This Is A Voice

This Is A Voice Best Bits part 2 - Impostor Syndrome, The BREATH, the Creep Challenge & Daleks

December 19, 2022 Jeremy Fisher and Dr Gillyanne Kayes Season 6 Episode 16
This Is A Voice
This Is A Voice Best Bits part 2 - Impostor Syndrome, The BREATH, the Creep Challenge & Daleks
Show Notes Transcript

This is part 2 of our Best Bits from the last 4 series of This Is A Voice podcasts!
We've got four glittering presents for you, beautifully wrapped under the tree.

1. Impostor Syndrome (S3 Ep1)
 - the dictionary definition of imposter and why it isn't impostor syndrome
 - different types of impostor syndrome by Valerie Young, based on the work of Clance and Imes. Which one are you?
 - Why we recognise different types of imposter syndrome in our own lives

2. THE BREATH! (S3 Ep3) One of our most popular episodes
 - Why the diaphragm isn't an animal
 - Why we need breath for singing, and what happens when we think we don't
 - And what the real function of breath is

3. Consonants, ventriloquism, Darci Lynne and Creep (S6 Ep6)
 - Darci Lynne's video of singing Creep as a ventriloquist
 - Which techniques she is using (Jeremy lists 6 different ones from the This Is A Voice Book chapter on ventriloquism and mimicry)
 - Jeremy's lip-perfect version (check it out)

4. Change your Pitch, Change your Meaning (S6 Ep12)
 - The research that triggered this episode (from UCL)
 - Why you don't need to understand music to read the "notes" in this exercise
 - Jeremy's four characters saying the same sentence - listen out for the dalek

Let us know which episodes you want to hear again.


My article, Seven Ways to Deal With Imposter Syndrome, is here https://vocalprocess.co.uk/7-ways-to-deal-with-imposter-syndrome/

Darci Lynne's full video of Creep is here https://youtu.be/KB-390oClpw

Our Creep Challenge is here! https://youtube.com/shorts/s2pcF4GvKTc?feature=share

All the exercises are in the chapter on Ventriloquism and Mimicry in our book
"This Is A Voice - 99 Exercises to Train, Project and Harness the Power of Your Voice" https://amzn.to/3uSw66c in the UK or 
https://amzn.to/3EvCBS6 in the US

The pitch rise/fall patterns come from our Webinar on Pitch, Pace and Power - check out the free preview in the Learning Lounge here https://vocal-process-hub.teachable.com/courses/the-vocal-technique-learning-lounge/lectures/27906956

Get the One Minute Voice Warmup app here, it's got a 4.9star rating
Appstore https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/one-minute-voice-warmup/id1212802251
Google Play https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.speechtools.warmup&hl=en_GB&pli=1

We've also got this! ↓
The 5 Days to Better Singing Teaching course online, with voice coaching techniques, vocal articulation exercises and a LOT more for the up-to-date singing teacher is here https://vocal-process-hub.teachable.com/p/5-days-to-better-singing-teaching

For the best self-guided learning check out the Vocal Process Learning Lounge - 16 years of vocal coaching resources (over 600 videos) for less than the price of one private singing lesson. Click and scroll down the page for the free previews
https://vocal-process-hub.teachable.com/p/the-vocal-technique-learning-lounge

For real 1-1 attention on your own voice, book a voice coaching session in the singing studio with Jeremy or Gillyanne
https://drgillyannekayesjeremyfisherinspirationsession.as.me/schedule.php

If you want to discover if our singing teacher training programme works for YOU, message us - we can share the process for joining Cohort23.

Sign up for the Vocal Process newsletter https://vocalprocess.co.uk/build-your-own-tilting-larynx/


Check out our brand new Voice Journal, written with Rayvox's Oren Boder 
https://www.rayvox.co.uk/products/voice-journal

Find us - follow us on the socials!
🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/Vocalprocess
📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/vocalprocess
📖 Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/vocalprocess 


#thisisavoice #vocalcoach #singingteacher #voice #vocalwarmup

Jeremy:

This is a voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher. Hello and welcome to this is, Season six, episode 16,

Gillyanne:

the podcast where we get Vocal about voice.

