How do you increase the rate VoiceOver speaks on the Mac I've found the utility but my read text command doesn't work with the right pitch in textedit and pages Can you help me get around this?

The VoiceOver feature controls how the Mac talks to users who are blind or partially sighted so they can find their way around the screen it is separate from Text To Speech which is controlled from the Text To Speech tab of the Speech section of System Preferences.