Title: How Vocal Coach Sally Morgan Empowered My Voice – She Can Help You Too
Guest: Sally Morgan
Peter: Today, my guest is Sally Morgan. She is a speaker development and singing coach. She’s also a songwriter and an author. And one cool thing I’ve discovered about her is she actually writes custom love songs. Welcome to the podcast, Sally.
Sally: Thank you, Peter. It’s good to be here.
Peter: So today, we’re going to talk about speaker development with respect to speaking with confidence. Now I know you also, do coach singing and you have, classes and some online classes and things like that. But for today’s discussion, I wanted to speak with you about learning to speak with confidence and tone of voice. Let’s just talk a little bit about your background.
Sally: I grew up in Central New York. I moved to New York City. I did more teaching than actual singing when I was there. Okay. Just love New York.
I did a lot of speaker development, coaching there as well.
Peter: So you are an authority on what you’re teaching folks with respect to singing and speaking with confidence. So I’m really looking forward to learning more about that. So first of all, when somebody comes to you and they’re looking to get you as a coach for speaking with confidence, what are some of the situations that you see people A coming to
Sally: lot. So someone who wants to do weekly videos and post them on their website and realizes that their presence on camera is not quite right. And what they are saying is not actually reaching the audience. A woman, a CEO of a healthcare startup, who had a stroke at a very young age, and had real trouble recovering her voice. So she and I worked on restoring her voice to health.
Just all these various ways that people need voice work, someone who had actually inhaled fire, she opened a door to that a was on fire and went, and it, you don’t want to know the details of that one. That’s very severe. So we worked again, on getting her voice back to as good health as we possibly could.
Peter: Got it. So I could come to you. I’ve got a podcast. About the only thing that’s helped my voice with respect to my podcast is I got a better mic.
Sally: Okay. Now the mic can only pick up what you give it.
Peter: True.
Sally: It’s Okay. You talk like this, that’s what it’s going to pick up and amplify it. And yes, you can do a lot with the controls, but a great mic is a wonderful thing to have if you are giving it great sound.
Peter: How do you get started when you do this?
Sally: Okay, I have been doing this for so long that I know immediately what I would do with you, just by watching you for a couple of minutes. I don’t tell people to give me a speech and then I’ll dive in. We just have a little chitchat and I know exactly where to go. That’s what comes from having the expertise that I do.
Peter: Okay.
Sally: Many, many years, and I never stop discovering and studying and training my own voice. There’s always something new to learn, and a new way to explain a concept to a client. Because everybody learns differently. I might be able to say something to you that immediately you would understand what I’m talking about and immediately make that change within your instrument, which is your body. And if I could say the same thing to somebody else and then I don’t get it.
So I have to have lots of different ways to explain something.
Peter: So one of my habits when I’m doing a podcast is I will use and, so, all these connector words. Do you have any tips or thoughts on how to reduce the amount of that?
Sally: When you use those filler words, it’s a chance for you to think what comes next. So a couple of things. Number one, it is okay to pause. It’s absolutely fine to pause. People need a moment to absorb what you’ve said anyway.
So it’s fine to take that moment. We think we need to fill every second, we don’t. So just take a breath, center yourself, and then move on. Another portion of this and a more difficult discipline is to listen to the sound of your own voice. Listen to what you’re saying, be in the moment with what you are saying, not planning what you are going to say next and be brilliant with.
That comes from the spontaneity of a conversation. So if you are thinking ahead, two or three, whatever seconds even, you’re not in the moment, You don’t know what you’re going to say, and then you get to the end of that and they, oh,
Peter: That analogy reminds me of a football player when you watch, when I watch football and sometimes you’ll see a wide receiver go out for a pass, and they’re going to catch the pass, and they don’t follow the ball all the way to their hands before they turn up field. They start looking up field before they even have the ball in their hands. And generally they drop the ball.
Sally: If I may, want to jump in with something that drives me nuts. I hear it on CNN all the time when someone says, well, today the president is going to kind of, kind of? They say this all the time, sort of. Yes, well, maybe. What?
Say it, just make a statement. Problem is that people are afraid to make that statement and make it, boom, this is my statement, period, because then you’re accountable. So speaking with confidence takes courage.
Peter: Yes, it does. And courage comes from experience, comes from having at least for me, what I found is the first time I did a podcast, it didn’t turn out nearly like I wanted it to. Sure. But what I quickly discovered is that it took practice.
Sally: Always. I practice every day and I’m an expert. I practice every day. That’s why I’m an expert. It’s a must, it’s a must.
Peter: So are there any particular exercises that you would suggest to somebody that you are coaching for speaking? And I don’t want you to give away all your secrets. Obviously, you do offer one on one consulting for speaking.