Jeremy:

I'm Jeremy Fisher.

Gillyanne:

And I'm Dr. Gillyanne Kayes.

Jeremy:

And welcome back to our best bits. This is Best Bits, part two, and we've got some really beautiful things wrapped up for you in beautiful little parcels ready for Christmas at the end of this week.

Gillyanne:

Now this was a very interesting one. And it came about as a result of the work that we had started doing with our Singing Teacher Accreditation and so many people talking about feeling that they were impostors, that we thought we've gotta get out there and bust this idea of impostor syndrome. Unpack it, find out what it really is and why we don't necessarily need to feel like that.

Jeremy:

And my memory is that this episode came from the article that I wrote about impostor syndrome.

Gillyanne:

So it did, and actually it was very popular and much talked about. So if you are, you've got a little bit of impostor still lurking in your life, this is the one for you. Hello and welcome to This is Voice Podcast. Oh, series three episode one. With Jeremy Fisher and Dr. Gillyanne Kayes, and the topic today is impostor syndrome. Uh, I wrote an article a few weeks ago on seven strategies to deal with impostor syndrome and Gillyanne, you looked up the meaning of the word impostor. What did you find? Hmm. Yes. I went onto Google and this is the Cambridge Online Dictionary. impostor. A person who pretends to be someone else in order to deceive others. Now what's interesting about this is that they give an example of using the word within a sentence, and here's what they say. He felt like an impostor among all those intelligent people, as if he had no right to be there. But that's weird. That's not actually the meaning of impostor. Mm-hmm. The meaning of impostor, if you like. It's the, also the difference between an active and a passive. So an active impostor is somebody who knows perfectly well that they are deceiving people. Yes. Um, let's have a look at some of the related words and phrases. Faking and pretending. Yep. Um, an idiom, a wolf in sheep's clothing. Air guitar apparently appears here. Faker, False. Mountebank. I love a mountebank. Isn't that interesting? But I mean, it isn't in, in a way, we, we get that the meaning is intending to deceive. But impostor syndrome is not that. It's something that's very different. And one of the reasons why you wrote the blog in the first place is because we work with a lot of teachers nowadays. Um, training teachers on professional development. And what we've found is that they often, within the community setting when we're all chatting, they talk about feeling like an impostor. It's one of the things that comes up the most in the courses for people when they come on the course in the first place and we ask them why they're there. And impostor syndrome seems to be a really big thing in the singing community, the teaching community, the voice community in general. So, um, what we thought we'd do is we take the article that I wrote and expand on it a bit, and in fact we have seven impostor Busters that you can do, actions that you can take. Do you know what I liked about this article? Because what I'd quite like to do is interview you about it. Sure. And, and would kind of riff around it. You talk about the fundamental issue for people who have impostor syndrome, mm-hmm, is that they're not able to internalize their own success. Mm-hmm., they think it's something to do with luck, um, and nothing to do with their abilities. And I think that is such a great point. And it's something that we come across all the time in our trainings, very much. That people we work with actually don't realize the things that they're good at. Yeah, and we'll talk more about that later. Well, there's, there's two things. I mean, one is they don't realize the things they're good at, and the second is they don't accept the things that they're good at. It must be luck, it must be coincidence. It must be somebody else did the work. You know, it's just, there's so many things in impostor impostor syndrome that people just don't realize. So there's two sets of, of bits of information that I put in the, in the blog and I want to talk about both of them. One is the seven impostor busters that you can do. And the second set is, uh, this, and by the way, I should, I should say impostor syndrome or impostor phenomenon is a real thing. Mm-hmm. It was identified in 1978 by Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes in their paper, the impostor Phenomenon in High Achieving Women, Dynamics and Therapeutic Interventions. And what they're saying is anyone can get it, but it's usually people who are highly responsible. So ironically, it's the people who are least likely to intentionally defraud who get impostor syndrome. In other words, if you think that you are an impostor, it's likely that you're not. It's absolutely certain you won't be, because the real impostors never think about that. And don't care! Mm-hmm.. So, um, the other thing is Valerie Young, uh, based working with the information that, um, uh, Clance and Imes created uh, wrote a book called The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women, and she lists five different types of impostor. That, and, and it was really fascinating reading this. I thought this was very interesting and I recognize myself. And you in them? Yes. Yes. I actually recognize bits of three of them in me. Okay, cool. The, the okay, reveal we've both had impostor syndrome definitely really quite strongly. So, uh, this really, it really resonated with us. So I'm gonna go with the, the five types first. I really like these. Perfectionist sets