25th October 2009

Was Hillary Clinton’s Voice Her Consequential Liability?

 

“Hillary Tops Obama in Pop­u­lar­ity Poll Nine Months After the Election.”
Lis­ten­ing to news pro­gram after news pro­gram quote the lat­est pop­u­lar­ity poll statistics—Clinton 62, Obama 56— last week, I couldn’t help but think back to last year’s pres­i­den­tial race between the man and the woman. Dur­ing that cam­paign I was in the process of writ­ing my lat­est book; The Voice of Suc­cess; A Woman’s Guide to a Pow­er­ful and Per­sua­sive Voice. (AMACOM Books). At the time, I had numer­ous calls from radio sta­tions ask­ing me to give my opin­ion, as a voice expert/coach, of the candidate’s voices. Most of the talk show hosts hap­pily agreed that both can­di­dates offered sim­i­lar solu­tions to cur­rent prob­lems, and that Hillary def­i­nitely had more expe­ri­ence than Barack, but they con­stantly com­plained about how annoy­ing Hillary’s voice was. Descrip­tive words like shrill, screech­ing, nag­ging, and annoy­ing, were among the many voice superla­tives that fol­lowed Hillary around the coun­try like a pan­demic. For example;
 
§ ‘It may not be Hillary’s fault that her voice sounds like it was fash­ioned from metal, but it is her fault that she sounds like a car alarm when she’s handed a micro­phone.”    Wash­ing­ton Post Writ­ers Group
 
§ By detrac­tors in the blog­ging com­mu­nity she was referred to as; Shril­lary; “She sounds like a shout­ing drone. Who wants to hear Mommy nag­ging them all day? I’m not vot­ing for a pres­i­dent with split-personality dis­or­der — yelling one minute and cry­ing the next.”
 
§ Talk show host Glenn Beck devoted an entire show belly­ach­ing about how much he hates Sen. Hillary Clinton’s voice. He called her “stereo­typ­i­cal” voice “nag­ging,” adding that it “just sticks in your ear like an ice pick,” makes you “envy the deaf,” and “makes angels cry.” Then to add insult to injury, he said “She could be say­ing, ‘All right, Glenn, I want to give Glenn Beck $1 mil­lion,’ and all I’d hear is, ‘Take out the garbage.”
 
Who’s Voices Are They Really Insulting?
Was Hillary’s “stereo­typ­i­cal” voice her main prob­lem or was it the female voice in gen­eral? In describ­ing her voice, the male media hosts kept com­par­ing her to their moth­ers, ask­ing them to clean their rooms, or their wive’s, ask­ing them to take out the garbage. Could it be the men are say­ing that their moth­ers and their wives voices are also shrill, nag­ging and annoy­ing? Regard­less of their pol­i­tics and choices, dur­ing the whole elec­tion ordeal, I never heard one per­son in the media com­plain about Barack Obama’s voice.
 
A Quick Female Voice Real­ity Check
When you get right down to the nitty-gritty, the sim­ple truth is; a woman’s voice, like most parts of her body, is not as strong as a man’s. Men have longer vocal cords and big­ger bod­ies than women, so, if it’s a bat­tle of com­par­ing voices, size does mat­ter and men def­i­nitely do have the edge.
 
And speak­ing of voice tone, have you ever won­dered why, when a woman is “los­ing” her voice to laryn­gi­tis, and has that deep and throaty sound like Kath­leen Turner, men find it pleas­ing, attrac­tive, and very sexy? “Love that voice!” they tell a woman when she can barely croak out her words. Well, believe it or not, there actu­ally is a phys­i­o­log­i­cal rea­son for their reac­tion. Just as cer­tain parts of the male/female vocal anatomy are dif­fer­ent, the vibra­tions of a man’s hear­ing mech­a­nism are not the same as a woman’s. A high-pitched female voice may sim­ply annoy women, but for the men she works with, dates, and those in her audi­ence, it can actu­ally be phys­i­cally painful to their ears. For that rea­son, men can not tol­er­ate high-pitched female voices. They auto­mat­i­cally block them out no mat­ter how impor­tant the infor­ma­tion or the mes­sen­ger may be.
 
