At the last Farnham Speakers meeting, I was privileged to be able to evaluate a wonderful and emotional speech. The topic was the speaker’s experience at assisting at a home birth and the thrills and concerns that came with it.
I was asked by the speaker to pay particularly attention to Vocal Variety as she had been ‘pulled up’ on this a few times before. It was not the goal of the speech but it is good to be considering the whole package.
The speech was an excellently presented story of the occasion. It made me realise just how much vocal variety is key to the delivery of emotion. This was a very personal story, after all, and there was no doubt as to any of the sincerity. It was very clear just how much the occasion meant to her.
Vocal Variety allows the ‘highs and lows’ of an occasion to contrast with each other, which in turn will make the impact of any emotion so much stronger. As mentioned, the sincerity was very clear. However, what would have made the speech even stronger would have been more vibrant vocal variety with the descriptions of the more ‘manic’ parts of the birth: Suddenly everything starts to happen and there is scope for panic despite any preceding calmness. Reflecting this in the voice is very powerful.
The strong emotional feeling of a baby being delivered safely would contrast so very well against dramatic use of vocal variety in the preceding moments… the ‘Is everything going to be okay?’ effect.
Such contrasting is a classic story-telling technique. Think of all those ‘rags to riches’ stories! “Look at me, I’m confident and strong up here on the stage…. but…. it never used to be this way…”.
How have you used Vocal Variety or other techniques recently to really increase the level of emotional involvement that you have with an audience?