extremely high expectations for themselves. And even if they meet 99% of the goals, they're going to feel like failures. Any small mistake will make them question their own competence. So accurate. Mm-hmm. It's so interesting when you set yourself such a high goal, and again, in a way this is about responsibility because you wanna do a good job. When you set yourself that higher goal, the 1% that you didn't quite hit becomes the most important thing you think about. Mm-hmm. That's the thing. That's the thing you focus on. I have to say that that was one of the things that I had performance anxiety about in my years as a performing singer. Mm-hmm. the one thing I would focus on was the mistake that I'd made. Mm-hmm. And therefore the 99% of the really good stuff just didn't occur to you. And if you watch successful performers in their habits, they don't do that. Mm. It's not that they don't care about that one mistake, but they don't do that. No. That you actually acknowledge and accept what you did well first, and funnily enough, it's one of the things that we teach our teachers, which is when you are diagnosing somebody, when you have a student who walks in the room and you are hearing them for the first time, so often we go to That's wrong and that's wrong, and that's wrong and that's wrong, and that's, that's wrong. And I need to sort out that because that just doesn't work. And, and you don't go, what's working? What's actually already working? What is, what are they already doing that's good? Mm. Validate what's working. Yeah. Okay. Now let's talk about the expert syndrome. The expert. Feels the need to know every piece of information before they start a project and constantly look for new certifications or trainings to improve their skills. They won't apply for a job if they don't meet all the criteria in the posting, and they might be hesitant to ask a question in class or speak up in a meeting at work because they're afraid of looking stupid if they don't already know the answer. Yeah, that's an interesting one because I recognize bits of myself in that Yeah. You know, I am Mrs Over-prepare. Yeah. I do feel the need to get all the information there before, um, I want to go on air for instance. I've highlighted all sorts of bits in this lovely article actually. and it's very much before I, I write, I want to gather everything, and then sometimes I'll kind of keep it to myself, which drives the other half mad, by the way. I'll say, yeah. Uh, because I want to have that sort of control over it. On the other hand, I'm not afraid to ask questions or speak up at meetings. There are no silly questions. Yep. Because that's something that also comes back on feedback from our courses that, you know, a lot of people say, oh, there are no silly questions. But actually when you open your mouth on course, you get a little bit of a glare or, or shot down. You feel that you are put down. Yep. Or that you're shut down. Yep. And actually by asking questions, that's how we learn, isn't it? Well, it's not a, it's not only how we learn, but actually as the teacher, when somebody asks a question of the teacher, it's how the teacher understands where you are and where you're coming from. Mm-hmm. and can actually help more actively. And it, we do say at the very beginning of every course, there are no stupid questions, but there really aren't. And anybody who asks question shows us what it is that they want to know. And I mean, I think it's brilliant. I know this is slightly of at a tangent, but one of the things that we've found working by Zoom, so working online with our trainings is that people feel that little degree of safety in using the comment box to ask their questions. Yep. As somehow it just buffers them a little bit. And it's really interesting what comes up because nearly always when someone asks the question, and they might even preface it with, uh, is this a stupid question or I feel a bit silly asking this, they will not be the only person in the room, uh, wanting to ask the question. Absolutely. So therefore everybody learns from your questions. Absolutely. Alright, now I'm going on to natural genius because Jeremy, I have identified you as the natural genius syndrome. Yes. Go on, tell us about it. Absolutely right. Okay. I'm gonna say what I wrote. When the natural genius has to struggle or work hard to accomplish something, he or she thinks this means they aren't good enough. They're used to skills coming easily, and when they have to put in effort, their brain tells them that's proof they're an impostor. Yeah. Okay. I come under the natural genius category because I'm very, very good at concepts. If you give me the concept, I can then understand it, break it down, break it apart, show it back to you, teach you all about it. I'm very good on, on understanding the reason behind something. And the difficulty for me is because that is so easy for me, when I don't understand something, it's like it's, it's more than stubing my toe, it's like I've run into a brick wall and I can't cope. Mm., absolutely. Gillyanne has many, many, many examples of that. Jeremy: October the eighth, 2021. This is probably the episode that got the most listens. This is The Breath. Oh, what a surprise. Yeah. Everybody is absolutely obsessed about breathing and singing and we, I mean, the reason why we called it the breath was because It's such a sort of iconic thing, isn't, it's a mythical thing. The breath. The breath. And there are so many ideas around different types of breathing and we just wanted to unpack it, not just thinking about singing, but what breathing is all about and what it means in our lives.

