Tone (speech)

“ If we feel timid, embarrassed or self-conscious it is registered in our tone when we speak. On the other hand, if we feel gay, optimistic, earnest and confident these moods are likewise revealed in our speech. Thus we find tone to be an index to character.
The function of tone-color is most important. It reveals the subtle changes of our thoughts and feelings. It can make the hearer see more clearly and feel more deeply what you say. Nothing so quickly reveals your sincerity of purpose as the tone of your voice. It is the source of the greatest pleasure to the hearer. ”

“ There seems little reason to doubt that the old Italian masters sacrificed many things, clarity of diction included, to beauty of tone. This they placed above everything. True, beauty of tone is the first essential of artistic singing, but it is not the only essential. If song is speech vitalized by music, then speech, the words to which music is set, has some claim to consideration. In fact, the singer's diction should convey the import of the spoken word with the added emotional eloquence of music. ”

“ Conversational elements: Pitch, Inflection, Color, Stress, Pause, Movement, Time. Separate discussions and illustrations with number of exercises for the pupil to practice. Melody in verse and in prose.
EXPRESSIVE SPEECH [9] By Robert Lloyd
’Tis not enough the voice be sound and clear,
’Tis modulation that must charm the ear.
When desperate heroines grieve with tedious moan,
And whine their sorrows in a see-saw tone,
The same soft sounds of unimpassioned woes
Can only make the yawning hearer doze. ”

“ Speak clearly and distinctly, never mumbling your words, and while avoiding a shouting tone, speak loudly enough to ensure your remarks being heard. A very low tone of voice will be heard if the words are clearly articulated and spoken slowly enough for perfect distinctness, and is much more agreeable than hurried, garbled speech loudly uttered. ”

“ A word whose customary feeling-tone is too unquestioningly accepted becomes a plushy bit of furniture, a cliché. Every now and then the artist has to fight the feeling-tone, to get the word to mean what it nakedly and conceptually should mean, depending for the effect of feeling on the creative power of an individual juxtaposition of concepts or images. ”

“ From the tone of voice, in that the tone of men is deep, and of women soft. From the speech, in that with men it is fond of licence, and bold ; and with women modest, and pacific. From the bearing, in that with men it is stronger, and firmer ”

“ Why should we assume that for man to express his feelings in tone he must first have invented speech, and then have developed the emotional side of this until it was able to cut [201] itself loose and commence life on its own account, by some process that is really unimaginable? ”

“ According as feeling is stronger and firmer, as in the expression of courage, determination, firm resolve, resistance, intense devotion, the voice is kept sustained, with pauses rather abrupt and decisive; if the feeling, though of high sentiment, is tranquil, without aggressiveness, the voice has more of the wavelike rise and fall, and at the pausing places the tone is gradually diminished, rather than abruptly broken off. In the case of quickly impulsive, passionate feeling, the speech is likely to be much varied in pitch, broken by frequent abrupt stops, and decisive inflections. ”

“ An aspirated tone is one that is surrounded with breath, only a portion of which is vocalized.
Whispered Quality. The whisper is seldom used by the orator, but is often employed by the actor. Whispered speech is speech that is produced by the articulation of breath without that breath being converted into voice. ”

“ Meanwhile the poet’s rich, resonant voice filled the studio with an agreeable and rambling monotone:
“Verse is a vehicle for expression; expression is a vehicle for verse; sound, in itself, is so subtly saturated with meaning that it requires nothing of added logic for its vindication. Sound, therefore, is sense, modified by the mysterious portent of tone. Thank you for understanding, thank you for a thought—very, very precious, a thought beautiful.” ”

“ In ordinary speech, the sound and articulation of a word, although indispensable to utterance, and therefore a necessary part of it, are of little or no value in themselves; for our interest is centered upon the meaning or upon the action which is expected to result from its understanding. We do not attend to the quality and rhythm of the word- sounds which we utter or hear, and the articulatory sensations, although felt, have only a shadowy existence in "the fringe of inattention." But in poetry, which is speech made beautiful, the mere sound of the words has value. ”

