscles of my throat does when I go up. My larynx went down, there was an opening of my throat as I went up to allow for that airflow. Same concept here. So think of that moving forward. Very good, engage with the diaphragm. If this is too high for you need to stop, fine. Very good. Good. You just had a great ab workout. You should feel it in your abs. You should feel that tingling feeling in your mouth. Excellent work. That's just going to reinforce the airflow, the support, and the anchoring of that sound so when you're out there speaking your voice will last. 12. Activity LIP TRILLS Vocal Exercise: Now we're going to be moving on to a very common exercise done by a lot of stage actors, Shakespearean actors, opera singers, very common technique used to loosen up the soft palate, to the tongue, your throat, re-engagement of the diaphragm, keeping that airflow moving forward and anchoring into our center mother ship. This is called the lip trills. I'll do it with you. Try it with me. This is a wonderful way to warm up before the big presentation, before that Zoom meeting, before you have that long lecture or whatever you do that involves you speaking for long periods of time. How do you think stage actors can do eight shows a week and never lose their voice? This is one of them, similar to this [inaudible] . But now we're going [inaudible] . Now this might be challenging for a lot of people. Not everybody could do [inaudible] that's fine. Here's another option. Can you go? [inaudible] that's another option. Either or works. Now this forces us to keep that airflow moving forward without disconnecting. If I disconnect [inaudible] no airflow, this forces us to relax our lips, have the engagement coming from our diaphragm. This is where the energy needs to be. This forces us to put the attention away from up here and putting it here, it's redirecting the energy. Because if we put it here all the time and stress our muscles in our face and our inner neck, that's when you start losing your voice. That's when your voice starts cracking, you get fatigued. Your voice feels like sandpaper and you could barely talk and you could only last for half an hour. These exercises are a must for any stage actor and will be wonderful implementation for you as well. Same thing as before. Try putting your hands right in the middle of your cheek there, pushing it into help with that [inaudible] production, or if not, [inaudible] your option here we go. [inaudible] you should feel really relaxed. [inaudible] very good [inaudible] . Remember if you can't do that, do this. [inaudible] . Remember thinking down. [inaudible] never reaching for high notes. [inaudible] . Whatever you can do is fine. [inaudible] engaged with the diaphragm. [inaudible] feel that flow. [inaudible] excellent work. You should feel a bit light-headed too if you're not used to doing this and that's normal because your body's not used to this airflow going through your head and your diaphragm. This is good. This is what we want. This is the beginning of new habits that you're going to start in implementing into your every day. All of a sudden when you talk, you're just going to sound much more engaged, much more anchored when you tell your kids to go to sleep, "Guys go to bed. Now, come on." They'll listen because that voice will resonate without you pushing or straining. Those days are over. Good job. 13. Activity A E I O U Vocal Exercise: Now we're going to be working on pronunciation exercises, starting with the five vowels, a, e, i, o, u. Try with me, a, e, i, o, u. Good. Same exercise as before, nothing new. We're going to keep it very simple for our non-singers out there. Same thing. Sliding up, sliding down with your a, e, i, o, u. I'll do the first one with you. A,e, i, o, u. I almost ran out of breath there. See how we really have to implement that breathing in deep, supporting, engaging the diaphragm, anchoring it in. Because if we don't do that, a, e not a stable sound, not a stable voice, we're implementing everything we've learned into this exercise and every exercise before this works towards succeeding in this and other exercises. Same thing, a, e, i, o, u. If you can't do all five vowels, it's fine, stick with a, e, i, and then eventually as you progress and get better, it add in some more vowels. Moving on. A, e, i, o, u. Remember engaged from the diaphragm, keep it anchored here, a, e, i, o, u. Very good. A, e, i, o, u. A, e, i, o, u. Remember how we're not reaching up down. The taker in the back of a church, singing down towards the people in the podiums down there. Is that what you call them, podiums. Going on. A, e, i, o, u. Very good. A, e, i, o, u. A, e, i, o, u. This isn't about singing or sounding pretty, this is about anchoring the sound. A, e, i, o, u. Good, good. What I like doing when I'm doing this exercise and the other ones is like having my hand like I said earlier in that mushy part where the diaphragm engagement is and