Jeremy:

And also different breathing patterns for different genres. Mm. And by the way, I love the breath like it's this animal that you have to tame and it's not connected with you at all. Of course, it's connected with you. Mm. Have a listen. Let's talk diaphragm. Let's talk diaphragm. Okay. So, um, the diaphragm has a complete mind of its own. It doesn't behave in any way that it should. And, uh, it's a, it's an animal basically. You didn't tell me you were gonna say this. No. Because it's all untrue. No, I've absolutely no idea where you're going with this. Hello and welcome to, this is a Voice, the podcast where we get Vocal about voice. And this is episode three, series three, and we're calling it The Breath. Yes, we're doing a whole podcast on breathing, and the reason we're doing it is that we are three months into the latest run of our accreditation program, and we've been talking about breathing in all its formats, and there have been some amazing questions coming up from the accreditees. And not just the breath itself in a way, that's why we kind of played with the whole idea, cuz there's a sort of holy grail isn't there, where we do it in capital letters. Yep. Um, and all the things that impact on breath flow. They're really important considerations. And those are some of the things we've been talking about, about pressure and flow and other stuff in our accreditation program. So, these are some of the questions that we are hoping to answer today in the podcast. And, uh, hope you have several hours because there's quite a lot of them. Uh, why do we need breath for singing, breathing for phrases versus breathing for life energy. Let's talk diaphragm. How do we breathe in? Abdominal release or rib raising, which is best? How do we control flow? And do we even need to,? Why active and passive SOVT might help build the relationship between pressure and flow so it can happen more intuitively. Why the timing of your in breath is important. MDs pay attention. I'll buy that! Why the pitch you are singing might make a difference and obviously why loudness might make a difference. Why our mantra one size doesn't fit all really does fit all of these questions and as a final token thing, breath as emotion, that's gonna be fun. Hmm.. Okay. Should we start? Yes. Okay. Oh, and by the way, what are we doing? Are we riffing around these subjects or are we doing them in order? What's the plan? Oh, no, we don't. We, do we ever do anything in order? No, we riff. Um, I do want to just say that we record this a few days before it goes out, and today is National Teacher's Day. So hello to all the teachers. Hurrah for me. Yeah, and me. No, you are a Vocal coach. I'm still a teacher. Vocal coaches are still teachers. Okay. Alright. No, I can still do teaching. Uh, so first question, um, to the singing teacher, this will seem very obvious and or the voice trainer. Why do we need breath for singing? I can remember working with, um, one of my singers who's a lovely cabaret. and you know, maybe six months into us training together, we were working in a masterclass and I said, look, you, you know, you need more breath, you need more airflow. And she said to me, yeah, but I've still got air in my body. I've still got air in my lungs. Why do I need to take more in? Boing! Mm-hmm. That was such a realization for me because in fact, what happened was that sometimes. Her sound quality was pressed. She'd get through the phrase, okay. She could sing the notes, but there was that sense of pressure. and for some reason I had not explained that what we need if we're going to keep the Vocal folds rolling because the Vocal folds only vibrate in response to the breath. Vocal folds are clever. They can close. That it's a muscular action that makes them close, but no Vocal fold muscles twitch at what have we got? You know, uh, even, um, 200 times a second. No muscles twitch that fast in the body. So, uh, if we are wanting to sing a, below middle C, which is around about 220 vibrations per second, it's actually happening in response to the breath. So it's the breath that keeps the Vocal folds rolling in vibration. So what we needed to do in that particular situation was to encourage her to breathe earlier. And to really sort of take a slightly larger breath and to feel that flow generating the sound. Um, what was so nice about it, from what I remember is that it really warmed the sound up. And then there's another corollary to that for lots of people who maybe are teaching beginner singers, which is they think they've got to use up all their breath before they take the next one. No you don't. You can let go. You can go back to your residual air level and then you can replenish for the next phrase. Oh, there's so many places we can go with this. Mm-hmm. Um, I just wanna talk about breathing for phrases versus breathing for life energy. And that was my sentence cuz this sort of ties in with the story. It does link with the story really nicely. Um, there's a very interesting one, which is, uh, I think there's a bit of a myth, which is sort of what Gillyanne was saying. You take in a breath and then you use it for your singing. And if you've got a really, really long phrase, you want to eek it out, you want to just feed a tiny little stream, you know, very fine tune your breathing. And then you wonder why things start to get a little bit shaky, cuz you've still got breath left in your body very much as this person was saying. Hmm. And part of the issue is that that breath in your body, first of all, you are using it so that it's coming out and therefore you're not holding it as it were. We'll talk about that later. But the main thing is that the breath in your body, its main function, is to give you life energy. So it's the oxygen exchange the breath in and to create glucose and therefore to feed your muscles while they're working. And if you hold your breath back and you are using it very, very slowly, that doesn't prevent the air from exchanging oxygen, carbon dioxide, uh, glucose, all of that stuff. It doesn't prevent it, it still carries on going. So actually you can still have half a lung full of air and yet need to breathe because your oxygen level's too low. Okay, this next one is my personal favorite. I loved this episode. This is October the 10th, 2022. Consonants, ventriloquism, Darci Lynne, and Creep.

