Speech and music overlap in our brains, with similarities in rhythm, melody, and structure.
The music of our speech enhances the impact of our words and creates emotional connections.
Deep dives
The Musical Nature of Speech
Everyday speech is like a musical performance, with its own rhythm, timbre, and tonality. Our voice is an instrument that communicates underlying meaning even without conscious thought. Podcast hosts, like Insultsman from The Illusionist and Martin Saltz-Ostwick from Song by Song, prioritize conveying emotion and mood through their speech. Each voice is unique, with its own characteristics. For example, Phoebe Judge's voice is likened to a low woodwind instrument, while Roman Mars' voice is compared to a John Cop and Moog. Speech and music overlap in our brains, with similarities in rhythm, melody, and structure. Even without the original speech file, a piano can recreate the energy shape of speech sounds. Our brains blur the line between music and speech, as demonstrated by the speech to song illusion. Certain phrases, when looped, start to sound like they are being sung. Our ability to variate rhythm and tonality in speech adds depth and meaning to communication.
The Power of Voice in Communication
The music of our speech enhances the impact of our words and creates emotional connections. Elevating communication to a more natural level, our voice carries nuance, emotions, intentions, and moods that text or email often fail to convey. Certain sequences of words can transform when looped, sounding sung rather than spoken. Happy voices are fast with pitch variability, while sad voices are slow and quiet with less pitch variation. Our brains are finely attuned to the sounds of each other's voices, providing rich signals about emotions, intentions, and thoughts. When we rely solely on written messages, we miss out on this crucial aspect of human connection.
The Art of Performance
Speech and music overlap in performances beyond podcasts, including in politics, acting, and comedy. The rhythm and timing in famous TV and movie scenes, like those drummed and synchronized by David Dockery on YouTube, highlight the talent of actors and the power of rhythm in expressing emotions. Even when reading off a script, hosts add cadences and scoring to bring their spoken words to life. Our unconscious gray area between speech and music reveals itself in these performances, where variations in rhythm reflect heightened emotions. Speech has its own characteristic patterns of syllables, accents, and pitch, and the way we choose to sing our words holds great power in enhancing communication and connecting with others.
The way you speak has rhythm, timbre, and pitch. It’s more like music than you might think. We chat with The Allusionist host Helen Zaltzman, Martin Zaltz Austwick from Song by Song, Music Psychologist Dr. Ani Patel of Tufts University, and Drum Composer David Dockery on how musical our speech really is.
