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A Few Words From Al G. Bell

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I know we’re all delighted to finally hear the voice of Alexander Graham Bell speaking into one of his experimental recording devices back in 1885. New modern technology has unlocked the secret of playback from old modern technology – a wonder that’s bound to be repeated 500 years from now when some determined tinkerer manages to liberate the contents of a bafflingly mysterious ABBA cassette.

Listen as Bell makes his declaration and you will notice one thing right away. People used to be a lot more comfortable about relishing the spaces between words.

I can only guess what was going through Bell’s mind when he made the above recording. He knew (or hoped) he was speaking to the ages. I would have frozen in the same way I do when I’m asked to come up with a password for a device or a website. What are the right words? Especially if they’re going to be remembered! He did OK with “Hear my voice. Alexander Graham Bell”, although really, that’s a deer-in-the-headlights response.

It would have been cooler had he said:

“Hello people of the future! What’s the price of bananas?”

But at least we know what he sounded like – scratchy and distant, the way historic people are supposed to sound. Which is too bad, because I prefer the thought that A.G. Bell had voice like Barry White. At least that’s the voice I imagine when I mentally re-create Bell’s other famous, unrecorded utterance – issued 9 years earlier into a paper cup that is somehow connected to a Droid Razr MaXX HD.

“Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.”

Good thing it wasn’t recorded. In what we now know as the reedy tenor voice of Alexander Graham Bell, those words would sound like a lead-in to a demand for more apple juice at a nursing home sing-a-long. But if they had been issued in the smooth rumble of Barry White, those words would carry an entirely different meaning. At least Mr. Watson would straighten his tie before responding.

How do you feel about the sound of your own voice?

60 thoughts on “A Few Words From Al G. Bell”

  1. Good morning. I should know my own voice. It comes out of my mouth. Somehow, the act of speaking seems to prevent me from really hearing my voice in the way other people hear it, or that is how it seems to me. I hardly ever listen to my recorded voice and when I do I don’t recognize it as mine. When I do listen to my voice I realize that I will never be know for having a great speaking voice. My voice does seem to be okay for making speeches if I just go ahead without thinking too much about how I sound. When making a recording to use on the radio I had a hard time finding a way to use my voice that sounded good to me.

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  2. Good morning, baboons, on this mild April morning. Can you believe it? A high of 70º F is forecast for toady! Nice job, Dale, I especially enjoy the concept of Bell’s voice quality giving his message the impression of “a lead-in to a demand for more apple juice at a nursing home sing-a-long.

    As I understand it, we each hear our own voice differently than those around us do. Is this why some women speak in such annoying, high squeaky voices, I wonder?

    On a couple of occasions I have called our home answering machine to leave myself a message about something or other I needed to remember. When I got home and listened to the messages, my first reaction to my own voice was, “who the heck is that?” Then I remembered having left the message, but didn’t recognize the voice at all. My feelings about my voice are pretty neutral, i.e. I hear my voice as nothing out of the ordinary, nothing special. In most cases it gets the job done, so I don’t spend any time worrying about it.

    But voices are interesting. Early in my working life I worked as a switchboard operator (on one of those old fashioned cord boards where you literally connected people to the extension of the person they wanted to talk to); I was surprised to discover that within a very short time I was able to recognize most of our clients by voice alone. Of course, we all recognize actors, singers, and certain politicians by voice alone. Interesting subject. Looking forward to toady’s musings.

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  3. i heard my own voice for the first time on a recorder my uncel sent to each of us when i was a kid. it was a recorder the size of a phonogragh and it had tapes like cassette tapes but the size was much larger. 8 x10 and 1/2 inch thick. he thought if you could talk int a tape you could send it off every week and have a continuing letter between the cousins coing. the idea faded but the notion of recording a voice in 1963 was new and the sound of the voices was funny. everyone sounded just like they do but me.
    radio voices are the best examples. you hear a voice on the radio and you get a very ambiguous idea of what the head attached to that voice looks like. not concreate at all but some idea . and then you see tham and that isnt at all what they looked like in your minds eye. same thing happens with voices form the written word. none of the baboons are at all what they looked like in my minds eye before i met them in person. maybe others are better at this than me but i am consistantly out in left field when it comes to putting a name with a voice with a face. barry white as alexander grahm bell would certainly be different. i can hear barry now. “hey watson baby… come over here now!” whole different picture.
    my voice ended up getting me into music and i recorded a bunch of stuff that doesnt sound much like me at all. in music that happens . did you hear the opera woman on phc this last week with the funny little squeaky voice and then she sang… couldnt possibly be the same person. i used to be a bob dylan knock off without being aware of it. my first band couldnt believe i could sing everything and make it sound like bob dylan. my brother does james taylor. every thin =g he sings show his james taylor influence. today i record stuff for presentations and i know it is not the james earl jones voice i would like to be heard as but it is passable and it like i have quirks and it may take a while to get used to or in reality if you dont mention it no one else will ever notice. every now and again i hear a voice and notice it sounds like me on the radio or video. its interesting how like a dog licking its own collar you get used to and embrace your voice. it just takes a little while