Sally: It would be impossible for me to give away all my secrets on a Okay. So no worries there. May I use you as a guinea pig?
Peter: Indeed, please.
Sally: All right.
Peter: I’m ready. As
Sally: I mentioned a few minutes ago, this is your instrument. Your body is the instrument. Do you play guitar by any chance?
Peter: No. Well, you
Sally: know what a guitar looks like?
Peter: Yes.
Sally: Okay, so would you attempt to play a guitar that its neck was bent? No. No, you can’t tune it. There you go. You can’t tune it, you can’t play it.
It’s unreliable. Yes. And you get my point because you just straightened up.
Peter: Yes, I’m straightening up right now. For those on the audio side of this, I’m adjusting.
Sally: Bring the mic closer.
Peter: Yeah. Sally is watching me adjust my mic and sit up a little better. Yeah. There we go. Yeah.
I’m gonna have to raise my monitor several inches if I wanna do this.
Sally: Yes. So it’s about adjusting what equipment that you use to help you as well. And looking right into the camera, there are all sorts of tricks around being on Zoom that to me are common sense, but to those who don’t use Zoom, not so much. But for your voice, just straightening out the instrument gives you a huge advantage because now your body is saying, ah, Peter, we can use this so much better now. So much better because you’re giving us half a chance to do it right.
Body knows, the body is so smart, much smarter than the brain. So we want to give this vocal instrument every chance possible. All right, now, you are sitting down.
Peter: Yes.
Sally: Having fits with the mic there.
Peter: We’re good, we’re good. All
Sally: right, all right. So the voice rides on the breath. You have to have breath moving through the vocal folds in order to set them vibrating. And that breath obviously is something that you have to generate. So what you and I are going to do right now is you’re going to release your jaw and think of opening your torso all the way to your bottom.
And now just tell me who you are.
Peter: Peter Wilson.
Sally: Chin level to the floor. There you go, again, release your jaw, open to your bottom and tell me who you are.
Peter: Peter Wilson.
Sally: Now we’ve got a big difference, don’t we? Uh-huh.
Peter: Yes, we do.
Sally: And that is what you need to practice because you’ll forget in about thirty seconds, your posture will be back to what it was. Yes. Because you’re not used to this open posture. I do yoga, I exercise in the pool, I do all this to strengthen my core. Because as we age, that just wants to give up.
I do that again, that’s every single day. I do both those things to strengthen my core because I sit here at my keyboard every day, doing Zoom lessons and writing and recording. And I have no back on this, I’m on a piano bench. I don’t get tired because I’ve worked on that core. But for you, you want to look at yourself so that your chin is leveled to the floor, your collarbones are spread wide.
Yeah, and a nice loose jaw, you open to your bottom.
Peter: Yes.
Sally: And I have all sorts of exercises around this, of course, to strengthen that. But for now, that is your assignment.
Peter: Thank you, coach.
Sally: You’re welcome.
Peter: Wow. My podcasts are gonna get markedly better from this point forward.
Sally: Well, and you have a beautiful speaking voice. There’s There’s nothing wrong with your voice at all. And this is the way it is with most people. It’s just, how are you using that voice? Are you giving it a really tough job to get through your body because your body just isn’t a question mark?
Or is your body nice and straight and strong, and you’re allowing the voice to move through? Much easier to speak this way. And sing much, much easier than this because you’re constantly fighting your own posture.
Peter: Right. It’s easier to breathe too.
Sally: Oh, yeah. Think of your innards. Think what your voice has to do to get through your body when you’re slouching like that.
Peter: Yes.
Sally: And you can hear the difference in my voice.
Peter: Yes.
Sally: That’s just hard to do. I don’t like that. So I straighten up, and then boom, I get this power in my voice. And there’s a lot else involved with this opening to your bottom. Because in the center of your pelvis, you have a power source that helps you to feel more confident.
The studies that have been done on striking a power pose
Peter: and
Sally: standing up straight have proven that when you sit up straight, stand up straight, it changes your brain chemistry.
Peter: Wow.
Sally: And you become more confident.
Sally: So
Sally: everyone has control over that. Everyone.
Peter: Yeah, wow. One of the things that I run into is I’m tall, six’four.
Sally: You are.
Peter: And I will sometimes find myself trying to slouch down to eye level with people and not, or if there is a desk that I could sit on to make myself at eye level with other, I always, I’m trying to adjust my height, so to speak. Maybe I should, now I’ll be thinking about that just in terms of standing up, now that we’ve had this conversation.
Sally: Right, right.
