Finding Your Voice!

 Expert advice from Diane Dayton of Dayton Communications.

We all have a story. Here is mine, at least as it pertains to my journey with voice, presentation, and performance. I can't remember a time I wasn't talking, presenting something, or performing somehow! My parents will attest to this. As a young child I would recreate commercials in front of the mirror all the time. In my room, I would read out loud and hold class with my stuffed animals and the dog. In the summer, I held various performances in our backyard as a part our neighborhood carnival.

In high school and college, I continued to perform. I was a high school cheerleader, sang in the choir and in a small group ensemble, and also performed in plays. In college I studied singing, all the while creating events to keep performing. I had the opportunity to perform and tour with a singing group while recording an album between my sophomore and junior years. I joined the college radio station when I returned, not because I wanted to be on radio, but because I wanted it to look good on my resume with my communications degree. Wouldn't you know my first job out of college was in radio! I was at WNOW and WQXA in York, PA. I was writing commercials and because there were so few women in radio at the time, I was recruited to voice some of them. This is where I really learned the impact of the spoken word and how persuasive the voice can be. I used the tools that I learned to hone my craft on stage and while studying singing. I funneled them into my voice on radio, which we call "theater of the mind." For many long hours each week, I worked in the sound studio, recording and re-recording, listening very intently to the subtleties of my voice, learning how to use the nuances to create images and feelings to evoke certain responses and portray messages.

This led to many voice over opportunities coming my way for radio and TV commercials, messages on hold, training pieces, on camera work, and emcee opportunities for both regional clients and national clients. Then I began to get requests from other people to help them with their voice and presentations. These people included business owners and managers, sales people, professors, other presenters, and more.



I started to teach what I had learned. First of all, I taught people how to hear your voice as others do. I introduced people to their speaking voices by recording the voice and listening back to it. Then working with them to discover the range in the voice, and the resonance, looking at how sound is produced, with the end goal to find the unique sound and authentic voice that best represents each person. I do believe that your voice can be one of your biggest assets when you learn how to use it properly. Awareness is key and so is practice. We learned to speak by crafting sounds and practicing those sounds. This is the same thing, only now you are listening with a keener ear and a desire to hone in on your own, unique voice.

 
"You can speak well if your tongue can deliver the message of your heart." - Gerald Ford