This has nothing to do with "pipes", as voices are often referred to in the radio business. Your "voice" has nothing to do with...well, your voice.
Abraham Lincoln is said to have had a high-pitched, somewhat nasal and flat delivery. Some historians suggest that Abe would have had trouble being taken seriously in the modern world of media sound bites. Maybe, but I think that's an indictment of the sound-bite mentality we're forced to live with today. Lincoln delivered his speeches to real people standing in front of him, exhibiting his dignity and his native intelligence with forceful and compassionate conviction.
That's "voice".
There are rich, deep, resonant voices and quirky, sparkly, unique voices. Most of us have average voices that sound pretty much like everybody else. Some of the greatest radio personalities who ever lived had average or even puny voices but they all had enormous belief in who they were and what they had to say.
There is no greater power than belief in one's self.
Your "voice", your comfort and confidence with who you are as a person, is something that only comes with life and radio experience. It's that day you realize you've grown up, when suddenly, after years of playing around, you just know who you are when you pop that mic one day and, for the first time, all the scattered pieces of you fall into place.
Writers are always talking about "voice". There was only one Mark Twain; just one Ernest Hemmingway. Nobody writes like Ayn Rand or Shakespeare or Dickens.
The greatest actors have "voices" that consume the words of playwrights which have been memorized and delivered by thousands of other voices but never with such unique faith and conviction.
You can and must learn from the mentors who will tweak and poke and prod at your vocal delivery. They will steal from you words, the only tools of your trade. They will force you into tiny boxes made of their own limited imaginations.
But whether you're hosting a talk show or reading news or just back-selling songs and reading liner cards, your "voice" will not be denied if you listen to that quiet "voice" in your head that tells you who you are.