“ An orator, by his tones as well as by his words, causes definite mental activities to take possession of his audience, thus influencing them with the action of their own minds. The language of tone is the language of the spheres, it is the language of the invisible world, it is the language of the angels. ”

“ It is the tone of voice in which a thought is uttered that gives the thought its power for good or evil, for pleasure or for pain, for success or failure. Words spoken in one manner will be devoid of meaning; spoken in another, they will be illumined with the light of reason. Words that are spoken as words will remain nothing but words, but those that are spoken as thoughts will disappear as words, and the ideas will step forward and be seen in the expressive countenance and heard in the tones of the voice. ”

“ Sing a tone, about the middle of the voice, without other thought than that of simply pure, free tone. It will be found that in the most beautiful voice the tone will be common-place, meaningless; in many voices it will be simply sound. Now place yourself in every way upon a higher, a more lofty plane. Think of higher ideas and ideals. In other words, idealize the tone. Remember, the ideal is the truth, and not exaggeration. Appeal to your emotional energy, the singer's sensation, and give expression to thought and feeling aroused in this way. ”

“ A rare tone in a person's voice, a densely wrathful expression in a pair of slate-colored eyes, a fine, fine shade of comparison and contrast between a word in a conversation and an angleworm pattern in a calico dressing-jacket—these are things that make me conscious of divine emotion. ”

“ The effect of the emotional tone does not even require fitness in the meaning of the spoken words, for nonsense or an unknown tongue may be made to convey, when spoken with expressive intonation, the feelings which are displayed upon the speaker’s face. ”

“ A tone is something to hear, and hearing is mental. An old French anatomist once said: “The eye sees what it is looking for, and it is looking only for what it has in mind.” The same is true of the ear. We hear the tone mentally before we sing it, and we should hear it as distinctly as if it were sung by another. ”

“ Words in the entering tones always end in the sound of h, k, p, or t. In speaking, the tone of a word is greatly modified by its relation to other words in the sentence, and all are obscure except that of the most emphatic word, which has its tone fully enunciated. ”

“ In applauding an orator we usually applaud ourselves. He says what we were just ready to say; we seem to have suggested the idea. It is superfluous to remark that slowness without gesture, and especially without facial expression, would be intolerable. A tone must always be reproduced with an expression of the face.
2. The voice must not be jerky. Here we must keep jealous watch over ourselves. The entire interest of diction arises from a fusion of tones. The tones of the voice are sentient beings, who love, hold converse, follow each other and blend in a harmonious union. ”

“ It is in general, and especially in the case of the human voice, very difficult to distinguish these single parts of tone, because we are accustomed to take the impressions of the external world without analyzing them, and only with a view to their use. ”

“ By quality is meant the kind of voice—whether it is smooth or rough, rich or poor, large or small, expressive or non-expressive of the many emotions [p. 40] which the human voice is capable of producing. A tone may be raucous, because it is held in the throat; it may be nasal, through being held in the head; it may be breathy, through a waste of breath; or, on the other hand, it may possess those qualities of clearness, smoothness, and richness that come only from a properly developed and correctly used vocal mechanism. The quality of the voice may be pure, aspirated, or whispered ”

“ Rightly understood, it is the following of nature. Its value is that it emphasizes the constancy of this one of the constant factors in voice. Its result is a certain kind and degree of monotony; without that particular kind of monotony the voice is faulty. When the tone is forced out of its proper place, it is dissipated and more or less lost. A student once told the writer, when complimented on the good placement of his voice, that he learned this in his summer employment as a public crier at the door of a show tent. ”

“ In a song where some particular phrase or sentence seems difficult to you, sing the entire phrase or sentence on one sustained tone, pronouncing the words distinctly until you have gone down several tones below and several tones above the pitch in which it is written, singing it over and over on the one sustained tone in all the keys of your range. ”

