It's a quarter past nine, the night shiur in shul, ten minutes in.
Someone in the back row cups a hand behind his ear.
Another one leans forward.
So you speak louder.
A few minutes later, louder again.
By the end of the shiur your throat burns and your neck is tight.
And on the way out, someone says: "Beautiful shiur. I just couldn't hear the end."
On Shabbos it's harder still. There's no microphone, the shul is full, and the drasha has to reach the ezras nashim too.
"I just don't have a big voice"
That's what most rabbis and maggidei shiur tell me.
Some people were born with a voice that fills a room, they say, and they weren't.
Projection is not volume. Shouting is volume. Projection is a voice that carries.
You can shout and still not be understood in the back.
And you can speak at a comfortable level and be heard clearly in every corner. The difference isn't the voice you were born with. It's how you use it.
Think of a shofar
A good baal tokeia doesn't blow harder to fill the shul.
Blowing harder just makes the shofar crack.
The sound fills the room because of a steady stream of air and the shape it travels through.
Your voice works the same way.
It has its own "shofar": the open spaces of your throat, mouth and face, which make the sound resonate and carry. With steady air from below and an open throat and mouth, the voice fills the room on its own.
When you push from the throat instead, it's like blowing the shofar harder. Louder for a moment, and then it cracks: the voice gets tight, rough and tired, and the back row still can't make out the words.
Three mistakes that keep your voice in the first row
Speaking into the sefer
When your eyes are down on the text, your voice goes down into the table. Look up at the end of each line and send the sentence to the back wall, not to the people closest to you.
Running out of air at the end of every sentence
The end of the sentence is often the most important part: the question, the answer, the chiddush. When you're out of air, it comes out squeezed and swallowed. Take a low breath before a long sentence, and allow yourself a short pause. Listeners need it too.
Swallowing the consonants
Clear words carry further than loud ones. When the jaw is tight and the consonants are lazy, raising the volume only makes a louder blur. Open your mouth a little more and finish every word.
Before your next shiur
- Warm up for two minutes: gentle humming, then a few lip trills (a "brrr" with loose lips).
- Stand or sit tall, with your neck long and your shoulders down.
- Breathe low before you start: one hand on your belly, let it move out as you breathe in.
- Aim your voice at the back wall, and check the back row's faces.
- Keep water within reach and sip between topics.
When to see a doctor
If hoarseness lasts more than two weeks, if it hurts to speak, or if your voice disappears and doesn't come back, see an ENT (ear, nose and throat) doctor before anything else.
Learning it properly
At Kolot, I teach exactly these tools: breathing that supports the voice, resonance that makes it carry, and diction that makes every word clear. Rabbis, teachers and speakers learn to hold a room for an hour and still speak normally afterward.
You can learn the whole method from home in my online course, Rediscover Your Voice. A good place to start is my free mini course.
Questions people ask
How can I make my voice louder without shouting?
Support it from the breath, keep the throat and jaw open, and send the sound to the back of the room. A supported voice at a moderate level carries further than a shout from the throat.
What exercises help with voice projection?
Gentle humming, lip trills, and slow low breathing before you speak are a good start. Practicing clear consonants on a few sentences, as if speaking to someone across the room, trains the voice to carry without pushing.
Why does my throat hurt after giving a shiur or a lecture?
Usually the effort sits in the throat: speaking louder without support, on the last of your air, with a tight jaw. When the breath carries the voice, the throat stops doing the heavy lifting.
