Article Category: Delivery Techniques

Toastmasters Speech 6:
Vocal Variety


Toastmasters Speech 6: Vocal Variety

Does your voice put your audience to sleep? Does it put you to sleep?

Do you find it hard to convey emotions with your voice?

Are you easy to listen to, or does your voice let you down?

The sixth Toastmasters speech project guides you to harness the power of your own voice. This article of the Toastmasters Speech Series examines the primary goals of this project, provides tips and techniques, and links to numerous sample speeches.

  1. The Ice Breaker
  2. Organize Your Speech
  3. Get to the Point
  4. How To Say It
  5. Your Body Speaks
  6. Vocal Variety
  7. Research Your Topic
  8. Get Comfortable with Visual Aids (coming next)
  9. Persuade with Power
  10. Inspire Your Audience

Why is This Speech Important?

The aims for this speech project are to use your voice to complement your message by enhancing your:

  • pace,
  • pitch,
  • power, and
  • pauses.

Your voice is the best tool in your delivery toolbox. You must learn to use it effectively to enhance your presentation.

Tips and Techniques

1. Plan Around the 4 P’s: Pace, Pitch, Power, and Pauses

Be conscious of all four major vocal variables, and work all of them into your speech.

  1. Pace — One of the easiest ways to incorporate variable pace is to slow down through key statements.
  2. Pitch — A convenient way to hit different pitch points is to play with different emotional content. A sad voice takes on a different pitch than a content voice, which is distinct from an excited voice, and so on. Stories are good speech building blocks for many reasons, including how they bring a speaker’s voice alive through different emotions.
  3. Power (Volume) — Don’t overdo it with changes in volume. Again, align your variations in volume with emotional content. Anger or joy tends to bring out a loud voice. Fear or sadness calls for a quiet voice.
  4. Pauses — There are a multitude of ways to incorporate pauses in a meaningful way (watch for a future Six Minutes article dedicated to pauses). For this speech, keep it straightforward. Make sure you’ve got short pauses following every sentence, and longer pauses at the ends of paragraphs or transitions within your speech.

2. Be Deliberate (Keep Score if You Have To)

Your voice is the best tool in your delivery toolbox. You must learn to use it effectively to enhance your presentation.

Don’t just write a speech and try to incorporate vocal variety on the fly as you deliver it. You won’t get any value from this speech project if you take that approach.

As you write, edit, and rehearse your speech, select words or phrases where you will consciously vary your voice in each of the four P ways. As you grow as a speaker, you’ll hit all four of these unconsciously, but when you are learning, it’s okay to be a little more deliberate.

Consider annotating your speech with colored pen to highlight vocal variation opportunities.

You might even consider making a “scorecard” in the margin of your page, and giving yourself one point for each vocal manoeuver. Shoot for a score of at least 3 for each P.

3. Align Your Voice with Expressive Gestures

One of the best ways to bring out your most expressive voice is to use expressive gestures, particularly facial gestures!

If participate in teleconference calls or webinars, you may have learned this trick. Even though nobody can see you, it really helps to stand up in your office and give body, hand, and facial gestures as you talk on the phone. Your voice will naturally come alive, as if synchronized with your gestures.

The same trick applies to face-to-face presentations as well. If you are expressive with your face and other gestures, your voice tends to naturally align.

4. Ditch the Notes, Keep Your Head Up, and Project Your Voice

Maybe you have used notes for the five previous Competent Communicator projects, but now is a great time to break free of your notes.

  • When you glance down to read notes, your neck and throat bend and can get contorted. Your voice tends to be low, or poor quality, and low volume.
  • Without notes, you’ll be able to keep your head up high and your eyes on your audience. With your head high, your neck and throat will be stretched out, and the quality of your voice will be much more resonant.

5. Exaggerate Words

If you are expressive with your face and other gestures, your voice tends to naturally align.

If your speech allows, find some words where you can play with the pronunciation to add some vocal spice to your delivery. For example:

  • Instead of saying “The car was a long way from the beach,” you could say “The car was a looooooong way from the beach”.
  • Instead of saying “The hamburger was delicious,” try “The hamburger was deeee-licious.”

6. Don’t Speak About Vocal Variety

When choosing your topic for this speech, avoid the temptation to speak about vocal variety, like this guy (who admits he “cheated”). If you do, you are missing the point of this speech project.

Your objective for this speech project is not to educate your audience about vocal variety. Your objective is to incorporate vocal variety to enhance your delivery.

You have infinite speech topics at your disposal… explore!

What I Did for Speech 6

I chose to deliver a biographical speech about Theodor Seuss Geisel, the children’s book author better known as Dr. Seuss.

This topic was fantastic as it begged for me to use my voice in a wonderful variety of ways:

  • My “normal” speaking voice was used for “bones” of the speech — the biographical details which formed the framework. Even in this section of the speech, I used vocal variety to emphasize key words, phrases, and points.
  • I included numerous quotations from his stories, each carefully selected to both (a) illustrate the biographical details and (b) allow me to convey a different emotion or mood. Each of these required varying the pitch, pace, and volume. For example, I included:
    • Happy, sing-songy passages from Fox in Sox and The Cat in the Hat
    • A stalwart, committed passage from Horton Hatches the Egg
    • An angry passage from The Lorax (this was one of my all-time favorite moments in Toastmasters as I used one of the audience members as a “prop” to be the source of my anger)
    • An optimistic passage from Oh, the Places You’ll Go

Reading Dr. Seuss books and other stories with my daughter is one of my favorite activities. Therefore, this topic revealed an inherent passion, and I knew this would come through in the quality of my voice.

