About the Voice and other Thoughts

0:06 Thunder's Mouth Theatre presents... Hello, it's Floyd Kennedy here, writer, creator producer of "Am I Old Yet?" Podcast. We're on hiatus. I think I told you that already. Doesn't mean I'm not doing stuff. I'm out for a walk this morning. It's an absolutely glorious spring day. Late spring, I guess, because it is May. You hear the seagulls? We get a lot of them in here in Liverpool, which is where I live. And I just thought I'd share a few thoughts with you.

0:50 If I sound a little bit strained, it's because I'm a bit stiff and sore. My hips are playing up, and all sorts of things that happen to you once you've turned 80. Yes, I passed the big 80 in back in March. Now, Helen is younger than me. She doesn't have her 80th birthday until June, and I am planning a bonus episode where the family will get together to help her to celebrate. So far, Helen has been blessed with slightly better health than me, but I'm hoping this is a temporary thing.

1:37 That's why I decided to get up and walk, see if I can walk some of this stiffness off. Now, I did say that I'm working on a new podcast. I've almost, well, I've written seven episodes and I want to wrap it up in episode number eight. But it's a fact that we're all living very, very busy lives. And the actors—it's fully cast! Everyone is very excited to start working on it, but they're also really busy, the actors who have been volunteering their services to make these stories for you, which is why I have to do the call out.

2:22 So if you have any pennies to spare, throw them in the bucket over at patreon.com or buymeacoffee.com. And that will all help to recompense the actors for, for their time and effort and their fabulous talents. No reason why they shouldn't get paid for what they do. Now. What else was I going to tell you? Oh, yeah, you know, it seems like a lifetime ago, but it was actually only ten years ago that I finally handed down my PhD dissertation thesis and was awarded my doctorate.

3:14 It was finally accepted in May, June of 2014, and I got to walk up and pick up my scroll from the vice, what do they call them? Vice Chancellor of the University of Queensland, proclaiming that I could put DR. before my name, as if that meant anything. Now, you know, when you—I don't know if you're aware of this, but when you do some reasonably major research, such as a PhD, there is an expectation that you may get a book out of it.

3:56 And I certainly had that expectation when I started. That was why I started, because I was so passionate about the human voice and the way we use our voice when we're performing to bring pleasure and engagement and interest and challenge to the people who hear our voices. And the voice wasn't getting much respect, in my opinion, back in those days. There's a lot more talk about it these days, especially with all this talk about AI. So to cut to the chase. I was chatting to some other people involved in podcasting the other night, and we got talking about AI and how the AI voice is a challenge to our livelihoods as—first as voice actors.

4:56 And I chimed in with my personal opinion that it's a challenge not only to us people who gift our voices to the storytelling process, but it's going to be a challenge to the listeners who, if they buy into the AI, if they think, oh, it's good enough, it doesn't really sound like a real human being, but it's good enough. They will dull their capacity down to be able to hear truth in a voice. And I care about the transmission of truth in a voice. Authenticity, if you like, mean what you say, say what you mean in the moment that you're saying it, that's what good acting is about.

5:45 And I don't care how good the AI is or can be, it cannot replicate what happens to the sound waves of a voice when it's coming from a living, breathing human being. Because not a lot of people know this, but everything that's going on in that human body at every given second affects how that voice will sound. And you cannot replicate that with AI, and I don't think you ever will.

6:30 More to the point, why bother when you've got human beings reproducing themselves at vast rates all across the planet? Why do we need to replicate them in a mechanical form and replace one of the greatest gifts that we have to give to each other, which is the genuine sound of our voices saying what we mean and meaning what we say? Anyway, did I say something about long story short? I should say, stop doing that. I can't tell a short story.

7:11 So upshot of my involvement in that discussion the other night about AI voices, I shared a little bit of my passion for the contribution that the human voice is capable of making. And they said, have you written a book? I said, well, I've written a 80,000 word dissertation, was supposed to turn it into a book, but it was too hard. The whole business of finding a publisher. It's just as hard as getting people to contribute financially towards the production of a podcast, as finding a publisher.

8:00 However, they did get me back to thinking about it and getting excited about it. So I am going to drag out the PDF of my dissertation and give it a jolly good shakedown and have a look at it and see if I can maybe adapt it into something, not so much for an academic audience, but for general consumption and try to do that thing. That was my goal when I decided and agreed to do a PhD, which was to raise the profile of the human voice in our awareness, give it a little bit of respect, share with people who are not aware.

