Your voice is a critical part of your nonverbal communication—but are you using it to its full potential? In this episode, we kick off the 5 Building Blocks of Voice series with Pitch, exploring how shifting between chest voice, middle voice, and head voice can help you hold jurors' attention and guide their decision-making. If your voice stays stuck in one zone, you risk losing engagement. But when you use pitch strategically, you create vocal contrast that keeps jurors actively listening and processing your message.

LISTEN HERE...

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

✅ Why staying in one pitch range (especially chest voice) can disengage jurors

✅ How to use middle voice to refresh attention and add energy to your arguments

✅ The role of head voice in voir dire and rebuttals (and how to use it without sounding ridiculous)

✅ A simple vocal exercise to expand your pitch range and bring life to your delivery

Practical Strategies for Trial Attorneys:

🔹 Vocal Warm-Up: Practice moving through chest, middle, and head voice with a simple counting exercise:

1. Say “1, 2, 3” in chest voice

2. Shift to “4, 5, 6, 7” in middle voice

Tap into head voice with “8, 9, 10”

🔹 Trial Application:

1. Use chest voice for authority and grounding, especially when stating legal principles.

2. Shift to middle voice when transitioning to a new section of your opening or closing statement.

3. Tap into head voice when voicing opposing arguments or emphasizing small details.

🔹 Practice in Low-Stakes Settings: Try this in everyday conversations, when reading aloud, or even talking to yourself in the car.

Resources & Next Steps:

📺 Watch the YouTube version for a visual guide: https://www.youtube.com/@FosterYourVoice

📩 Connect with Me:

Join my mailing list for free vocal tips delivered to your inbox weekly: www.fostervoicestudio.com

Follow me on social media:

1. IG: www.instagram.com/fostervoicestudio

2. FB: www.facebook.com/fostervoicestudio

3. LI: www.linkedin/in/fosterthought

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Keep fostering your voice, and I’ll see you next time! 🎙️

TRANSCRIPT:

 Hellloooo!! Hello Foster Fam. Welcome back. Glad to be here with you for the start a vocal TECHNIQUE series. Talking through facial and body nonverbals and mindset around using vocal development in courtroom communication is super important, but there's just some brass tacks that need to go hand in hand with your strategic communication growth.

In fact, you may not have considered that your voice—how you speak—is actually part of your nonverbal communication. Your words are the verbal part. But your delivery—your pitch, pace, melody, volume, and tone—falls under nonverbals, just like your facial expressions, body language, and breath control.

So, we're going to do a series on, what I refer to as, The 5 Building Blocks — pitch, pace, melody, volume, and tone. I want to encourage you as we get started to try DOING the vocal exercises I'm going to walk us through. So, listen when you're in a safe space, in your car or close the door to your office, and just make sure there's not a depo happening in the conference room next door, or while you're out walking your dog. Just make sure you can experiment vocally and not alarm anyone who may overhear you.

So why does this even matter? Why should you care about vocal development? Because you, my friend, are a high-stakes communicator.

So what does that mean? You may think the answer is obvious. As a trial attorney, you are communicating in high stress situations where the stakes are high. You're talking in arenas where big money or jail time is being discussed. It's high RISK.

That's true. BUT...going even deeper...you are a high-stakes communicator because you are needing to transmit information, NOT just for informations sake. Not just for the joy of knowledge acquisition. You need your audience to TAKE ACTION based on the information you transmit. And if they don't take action, or stay passive in decision-making, then justice for your client is at risk. It's high-stakes.

So, back to the question WHY do you need to pay attention to voice development? Well, information enters the brain at the hippocampus. But decision making happens in the prefrontal cortex. So how do you get the information to the decisioin-making/action center? It's through VOCAL EMOTION. You use your voice to INFUSE MEANING into your words so jurors can not only learn your case facts, but they can relate to them, reframe them, personalize them, connect them to core knowledge, interpret them, and then decide what action they are going to take as a result of obtaining that information.

If you’re not using your voice strategically, your words might not be reaching the part of the juror’s brain where decisions on how to act actually happen. And if they don’t act? Justice for your client is at risk.

Today, we're going to dive into some vocal technique as we begin to cover The 5 Building Blocks of voice. These are 5 foundational elements, concepts, that you'll explore to expand your range, and that you'll apply to your communication so you can build new vocal habits.

The 5 Building Blocks are — pitch, pace, melody, volume, and tone. These items partnering with your breath...? That's a stacked tool box that holds a lot of power.

I'm gonna try to not get too technical, so don't be afraid. This isn't intended to be a comprehensive vocal course. But giving you some basic terminology and a good overview to get you started and we can feel really good about that.