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    2. I had an experience you are too young to have had, tim. When we got our first TV in 1952 we saw for the first time the faces of personalities we were fond of from their radio work. I remember being chagrined to see what Arthur Godfrey looked like. a’Gunsmoke” actually began as a radio show with William Conrad as the voice of Matt Dillon. When it went to TV there was no way that little fat man could be Matt Dillon.

      When you say your singing voice sounded like Bob Dylan’s, I guess you must mean the way he sounded on his early albums. Since then his voice has changed enormously, starting by losing the Oklahoma accent of his early stuff.

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    3. We had a tape recorder like that, tim, and my boyfriend from freshman year at ISU suggested we send tapes to each other over the summer. If memory serves, we sent just once or twice (you could tape over the last one) and I must have gotten rid of it – would be interesting to hear it now.

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  4. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    Are we still angry today? Just wondering if I should type in caps.

    I don’t like the sound of my own voice. Or my own picture.

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    1. I sensed your discomfort with the camera the day we met, Jacque, so I only took one picture of you. That picture accurately shows your intelligence and good humor.

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      1. Which reminds me, Steve, of group photo you took of the gardening baboons in my back yard a year ago, would you be willing to send me a copy? I have the others, but for some reason that one has escaped who knows where. I’d appreciate it.

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  6. There is a very wide range of speaking voices that can be heard on KFAI because there is a great number of volunteers that do shows on that station. It ranges from people who have extensive experience doing radio and have well developed radio voices, this includes Dale, to people who do not have polished voices. I think it is good to hear all of these different kinds of voices on the radio, although at first I thought that sometimes there were people doing shows that didn’t do the best job.

    Actually some of the volunteers on KFAI have been doing their shows for many years and are very good and I think it is good that some people who are not too polished are getting a change to develop some skill. Others, like Aaron, who is sometimes on this blog, have very unique voices which are interesting. Aaron has said that he very much appreciates the willingness of KFAI to allow people with voices like his to speak on the air.

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  7. It is odd to hear my own voice. The act of speaking does not allow us to hear our voice as it sounds to others, so people often freak out when they hear their voice recorded. I don’t. I’ve been told I have a good voice. When I showed up for my first day of work at the Minnesota legislature, I met my boss and a guy in the office who were both long-time radio guys. They told me I had a great voice for radio, and my boss said I sounded exactly like Robert Reich, the short guy who was Clinton’s Labor Secretary. I might as well believe them and quit worrying about it, for I know what I hear when I speak is not the way I sound to others. I also have a great face for radio, but that’s another issue, isn’t it?

    My daughter and erstwife both have deeper voices than most women, and that serves them well in business. My daughter is beginning to do a lot of media stuff. She sounds smart, friendly and authoritative. High female voices are a burden to women in business since higher voices are not respected as much as deeper voices. When I traveled to New Orleans I met my first Southern Belles, and I was astonished to note that they spoke at the very top of their pitch range in order to fit the Southern cultural norm of girly girls.

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    2. Is there any reason no one uses “waswife” like “wasband” ? I kinda like it. I agree that women with high, strident voices are like chalk on a blackboard. Palin, for example.

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  8. Like many people, I am a bit surprised by the sound of my own voice. I used to not like how I sounded to others – now I’m just a bit perplexed by the difference between what’s in my head and what you lot hear. I take comfort in knowing it’s not a squeaky voice (thanks Mom for providing me with a nice alto sound). A couple years ago I recorded a training video for work – it’s all screen captures in the video so you never see me, you only hear my voice. To me I sound like a flight attendant telling store managers where the emergency exits are and what to do if there is a sudden loss of cabin pressure whilst using our web tool…people tell me it’s a nice sounding voice. I guess I’ll believe them.

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  9. I don’t like my voice either. Why does is sound different to us than to the people who hear it ?Which version is “real”?

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    1. Since you’re the only one hearing your voice the way you do, Renee, I’d say that the “real” one is the one we hear. But, who’s to say we all hear it the same? I know with my increasingly limited hearing, especially in my right ear, I have little faith that I’m hearing what other people are hearing.

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      1. When we hear another person speaking, our ears are picking up vibrations in the air. That is the normal way we hear. When we hear ourselves, we are “hearing” or sensing vibrations in our own heads. That is not the way we hear anyone else.

