Its often said that your voice will carry further if you’re pushing out more air while you’re talking or singing. People call it projecting.
So to project better without straining, is it better to suck the stomach in or push the stomach out while speaking/singing?
To project, you tighten your abdominal muscles to support your diaphragm. This is neither sucking in nor pushing out. It’s more like firming up. And it’s not just a matter of pushing out more air. In fact, sometime singing softly properly can consume an awful lot of air. The key here is to make the diaphragm and abdomen do the work, to avoid straining your vocal cords and throat muscles.
Breath support is one of the first things singers and public speakers learn to do, and it’s not that intuitive.
Proper technique to create resonance affects projection more than how much air is used.
You raise the pitch of your voice. Not necessarily a whole lot–not falsetto or anything like that. That makes it much easier to speak louder.
I agree that you firm up to make things louder. But I would argue the firming up part feels like and maybe even slightly pushes things out. And then the actual speaking slowly pulls inward, as normal. So there is an outward and inward pressure, which increases the air pressure.
That said, that change is small, unless I’m actually shouting. If I’m just projecting, the bigger difference is how I open up throat and create the resonant spaces. And, yes, the pitch does tend to go up a bit, to where my voice naturally projects more.
I also learned this from singing, though I’m sure this comes naturally to some. And, yes, that abdominal stuff is important even when singing softly. The difference is just how much air you put out, and it’s actually harder to sing well quietly.
I disagree with this, based on my experience in singing and as a presenter and presentation trainer. Raising your speaking pitch above your normal range can cause strain. You can project quite well (which is not necessarily just turning up the volume) using whatever your normal pitch is. The key is in creating resonance.
I tend to breathe thoracically; when I’m projecting, I breathe both thoracically and abdominally, so my stomach actually goes both in and out more than when I don’t project.
That would be for someone who only speaks while exhaling.
Your body may be different from mine. When I’m singing, I can sing much louder in the top half of my range than in the bottom half.
It’s not just my body. Please see link in post #2.