Let’s start with Pitch—which is just how high or low your voice is. Lower pitches are called chest voice because you can literally feel the vibration in your chest when you use it.

Now, I need to also say that you should not be doing this while driving. Make sure you're in a stationary spot for this episode. AND, if you have the option, flip over to the Foster Your Voice YouTube so you can visually follow along. The link is in the show notes, but I'll do my best to describe what I'm doing for those that aren't able to see me.

Now, with your hand on your chest—just start talking. Say the alphabet with me. (Pause) Now, move your voice lower. Keep going. (Pause) Do you feel that? That vibration in your chest? That’s chest voice.

Now, start the alphabet again, but this time move your voice up. Notice that the vibration is lessening. For me...now I don't feel that vibration at all. And listen to what my tone sounds like. I'm in high pitch, and we're going to call that "head voice."

We have CHEST voice, and we have HEAD voice.

So the big question now is: When in the WORLD would you ever need to USE chest voice and head voice in trial?

Chest voice is where most of your day-to-day speaking happens. It’s strong, grounded, and should feel comfortable. But here’s the catch…

Because you talk about serious things all the time, you can easily get stuck only in chest voice, only in your lower pitch zone. You get locked in here and...well...it's boring. haha! It will lull the jury into disinterest. When everything sounds the same, they stop listening. Their brains just CAN'T hear differentiation of ideas, so they lose out on mental organization, and you lose out on their ability to retain your message.

Are you noticing how bored you are listening right now? How many additional thoughts have you had while I"m talking? How many distractions?

Okay, enough of that. What's the alternative? Well, we also found our head voice earlier. Is this a suitable option? We either talk LOW or we talk HIGH?

Not exactly. The alternative to the trap of chest voice is to add in that in-between zone. It's a middle voice. Repeat after me...

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

4, 5, 6, 7.

4, 5, 6, 7.

Can you hear how 1, 2, 3 is that chest voice. 4, 5, 6, 7 elevates pitch and expands your range while still keeping it out of head voice zone. 8, 9, 10. That's head voice. Do head voice with me — 8, 9, 10. Feel how that's high. Now, do middle voice again — 4, 5, 6, 7. Now chest and middle — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

How you doing? You still with me? You didn't know you'd have to do so much counting. Trust me, this is where the magic happens!

Middle voice is where your voice comes to life. You'll still do the bulk of your natural speaking in chest voice, but you have to just pop up into middle to perk up the listener, to tantalize their ears, and to change up the energy.

Pop into middle voice to transition to different sections of your Opening. Establish your RULE with chest voice: "A company that puts profits over safety must be held accountable."

Okay now transition to your teaching section by using middle voice: "Now to do your jobs in this case, you'll need to learn about the safety protocols of Company XYZ."

See how that disrupts a pattern and tickles the ears a bit. There's new energy. It gives the jury bite-sized chunks and lightens things emotionally so they don't have to maintain heaviness. That's one of the many values of strategic middle voice.

So, what about HEAD voice? When would we EVER need to use this high-pitched zone in trial. Don't I sound ridiculous

And the answer is Yes. Yes, you DO sound ridiculous. You're never going to LIVE up here. Just like you're never going live only in middle voice, and you definitely shouldn't live only in chest voice.

But JUST TAPPING into head voice can add a LOT of auditory interest. Use it for descriptions of small things and approximations: "Vaughn, NM is a TINY LITTLE TOWN...ABOUT HALF WAY between Albuquerque & Roswell."

Where head voice becomes really strategic though is when you use it for a Devil's Advocate question in voir dire, or in your Challenges section in Opening. "Now, before we could bring this case to trial, we had to consider a few things. Maybe Mrs. Smith could have been a little more careful. Maybe she should have noticed the risk and avoided it. I mean, what about personal responsibility, right?"

Then bring your voice back down: "Let’s be clear. People have the right to trust that the products they use, the places they visit, and the services they rely on are safe. It’s not the public’s job to predict and protect themselves from corporate negligence—it’s the company’s job to make sure there’s no danger in the first place."

Can you hear that that nonverbally communicates that the defense's premise is ridiculous? If you DON'T move your voice up and you pose the premise in your natural voice, you'll give credibility to it and cause your jurors to second guess themselves and the principles you helped them establish in your voir dire.

Strategically accessing (and knowing WHEN to access) chest voice, middle voice, and head voice will elevate your nonverbal communication game and set you up as the emotional leader of the courtroom.

"Start experimenting with this. Try it in low-stakes situations—practice it in casual conversations, when reading out loud, or even just talking to yourself in the car. And let me know how it goes! DM me, email me—I want to hear about it. It takes practice, but once you start using pitch strategically, your communication will never be the same.

Keep fostering your voice, and I’ll see you next time!