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  10. I’m not as surprised by my own voice as I once was, having heard it frequently on recordings. I’m told I have a nice singing voice, which is good because I so love to sing. Like PJ, I don’t think about my speaking voice too much. I think it’s lower than it used to be. I’m glad of that because I find some young women’s high-pitched, sharp-edged voices really annoying. I think some of them try to cultivate that tone. If they were aware of the way it sounds, they might stop.

    The first cassette tape players came into existence in the ’60s when I was a kid. My aunt and uncle lived in Koror, Palau, then Guam. They mailed recorded cassette “letters” to us to listen to. I loved that! I thought about how far away they were and how nice it was to hear their voices as they described stone money, half-naked Polynesian people, crystal clear water and white sand. Their voices, to me, sounded just like them and it was as if I could see them sitting at the table and smiling with us.

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  12. My voice sounds better to me in my ear than it does when I hear it recorded. On tape it sounds a bit high with a soft edge to it. Little cutting power. I don’t care for it much. Wish I could have a radio sort of voice. I tend to get drowned out with any noticeable background noise. I also have a trace of a “speech defect” thanks to hopelessly misaligned teeth that braces only managed to mitigate years ago. My “esses” don’t come out quite right. Not terribly obvious, but there if you listen carefully.

    I don’t think it’s a great voice for oration.But I taught school for six years and have given many community ed classes over the ensuing years, so I don’t lack for courage when it comes to public speaking

    However, when I get a cold that goes into my throat and chest, my voice drops about an octave and I get a really cool James Earl Jones thing going on. Go figure.

    Chris in Owatonna

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      1. Me too, PJ. Except when I try to put the moves on my wife in that condition, right after I say, “Oh-h-h- Baby-y-y” on C below middle C, I usually erupt in a hacking cough that lasts for a minute or so. Sexy? NOT!

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        1. Well, I’ll allow that you probably sound sexier, but not that you are. Nothing romantic or sexy about spreading your germs all over.

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      1. I was the Junior High/Senior High (6 grades in same building) band director in Carlton, MN for 6 years. The last two years, I also taught the elementary band kids. So grades 5-12.
        I also taught adult community ed classes in financial planning and wine “appreciation.”

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  13. Now that I think about it, I’ve heard my own voice on recordings lots of times. When I worked for the accounting firm, I’d dictate correspondence using a Dictaphone, but when I’d spool back and listen, it would be only short snippets I’d listen to, and only for content, so I didn’t really pay much attention to voice quality. Then there was my famous “Getting to Know You” radio program in Greenland, but, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather skip that.

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  14. Like Tim and Steve, I glommed onto an old RCA cassette recorder my Dad had when I was a kid. I loved trying to imitate voices from cartoons, sound effects, and impersonating people from movies and television.

    Later, in my teens/early 20’s, I did the Engine Room interpretation on the S/S William A. Irvin, wherein I used a microphone/speaker to be heard over the sound of the a/c generators and other running equipment. Between tours, I’d make groaning sounds into the mic to make it sound like the ship was really straining against the mooring lines. That and other weird sounds because I was bored.

    When I started learning voiceover, the first thing I had to do (like most folks) was reacquaint myself with how I actually sound. Lots more hours of talking into a recorder to find out what ‘works’ commercially and to avoid ‘creepy guy’ voice (which most folks really don’t want unless it’s a Dr. Kyle kind of character).

    So, yeah, I’ve had a lot of time to get used to how I sound. And, y’know what? You get used to it. And it really isn’t the horrible trauma that most people initially think it is.

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    1. Your post makes me wonder, how much of voice recognition has to do not so much with the quality of the voice itself but rather speech patterns, accents, and so on? I’m thinking here of people who are good at impersonating others; surely it’s more the latter that they pick up on, isn’t it?

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    2. I think that it would take a little practice for most of us to speak with a voice that works well over the radio or for other kinds of broadcasting. I have heard myself being interviewed for a couple broadcasts and I didn’t sound too bad. However, I think to consistently broadcast as the lead voice, not the one interviewed, I would need to do a lot of practicing. First I think I would have to get over being nervous about the way I sound. However, I think I would also need learn to speak clearly without too much hesitation and work on the way I sound.

      I wouldn’t want to sound like those loud mouthed hosts on commercial radio shows, but I would also not want to have the kind of voice I associate with National Public Radio. I think Dale has a good voice that has a little more character to it than what you usually hear from people who speak over a big public radio station even though he did that for many years. I agree with Garrison Keillor who suggested that it is unfortunate that MPR has moved to using more people who don’t even sound like they grew up in Minnesota.