Peter: So how much do I owe you, Sally?
Sally: Oh, we’ll talk about that later, thanks.
Peter: Well, I’m gonna look down at my notes here for a second.
Sally: All right.
Peter: This has been fabulous. I’m already feeling really, really much better about myself. So in addition to speaking about or coaching with respect to posture and what we talked about, straightening out your body and finding that power within and this open posture. Are there other aspects of speaking confidently that you coach on?
Sally: Many, many.
Peter: Okay. What are the, just if we could touch on a few, what are the things, I don’t need to necessarily have the tip, but I’m just curious what issues you see that you can help people with.
Sally: Yes. Okay, thank you. One issue big for almost everybody is addiction. And that might sound like an antiquated word
Peter: in
Sally: our society.
Peter: What does that mean?
Sally: Diction has, it’s just so poor these days. What you can do though, is just be aware. Be aware of your consonants. It’s about consonants. Consonants are the action of our words.
A lot of emotion is tied up in the confidence or consonants.
Peter: And
Sally: so if you, okay, so you introduced me as a speaker development trainer. Uh-huh, what? So if you just pay attention to the consonants, a speaker development trainer, it takes that level of speech and raises it way up. Consonants will travel as well, if you’re speaking in an open space. I have a story.
I was at a women’s networking group, this was in Manhattan, and we were in a store in Manhattan, and there’s about 75 women, so you can imagine the noise. And the leader of our group was up there with a microphone saying, okay, everybody, the speaker’s ready now, can you please quiet down? Nothing, nobody quieted down. And we all love her. It’s not that people were ignoring her because they didn’t like her.
And she finally looked over at me and mouthed help. So I went up, I don’t think I even took the microphone. But I said, good evening, everyone. Room went silent like that. I was surprised.
But that is the power of having a confident speaking voice, having confidence in your own presence. Yeah, that’s the difference.
Peter: That’s big. That’s big. That’s really helpful. So we’ve been speaking about speaking with confidence and some of the coaching that you do there. I know a big part of what you do also is coaching, singing Mhmm.
As well, I wanted to just dive into that a little bit.
Sally: Oh, goody. Okay.
Peter: Now I am not going to sing anything by the way.
Sally: Oh, come on. I thought
Peter: you Oh, no. Not going to do it. Not gonna do it. The only place I Okay, sing is in church,
Sally: well, it is really the training that I use is basically the same. Okay. It’s a voice, it’s the voice. And one of the major problem for singers is that they think of singing as something different than speech. It’s an instrument of communication.
And if I use it in any other way, it’s what I say is, it’s like going to the singing place, you know, singers go to this place. It’s like this, instead of just using their voice, they go to the singing place. So what I teach is to get them out of the singing place And to begin with speech, the vocal technique is sing like you speak. That is what I developed after many years of frustration with traditional vocal training. That didn’t work for me.
And it doesn’t work for a lot of contemporary singers. So sing like you speak is based on the fact that you already have this perfect musical instrument. It’s the way you use it that causes the problems and the thought, I have to do something different. And speakers will get into this too. I’m just going to get up there and speak.
That’s not going to be enough. And yet it is.
Peter: So I should mention that you have a website singlikeyouspeak.com. Mhmm. And for those that are interested in singing better, you do have a free, lesson available there as well. So it’s singlikeyouspeak.com. And, I actually signed up for the lesson just to check it out as well in the privacy of my office.
So Yeah. I’m not going to share that with anybody. And let’s talk about students that come to you for singing.
Sally: Mhmm.
Peter: What what do you where what where do you, do you see folks across the spectrum coming to you from seasoned professionals to amateur and
Sally: Yes, I get everything from kids 12 and on up to I have worked with a couple of opera singers. I had this one woman, lovely woman, actually in Switzerland, who was a well known contralto, who had vocal training that was so intense. And she was forcing everything so much that she actually blew a vertebra in the middle of a concert.
Peter: My.
Sally: Didn’t sing for six years. And when she found me on YouTube, she said, I just wept for joy because I knew you were the one who was gonna be able to help me fix this.
Peter: Wow.
Sally: And oh, would just, I would fade away practically listening to this voice, a glorious voice. So we had to, she was using it with a great deal of stress. So we had to take the stress out of it, so that beautiful instrument could be heard.
Peter: That’s neat.
Sally: Yeah.
Peter: So when you coach folks in the singing realm, do you have a particular cadence or a series that you go through? Or is it just as long as they need your help? And would people schedule like five sessions or is there any particular prescribed curriculum that you work with? Or is it pretty much just as people need your help?