the hand right here in the core, the centralized area of your sound. Then when I'm doing it, I engage diaphragm and I feel my hands vibrating, even when I'm going up. That's way up there, but I'm still connected. I can't possibly go without connecting here. An open airway. Think of it like again, like I said, a mothership, the spaceship and we're up here, it's still both engaging at the same time. It's like chakras when you meditate. Hello, everybody, and welcome. Thank you so much for coming. We have a great presentation for you today. Our numbers are through the roof. See what I mean, engagement and I don't feel any strain at all and I could go on for days. Excellent. Moving on. 14. Activity Stacato Diaphragm Vocal Exercise A E I O U: Excellent. Now, I know these workouts could be a little intimidating. There's a lot I'm throwing at you here, but I'm telling you stick with it, you can do it. Even if you don't know what the pitches are, just doing it in different tones. All you need to know is to do it low, middle, and high. That way you're engaged from the diaphragm, you anchored that sound in, no matter where you're going, your larynx is relaxed. Now adding on to the, a, e, i, o, u, this is really going to fire up your diaphragm. When I'm done with this exercise I'm about to show you, I'm like, "I feel like I've done 1,000 crunches." That's what we want. We want to work up the muscles that need to be engaged when speaking. These muscles, not this. Again, keeping it simple, keeping with the slide. We're doing the, a, e, i, o, u, again, but we're doing it staccato style, which is a singing term meaning short and choppy. Let me do the first one. That's all it is. Now, make sure we're not going, that's from the throat. We don't want that. By engaging from the diaphragm. Breathing in like we did earlier, engaging from the diaphragm , centering that sound. It's like it's coming from the basement. You could hear how deep that is, how engaged that is vs. This is the exercise. Moving forward. Here we go. While we do this, I want your hands here, right where your diaphragm is. The mushy part I was telling you about. I want your hands here on your core, and I want you to feel this vibrate, and this engage. Watch. I can't do that because I'm playing piano, but that's what I want you to do. Here we go. Good. Engage. See how deep that sounds? Very good. My diaphragm feels so tired. I feel like I've done, like I said, 1000 push-ups. That's what we want. The second you feel that sound going into your throat, stop. Don't even go there, because that's when you're going to start putting strain on your voice. We don't want that. Now, again, if you're not musical and you have bad pitch, and you can't tell them like, you're all over the place, that's fine. Just find a note, any note, a low note. Pick that a middle note, a high note. The key is to get those muscles working. It's like when you go to the gym, we can't just go and do legs. We got to do all different exercise. We develop our diaphragm, whether it's staccato or whether it's elongated. Good work. Moving on. 15. Activity Volume Control Exercise: Now not every presentation we do is in front of 3,000 people. Sometimes the audiences is a lot more intimate, possibly a Zoom call or a meeting among two or three people. There's a misconception that when we speak piano, the singing term meaning when we don't speak loud, when it's again more intimate, we disconnect. That's a problem. We are still connected regardless as if we're speaking a little more intimately without a very loud voice, or whether we're speaking to 3,000 people in an auditorium. There's still the engagement of the diaphragm. We are still anchoring that sound, whether it's down here or up here. Another exercise I want you to start implementing along with everything we've been doing is the volume control exercise. Let's pick a note. It doesn't have to be anything specific. Pick what I call your speaking voice volume. Just say your name. Hi, my name is where's your voice? What's that tone? Hi, my name is, there it is. That's my speaking tone. It doesn't have to be specific. But why don't we control the volume up and down with this pitch. Any pitch. Put your hands in your diaphragm like I was telling you about earlier. Let's put your hands under the lower sphere. A nice centralized anchored sound. Let's start forte, really engage, forte meaning loud, and then we're going to pull it back, but we still want to engage. The engagement never goes away. Let's start with the word hi. Very simple. Hi, nice and engaged. Big, grounded. Hi, pull back the volume. Hi, a little more. Hi. Hi. Hi. You see how it's still grounded? I'm not as loud, but I'm still grounded. I'm still engaged with my diaphragm versus hi, you see it right now I'm not using anything. My voice sounds crackly and a weak and not very confident, does it? Versus this way where it's engaged, even though I am speaking more piano or softer. No