The Perfect Voice and Vocal Power are Roger’s Love products to improve our speaking voice.
I find  them very good.

Bullet Summary

• Use diaphragmatic breathing
• Only speak when you a belly full of air
• Make sure your larynx (in your throat) is not blocking air

Full Summary

Roger Love start from the very beginning teaching proper breathing:

Diaphragmatic breathing

You use diaphragmatic breathing because you want to control the stream of air that comes out of your mouth as you speak.

• only move your stomach from your belly button to 3-4 inches above it
• only breath from your nose

If you can control the air flow, you can also control the sound.

Only Speak When Air Comes Out

You should create a continuous stream of air that comes out of your mouth as you speak. That air should come as you push your belly back in.
Exercise with diaphragmatic breathing and speak only when your stomach is coming back in. Breath in from the nose, then breath out from your mouth slowly.

Roger Love say you can exercise saying the following:

If I stomach is coming back in as I speak I’am going to sound a lot better.

Common mistakes people do:

• Raising their chest breathing
• Keep speaking after they’ve run out of air, trying to squeeze the last words in. And that sounds terrible
• Tension in the top part of the stomach
• Holding air trying to make it last longer

Types of Voice

Roger love is simply amazing to mimicking the types of voice and what they do wrong.
Similarly for Straight Line Persuasion which is all about tonality, there’s no point in me “describing” how the voices sound.

But here are two examples I could find:

Nasal

The Airy Man

Trying to sexy like Maryilin Monroe and talking a bit like Mickey Rourke

The 6 Elements of Voice

• Volume

Most people speak too low. Fill the space around you and never have anyone ask you to repeat.
A good volume is a mixture of air and cord vibration.

• Melody

Melody is about going up and down and adding variety. Melody keeps people guessing and enthralled.
Most people are too close to monotone.

• Pitch

Too low pitch sounds like you’re too serious. Too high and people won’t take you seriously.

• Tone

Too airy and whispery sounds fragile, like Monroe used to speak.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is that grating, irritating sound you hear holding the “A” in “graaaass”, where it feels like you have no air left.

• Pace

How quickly or slowly you speak.

Posture

Keep a good posture and don’t hunch over or you will constrict your air flow.

Water

Drink almost 2 liters of water a day.
It’s the water that you drank the day before that will help you mostly the day after.

Voice Exercises

Belly Breathing

Many are afraid of breathing with their belly and hold tension there because they don’t want to make it look as if they have a big tummy.

Let go of that fear.
Breath from your belly and let air go out of your mouth as in a whistle, very little.
Let a bit of air come out without pressure on your stomach.

Birthday Candles

Imagine you have a birthday pie in front of you want want to blow off the candles. One by one, blow from your mouth and at each blow push your belly back in.

the goal is to not create any tension in your stomach. let it come in, then relax. Let it come in, then relax.

Air Fingers

Put a hand in front of your mouth and speak. The air should come out NOT in bursts, but unobstructadely.
Roger Love says

I need to connect all of my words together

Of course, you can say anything though.

Scale

• Gog

Repeat “gog” up and down the scale. This exercise helps find both your low, middle and high voice

• Gag

Same but with a wider scale

Speak Low to Move Larynx

Find out your adam apple. The larynx, or “sound box” is right behind it.
Swallow and it should go up.
But when you speak it should NOT go up or it will suffocate your voice (to find out, put a finger and start speaking, it should not move more than a quarter or a third of an inch and not nearly as close as when you swallow). A larynx going to up when you speak is one of the most common problems affecting speakers and you should fix that.

You fix that with a series of low larynx exercise.
Repeat “mom” and speak like yogi.
Repeat “mom, mom, mom” with a low pitch.

Volume

To get the best volume, get more air out of your mouth (put a hand in front of your mouth and count from one to ten.
More air should come out of your mouth when you speak louder.

Pitch

To reset your pitch say “hello” and keep the “o” going. Put your fingers on your stomach right below your rib cage and push in quick motion.
Your “ooo” should start vibrating up and down.
Now try to stay only with the high pitch and let go of the lower part of the scale.

Mouth Physiology

Some of us make a smile when pronouncing certain words and spread their mouths too long(especially “e”).
Smiling is great but not while speaking because it pushes air in the nasal cavities and we don’t sound good.

To fix the smiling and spreading of mouths, put your index fingers on both corners of your mouth and push in as if you wanted to purse your lips a bit.
Then speak like that and recite the alphabet.

You don’t need to smile to say “e”. Say “u”, hold your mouth like that and than say “e”.

Vocal Power or The Perfect Voice?

Albeit it covers all the same exercises, The Perfect Voice is more compact.
The Perfect Voice also goes a bit more into general self development, but that’s not to say that it doesn’t properly cover all the bases when it comes to voice.

If you don’t strictly work with your voice, then you can safely go for The Perfect Voice.
If you work with your voice then I’d probably go with Vocal Power, just to make sure you get everything from one of the best vocal coaches in the industry.

CONS

Videos might have helped
The program is in audio, and that’s cool.
At times I thought that maybe a video version could have helped for a few exercises.

No Throat Tension / Mask
I wish Roger Love had dealt with throat’s muscle tension because I feel that’s one of the areas I should target.

PROS

Brief and to the point
No beating around the bush, no thanks to mom and dad, no time wasted: everything is about voice here.

Warm up exercises
I particularly loved Roger Love’s warm up exercises. One single track on your phone and that’s all you need for your daily exercises.

Learn From A Master
Roger Love is really a master at what he does.
When he replicates people’s voices it’s almost funny how good he is. And that’s very helpful to make you understand what vocal sins you are currently committing.

More Resources

Some other resources I find very good when it comes to speaking:

• New York Coaching

I’m exploring this guy too these days. He is also crazy good: https://www.youtube.com/user/NewYorkVocalCoaching

• Felicia Ricci

Felicia Ricci is also very good, she has a ton of crazy and helpful exercises. To overcome my throat tension I favorited this video of hers:

SUMMARY

Awesome products to improve our voices.

I think that because most us speak every day since we were around two years old we fail to realize how important proper voice is.

Don’t do that mistake: it’s a fundamental tool of socialization, power and influence. And it’s because we use it daily that we must make sure we use it properly.

Get The Perfect Voice