Sally: Well, always look at a few basic things. Always begin with posture like I did with you, an opening inhale, such as we did opening down to your bottom. And of course, I have to assess where that student is in their career. And sometimes like a pro just wants help with delivering the lyrics so that the audience understands them, so that they can draw the audience in, instead of just pushing out at the audience, a very, very different energy.
Peter: Right.
Sally: Sometimes pros want that. People who are starting out, I have to begin with posture, with proper breathing, and how to release the sound, there’s always diction involved. I have to be flexible enough to respond to what that singer needs. Everybody’s different, everyone So learns there’s no cookie cutter. That’s why it’s difficult.
And that’s why there are very few of us who really know what we’re doing, because you don’t get out the cookie cutter and say, this is what you do, try this, I’m gonna listen. How did Do that you know what you did? And usually the first few times when they get an amazing sound, they say, okay, what did you do?
Sally: I don’t know.
Sally: And that’s okay.
Peter: That’s like me when I hit a golf ball, and it actually goes straight.
Sally: What did
Peter: I do?
Sally: What did I do? I don’t know what I did.
Sally: So I keep asking. I keep asking until they can say, now I get it. Now I know what I was doing. And I can see and hear what they’re doing. So I usually give them a hint as to what they were doing.
And they’ll say, you didn’t hear that. You didn’t see that. Okay. But I did.
Peter: Well, that is amazing. It sounds like you’ve really had a chance to help a lot of folks, now that you have your online course and some other things, you’ve got opportunities to help even more people.
Sally: Yes, yes. And that’s my mission, is to empower voices and that in turn empowers people’s lives.
Peter: So let me ask you a quick question. Who would you recommend for your online series?
Sally: Good question. I would say that a non professional such as yourself,
Peter: who
Sally: wants to study and doesn’t have the money to do it privately, but still wants this amazing training. And even though all the lessons are online, below every single lesson, and there are over 200 of them, there’s a place for you to chat with me and send me a question. And so I am able to give feedback. So probably the non professional who may be just starting out, who may be frustrated with singing in choir, who just knows they need to sing to feel most alive and happy. And also the professional who’s out on the road.
It’s a great way for professionals on the road to keep their voices in shape.
Peter: Excellent. Yeah. So we’ve talked about singing. Would you share a song with us?
Sally: Oh, go ahead, twist my arm.
Peter: Thank you.
Sally: Yes, I would be happy to. And what I will share with you is something that I wrote. It’s a song that I wrote for my niece’s wedding. And it’s called Fairy Tale Come True. That was her theme.
Sally: Holding hands by the lake. First, I love you. Walk along on the sand. Marry me do. Special time, special place, special you.
Something old, something new. Borrowed and blue, your sparkling eyes saying to me, I adore you. My sparkling smile telling you you’re my fairy tale come true. Cinderella at the ball. Down the stairs she flew with the clock striking twelve.
And she lost her shoe, then her heart, it did fall. The magic’s gone, she knew. Cinderella, poor old thing. She did not have you. Your sparkling eyes saying to me, I adore you.
My sparkling smile telling you you’re my fairy tale come true. No matter where, no matter when, the magic is you. Found my prince, found my love, Found my wings and flew to your side, tucked in your arms. Happy through and through, here and now forevermore. Tale, my every ever after coming true.
Peter: Bravo. Wow. I encourage folks to watch the video so you can just get the full experience of Sally singing that song. So that was for your niece, that was lovely. So you wrote that song.
Sally: Yeah, I wrote that. Yes, I did. And it was so fun. I sang it at the reception and one by one people would go, wrote that for them.
Sally: People were crying. Was
Sally: great, it was great. That’s usually what happens when I do a custom song. Because it’s so personal. And my niece has the most gorgeous smile. Writing that was just pure joy to put together lyrics.
And every time I get to Cinderella at the ball, I think, how did I come up with that? I have no clue.
Peter: You nailed That’s a
Sally: great process.
Peter: That was great. Sally, go ahead.
Sally: They’re interested in a custom love song, they can go to singlikeyouspeak.com/customsongs.
Peter: And another way that you mentioned that folks can reach you is via your email, which we’ll put in the podcast notes as well. We’ve got I’ve got it down as salliesalliemorgenvoice dot com.
Sally: Yes, sir. That’s it.
Peter: And this has been thoroughly enjoyable. Enjoyed learning more about what you do and getting your help as well.
Sally: So
Peter: it’s been extremely helpful. And I would encourage folks who want to speak more confidently and sing better as well to contact Sally and to check out our website. Again, that is singlikeyouspeak.com and see everything she has to offer. And thank you so much for joining me today.
Sally: Aw, thank you, Peter. This has been fun.