Noth­ing Personal
The truth is, a man’s insults of the “stereo­typ­i­cal female voice”, could just as eas­ily be pointed at his mother: “Clean your room!”, his wife; “Take out the Trash!”, a female co-worker, or a female polit­i­cal can­di­date. It’s noth­ing per­sonal; it’s just a phys­i­cal, gen­der real­ity. You may think a man is block­ing out your ideas, but it could very well be your voice he can’t accept. When it comes to men under­stand­ing and tol­er­at­ing any woman’s voice, this may well be the most impor­tant para­graph every written!
 
It’s The Female Voice—GET OVER IT!
Because of their phys­i­cal dif­fer­ences, where men and women are run­ning neck and neck for the same office, it is vital, that women learn how to voice their opin­ions with author­ity, assur­ance and self-confidence, vocal traits many women are still not com­fort­able with.
 
It is a well-known fact that most women are more emo­tional than men by nature, that is a part of who we are, and that’s not a bad thing! It’s when we try to cover up those emo­tions that our voices always, yes always, give us away despite our best efforts to hide our feel­ings. No mat­ter what your words say, you can­not fool your voice. Those, who crit­i­cize even the most accom­plished women, often mis­con­strue the woman’s feelings—or the expres­sion of them— as a char­ac­ter weak­ness and use the emo­tions to belit­tle her abil­i­ties. Please hear this well:
 
Hillary’s voice will never sound like Obama’s and your wife will never sound like your best buddy!
 
A woman’s voice will never be as strong and res­o­nant as a man because her vocal cords are shorter, and her nat­ural body res­onators are smaller. To com­pen­sate for this lack of body and vocal girth, most women resort to rais­ing their vol­ume, which leads to, a scream­ing voice fol­lowed by scream­ing crit­i­cisms, as noted above. It’s not vol­ume that women need in their voices, because when it comes right down to it, because of their nat­ural acoustics, men will always have the loud­est voices. Women sim­ply need to learn how to use their voices in a range tol­er­a­ble to the male (and female) lis­ten­ers ears, and both gen­ders need to under­stand, appre­ci­ate and STOP crit­i­ciz­ing the female Voice.
                                                                       
Joni Wil­son is an inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized voice expert, best sell­ing author and cre­ator the amaz­ing 3-Dimensional Voice® Tech­nique. For more infor­ma­tion about Joni, her lat­est book; The Voice of Suc­cess. A Woman’s Guide to a Pow­er­ful and Per­sua­sive Voice, and the best on-line voice lessons visit:www.virtualvoicecoach.com

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18th October 2009

& Faster Healing">Oprah’s Dr. Oz Suggests Singing Your Way to Better Health & Faster Healing

by: Voice and Per­for­mance Coach/Best Sell­ing Author,Joni Wil­son

singing-therapy-health

“We are only begin­ning to under­stand what con­tributes to our healing.

Accord­ing to ABC news, Dr. Oz, the world famous heart sur­geon, and medial expert believes; ”That we are only begin­ning to under­stand what con­tributes to our heal­ing.” As an advo­cate of “com­ple­men­tary med­i­cine” Dr. Oz is chal­leng­ing the “sta­tus quo” to expand their def­i­n­i­tion of con­ven­tional health care and include such uncon­ven­tional meth­ods as singing.

On Good Morn­ing Amer­ica recently, Dr. Oz was shown singing; “Dream A Lit­tle Dream of Me.” with a group of recov­er­ing patients. He explained how singing prompts deeper breath­ing and energy heal­ing. “We used to spend hours ask­ing folks to take deep breaths, and singing accom­plishes that goal.” He explained to the group.

From headaches to asthma, aller­gies to MS and Parkinson’s disease

As a voice coach for 20 years, I have loudly declared the health ben­e­fits of singing to any­one who would lis­ten. Over the years, I have watched as my stu­dents of all ages walked into my stu­dio tired, stressed, and men­tally pushed to the lim­its by school, work, relationship-malfunctions, and major phys­i­cal ail­ments of var­i­ous vari­eties. After an hour of the vocal aer­o­bics, I put them through, and using the vibrat­ing energy that comes from, deep-breathing and singing the songs they love, my stu­dents always walk out quicker–of-step and grin­ning ear-to-ear. From headaches to asthma, aller­gies to MS and Parkinson’s dis­ease learn­ing how to sing cor­rectly, strength­ens the mus­cles your body needs to com­bat the dis-ease that accom­pa­nies most major health problems.

Are you stuck with the voice you were born with?

