Last time, I talked about how mastering social skills leads to confidence. When you master your "instrument", you carry that confidence with you everywhere. However, it doesn't do to just press the keys properly or say the right words. While a major part of social skills is knowing what to say, an equally important part is knowing how to use your voice. Since nobody ever teaches you how to master your voice in school, I'm going to go over it today.

Way too many people speak in a way that hampers their natural voice. It sounds way too high, even for those with a high-pitched voice.

Or, you get the case of people who say "like", "uhm", "ahh", and "so" as a way to fill the silence. Their attempts to avoid the awkward silence only make it more so.

Taking the time to master your voice is a very worthwhile and simple process. Here are two tips for mastering your voice that go very well with the social skill tips from last time.

1. Pacing adds to the experience

You probably know by now that suspense is one way to keep people on the edge of their seats. However, you don't need the suspense of a horror movie to keep an audience captive. A big part of being witty is having something witty to say, yes, but a big part of it is also your delivery. When it comes to delivery, you want to have exceptional pacing and timing.

A lot of people naturally have some sort of pacing to their speech patterns, but for the most part, it's completely unconscious. As long as it stays 100% unconscious, your pacing will stay uncontrolled.

There are two major parts when it comes to pacing.

Firstly, the tempo at which you speak. How fast, how slow, how much space there is between what you say, and how much silence you utilize are all part of tempo.

The way to think of it is you are using tempo to subtly grab their attention by dragging their interest slowly toward you. Making good use of tempo means you are using little bits of suspense here and there.

Second, is your tone of voice. Don't speak too high, don't speak too low. Everybody has a natural voice range, and your voice is the most attractive in that range.

A good rule of thumb to know if you're in that range is whether your throat is contracting or expanding. If your throat is doing either, you are moving out of your natural range.

To more easily stay in your natural range, take deep breaths and breath from your diaphragm. Otherwise known as belly breathing, this will allow you to take in more oxygen and speak with a more stable tone.

The reason to stay in your natural range is because it conveys confidence, and confidence tends to be mesmerizing. When used with proper pacing and timing, you grab attention and they don't want to let go.

2. Use your natural voice range

Everybody loves a good story (which is why people hate spoilers). Most people, however, are terrible at telling stories. A good storyteller knows how to not only pace their stories but keep their audience interested through the use of their voice.

We humans have been telling each other stories since time immemorial. Stories are our way of sharing our experiences and connecting with others.

However, when people are bad at telling stories, they become worse at connecting with others. Nobody wants to listen to a boring story after all.

We've already talked about pacing, which is an essential part of storytelling. The other important part of storytelling is expression.

On one hand, you want to have a sufficient expression in your storytelling so you can infuse different emotions into the story. As you tell the story, your audience should be able to empathize with what you say.

On the other hand, you want to still stay in that natural voice range. Your natural voice range will allow for some deviation both upward and downward from your natural tone of voice, but don't go beyond that.

One concept I've applied to my tone of voice is something I learned in band class.

We would often have to play scales as part of our assessment at the end of the year, and for some of us, some notes were either too high or too low to play clearly.

So the solution was to play the same note at either a higher or lower pitch and continue the scale from there. This same concept can be applied to your voice.

If you're already going up or down in pitch and something you want to say requires you to go out of your natural voice range, there's only one scenario where you can go out of your natural range.

If your story requires you to be in some sort of character for the audience to better understand the story, you can justify moving out of your natural range. However, the majority of the time, you won't need to move out of your natural voice range.

By staying within the range your voice can handle, combined with good pacing and compelling content, your stories become so much more interesting and captivating.

Become a learned natural

The irony of mastering your social skills is that you become a natural at it, even though it was all learned. Over time, being social becomes fun due to how much success you have with it.

While you don't need to do these things to have a good social life, it's better to play to win than to not lose. When you let your social skills rot away, you are playing not to lose.

Eventually, you'll become a social butterfly. Instead of being that awkward person in the corner at the party, you may just become the life of the party.

- Karl