1. Strengthen your Neck Muscles

I’ve seen a lot of talk about this online, so I wanted to start by confirming here: this truly does work. Actually, it’s my favourite method of all of them.

If you put your hand on your throat, you’ll feel two long muscles which run down from behind your ear to your collarbone. These are your sternocleidomastoids, and when they get tense they tug on your vocal chords, resulting in a higher note. Relax these and, logically enough, your voice gets lower.

One recommended way of doing this is by making the neck muscles stronger. Stronger muscles are better at meeting their daily demands and therefore less likely to tighten up throughout the day. I was interested in this idea, so I thought I’d test it out.

Every day, at 2 o’clock and in the same room, I recorded a sample of my voice and wrote down the figures. I chose 2pm because I wanted the ‘morning effect’ of my voice to have worn off and I knew I wouldn’t have been drinking alcohol around that time. After the recording, every other day, I’d do 3 sets of 20 reps of crunches, where I lay on my bench and slowly nodded my head from horizontal to vertical, tucking in my chin – like doing sit-ups with your neck.

And it worked. Here’s a chart I made with Vocular.

As you can see, by all four metrics, my voice did deepen over time. My matches completely changed too.

More compellingly, my voice actually got higher before it got lower. It starts at about 105Hz, then shoots up to 113Hz and stays high for a week, before it gradually deepened month after month to the current pitch of 89Hz. That’s like going from Edward Norton, to Justin Bieber, to Jon Hamm.

This fits the idea that strong neck muscles give you a deeper voice. The exercises first made my neck weaker, like any muscle when you start training it. So my voice got higher. Then, as I continued with the exercises, it got used to the strain and became stronger, and my pitch dropped.

I should add that I also stretch my neck to relieve any tension that might build up with the exercises. So if you’re thinking of doing this, that’s something to keep an eye on. In fact, this guy on Reddit seems to have a routine which worked really well for him and seems to focus more on stretching.

2. Breathe from the Diaphragm

Ever noticed how your shoulders bob up and down as you breathe in and out?

If you’re have, you’re doing it wrong. This is a thing called ‘shallow breathing’ and it’s something most people are guilty of. While it seems as good as any method, this kind of breath shifts effort to the upper half of the torso, putting tension on the neck and vocal chords.

Instead, breathe with the muscle that’s designed to do it: the diaphragm. As you inhale, try to shift the effort downward so your stomach flexes out while your shoulders remain completely still. Feel as though the air is being summoned by your abs.

I know it’s quite hard to follow in writing, so Eric Arceneaux does a very good job of explaining this.

This one correction had the greatest impact on my voice depth – but, like any bad habit, it requires a conscious effort to overcome it. You may want to try something to remind yourself when you’re creeping back to your old ways. One vocal coach has created the Singing-Belt to do this, although it’s expensive so using kinesiology tape or a tight T-shirt might work better.

3. Aspirate

You can try this one for yourself and immediately see its effect. Open Vocular and enable the Pitch Tracker in Settings, then speak to the microphone in your normal voice and see what numbers come up.

Now try talking in a breathier, more aspirated kind of way, as if you’re speaking through a sigh. If you need someone to copy, Tom Hiddleston’s a pretty good example.

4. Drink More Water

Please don’t skip over this section, because it’s a lot more important than you might think. You know how the depth of your voice is partly caused by the size of your vocal chords? Well, dehydration literally shrinks your vocal chords. The loss of water equates to a loss of mass, leaving you with thinner, squeakier vocal chords.

And, strikingly, most people are dehydrated. A recent study found that 75% of Americans fell far below the recommended daily intake, which, again, gives us a majority of people speaking with higher voices than they ought to be.

The solution is to make things easier for yourself. If you work at a desk, get a jug (one that can hold 3-4 litres) and fill it every morning. Not only will this encourage you to drink more because it’s there, it’ll bring the water to room temperature which stops the throat contracting from the cold.

5. Be More Monotone

I’ve noticed a few names that come up time and time again when discussing voice depth. One of these names is Clint Eastwood. But the weird thing here is that, in terms of pitch, Eastwood doesn’t have a deep voice. It’s about average.

However, one thing Eastwood has in spades in monotony. This is a very manly trait – in fact, a recent study found that men with monotone voices tend to have more sexual partners than those who don’t. So it may be that the masculinity of a monotone voice tricks people into thinking that voice is deep as well.

1. Women are more attracted to men with deep voices – and this attraction is strongest among prettier, more feminine women. In fact, women prefer a masculine voice more strongly and more unanimously to a masculine face. This might lead you to think you should be the next Barry White, but a recent study found that the most attractive male voices were the ones around 96Hz (that’s deeper than average, but not incredibly so.) Once this average pitch fell into the 80s, women preferred a higher voice.

2. Deep-voiced men are rated as being significantly more dominant, both physically and socially, to men with higher voices – and men who believe themselves to be more dominant subconsciously lower their tone when faced with competition.

This is probably why powerful characters such as Darth Vader or Smaug are traditionally given very deep voices. They’re supposed to intimidate on a very primal level, and a low pitch and low variance is the best recipe for that.

3. In fact, owners of a deep voice get better ratings for all kinds of qualities. A 2012 study on electoral success found they were considered more intelligent, more trustworthy, more confident, more likable, healthier, and of a higher social status than high-pitched men.

4. People prefer voting for politicians with deep voices, especially during wartime. Most famously, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher underwent vocal coaching to lower her voice by a whopping 46Hz, more than half the difference between male and female voices.

5. CEOs with deeper voices tend to run larger companies, make more money and keep their jobs for longer. From a sample of 792 CEOs, a 1% decrease in voice pitch was found to be worth $19,000 in CEO pay and $30 million in the size of company managed. And the CEOs at ‘the deep end’ earned $187,000 more on average and ran companies that were $440 million bigger.

6. Men with deeper voices report more sexual partners and start having sex at a younger age. A study in Tanzania even found that the deeper-voiced tribesmen fathered more children, despite the fact that a naturally lower voice has been linked with a lower sperm count.

7. Lowering the pitch of your voice makes you feel more powerful. Much in the same way that certain ‘power poses’ boost confidence and reduce anxiety, researchers found that “participants who lowered their voice pitch perceived themselves as possessing more powerful traits”. They also found that they gained, in their own words, “a higher level of abstract thinking”, which is associated with people in high power positions.

8. Lowering your pitch also makes you more persuasive and influential. This finding came from an experiment in which groups of people were asked to discuss which objects would be most useful after a crash landing on the Moon. Speakers whose voices deepened during the discussion were more likely to convince others to support their ideas and more likely to be rated as of a high social status. And this was independent of their average voice pitch – even guys with high voices had the same benefit.

9. Women retain information better when listening to a man with a deep voice. Unfortunately, this study was not done with male listeners, so we can’t really tell whether this is because of the attractiveness or the authority of deep voices.