“ What a miserable instrumentality is language! A tone of satiny flesh, a luminous shadow on a bare shoulder, a flickering light on floating silk, attract, recall, and retain the eye for a long time, and yet there is but a vague phrase with which to express the charm.... ”

“ The quality of voice to which I would here call special attention is called pure tone, which in its perfection, accompanied with strength and compass, comprises nearly all the requisites of a good voice. ”

“ Let any one put on a laughing, sneering, or cross face, and then talk, he may notice how his tone of voice follows; the attitude of features belonging to each particular temper acts directly on the voice, especially in affecting the musical quality of the vowels. ”

“ And while effusive utterance is always the prevalent mode, it will give place to the expulsive mode or to the explosive, when energy of thought or force of passion requires it so.
Thus, as the diction rises from plain discourse to the language of feeling, the appropriate vocal expression gathers intensity and becomes more varied, assumes, as may be said, brighter colors and displays greater contrasts; and so, in the third class of diction, the diction of passion, it displays its intensest and most vivid modes—its brightest colors, its deepest contrasts. ”

“ In watching the process which thus enables one man to take a copy of another’s emotions through their physical effects on his vocal tone, we may admire the perfection with which a means so simple answers an end so complex, and apparently so remote. ”

“ The character of the tone in certain portions of its register is very similar to that of the human voice, and without going too far, it may be said that it is possible to produce nearly all the varied effects of articulation of which the voice is capable, except actually speaking. ”

“ The orotund quality which is so effective in impassioned utterance, and in the expression of deep, forcible, and sublime emotions, is nothing more than pure tone increased in extent of volume, and in intensity of force. ”

“ Then, again, we have discovered that often we are made to feel most deeply, not by detailed statement, but by suggestion: in the case of a speaker, perhaps by a momentary gesture, or play of features, by a sudden inflection of the voice, or a pause in speech, and the occasional accent of a word or sentence; in the case of a writer, often as much by what he leaves unsaid, by the thought that is veiled behind the statement, by the choice and emphasis of certain features of his record. Further, we may have learned to find occasional value even in uncertainty or indecision. ”

“ A tone first of all is a mental product, and its pitch, power, and quality are definite mental entities. When we wish to convey this tone to another we do it through the sound producing instrument which nature has provided for this purpose.
That everything exists first as idea has been the teaching of the philosophers for ages. That the idea is the controlling, governing force is equally well understood. Therefore, inasmuch as the aim of all voice building is to produce beautiful tone we must start with the right idea of tone. ”

“ The Third Study should have convinced you that a sense of good humor is a safe and desirable thing to cultivate; that the whimsical tone in interpretation will leaven almost any lump of sheer learning and counteract a serious overdose of sentiment; that fable, fairy tale, and nonsense rhyme depend too for successful interpretation upon this element of whimsicality in the reader; that the secret of the whimsical element in vocal expression lies in a use of pause and inflection. ”

“ Not only will the arrangement of words be thoroughly considered, but their utterance will receive much attention, the aim of the author being to show how, by the inflection, emphasis, and tone of the living voice, thought can be interpreted, and an impression made by the speaker on the minds and actions of others by means of the spoken word. Attention will also be given to getting the mentality into the voice, making the soul of the speaker shine through the medium that is to make the thought apparent to the listener. ”

“ It is indeed largely the psychological quality of a tone that makes it reach in through the ear to the comprehension. The quiet, clear, restful, persuasive tone of a speaker who knows his power goes straight home ”

“ He may arouse his interest in some particular thought and hold that in mind as he sings; the voice will then have warmth of tone and will readily receive meanings. He may express varying degrees of surprise in the face and he will find varying degrees, to correspond, of fulness and roundness go into the voice. The use of expression in the face as a means of giving character and quality to tone opens a field of experiment and experience which will lead any teacher to practical and beneficial result. ”