Gillyanne:

Do you know what? I wasn't completely convinced about this topic. You did a great job in the podcast. And then what happened subsequently was The Creep Challenge.

Jeremy:

If you haven't seen The Creep Challenge, it is so worth doing. You discover so much about your voice. Hmm. We're not gonna say more than that. Yeah. Go and have a listen What are we doing today?

Gillyanne:

Well, we're doing something unusual. There's been a lot of talk on our Singing and the Actor Facebook group, about a video of Darci Lynne singing Radiohead's Creep using ventriloquism.

Jeremy:

And for those of you who don't know, Darci Lynne was very, very successful in an American talent show as a young teenage ventriloquist. Extremely good. And she did ventriloquism and singing.

Gillyanne:

So, of course the conversation has been mind absolutely blown. How is she doing it? And also something very interesting, which is about resonance, which we'll come to later.

Jeremy:

Yeah. I mean, the reason that we're interested is in 2016, I wrote the chapter of the book, This Is A Voice, on ventriloquism and mimicry. And in fact, um, the, the chapter that you're seeing in the book at the moment is in fact only half what I wrote, because I wrote two entirely separate chapters, one on ventriloquism and one on mimicry. And because we wanted the book to be a certain length, uh, we put both of those chapters together and cut them both in half. So's many more things that I could tell you about ventriloquism, but not today.

Gillyanne:

And this was one of the chapters, um, those of you who heard one of our earlier podcasts will remember, about Jeremy sort of discussing the contract with the, Wellcome Foundation coming home and saying we're doing the lot. And I went, what? Beatboxing? Ventriloquism? You're off your head!