The longer I teach voice, the more respect I have for this amaz­ing vocal instru­ment, that resides inside every human body. I have enough sto­ries and exam­ples of how singing and speak­ing cor­rectly has lit­er­ally changed lives, healed bod­ies and launched new careers (not just singing), to fill an entire book.

The key word here is “cor­rectly.” When you learn how to play this most amaz­ing “God cre­ated instru­ment” cor­rectly, your voice and your body form a syn­ergy that not only delights the ears of those who hear it, your voice will actu­ally please your harsh­est critic …namely YOU! Are you stuck with the voice you came in with …NO! Can any­one learn to use his or her voice cor­rectly … YES!

Every note you sing has a pro­found effect on your body

There is a good rea­son why singing has been a large part of our reli­gious cer­e­monies for as long as human beings have walked this planet. Every note you sing con­tains a vibrat­ing energy and res­o­nance that has a pro­found effect on your body. For thou­sands of years peo­ple have used chant­ing and singing to bring them closer to the God expe­ri­ence no mat­ter what their reli­gious pref­er­ence maybe.

Voice health effects are still shrouded in mystery

Sadly, the human voice and its effects on the mind, body, and spirit is still shrouded in mys­tery. We all have a voice but very few of us actu­ally know how to access it’s ulti­mate poten­tial. Thank you Dr. Oz for open­ing a door that can ulti­mately take energy med­i­cine and singing to a com­pletely new level. Oh, and by the way Dr. Oz…if you would like a bit of help with that singing voice…call me!

Joni Wil­son is an inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized voice expert, best sell­ing author and cre­ator the amaz­ing 3-Dimensional Voice® Tech­nique. For more infor­ma­tion about Joni, her lat­est book; The Voice of Suc­cess: A Woman’s Guide to a Pow­er­ful and Per­sua­sive Voice, (AMACOM books) and the best on-line voice lessons visit: virtualvoicecoach.com

 

posted in Singing Your Way to Better Health and Faster Healing, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

23rd June 2009

Why You Need Voice Lessons

“Do I Really Need Voice Lessons?”

I am con­stantly read­ing this ques­tion on blogs regard­ing the impor­tance of tak­ing or NOT tak­ing voice lessons. The answer, of course, depends on who’s blog you are on as the answers go from;“Yes voice lessons are impor­tant.” to “No,voice lessons are a waste of time and money.”

Here is My Answer to That Always Per­plex­ing Ques­tion. . .

I was giv­ing a work­shop on Voice Sur­vival at the National Speak­ers Asso­ci­a­tion Con­fer­ence in Hol­ly­wood, Cal­i­for­nia, when one of my fel­low pre­sen­ters approached me in the hall­way. “Joni, can you help me?” she asked in a raspy voice, “My speech is in two hours and I don’t know what to do… I have to speak in front of eight hun­dred pro­fes­sional speak­ers and my voice is com­pletely gone.” She stared at me hope­fully, wait­ing for my answer.


Stop right there and hold that thought while I back­track ten years to the time when I had just fin­ished writ­ing my first book on voice tech­nique, The 3-Dimensional Voice: A Fast and Easy Method of Voice Improvement.

Hav­ing spent the week­end in an inspir­ing moti­va­tional sem­i­nar with Mark Vic­tor Han­son (who endorsed my book) and Jack Can­field, the authors of all those Chicken Soup for the Soul books, I was fly­ing high with enthu­si­asm and untapped poten­tial. I was ready to estab­lish myself as “THE” voice expert—not just another voice teacher.

My Story…

Over the years I had attended many work­shops and con­fer­ences, some­times as the presenter/speaker and some­times as an attendee and at most of the events—following my pre­sen­ta­tion on voice techniques,—singers, speak­ers and busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als often approach me look­ing for answers to what seemed to be their never-ending voice prob­lems.

As my rep­u­ta­tion as a voice expert grew, I also received tele­phone calls and e-mails at all hours of the day and night from peo­ple search­ing for answers to those success-robbing voice dilem­mas that seemed to pop up at the worst pos­si­ble times. The prob­lems, which ranged from chronic vocal fatigue to total voice loss, often occurred for no appar­ent rea­son. But, of course, there is always a reason.

In my years of teach­ing voice, I’ve worked with teach­ers, lawyers, politi­cians, speak­ers, singers, busi­ness exec­u­tives, media pro­fes­sion­als, amer­i­can Idol con­tes­tants, and even stay-at-home moms, all expe­ri­enc­ing voice prob­lems caused by strain­ing their voices as they tried to be heard above life’s bois­ter­ous noise and chatter.


