Tag: voice

Is Elizabeth Warren’s voice the problem?

Perhaps the root cause of Warren’s disappointing showing in both Iowa and New Hampshire and her seeming inability to climb out from under the shadows of male candidates have nothing to do with her policies. Perhaps her poor showing has more to do with unconscious triggers embedded in the human genome.

Consider her voice, high pitched and often squeaky, with hoarse breaks as she tries to increase her volume for emphasis. I sometimes cringe when this happens. My reaction to her delivery often drowns out whatever she is trying to say. Am I alone?

“We understand that we find certain voices more soothing or grounded. And these tend to be deeper voices,” says Brian Lee, a voice communication expert who founded Be The Voice Academy. “High-pitched voices, on the other hand, can be unpleasant or cause anxiety.”

“These sentiments are echoed by Carina Tien, who founded The Voice Room in 2003. She shares that CEOs who are speaking on stage, for instance, tend to tone down their voices in order to be perceived as assertive or authoritative.

“In contrast, high voices tend to communicate high energy, and as such, ‘Don’t give people a serious impression.’”

The article I’m quoting, “The Science of Hating Someone for their Voice,” goes on to provide scientific data measuring various voice pitches against the listener’s reaction. No wonder people who are serious about making their points effectively often end up working with a voice coach.[1]

I don’t hate Warren. I think she’s got great ideas. Her fans appreciate the minutia of her policy plans although many others don’t dig that deep. But she might benefit from a voice coach – assuming it’s not already too late. Her poor showing in Iowa and New Hampshire will be difficult to overcome.

Another trademark characteristic of Elizabeth Warren’s public appearances is her wildly waving arms. She does this to demonstrate and generate excitement. But that’s likely not the effect on most observers.

“Wildly waving arms” is a distraction, according to a pastor’s advice to other pastors. Along with pacing and “sprinkler-like torso turns,” such movements are “not ways to emphasize the point.” Creating stillness, the advice continues, “allows listeners to feel the sermon without being distracted by unnecessary gestures.”[2]

In real life, humans instinctively see such gestures as a signal that someone is desperate for rescue from drowning or trying to regain balance as they teeter on the edge of a cliff – not the message Warren means to send. Rapid arm movement suggests frenzy or some form of emergency, none of which is helpful to conveying Warren’s intelligent message.

Women have a hard enough time breaking into the traditionally male enclave of politics. With two strikes already against her because of her gender, Warren has managed to gain public office by meeting and greeting people on a personal basis where waving arms and high squeaky rants aren’t involved. But that doesn’t work in big rallies and the types of appearances required in a presidential campaign.

Shrill voices trigger an innate reaction reminiscent to many of an angry mom or wife who rants while pointing her finger – emotional, volatile, bossy and nagging. This image doesn’t serve her well.

As for women in general, take the disparagement of Hillary Clinton who had the serious demeanor and determined strength people prize among men. Her voice wasn’t particularly high and she didn’t wave her arms. But among women, whose gender norms involve a comforting, maternal presence, Hillary’s strength and determination framed her as a cold unnatural bitch. That made her the perfect candidate upon which to hang the Republican’s most effective hot button: abortion, the “unnatural” female act.

Those who know Hillary personally say nothing could be further from the truth, but that’s worth nothing when you’re trying to persuade millions of people to care about you.

Not that men don’t have appearance and behavioral issues that turn off voters. Bernie’s entrenched presentation method involves an angry frown accompanied by arm waving as if he’s conducting a Tchaikovsky symphony. These elements of his body language are distracting. After watching him on multiple occasions, one interprets the underlying message, that he’s stuck in a habit and rigid in his beliefs in the same way that he can’t stop with the arms or frown.

Which is, ironically, one of the characteristics many of his fans prize the most. He’s been preaching the same leftist ideas for over fifty years. To many, that makes him authentic. To many others, it means that he is not well suited to a job that requires thinking on his feet to deal with unexpected developments.

It’s worth noting that Buttigieg doesn’t frown, doesn’t wave his arms, and smiles a lot when speaking intelligently and calmly about his position on the issues. This alone could help explain Buttigieg’s stunning rise in the candidate ranks.

Few people listening to these speakers investigate their gut reactions to analyze whether it’s a squeaky voice, waving arms, or smiles that make them like or dislike a particular political hopeful.