Jeremy:

No, I've been, I've been dabbling in ventriloquism since I was about eight.

Gillyanne:

And do you think that's because of the kind of material that you've often sung because you've sung a lot of patter songs and you really think about how you form words?

Jeremy:

Um, it was, it was, I think it was the other way around. It was because I got to be moderately good at ventriloquism, moderately good, um, it really helps patter song singing. It really helps strings of words and really fast lyrics where you have to get the sense across. Because in a way, the more you move your articulators, the less fast you can sing. So the more accurate the movements that you can get really small, the quicker you can sing. It's great. It's a really brilliant byproduct. Anyway.

Gillyanne:

So where can they find these exercises in the book?

Jeremy:

Is we are gonna start with, um. The whole chapter starts on page 92, Ventriloquism and Mimicry. And in fact, What we're gonna do is to play a little excerpt from Darci Lynne's video. She's sitting in the car, she's singing Creep by Radiohead, and she's trying it out because people don't believe that she can sing without moving her lips. So she sings it once with mouth movements and then she sings it again with no mouth movements.

Gillyanne:

And then she mixes and matches at the end.

Jeremy:

And then she mixes and matches

Gillyanne:

very impressive

Jeremy:

by the syllable, which is really good. And people on the Facebook group were saying, well, what's she doing? What's she doing? And I'm thinking, well, she's doing actually exercises 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36. That, I mean, she's doing pretty much everything that's in the book and it's so, well, frankly, it's so gratifying to see somebody at that level, with that skill, doing exactly what I'm talking about in the book.

Gillyanne:

So we're using it as an exemplar of how to put it into practice. And I'm gonna challenge Jeremy to try one or two phrases.

Jeremy:

It's gonna be really interesting. This is one of the, the few episodes that we say it's really good to watch it on YouTube, because you will be able to see whether my lips move or not. Mm-hmm um, we're just gonna play a little bit of Darci's singing. When she's singing the, the opening lines of Creep without moving her lips, just so that we have something to, to go with.

Gillyanne:

And this is a car video. So you're going to hear background noise. Yes. It's not us.

Jeremy:

And obviously we'll drop the link to the video, into the show notes so you can see it yourself.

Darci:

When you were here before, couldn't look you in the eyes. You're just like an angel, your skin makes me cry.

Jeremy:

That'll do nicely.

Gillyanne:

So Jeremy, the first thing I want to ask you is which mouth position is Darci using?

Jeremy:

Okay, this is exercise 31 and it's almost the most important thing to start with as a ventriloquist is, you're not allowed to move your lips. You can't be seen to move your lips. But you can put your mouth into three separate shapes. And basically the first one is very neutral, not open very much, but very relaxed. The second one is the same thing, but smiling lips. And the third one is called the shock view. Which is when you are horrified by what your puppet has just said. And so the mouth is, the jaw's more open the mouth's a bit more open. Um, and the thing that I do say in the exercise is if you're gonna do the shock view, which is. Then you can't do it face onto the audience because the audience, because your jaw is more open, the audience will see your tongue movements. So the shock look, watch this in the ventriloquists that you watch on television, the shock look tends to be done to the side, to, to your puppet so that the, the audience never sees a face-on shock movement. So, so she's doing relaxed.

Gillyanne:

She's doing relaxed. Yes. It's a sort of, for me, it's like, if I'm I'm looking at myself doing it.

Jeremy:

It's almost the gormless look, but it's a very, it's quite a narrow gormless look, it's just this sort of, uh,

Gillyanne:

it's thinking face with my mouth open

Jeremy:

thinking face with your mouth open.

Gillyanne:

Is how I'd describe it.

Jeremy:

I like it. Yes. Yeah. Um, so the lyrics are when you were here before couldn't look you in the eye, you're just like an angel. Your skin makes me cry. And just listening to her, there are a couple of places where she makes a face and I can tell you exactly why she makes the face because she has Bs and Ms. Um, and I think that's in that's it.

Gillyanne:

Which are bilabial.

