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The brain is adept at
recognizing voices and interpreting countless subtle levels of expression,
as it is oriented toward recognition of human faces. Everyday we
detect the state and mood of a person by noting differences in their
voice. The sensitive listener hears the way in which things are
said and understands deeper meanings in the fluctuations of the
voice. For acoustic communication, the significance of the voice
is that it is a means of communication of the whole person. A person’s
voice reflects their concept of self and their relationships to
others, including the environment. The communication of emotion
is clearly a powerful role for sound making, and an excellent example
of the mediating role of sound between the person and environment.
The earliest stages of sound making in which the self is communicating
to and about itself evolve with mental development and become the
vehicle for thought processes in terms of inner speech. Its later
use as a rehearsal for speech and inner thought transmute the role
of sound making as a “testing out” of the external environment,
and the relation of self to it, to the testing out of the inner
environment. If words can be internalized as “inner sounds”,
then so can other sounds. We also have the ability to think in music.
You can ‘recite’ a song in your head without using a
verbal language.
When a musician or composer is verbally silent and acoustically
expressive, they can be described as manifesting externalized thought
in real time, as in self-expression.
Here is a study on manipulating the timbre and tone of the natural
voice, ƒ
He Destroyed Her Image, by Charles Dodge 1972.
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