Toastmasters Speech 6 Examples

  1. The Ice Breaker
  2. Organize Your Speech
  3. Get to the Point
  4. How To Say It
  5. Your Body Speaks
  6. Vocal Variety
  7. Research Your Topic
  8. Get Comfortable with Visual Aids (coming next)
  9. Persuade with Power
  10. Inspire Your Audience

Here are a few sample video speeches which may provide inspiration for you. As you watch some of these videos, ask yourself which speakers are using vocal variety to enhance their speeches, and which are missing opportunities. Then, try to emulate the best behaviors in your own speech.

Next in the Toastmasters Speech Series

The next article in this series examines Toastmasters Speech 7: Research Your Topic.

Please share this...

This is one of a number of articles related to Toastmasters featured on Six Minutes.
Subscribe to Six Minutes for free to receive future articles.

Note: Six Minutes is not affiliated with or endorsed by Toastmasters International. Click here for more information about the relationship between the two.

Add a Comment

Comments icon29 Comments

  1. K8 Peters says:

    Happy to see an article on public speaking that also includes basic use of voice..vocal variety being only one aspect of that. Any thoughts on why singers make good speakers…or do they, in your opinion??

    1. Andrew Dlugan says:

      I’m not sure I have a firm opinion on whether singers are good speakers or not. There are certainly some common aspects/skills, such as overcoming performance anxiety or making an emotional connection with the audience. Similarly, a songwriter and a speechwriter share traits.

      1. Andrew Dlugan says:

        A full article on the similarities between songwriters and speechwriters: 8 Speechwriting Lessons You Can Learn from Songwriters

  2. Abhi says:

    Hi See my 5 speeches in my blog : http://jainy-speaks.blogspot.com/

    Also you can follow CrystalTalk Toastmasters Club of Motorola Bangalore on youTube at – http://www.youtube.com/user/CrystalTalkTM

  3. Abhi says:

    Hi,
    I always follow your blog before going to my next speech and infact I am just one speech behind your progress.. e.g. I am on 6th speech and you have written about 6th speech..
    thanks a lot
    -Abhi

  4. Sue Hutton says:

    I cheated at Level 6. I sang! He Who Must Be Obeyed! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiXlma2er-w

    Sound level low.

  5. Leon says:

    The way I see the vocal variety speech is as a ear / audio focused speech, i.e. how it will sound. It must make sense to a blind person, whereas your show-what-you mean topic had to make sense to a deaf person.

    This is a very useful article., and I linked to it from this page: http://www.toastmasters-public-speaking.com/vocal-variety-speech.html

  6. nadz says:

    I am about to do my #6 speech and i really have writers block . Thank for sharing you really opened up my imagination and have me ticking again.

  7. cheryl ann fernandes says:

    Hi Andrew
    I was desperately looking for some information on Vocal Variety as I have to do a 15 minute presentation (educatinal session) on the same for young boys and girls at the Church. (YLP) Found your article and was over the moon.
    Fantastic informtion. Used nearly all of it.
    I will be visiting more often.
    Thanks again. Cheryl

  8. Rob says:

    This Toastmaster’s speech series is excellent and inspiring. I just wish it didn’t end here!

    1. Andrew Dlugan says:

      The other articles are coming…

  9. I was googling “vocal variety speech ideas” and found your site. I like the examples you give to implement the various aspects of vocal variety such as the 4 Ps–I didn’t find the Toastmaster Competent Communicator good enough in terms of examples. I am giving speech # 6 next Tuesday.
    Thank you. I’ll be visiting often. I joined Toastmasters last February.

  10. gul says:

    Your points really halped me in facilitating my task; delivering P 6. All descriptions are to the point and comprehensive. We hope to benefit from you in future as well

    Gul Dubai

  11. Nkem says:

    Andrew, I was just passing by on my path to preparing for my speech 6 when I stumbled on your blog site. I must say that it has been absolutely useful especially as I did not remember to bring my speech manuals along. Keep the good work and God bless you.

  12. chesenge says:

    Kudos to you for your work well done i look foward to make such powerful speech. Train me.

  13. Dean Sampano says:

    Hi Andrew, i liked your post, it’s great to see you giving back.

    Dean Sampano
    President,
    Mass Consultants Canada

  14. Neeraj says:

    Link to my Toastmaster speech 6

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGLT8dDWu_g
    or search
    Project 6_Toastmasters vocal variety

  15. Karin says:

    I had to give a short presentation about voice to some young toastmasters. I thot that your 4 P’s was an excellent way of explaining voice variety so I used that in my speech. Thanks! I’ve been told to keep that speech and use it as an educational advisory at my regular Toastmasters meeting!

    Thanks again for your help!

  16. This was great insight .. That helped me with putting togather my Toastmasters Speech 6 on Vocal Variety. Today morning I had no clue what to speak about after reading this, there I was ready with my speech and I have to go and practice.
    Thank you

  17. priya says:

    Thanks for the great repository of information in this website. For every speech i do, i always refer to this site one or more times.

  18. Lori says:

    I wanted to watch the recommended videos but they are all private. How can I get access to them?

  19. Gwen Resick-Rennich says:

    Please send me your articles.
    Thank you!

  20. sreejith says:

    Dear Andrew,

    I have been reading your articles on Toastmasters speeches for sometime. I am a little curious on why you have not written anything about projects 8, 9 and 10 yet.

    Thanks and best regards,
    Sreejith

  21. carmel says:

    please forward tips for CC6

  22. great articles and contribution to the toastmasters community.
    much obliged!

    Raam

  23. Viveckanand Krishnnaswami says:

    Thanks for these tips, extremely useful and practical to implement

  24. Waseem says:

    Thanks a lot for the great and educative article!!

  25. carol says:

    i like your content

Tweets iconRecent Tweets

Links icon5 Blog Links