My Own Voice Gone Missing

I under­stood their frus­tra­tions, because I too had lost my voice at a piv­otal time in my life, and that cat­a­stro­phe almost ended my singing and act­ing career just as it was about to take off. I was twenty years old, singing in Las Vegas with the world by the tail, when my voice prob­lems began. I had just been booked as an open­ing act for Elvis (the real one!), and I had won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ties fly­ing at me from all direc­tions and a secret fear—that I could not trust my voice to be there when I needed it most!

This fear kept me from act­ing on any of them, and like most peo­ple with voice prob­lems I just kept push­ing my poor, abused voice by tight­en­ing, forc­ing, and stran­gling it into sub­mis­sion. In my igno­rance, I actu­ally believed that I could make my voice per­form by push­ing it harder and forc­ing it to be louder. The frus­trat­ing result of all that push­ing was, when I pushed it too hard, my voice would wisely say, “Enough is enough, Joni,” and com­pletely shut down. It would sim­ply thumb its nose at me and take a mini-vacation while I can­celed gig after gig and missed oppor­tu­nity after oppor­tu­nity because I had no voice.

Like Aris­to­tle search­ing for the mean­ing of life, I went from voice teacher to voice teacher search­ing for the per­fect voice method to solve my prob­lems. Noth­ing was work­ing and I was incon­solably turn­ing down those once-in-a-lifetime pos­si­bil­i­ties, while watch­ing my career sink like the Titanic. Then, to top it all off, a lead­ing throat spe­cial­ist dis­pas­sion­ately told me, “For­get about singing Joni, your voice is shot. Go find another career.” For­tu­nately, I did not take his advice.


A Bright Light at the End of My Dark “Voice” Tun­nel

 

It wasn’t until I became a voice teacher eigh­teen years ago that I real­ized this prob­lem was not mine alone. I knew there had to be an answer, not only for me, but for every­one whose liveli­hoods depended on strong voices that would last for more than a few hours, even when they were over­worked and tired.

 

I spent the next eigh­teen years watch­ing the answers unfold before me, stu­dent by stu­dent and les­son by les­son. Each per­son became a link in a chain of events that, I’m happy to say, com­pletely resolved my voice prob­lems as well as those of my clients.

 

YES! My tena­cious search for answers paid off because today my voice is stronger than ever, soooooo here (at last)  is my answer!

Know­ing that your voice will be there when you need it most elim­i­nates fear and builds the self-trust so essen­tial for a singer, speaker or busi­ness exec­u­tive to be suc­cess­ful. In my years of teach­ing, I have seen shy, soft-spoken stu­dents per­form minor mir­a­cles once they learned how to use their voices prop­erly. Shar­ing this impor­tant infor­ma­tion is the rea­son I teach voice, write books and speak to any­one who will lis­ten on the impor­tance of using good voice technique!

Well, that’s MY story. So to answer the nay-sayers and the skep­tics who tell you voice lessons are a waste of time here is my opinion.

When it comes to voice lessons, One Size Does Not Fit All. If you sing pop style, clas­si­cal train­ing is not for you. If your goal is to sing at the Met, pop train­ing is not for you. Coun­try is not the same style as R&B and Amer­i­can Idol audi­tions are not the same as your musi­cal the­ater audi­tions. In other words singing styles are as unique as play­ing any style on any instrument.

The good news is, when YOU know how to play YOUR vocal instru­ment cor­rectly, style is just that… style. Vocal lessons are sup­posed to teach YOU HOW to play YOUR vocal instru­ment so YOU can decide what style of singing YOU choose.

Can you sing more than one style…of course, just like a piano is not lim­ited to play­ing Salsa, once you learn how to play your vocal instru­ment you can sing many styles also. The key words here are, “…learn to play your instru­ment.”, and that takes the guid­ance of a good voice coach because you can NOT hear your voice like oth­ers hear your voice.

FACT: Because of the res­onat­ing cham­bers in your head, you are hear­ing 65% more sound in your head than we are hear­ing com­ing out of your mouth. If you don’t believe that, record your voice and see if that voice sounds the same as the one you are hear­ing in your head. Singing or speak­ing, a well trained set of “3rd party ears” can teach you how to hear your voice and cor­rect any voice prob­lems you may not even be aware of.

CONCLUSION: Good voice train­ing can be a bless­ing because your voice can make or break your career, period!