Jeremy:

Well, the M is both of them are bilabial so you use both lips and your lips are supposed to close, and that's how you create the consonant.

Gillyanne:

Mm-hmm.

Jeremy:

Now obviously as a ventriloquist, you can't close your lips, so you have to replace it with a completely different consonant. And in fact, with, uh, before. There is a bilabial, which is the B stopped voiced consonant. And then there's an F, which is an unvoiced labiodental. So you've got bottom lip, top teeth. And again, you can't do that because in order to do it, you would have to move your lip up to your teeth or your teeth down to your lip and we, the audience, would see it. So you have to replace the Bs, the Fs, and the Ms with different consonants. Yeah, essentially, you have to fake it. So we're gonna tell you what it is that you do. Um, okay.

Gillyanne:

Are you up for having a go and then I'll ask you what you did.

Jeremy:

Sure.

Gillyanne:

And I think that might be quite interesting for the listeners. Lemme, remember viewing this is gonna be the best experience.

Jeremy:

Let me sing it without, uh, without doing the ventriloquism lip thing. Uh, and then with. When you were here before. couldn't look you in the eye, you're just like an angel. Your skin makes me cry. Okay. So that was without, I'm not moving that much, but you can see the movements. Mm-hmm right. When you were here before. Oh, Couldn't look you in the eye. You're just like an angel. Your skin makes me cry. I was trying actually, actually, weirdly I was trying to move my head just to demonstrate that I hadn't actually frozen the video.

Gillyanne:

I was very impressed,

Jeremy:

So we're almost up to date. This is now November 21st. Uh, 2022. And this was Change your pitch, change your Meaning. And this is another exercise from This is a voice.

Gillyanne:

I so wanted this one because there's a little section in it where the way Jeremy changes his pitch. It sounds like a dalek

Jeremy:

yay. That was good fun to do.

Gillyanne:

This came from a very cool piece of research, which we can mention.

Jeremy:

We can, This comes from UCL, and it was part of their phonetics course and we had permission to use it, and we had permission to actually show the diagram, uh, and use the, this particular exercise on the webinar. And that was quite a few years ago now it's all nine years ago, I think we've been using this. Lovely piece of work. And what do you see? I mean, what we'll do is we'll make this particular little video in the Learning Lounge free, so I will put the free preview link in. So you can just click on the link if you are watching in YouTube or if you're listening on Buzzsprout, or if you're listening on any of the podcast platforms, there'll be a link for you to go and actually see what we're talking about.

Gillyanne:

Yeah, and I think what's nice about this is that, you know, we've been talking about how it's hard for people to process melody in speaking voice, particularly if they don't come from a music background. They don't have that awareness. Because you've got visuals here it's super helpful.

Jeremy:

Now you don't have to read music to be able to see this, but I'm gonna describe what we are seeing on the screen. Uh, there is a top line. There's a middle line, and you have, and then the words are written underneath and you have little dots. Some of them have tails, some of them don't.

Gillyanne:

Like little tadpoles.

Jeremy:

And what you're looking at is where that dot is positioned between the two lines. So if it's closer to the top line, it's going to be a higher pitch. And if it's closer to the bottom line, it's going to be a lower pitch. And the tails tell you whether the, if there's no tail there, then the, the word just stays on that pitch. Mm-hmm. But if there's a tail going downwards, then the pitch slides down during the word and likewise going up.

Gillyanne:

And just for people who aren't used to the word pitch, note. Yeah. Where the note is.

Jeremy:

If I spoke to you all on the same pitch, it's gonna sound like. If I start to move the pitch up and down a bit, if I, well, that's going up and then that's going down. So now I can do that contour and it's almost like I'm around a middle line, but I'm going higher and then I'm going lower, and then I'm going back to the middle line. So, um, what is so lovely about this is it's, the sentence is, No, no, you fool, no you silly fool. That's the sentence. And they're taking each of those syllables and put them on a dot on this chart. So the first one is called the high fall. You start high and you come down and it goes like this. No, no, you fool. No, you silly fool. Now I am following exactly the contour that's, that's pictured. But it has a particular emotion or it has a particular story that you hear.

