There are 5 vocal tools that when you use them together, they help your audience stay tuned more easily, pay closer attention to what you’re saying, and will find themselves more easily moved and persuaded.

These are:

1. Emphasis and energy is concerned with the force of stress your place on important ideas, concepts, or feelings, as well as a generally energized vocal style.  It is the simplest of the five essential vocal tools, and one that you probably already know how to use well.
2. Pitch inflection refers to the rising and falling of your pitch on the musical scale.  Sometimes called intonation, lively pitch inflection helps you avoid monotony as well as convey meaning.  It’s not only a critically important vocal tool: it’s the one you may have the most trouble using freely in formal speaking situations.  If you haven’t received performance training in the use of the voice, you may stay in a too-narrow pitch range, limiting your voices natural ability to express emotion.
3. Your rhythm and pace also need to be varied when you speak publicly so your audience stays attentive and aware of the nuances of what you’re saying.  In normal conversation, i.e., when you’re not self-conscious your speaking rhythm changes frequently according to new ideas or emotions you bring up.  Why should it be any different when you’re giving a presentation?  If you’ve ever suffered through a talk by a presenter who speaks in metronomic fashion, you know how an unvaried pace can lull an audience into inattention.
4. Pauses and silence is another vocal tool you may be neglecting due to speech anxiety.  Pauses in a speech can add emphasis, build suspect, bridge ideas, make a comment on what you just said, and enrich your talk in other subtle ways.  If you pause at appropriate times, you’ll also show that you’re confident enough to set the pace for yourself rather than rushing through your talk because of nervousness.  Unfortunately, adrenaline by its nature forces you to either fight that ‘threat’ you’re facing or run from it — in other words, taking any course of action rather than pausing.
5. Vocal quality is the most encompassing of the five vocal tools.  It includes the tone, the richness, and pleasantness of your voice, along with other factors such as breathiness, warmth or stridency, patience or impatience, empathy or anger, hesitancy or bewilderment, and other elements that effect people’s emotional response when you speak.  No wonder vocal quality is the most inclusive of the essential tools.