8:51 Because let's face it, if we're lucky enough to be born with a physical sounding voice,(not everybody is) but those of us who are, we just, you know, it sort of comes with the territory of being alive as far as we're aware. And we grow up, we learn how to speak without knowing that we're learning how to speak. We just do it, and we don't think about our voices until something goes wrong with them. And then we think, oh, that's interesting. So, yes, I'm not going to whitter on any longer. This is just... Well, I'm halfway around the park, and this chatting to you as I walk actually took my mind off the pain in my hips.

9:41 I should do this more often. And yeah. Have I got anything else to report back? I don't think. No, not at this time. I shall stop whittering. And it's not that I'm ungrateful to the invention of AI, because AI is, as I speak, transcribing my speech into text, which I will go home, upload, download and edit very thoroughly, because it doesn't transcribe all that accurately, especially if there's birds and traffic. Can you hear that? It's a crow.

10:24 I wish I knew what particular bird sounds were like. Is that a crow or a baby? And that lovely tweeting sound. Tweet, tweet. (High pitched then). Is it a blackbird? I don't know. I don't hear them all that often because my little house in the middle of Liverpool, I only get pigeons. They chase everything else away. Occasionally I'll see a magpie, maybe even a blackbird, sitting on a tree or a fence nearby.

11:09 But they won't come down to my bird feeders because the pigeons are a bit thuggish. Funnily enough, the seagulls never come down to the bird feeders. They fly around above all the time. Can you hear that? I hope it comes through. Bird sound on a Sunday morning. It's always like, oh, doves! Yeah.

11:50 Isn't the human voice a marvelous thing? Do you know what musical instrument a lot of people think is the closest to the human voice? It's the cello. Oh, what was that? Something else. Yeah. Have a listen to some cello music sometime. See what you think. So expressive, capable of a huge range. A variety of sounds as well. And it's. It's a built thing, obviously made from wood, which resonates in the shape—two curves attached to each other so that you get multiple resonances.

12:43 And a bow on unfretted fretboard so that the changing length of the bow, just like the changing length of the vocal folds, is made to change its pitch by the action of the human fingers. And those human fingers will have an effect on those strings. That's not the same as if there was some mechanical arm coming down and pressing on those strings. The sheer fact that those human fingers holding the instrument against the human body is going to affect the actual physical acoustics of the sound coming from the instrument.

13:40 Bear that in mind the next time you hear talk about AI. And, you know, somebody said the other night, but these deep fakes, people can't tell that it's not the voice of the original person. Most people probably won't. I suspect I would, because my ears became attuned, as I say, to that authenticity. I've always been pretty good at telling when people are lying. A good liar, like a good actor, actually means what they say in the moment that they're saying it. It is the truth for that speaker in that moment.

14:32 And that's the only way they don't sound as if they're lying. Because if they are lying and they know they're telling an untruth that will seep into it, will affect the quality, the vocal quality of the voice. Okay, I'm banging on now, but I'm nearly home, so I'll let you go. And I've got a couple of podcasts to recommend to you to have a listen to. .By the way, these are fellow members of the AIRmedia AMPLIFY New Voices programme that I was on recently. Fabulous programme.

15:17 If you're interested in podcasting yourself, check it out. They're open for applications for the next workshop programme. Traffic's getting a bit busy. I'll wait till I get home, and then I'll tell you about them. Okay, I'm home now, and rather than me banging on about other people's podcasts. I'll let them speak for themselves. I'll just include one first. This is an absolutely beautiful piece of work from Debra Jarvis. It's called "The Final Say". It's the podcast where you can get comfortable talking about death and learn some things about life from people who are facing death.

16:04 I find it enthralling and enlightening. Here's Debra to tell you all about it. What's your biggest fear? Snakes? Spiders? Maybe it's talking to friends and family members about death. I mean, uh, well, fear no more. I'm Debra Jarvis, the host of "The Final Say", conversations with people facing death. This is the podcast where you can get comfortable talking about death and learn some things about life from people who are facing death. So join us wherever you get your podcasts or on the website, thefinalsafepodcast.com dot. There will be no snakes or spiders.

16:50 And that's it from me for now. Thanks for listening. Stay safe.