Gillyanne:

Mm mm So you assign meaning to it.

Jeremy:

Yeah. Do you wanna try it?

Gillyanne:

No, No, you fool. No, you silly fool.

Jeremy:

Absolutely. And Gillyanne is doing exactly the same pitch contour that I'm doing because she has a different voice and a different personality. It has a slightly different meaning.

Gillyanne:

And that says to me, Danger. Yes. Yeah. For God's sake, don't do it.

Jeremy:

So that's called the high fall.

Gillyanne:

Okay.

Jeremy:

Now we do the low fall. Most of the words are in exactly the same place. They're close to the bottom. But the ones that we started high and fell, they are now not close to the top line. They're right in the middle. So the fall will, the general pitch will be lower for them, and the fall will be smaller. So it goes like this. No, no, you fool. No, you silly fool.

Gillyanne:

Well, now the musician in me just wants to copy his pitch. No, you fool. No, you silly fool.

Jeremy:

Great. What's so good about this is that because it's not written as music, it's not written as rhythm. So Gillyanne and I can do different rhythms on this, but we have the same shape.

Gillyanne:

Can I do the next one first? Yes. Otherwise, I'm just gonna copy your pitch again.

Jeremy:

Yes. Now the next one we, This is called the low Rise. So the first note of each phrase, No, no, and no. Starts very close to the bottom line. Uh, there's this little tail up. So there's a bit of a slide, but then they climb slightly.

Gillyanne:

Yes. Okay. No, no you fool. No, you silly fool.

Jeremy:

Very good. So each phrase climbs. No, you fool. No, you silly fool. Again, exactly the same wording. I'm doing pretty much the same rhythm, but it has a completely different meaning.

Gillyanne:

Jeremy, can you do that again because I'm not hearing the L in fool?

Jeremy:

Nope. Right. No, no, you fool. No, you silly fool. Actually really interesting cuz an L is a pitched consonant so you can pitch on it. Mm. It's a voiced consonant. And then my, my, the last one is my favorite. This is called the high rise. So all...

Gillyanne:

Sounds like a pair of trousers.

Jeremy:

Yeah, I wear them. Hate lowrise trousers. Um, uh, just call me Simon Cowell. Uh, okay. So all of the notes now are further up between the two lines. So the final note of each phrase is almost touching the top line, but that all the, the words in general are higher up. Okay. Gillyanne, you do it first.

Gillyanne:

No. No you fool. No you silly fool.

Jeremy:

Very good. The reason I love this is because

Gillyanne:

body conducting.

Jeremy:

I love this because this, as far as I'm concerned, is a science fiction program that you may have seen on television.

Gillyanne:

Mm-hmm.

Jeremy:

No. No you fool. No you silly fool. That to me sounds just like a dalek.

Gillyanne:

He was channelling his inner dalek.

Jeremy:

Absolutely love that. So it's very interesting to, I mean, this is, this is exactly the same sentence said with high fall, low fall, low rise and high rise. I'm just gonna do them all in a row so that you can hear the difference in meaning. I'm gonna do the same rhythm, I'm going to attempt to the same volume, although that's tricky. Mm. I'm gonna talk about volume in a minute. And I'm gonna do the same speed, but I want you to notice how different the meanings are. Okay? Go on then. No. No you fool. No you silly fool. No. No you fool. No you silly fool. No. No you fool. No you silly fool. No. No you fool. No you silly fool. So fascinating. It's like playing four entirely different characters.

Gillyanne:

That's a wrap.

Jeremy:

Yeah. I hope you've enjoyed all of the things that we've given you. All those lovely little treats wrapped up, we're now ready for Christmas. That was, by the way, the last episode in season six. We will see you in January with season seven.

Gillyanne:

Have a great holiday season, everybody, and thank you for listening.

Jeremy:

See you next time.

Gillyanne:

Bye.

Jeremy:

Bye. This is a voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.