matter what the medium, whether it's Zoom, whether it's a big auditorium, whether it's 200 people or three, we are still engaging with the diaphragm and centralizing that sound and speaking from the lower hemisphere. Let's start with A, B, C, Ds again, starting strong forte and then eventually pulling it back and then when we get to Z, you can barely hear us. Starting with A to Z. Do with me. Hand in the lower hemisphere, engagement. Here we go, loud and then eventually softer but never disconnecting. Here we go, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z. Still connected versus A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K. That cloud needs to be supported regardless of the volume. Implement that exercise into your routine to make sure your sound foundation of support is consistent and always there for you. 16. Enunciate, Enunciate, Enunciate!: I'm never going to forget the note I got from the Great How Prince. He's won over 20 Tony Awards. The Director of Family Opera, Evita. I had the rare opportunity to work with him in a production of Evita where I played Magaldi, and I remember him coming up to me and saying, "What you're doing is great, Gabriel, but we can't hear you. What's the point of this wonderful song, these wonderful lines, if we can't hear you. We, meaning the people sitting in the $50 tickets way up in the mezzanine. You need to create diction. I need to see you spinning. I need to see the saliva flowing through the auditorium." I couldn't believe my ears. First of all, it's the great Owl Prince telling me to spit on my fellow stage actors. Long and behold, I did what he said and I'm never going to forget I was doing this 110 scene where I'm like literally up in her face. I had created so much diction that there were saliva literally dripping down from her eyelashes onto her face, my saliva. But she being a pro that she is, knew what stage acting was all about and took it. Now, I don't want you to be spitting out in the audience, but diction exercises and diction in general is something that is essential for proper communication. People who are shy or English is not their first language, they tend to speak a little more inwards, bringing things in and then we can't really hear you and you come across is not very confident. We need to bring out the diction, bring everything out to the surface of our mouth. However, we do not want to disconnect. No matter what we do, whether we're speaking piano as I did earlier, everything has to be connected. We don't want the sound to start coming up here in our mouth, "Gabriel said we have to create diction so we're going to put everything here." We still have to stay engaged, making sure we are really enunciating and spitting out those consonants. We're at the gym, remember. When we're at the gym, we do extreme things that we don't do in public. If we're doing a bench press to really build up the pectoral muscles, it doesn't mean in real life we bench press. It's something we're doing in the gym in excess so the same thing with this. We're going to go in excess. We're going to over-enunciate right now, so then when you're up there, it's going to be there for you. Why don't we do the ABCs again, but with a lot of diction support and again speaking from the lower hemisphere? I want you to really split up those ABCs so much so that I'm going to move myself over here so I don't spit on you or the camera. Here we go together supporting A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z, or Z, depending on what part of the world here from. But see that I had all the saliva in my mouth. Another good thing to do is tongue twisters. If you Google them online, they're everywhere. Wonderful way for you to bring that diction up in the forefront yet staying connected. Let's do a couple. Here we go. Tina was taught to tap on Tuesday. Very good. Let's try that again, but maybe not so loud. Tina was taught to tap on Tuesday. Good. Nice connection. I didn't hear any. Still connected regardless if we're loud or soft. Here's another one. Patricia picked the perfect puppy piano. Small, soft. Patricia picked the perfect puppy. Good. Your diaphragm should be engaged whether it's loud or soft. Another one. Will you wish Wanda a wonderful Wednesday? Piano, soft. Will you wish Wanda a wonderful Wednesday? My sister babysat on Saturday. Now, let's bring down by my sister babysat on Saturday. Good. Last one. Frank fought for the phone. Let's bring down volume. Frank fought for the phone. Good. That's your repertoire. Again, these resources are all over the internet. Do a couple of tongue twisters a day with that engagement, speaking from the lower hemisphere, do them loud, do them soft, and always have that diction. Spit them out just like my director said. Go extreme here. I always say when we're rehearsing, when we're practicing, we go a 130 percent. Then when you're out in public, it drops down to exactly a 100 percent. We come across as clear, confident, and engaging. 