Teenage years are when your voice starts to change rapidly and it gives certain qualities to it. Sudden changes in hormones and vocal box mass will cause the voice to deepen, some voice cracks will appear and also there are a lot of mannerisms characteristic for teenagers. So to sound more like a teenager try the following methods:
- Get loud
- Lower the pitch (for males)
- Increase the pitch (for females)
- Exaggerate
- Sound annoyed and irritated
- Incorporate voice cracks
Get loud
In the teenage years, the voice starts to develop with muscles and cartilages getting bigger and stronger. It’s in the teenage years when our voices get really strong and loud. To imitate a teenage voice try to speak louder than usual.
When doing an impression of a teenager add a few decibels above how you usually speak. A nice trick is to use earbuds. They block sound making you speak louder because you feel like you have to compensate for the loss in volume you hear. Similar to how old people speak very loud due to bad hearing.
Change the pitch of your voice
During teenage years the voice drops significantly, especially for males. Females’ voices tend to drop a bit as well, however not as much. For guys, the voice reaches the maximum depth somewhere around the end of their teenage years. Once in adult life, males voice starts to rise in pitch.
In contrast, female voice gradually drops in pitch even after the teenage years.
Therefore, to achieve a teenage boy’s voice try to add some depth to your voice. However, to do a teenage girl’s voice impression try to raise the pitch a bit higher and sound brighter.
Exaggerate
Remember how you sounded when you were a teenager. Everything seemed to be hyperbolized and exaggerated. A teenage voice is not just the quality of the sound, but it has to do a lot with the manner of speech.
Try to sound exegerrated and emphasize everything. Remember that your teenager character hasn’t seen much of the world as of yet, so everything seems to be new and unexplored.
Sound annoyed and irritated
For teenagers hormones are jumping all over the place making them annoyed, irritated or happy all of the sudden. So, when doing a teenager voice impression add some irritation and annoyance to your voice with a sprinkle of happiness once in a blue moon. It will make your listeners remember what’s it like to speak with someone going through their puberty.
Incorporate voice cracks
Teenage voice is all riddled with voice cracks due to how their muscles and cartilages change and grow, also nerves could play a big role. Essentially teenagers have to yet accommodate to their new bodies which change so drastically and that causes a lot of voice cracks in their voice. That’s true for both males and females, although it’s way more noticeable on guys due to them having higher testosterone levels.
You can try and incorporate a few voice cracks during your teenager voice impression to make it more realistic.
You can achieve a voice crack by suddenly changing the pitch from very high to very low or vice versa. The voice crack happens due to a sudden change in cricothyroid muscles. A sudden change in pitch will often make the muscle tighten quickly causing a voice crack.