I have a wonderful success story to tell about modifying your speaking range to help with singing. It'll require a bit of backstory first, though.

I'm a man in my mid-30s, not a full-time professional vocalist, but an actively gigging singer. The jury has always been out on my vocal type. Teachers have disagreed on whether I was a baritone or tenor. Pop musicians I've worked with would call me a high tenor because I can phonate very effectively up to C5 and sing Bruno Mars/Michael Jackson stuff without much trouble, but I also have a very powerful, manly mid-range that sounds distinctly baritonal, and I can generate sounds that I've used live all the way down to a B1. Lucky genetics a ton of training and practice.

I've been in classical lessons again after not studying that material for about a decade, and noticed that the way I was practicing recently was dragging my voice down. The "glottal rattle" in my speaking voice was becoming very prominent, and I was phonating effectively enough in the lowest part of my range that my classical teacher briefly considered training me as a bass.

Unfortunately, everything above an F#4 was starting to feel tense and weak, with a broad, uncontrolled vibrato. I mentioned to my teacher, a retired dramatic tenor with an impressive resume, that I spend a significant amount of time messing with vocal fry to expand my low range, and he politely suggested I stop doing that.

I had a wedding gig booked after that lesson where I'd chosen some really hard stuff to sing. Two Bruno Mars tunes, Stevie Wonder, plus a couple of tunes that were usually sung by women or required high falsetto stuff. I was frankly a little frightened, because the weight my voice had gained was making that sort of stuff almost impossible to sing. So I decided not only to take my teacher's advice and completely eliminate the low-register work I'd been doing from my practice routine, but to change my speaking voice in an effort to realign the way my vocal mechanism worked. I've spent the last three days literally talking like Michael Jackson.

The gig I was worried about was tonight, and I literally walked onstage and started singing my first song with a voice that was better warmed up than I'd ever experienced.

The contrast was HUGE, you guys.

Usually the first few tunes are kinda crunchy and I don't feel like my voice is really cooking until the set is almost over. This time, I was at 95% right out of the gate. The warmup I did before performing was several hours before the gig started, and definitely not exceptional in any way. I'm firmly convinced that the difference I experienced was almost entirely due to modifying my speaking voice.

I believe Michael Jackson consciously modified his speaking voice too, although I don't have a cite for it. Certain clips on YouTube feature him speaking in a much more masculine register (though he still sounds very distinctively tenor-ish). It's really surprising to me that he's the only celebrity I can think of who does it, because it was shockingly effective.

As weird as it's gonna be for my friends and family, I think experimenting with modifying my speaking voice is gonna be a fixture of my vocal care from now on. I'm just blown away by how a few days of talking like a little kid could make a voice that I was feeling so worried about sound so awesome.

Thanks for reading. =)