17. Activity Consonants Vocal Exercise : Here's an exercise that's going to really bring up those consonants we were talking about to the forefront of your teeth without disengaging with connection. Because when we tend to speak very fast, everything tends to be very fast, and we tend to put everything in our mouth and then we disconnect. We just separate off and then we put the strain. This exercise is going to help us create those crisp, clear, speedy consonants, yet still be engaged. Remember this is the key. We cannot veer from this. This is how it goes. Same as before, but we're not going to go up this time because we'll be here all day, because there's a lot of consonants to go through. We'll keep it simple. I'll be displaying the consonants here on the screen with you. We're going to be adding each consonant to the a, e i, o, u, vowels that we were talking about earlier. But we're not going to move up on scale because then we'll be here all day. Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. If you want to do that and you have time, go for it. But for now, I'm just going to show you the consonant exercises going into the A, E, I, O, U. That way we cover every possible combination, so you won't flip or you won't tongue twist as you're speaking when nerves kick in. [MUSIC] We're going to be starting off with the B sound. It's like this ba-ba, be-be, bi-bi, bo-bo, bu-bu, buu. Good. Doesn't have to sound pretty, I just want it to be heard. I want you to really bite into those Bs. I want you to really engage from the diaphragm, ba, ba, be, be, bi, bi, bo, bo, bu, bu, buu. Not interesting. We don't want to hear from that guy. Going on to C Now. ca-ca, ce-ce, ci-ci, co-co, cu-cu, cuu. Excellent. D, da-da, de-de, di-di, do-do, du-du, duu. Very good. F, fa-fa, fe-fe, fi-fi, fo-fo, fu-fu, fuu. Good. G, ga-ga, ge-ge, gi-gi, go-go, gu-gu, guu. Nice. Moving on to the H, ha-ha, he-he, hi-hi, ho-ho, hu-hu, huu. You can start hearing words, hold on to that thought. Going on to the J, ja-ja, je-je, ji-ji, jo-jo, ju-ju, juu. L, la-la, le-le, li-li, lo-lo, lu-lu, luu. M, ma-ma, me-me, mi-mi, mo-mo, mu-mu, muu. N, na-na, ne-ne, ni-ni, no-no, nu-nu, nuu. We want to make sure that cloud of airflow is supported under that sound, engaging from the diaphragm, keeping it anchored na, na, na. Na-na, ne-ne, ni. P, pa-pa, pe-pe, pi-pi, po-po, pu-pu, puu. Good. Q, and don't forget to spit, it's okay to spit. Qa-qa, qe-qe, qi-qi, qo-qo, qu-qu, quu. Going up to the R, ra-ra, re-re, ri-ri, ro-ro, ru-ru, ruu. Sa-sa, se-se, si-si, so-so, su-su, suu. T, ta-ta, te-te, ti-ti, to-to, tu-tu, tuu. V, va-va, ve-ve, vi-vi, vo-vo, vu-vu, vuu. W, wa-wa, we-we, wi-wi, wo-wo, wu-wu, wuu. X, xa-xa, xe-xe, xi-xi, xo-xo, xu-xu, xuu. Z, za-za, ze-ze, zi-zi, zo-zo, zu-zu, zuu. Ch, cha-cha, right? Cha-cha che-che, chi-chi, cho-cho, chu-chu, chuu. Sh, sha-sha, she-she, shi-shi, sho-sho, shu-shu, shuu. Now, this is the hard th. This is the "th", as in, "those" "this". Here we go. Tha-tha, the-the, thi-thi, tho-tho, thu-thu, thuu. This is the soft th. As in, "thought", "think", tha-tha, the-the, thi-thi, tho-tho, thu-thu, thuu. If you're feeling ambitious, go up the octo, pa-pa, pe-pe, pi-pi, ma-ma, me-me, mi-mi. Again, I'm going to have all of these scaled vocal exercises on an MP3 for you to have, that you could do any sort of variation of this, whatever benefits you the most. If English is not your first language and you have problems with specific consonants, hit that over and over and over again until it becomes normal, and your body doesn't freak out when you're about to say, "the thimble of this horse is thorough." Excellent work. Are you feeling fatigued? Your abs feel like you've done a lot of crunches? You feeling that engagement? All good, all normal. This is a vocal exercise. These vocal exercises are going to engage your voice. It's about reconnecting the voice to its source, to its baby cry. When we were babies, we cried for hours [NOISE], but we never lost our voice. Because babies naturally know how to use the diaphragm. If you look at a baby cry, look at their diaphragm. It's completely engaged. [NOISE] It's completely engaged. They have it down. They know how to do this stuff. We have to relearn, how to engage the diaphragm, keep it centered so that our voice is in control and is in our side, so whatever we have to say resonates. 