We’re introducing you to ideas about voice production that are likely to be new, and may seem rather strange if, like most people, you’ve been controlling your voice from your throat all your life.

You’ve probably never visualised either how you produce your voice. Remember: the visualisations we suggest are just ways of helping you to imagine processes that are either difficult, impossible or meaningless to describe in terms of anatomy or physiology. They may not be descriptions of what is actually happening physically, and they don’t need to be in order to work.

People often have questions at around this stage. Probably the most common is ‘Am I doing it right? I’m not sure the exercises are working.’ If you’re like most people you’ll be getting it right some of the time. Engrained habits take time to change. But importantly you’ll be learning to feel the difference between right and wrong, and with practice you’ll gradually increase the percentage of ‘right’.

‘All I’ve done is hum. When am I going to do exercises relevant to speaking?’ is another frequent question. Even if you feel you haven’t got very far, the exercises you’ve been doing are the vital foundation for your Better Voice. It’s the same as building a house. The builders seem to spend ages in the ground with very little to show for their efforts and then suddenly the whole structure appears very quickly. (And you will be starting exercises with your mouth open in the next section.)

‘Aren’t these exercises only meant for singers?’ is another worry. I can’t stress enough that you don’t have separate voices for speaking and singing. The ‘sung’ exercises here are the best way to start learning the Better Voice technique, in whatever way you then want to use it.

You may even be thinking ‘Is the effort worth it?’ Only you can decide that. But there are generations of those who have learnt the technique who believe that it was.