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    3. Don’t know why I didn’t think of this until you talked about making sounds in the engine room when no one was around…I was hired (through a friend) to be one of the voices for a video shown at the Hinkley Fire Museum (it was several years a go now – I think it was the 100th anniversary of the fire – the folks doing the video purposefully hired non-professionals so we wouldn’t sound too polished). I wound up reading I think 2 or 3 voices. For one I had to be a girl of about 12, another a recent Swedish immigrant (was told I had enough Scandinavian lilt on my own that I didn’t need to embellish at all) and there may have been a third. For one of them they wanted my voice to sound “breathier” – they also moved the mic around so I had a different distance from it (I think that was the one where my friend started teasing me about my future career in the “adult” phone call business…). I went to see the video a year or so later – I was amazed with how little manipulation it took to make me sound like different people (both my vocal manipulation and what the engineers did). Fun experience.

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  15. Morning all. I’m in the same boat as most of the baboons… I hear my voice differently in my head. When I hear recordings of my voice, my first thought is “Gosh, I sound just like Sally (my middle sister).”

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  16. I like my voice fine when I hear it. Apparently I sound “young” on the phone – when I worked as receptionist, one person came in and upon meeting me, said “Oh, you’re the one with the 20-year-old voice.” (I was 45.) Unfortunately, the singing voice of me is losing clarity, probably related to hypothyroid stuff.

    I agree with several of you about high squeaky women’s voices – for many, they could take some voice coaching to learn how to use the lower registers… b I remember seeing Kristin Chenowith for the first time on The West Wing, and later hearing her singing voice – wow, what a change.

    My friend Barbara McAfee does some of this coaching, and has written Full Voice: the art and practice of vocal presence.

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    1. Isn’t it interesting how a voice quality will give us the perception of a person? I recall one woman I spoke with almost daily on the phone while I was a student worker at SIU. This went on for four years. Shortly before I graduated I actually met the woman. I had, in my mind’s eye, envisioned a tall, young, blonde woman. She turned out to be a short, rather hefty woman in her fifties, a far cry from what I had imagined. She had been delightful and helpful to work with those four years, but visually she turned out to be a surprise. Because of my Italian last name, lots of people, on meeting me the first time after only phone contact, express surprise that I don’t look Italian.

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  17. Hi, people! I’ve been in Michigan all week to be with my mom. She had some symptoms and went to the hospital last weekend and had a stroke right there in the hospital. Let me tell you: if you are going to have a stroke you should have it in the hospital. The folks there were on it in a flash and she is making a good recovery. She is being discharged today to rehab in the same place where she has her assisted living apartment. This is so good, because the people there know her well from the stroke she had in 2010.
    Which brings me to my song for this afternoon: Back in 2010, while I was helping her through her (much worse) first stroke, Dale played “Hold On I’m Coming” for me and dedicated it to my husband back in Minnesota. I think this would have been an appropriate response for Mr. Watson to Al G. Bell’s call as well.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN4DHY_9gOs

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    1. Sorry to hear about your mom’s stroke, Holly, but certainly, the hospital is the place to have one if you’re going to. Glad she’ll be in good hands for her rehab.

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  18. OT – Another old timer bit the dust today, George Jones passed away at 80 (I think). Musically, we are coming to the end of an era.

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  19. Greetings! I don’t like the sound of my voice and I do try to accentuate my low, alto voice. I kind of feel bad for professional women who have high, squeaky voices — it’s just hard to take that voice seriously. From my theater training and all the time I spend on the phone, I am very conscious of how I speak. I spoke with a dispatcher (who originated from some unknown Arabic country) tell me that I sounded just like a famous announcer or radio personality from his home country. I’m told I have a distinctive voice — whatever that means. Sometimes when I call dispatchers, all the 20-something gals sound alike to me, so I guess distinctive is good.

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  20. midday on 91.1 had a wonderful show on about f scott fitzgerald by particia hemple. it was very good. they hat fitzgerald reading something in that english singsongy poet voice and then at the end he said in a brisk athorataive midwestern snap. end of tape move on or something that showed his true self. it is said to be only known recording of f scott fitzgerald. it is neat to be able to hear the voices of people like that. i think i have heard abrham lincolns voice once. is that possible?
    http://www.firstsounds.org/features/lincoln.php
    looks doubtful

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  21. I’ve had the surreal experience a number of times in which, while listening to someone else’s taped voice, it sounded exactly like how I “hear” my own voice. This freaked me out! I’d listen and whatever the identical-sounding voice was saying, it was as though it was me. Perhaps I was delusional? Apparently, however I “hear” my own voice inside my head sounds the same as other people’s voices.

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