18. Speech, Speech, Speech!: Building onto the volume control exercise, let's put it all into action. Everything we've learned when it comes to the support, dropping the sound, lower hemisphere, projection, diction. All of that. Let's put it into a speech. For exercise purposes, we're going to use this George Washington's speech. But I recommend for yourself in your daily practices to read something in your industry, something that will have words that you deal with on a regular basis. If you want to improve your voice and social situations, read a fictional novel or scripts, whatever you can get your hands on. This is really about putting everything that we've been practicing into practice. Little rule of thumb, when you're speaking to a larger audience, of course, you want to have more engagement in the diaphragm and you want to make sure there's more diction because the person in the back row won't be able to hear. Not only can we be heard, but it will also connect to the voice, to your emotions. Guess what's in the lower hemisphere? Your heart. We're speaking from the heart. This helps you emotionally connect with what you're saying. Now let's read this speech from the top. For now, I want you to have your hand on that diaphragm engagement I was telling you about. Every time you're about to speak, a nice deep breath into the diaphragm. I want to see the engagement. Once in a while, double-check to make sure that we're speaking from the lower hemisphere. I'm going to do along with you and I'm going to have it displayed. Now, this is for a bigger audience, assuming an audience of 500 or more. A lot of diction, engagement. Here we go. I am again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its chief magistrate. When the occasion proper for it shall arrive, I shall endeavor to express the high sense I entertain of this distinguished honor, and of the confidence which has been reposed to me by the people of United America. Did you see my engagement here? Did you see it engage every time I spoke? If you're not feeling any engagement down here, then you're not connecting. Now, let's bring that audience down to say, a dozen people, like in a boardroom situation. We're still engaged, still dropping the sound, still centralizing that sound. Here we go. I am again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its chief magistrate. When the occasion proper for it shall arrive, I shall endeavor to express this high sense I entertain of this distinguished honor and of the confidence which has been reposed to me by the people of United America. Still engaged. Versus, I am again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the, not confidence. Now let's bring it a little more intimate, shall we? A Zoom call or you're speaking to just two or three people. We're still engaged, still dropping the sound, centralize that sound, grow those roots. I am again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its chief magistrate. When the occasion proper for it shall arrive, I shall endeavor to express the high sense I entertained of this distinguished honor, and of the confidence which has been reposed to me by the people of United America. This engagement, dropping the sound, centralizing the voice, never goes away. And the more you speak from that anchored sound, the less you have to worry about my voice, my voice, am I going to lose it? Am I going to crack? Let the nerves come in. Let all of that happen. It's fine. You've done the exercises. You know how to physically drop, connect to ensure that your voice will be there regardless of your emotions, your feelings, what you're reading. Are they paying attention to me? Oh my God, that guy is checking his phone. It doesn't matter. Let those emotions come. You've done the exercises, your voice will be there and most importantly, all of this will bring confidence and there's nothing more exciting than to listen and engage with somebody who is confident. 19. Game Plan Moving Forward: Congratulations on coming this far. Now throughout these lectures, I threw a lot of exercises at you. What I want to do is I want to put them all in an actionable game plan moving forward so you have something tangible to work with, to develop your vocal strength, your stability, your airflow, your support, your resonance, all of that covered. As I say in all of my lectures, we can't just talk about it, you can't read about it, you can't just see videos, you need to get up on your feet and do these exercises daily to build up this muscle, just like all the actors do in these high-paying theater schools, that's why they're able to command a stage, command an audience with their voice. Now the question I get a lot is, how often do I have to do these exercises? For life? Here's the game plan. I want you to start doing it once a day. Again, like I said in my earlier videos, it's not very intrusive. This is something you could do while washing dishes or in the shower. At first, it's going to take a little concentration because you're getting used to them, but once you do them often enough, then it'll say, you could do this in the car while driving to work. Like I said, I recommend doing them once a day. It'll probably take you about 10-15 minutes to go through them. Do that for about a month and you're going to start noticing your voice is going to strengthen, it's going to align itself, it's going to deepen. You'll be able to speak longer to carry a conversation without losing your voice, you're going to start noticing these changes. Then once you find this becomes the new norm for your body and your voice, then you could do it every two days and then eventually once a week, and then eventually once a month, and eventually, you could just let them go and you'll always have these exercises to go back to in the event that you feel your voice getting out of line. Like I said, if you start feeling sandpapery, or if your voice gets raspy, you don't feel like you're speaking from the lower hemisphere, re-engage your alignment, re-engage your support. It's like opening the hood of your car and making sure everything is working correctly, because ultimately, we want this to be your new normal moving forward. 