Psychologists who study body language more or less agree that less than 10% of what someone says is communicated through words alone. “The numbers represent the percentages of importance that varying communication channels have. The belief is that 55% of communication is body language, 38% is the tone of voice, and 7% is the actual words spoken.”[3] Researchers rush to point out that circumstances can significantly influence the exact formula.

Researchers have also noted that for politicians in particular, nonverbal behavior is a major contributing factor to the audience’s lasting impression. “According to University of Pittsburgh Political Communications Professor Jerry Shuster, body language, mannerisms and facial expressions are 85 percent of what an audience takes away.”[4]

Again, these reactions are for the most part not recognized consciously by people in the audience. We walk away from a speech or flip the TV channel because we don’t like someone. Or we dismiss what a candidate is saying because they annoy us. Often, we can’t get past the body language/voice issue to really hear what they’re saying about their plans and aspirations for the office, should they be elected.

We’re not as intellectual about such things as we might think. As noted in a Wikipedia article about body language, “…if a person is feeling confident, then their breathing pattern will deepen, their intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) will increase, and their tone of voice will sound fuller and stronger. If they are feeling anxious, their breathing will become too shallow, their IAP will decrease, and their voice will sound thinner and weaker.” We want strong confident leaders, so our subconscious takeaway on voice matters.

Anyone who plays poker can verify that body language often makes or breaks a player’s game, and the same is true for politicians. Once you begin analyzing what you’re actually thinking as you watch and hear candidates or politicians speak, you’ll come to understand the power of this primal type of analysis.

Warren would be well served to lower her voice, speak from her diaphragm rather than her throat, and stop waving her arms. One of the advantages of Klobuchar is her low voice and resolute stance. No arm waving.

Sanders would benefit from a lot more smiling and positive slant in his speeches and for heaven’s sake, no more conducting. It’s doubtful he’s capable of this change, which again speaks to the overall impression of his ability to serve well as president.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by CRISTOBAL HERRERA/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock (10554400c)

Buttigieg may have already figured all this out. If you watch him, his easy-going presence immediately puts his audience into a calm and pleasant state of mind. We’re eager for calm and pleasant after the current president’s erratic, angry behavior.

Warren’s complex policy plans may put off many voters who don’t have the time or interest to wade through the details, although Warren seems to believe that the minutia of her proposals are key to her winning. Wrong. It’s bad enough to carry the ‘female’ baggage when running for president—too emotional, easily hysterical.

Men don’t escape from problems when violating gender norms. Buttigieg especially, as a gay man, has to avoid seeming weak. His military service helps him in this regard as does his athletic appearance, ever-present after-five shadow, and confident manner even when confronted with criticism.

Chances are that someone has mentioned these body language issues to both Sanders and Warren. It’s easy to imagine that their reaction was to cling fiercely to how they are naturally without any makeover. They’re both proud of their authenticity and may see such modifications as falsification. But just as people dress appropriately and manage a groomed hairstyle in order to create a better public image, so must they pay attention to body language and voice in order to more effectively communicate their potential.


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[1] https://www.ricemedia.co/the-science-behind-hating-someone-for-their-voice/

[2] http://wesleyansermons.com/page/8/

[3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beyond-words/201109/is-nonverbal-communication-numbers-game

[4] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/political-body-language_b_3163499

A Day Without Music

One day. That’s all I ask. One day for us to recognize how much we’ve come to depend on and simultaneously disregard music. And to think about life without it.

One day without music in the doctor’s waiting room, the supermarket, the car repair shop. One day in silence while driving, while eating lunch at our favorite café, while having our hair cut. One day to live without a buffer against other people’s conversations, without music’s unique ability to suspend us in our own cocoon while noises of our increasingly crowded world batter us on all sides.

Think about television shows and movies without music to hype the suspense, give us auditory clues about what might happen next and what to feel about the images we see.

Like the old saying that familiarity breeds contempt, music has become so pervasive that we don’t even notice it anymore. Don’t notice, rarely appreciate, and generally don’t support in all the ways that are necessary for it to continue to be a viable art form.

Observers in the business world have warned us. Forbes published an article last year discussing how the music industry is putting itself out of business. Another commentary appears in a short documentary “that reveals the dramatic collapse of the music industry and the unintended consequences the internet revolution is having on creators of all kinds.” The warnings are out there.

Musicians don’t just pick up a guitar or sit down at a piano and magically start producing music. As any parent determined for his/her children to learn piano can attest, years of hard work precede the success of most musicians—learning the names of the lines and spaces, the rhythm designated in key signatures and variously shaped notes, the harmonic requirements in melody and supporting cast of chords in certain sequence.