Thanks for let­ting me vent!  Joni

P.s. I’d love to have your com­ments and responses to this post…

posted in Lessons | 2 Comments

16th March 2009

Joni Wilson and Sheryl Roush Interviewed about Speaking Success Series for Women In Business

Joni Wil­son and Sheryl Roush are pre­sent­ing a five week sem­i­nar series, “Speak­ing Suc­cess Series for Women In Busi­ness” designed to help women strengthen their speak­ing skills. Visit the link above to sign up for the sem­i­nar series.

Debra Simp­son, Syn­di­cat­ing Your Con­tent, inter­viewed both Sheryl and Joni. Here’s the audio. Let me know what you think by commenting.


MP3 File

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26th January 2009

American Idol Strikes Again!

 

Well, it’s Amer­i­can Idol time again when mil­lions of peo­ple all over the world become “obsessed with singing”. Don’t you love it?

Singing has been with us ever since prim­i­tive man stopped think­ing of his voice as sim­ply a grunt­ing diges­tive tool to use dur­ing the feed­ing process. The truth is, the human voice is the most amazing—God cre­ated instrument—on this planet. It is more ver­sa­tile and adjustable then any­thing man has come up with yet. A horn always sounds like a horn, a gui­tar like a gui­tar etc, but a human voice can not only sing many styles, it can mimic the best instru­men­tal sounds—just lis­ten to Bobby Mcferrin’s a cap­pella Voic­es­tra record­ings to hear what your voice can really do. When it is used prop­erly your voice—yes, I said yours—can; soothe the sav­age breast, lull us all to sleep, whip us into a frenzy and even spir­i­tu­ally enlighten us. Wow, no won­der Amer­i­can Idol is the most-watched show on the planet!

As a voice coach, this is the time of year when every one, whose num­ber one fan­tasy is to stand in front of a cheer­ing crowd and sing, calls me to begin prepar­ing next years audi­tion. The Amer­i­can Idol “gang” always makes sure that the singers “passed through” are not all Car­rie Underwood’s or Kelly Clarkson’s. If they were, very few Idol wan-ta-be’s would dare to try out.

I am located in San Diego and when Idol was here last year I had stu­dents who were actu­ally told at the audi­tion that they were “too good and not what we are look­ing for”, by the first audi­ton judi­ca­tors. (No, Randy, Simon and Paula do not lis­ten to the thou­sands who audi­tion, only the very few who are either, good, kind-of-good, off-the-wall, or just plain suck.) This process makes for good tele­vi­sion and keeps thou­sands of singers dream­ing of a singing career. It also, sadly, destroys the hopes and dreams of many good singers. (I was lucky that year to have one of my for­mer stu­dents make it to the top ten.)

Cor­rect Singing Takes Skill and Prac­tice

Singing good… good enough to make money at it, does take an under­stand­ing of how your vocal instru­ment should be played. If you want to sing Opera, ten years of voice train­ing is noth­ing because you will be train­ing all of your career. If you are a singer, inter­ested in a more pop/contemporary style, good singing is impor­tant but as we all know, many have made it to the top in the pop field with­out being the best singers. They are the ones who have “the look.’ Amer­i­can Idol also uses the “look” fac­tor in choos­ing many of it’s con­tes­tants. It also uses the “story” fac­tor. “Is your mother in jail?” “Are you home­less?” “Was your aunt on your mother’s side a 60’s pop star?” Unless you absolutely blow them away with your singing, you will need a good “human inter­est story” to win points with the Idol cre­ators.

Yes, good singers do make it on Amer­i­can Idol and Amer­i­can Idol is a door to a singing career, but not always the one you are dream­ing about. (Many Idol final­ists move on to Broad­way, Broad­way tour­ing com­pa­nies, Nevada Casi­nos, and Indian Casino’s. Tay­lor Hicks was here in San Diego last year, first at a Casino, then in the tour­ing com­pany of Grease. But what the heck, it’s still show busi­ness and pays good!.)

The bot­tom line is, if singing is your dream, take the time to do it well, cre­ate an image that is yours alone, have a good story ready and when some­one approaches you in that line of thou­sands and asks the ques­tion; “… Soooooooo, why do you think you are the next Amer­i­can Idol?” Have a good answer because that answer alone may just be your ticket to star­dom.

Happy Singing!

Joni




posted in American Idol | 2 Comments