20. Exercise Review: Just to review all the exercises that we've been talking about, remember we're going to start off with the breathing exercises. We're going to start off with the bending over, breathing into your diaphragm, and your back coming up on a sss. Do that a couple of times and then do it again and add a little jog like we did, sss, fighting to keep that hiss as consistent and long as possible. Remember, track your progress, how many seconds can you hold it for? Break your record every day. Then we have the zzz exercises, remember those? The octave jumps. What I mean by octave is going from one note to the next, zzz, zzz, but as you're doing this, make sure you're supporting from the diaphragm. Remember having your hands in between your ribs and your hips and then worship hard, zzz, zzz, making sure you're engaged. Then we have the A, E, I, O, U legato exercise. Remember, legato is the Italian term for a connected sound, a flowy, smooth sound A, E, I, O, U and remember support [inaudible] versus [inaudible] check your gauges. These are like the gauges under the hood of your car. Make sure you're checking here, checking here dropping the sound, and then you have the same exercises, but staccato meaning choppy sounds, [inaudible] this needs a lot of support, centralize that sound, stay away from the throat [inaudible] none of that. Then we have, of course, the consonants into the vowel sounds like we did earlier mama, meme, mimi, momo, mu, papa, pepe, pipi, remember that? Going through the list of consonants. Now remember what I said earlier, I'm going to have an mp3 with all of these exercises on there for you to follow along and of course, then we implement everything we learned into the reading exercises. I want you to read something in your industry if you're in technology or if you're in software development, whether it's your company website or whether it's a journal, you're reading, a presentation, you need to do any scripted dialogue, reading it out loud. If you're doing this course, just to better the sound of your voice then any fictional, novel or poetry, anything you can grab and read out loud like this supported with your hands and your diaphragm making sure you're speaking from the lower hemisphere and read out loud. But we want to change the volume on that as we do it randomly so our brain is not able to associate any patterns to anything. It's like going to the gym we want to do random things, making sure we read loudly and then eventually lowering the volume but staying supported. Remember that support lower hemisphere regardless of whether we're loud or soft, maintain that support and control. Lastly, we want to do some tongue twisters with the same approach, same engagement, loudly, softly, and again, these tongue twisters, you can find them all over the Internet. Just Google tongue twisters they'll pop up and add that into your repertoire as well. Everything we're learning starts working in sync together as a dance, and then eventually your body is going to accept this as the new normal. No longer will you lose your voice, have that achy feeling in your throat and most importantly, it's going to give you confidence. When you have a confident voice, a confident approach, you will stand out as confident. All that hard work you did on learning a material will come to fruition without the angst stuff, whether I could deliver it or not. You have the instrument now, work on it every day build that strength, that confidence, and you will see the positive reinforcement for the audience and this is going to be that confidence and make you get better and better and better. 21. CONGRATULATIONS!: Congratulations. You should be very proud of yourself. We have covered the voice from every angle. You now have a foundation, a tangible way to lock in, anchor in your voice with a clear pathway from your heart to the world. One of my favorite quotes is from John Ford who says, ''You can speak well if your tongue could deliver the message of your heart.'' Well, now you have a clear pathway from your heart to the world. Your voice is on your side now. Keep up with the exercises and you will uncover so many levels of strength that you never even thought was possible. Now we have the tools to truly speak from the heart.