Aside from the basics of learning to read music, there’s the even more challenging work of learning to express music through voice or an instrument. Applying all ten fingers in opposing motion to a keyboard with 88 keys. The difficulty of reeds and mouthpieces. The fingering of certain saxophone keys to produce an “A” versus an “F”. Mastering intonation—is it sharp or is it flat? Singing for hours a day without destroying our vocal cords. Keeping a steady rhythm, something we depend on drummers to do with both hands and both feet at work.

Do we appreciate musicians? We think we do. We watch the Grammy’s. We listen to the results of their long labor. We might spend a few bucks for a CD, but more often we’re eager to download music for free. We might spend a few dollars for concert tickets, but really, how often do we attend concerts?

Not so long ago, we might have routinely paid a modest sum to enter a club offering live music. Once inside the venerable establishment, we would have kicked back, welcomed a few friends around the table, and eagerly awaited that first slam of the snare, the reverberation of a guitar. Music would flood the room, its driving rhythms and wild harmonics hitting us in the gut and transporting us to a place outside of time.

Now clubs mostly don’t pay bands to play. They say patrons don’t want to bother with a cover charge, don’t expect to hang around for long. Patrons are about their phones, texts from friends who want to meet somewhere else. They’re not invested in a band or a place. Anyway, they can get music free whenever they want.

Where do they expect that music to come from? Bands don’t form out of thin air and suddenly play a big hit. Bands need instruments and they’re not cheap. Bands need places to practice which usually involves paying rent for rehearsal space. Bands need venues where they can offer their performance, feel the audience’s response, and go back to the practice room with a better idea of how to do better. Any climb up the charts is a path of trial and error—better bass lines, a more unique guitar riff, more compelling lyrics. Even touring to build audience rarely pays for itself. Hauling a trailer full of gear and finding a place to sleep for two or three months on the road is a towering success if it breaks even.

These are musicians at work, learning how to express an intangible idea, a heartfelt emotion, how to draw audiences into a new vision. They are participating in an art form older than history, universal among all races and cultures, key to exploring the mysteries of creation.

My concern is not just about popular music. Much of what we hear in movie soundtracks and even in television commercials is ‘serious’ music. Like, violins and trombones and percussion. Symphonies are slowly disappearing from our communities. College music departments continue to shrink. If we just removed ‘serious’ musicians from our daily diet of music, big gaps would open up in our need for constant sound.

Do we need constant sound? What is so terrible about pushing a grocery cart down a store aisle without music in the background? Would it wreck our day if we jogged without earbuds? If we drove to work in silence?

Is it fear of overhearing other people talking? Is it really that we need to be constantly entertained in ways we only dimly acknowledge, if at all?

Is it the need to stamp out the ongoing dialogue with our inner self, to block our feelings, to ignore the warnings and expressions of our subconscious?

How did we migrate from worshipful attention to musical performance  to this ho-hum disregard?

Why do we need music?

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” ― Plato

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.” ― Albert Einstein

“Music is the shorthand of emotion.” ― Leo Tolstoy

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.” ― Maya Angelou

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” ― Aldous Huxley

“Where words fail, music speaks.” ― Hans Christian Andersen

“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.” ― Arthur O’Shaughnessy

“Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.” ― Confucius

If you ask someone what music does for them or why they like music, no doubt you’d hear responses like some of these cited above. Yet how does that appreciation manifest today? Audiences talk through performances. Amplified music aids and abets this disregard by blasting out sound louder than the crowd murmurs. The routine background music in elevators, stores, cars, and every other possible venue leads us to assume that we’ll always have a soundtrack for our lives.

We take music for granted. We pay little attention to the very real struggle of musicians. We expect to flip a knob or press a key and have instant, free music. We have no idea how our lives would be different if we didn’t have music.

So let’s turn it off. One day without music. Let the silence echo through.

Then let’s pay attention to what we need to do to ensure that music regains its respected and vital role in our society.  Let’s have more silence instead of constant soundtracks so that when music appears, we pay attention. Let’s make sure our children learn music in school even if we have to sacrifice part of the athletic budget. Let’s patronize clubs that host fledgling bands and welcome the opportunity to pay a modest cover charge. Let’s attend local band and symphony concerts and donate to their organizations. Let’s be willing to pay more for our Pandora or other streaming services and discourage our family and friends from free downloads.

Otherwise, we might wake up one day and find there’s no music to be heard.