Sunday, October 9, 2016
Voice Control
After
reading Johnson, I was completely on board with the idea that your mind had
more control over your voice than any biological components. After all,
apparently my normal voice was just me thinking about how I should be talking
and then executing it. When I want to affect a British accent, I don't think
about how I need to vibrate my vocal chords, I just think about what a British
accent sounds like and it is done (albeit, very poorly). So I thought, even if
the voice was being made by my body, it was being controlled by my mind. Or so
I thought. After reading the Gussenhoven article however, I realized that my
vocal chords were a small part of a very complex system that made up my voice.
And I also realized that the sounds I produced were not magic, and they were
not random, they were a direct result of very specific movements in my organs
of speech. This knowledge combines
nicely with the Kenstowicz reading. It would be one thing just knowing how to
produce different sounds, but that knowledge would be useless without a way to
diagram out the words of a language and match sounds to symbols, which the
Kenstowicz reading provides. As a radio host, actor, and occasional rapper,
it's important for me to have control of my voice. And these readings prove
that with knowledge of the phonetic symbols and how to produce their associated
sounds, I could take my current control of my voice to the next level.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Out of curiosity, since you said you're a radio host, actor, and rapper I assume you've heard recordings of yourself many times. If so, instead of the common reaction of "oh my god is that really my voice?" do you think recordings are accurate to what you hear when you talk? Or have you learned to treat them as two distinct sounds? Another question is after hearing your voice recorded have you tried to change it when you talk in a normal setting?
ReplyDeleteNo, my recorded voice is completely different from what I think I sound like! I had it explained to me once that the internals of your skull add a bit of reverb, so what you hear sounds different from what other people hear. And recording yourself you often lose some reverb of your environment as well. Now I just treat them as completely different voices. No, I try not to worry about how I sound when just talking to people, as I still ahve no idea what I sound like to them, and any changes that sound good to me could sound worse to them. When I record I make a conscious effort though, because I can play it back objectively and adjust accordingly.
Delete