How do you get rid of a monotonous voice?

Post Reply New Topic

My usual speaking voice is monotonous. Yet, I easily can pick up accents and do impressions, not to mention learn foreign languages and new sounds. When I orate, I sound completely different. When I give a presentation, I like large rooms so that I can push the microphone aside and use my powerful voice. I think my oratorical skills come from listening to political oratory when I was young.

Yup, I know someone who talks with almost no variation in pitch, but he definitely does not have Asperger's.

And there are the familiar variations on that theme. There are people whose voices go either up or down at the end of every otherwise flat sentence. There are the tannoy announcers in supermarkets who speak in two notes, usually at a dull pitch interval somewhere between a major and minor third. In all such cases, they are much too numerous to be predominantly Aspie.

Differences in pitch, voice quality, and prosody (how you say something-- rate, rhythm, etc.) *can* be characteristics of autism. I have sort of odd prosody, or so I have been told. Some people say I talk like Temple Grandin.

But somethings do definitely have cultural aspects doesn't mean it isn't an autistic characteristic. All social issues have cultural aspects. I have normal eye contact to hispanics, but not to anglos (too bad I am anglo!). OTOH, standoffishness in terms of touch is typical for Brits, but not to Hispanics.

--des

Do you have some sources that there's no correlation with ASD and voice prosody?

I try to work on my voice, but most of the time I find it tiring and usually forget about it after a while. I like to think I can do some accents and imitiations of other people's voices, though. I think there are books on it, though I don't really know if they'd exactly answer your question (I was supposed to buy this book called "Freeing the Natural Voice" or something for a class but never got around to it...)

No. I'm merely saying that I hear so much monotony from so many people that it must be very common in the NT world, depending upon locality.

how yalll doin ? i got a trick practice waht i cl arura project ire the vibe u put offf,it starts with a n ineerr silence ier recharge the battery cause when u put out u expend the battery power need t project keep goin fom u burn out there comes brakdowns then VERYBAD. push blast out it even afffect ur voice raises confidence ur need proper energy reserve to show exhuberance and confidence. ie never ever party hard 7 days in a row it very hard on mind.running on no power even affects voise.

Try to act/behave like others. I have a monotonous voice too, but in social situations I know how to make it not so monotonous by acting.

Listen to yourself. Record yourself reading stuff.

ruveyn

drink a cup of hydrofluoric acid and the monotonous voice will be gone.

That could work very well, as long as hearing yourself doesn't daunt you too much. I think it knocked my self-confidence at first, but luckily not too much. It's interesting - I think I actually sound "better" when I'm talking to people than I do when I'm alone and recording my spoken voice. And I've heard a recording of John Lennon when he was trying to record an audio diary as an experiment, and his voice had become very mumbly and monotonous....in the end he said "actually this is really boring" and stopped the tape. And that was somebody with apparently great confidence in his singing voice and his speaking voice in public.

I still wouldn't be able to do very well if I were recording my own speaking voice onto a tape while alone, unless I were simply reading from a book....I did that once, had to push myself into it, but once I got going and made an effort not to be too self-critical, I started really enjoying it, and the intonation seemed to get quite good. I used to read bedtime stories to my son as well, and could get quite carried away with those.

I think a lot depends on who you're talking to - with me, if it's somebody I'm somewhat scared of, I can revert to mumbling, though I tend to notice and compensate.......I see mumbling and being monotonous as rather dangerous because I think that it puts people off (it bores them or just makes it more difficult for them to focus on what I'm saying), and if the people concerned are competitive, bullying types, then I think they pick up the tone of the voice as a sign of weakness and are more likely to move in for the kill.

There can also be a slight quake in my voice as well, and I think that too can be a dangerous signal to the wrong tyoe of person, they'll sense my fear and think I'm being dishonest or again see it as a sign of weakness so they'll feel more at liberty to walk over me. So I think it's useful to try to project a certain amount of confidence into my voice.

I'm been lucky, because I've been heavily into singing for many years, and have ironed out nearly all of the mumbly aspects of my singing voice after years of painstaking practice, and it's easier than spoken word because I'm just reading the song lyrics from a pre-written script, and can focus completely on delivery. It's also like that for reading aloud, though that's harder because with singing, the pitch of the notes is also pre-defined, whereas with spoken word I have to decide for myself how to pitch each syllable. Frankly, even with my head start with the singing achievements, I still have a lot of trouble over getting my spoken voice right. If my confidence is low, my voice soon follows.

It's good to listen to people who have what I see as good delivery - I'm sure a lot of it rubs off on me - the best ones for me are not too bubbly and overdone, not too contrived or self-conscious, but just somehow immediate and with what I see as a natural amount of intonation. I agree that some people on the media sound horrible. I pick up a lot in the tones of voices, I guess it's a compensation for not picking up on visual gestures or body language.

Anyway, I don't agree that you shouldn't bother with tone of voice. It would be great if everybody just accepted the way individuals speak (like they do for Stephen Hawking because he's so brilliant in his field), but we live in a real world where these things can make a big difference unless you happen to be very a powerful individual with control over something that other people want. If you've got that then they'll tolerate pretty much any eccentricity.

I have more of an odd speaking voice than a monotonous one....it can go monotonous, but that usually means I am very tired or in a very bad mood

Sounds legit

I think that may actually be a good idea.

Although I don't have a problem with reading facial expressions, at least according to all those online tests, I decided to get a copy of Simon Baron-Cohen's MindReading Emotions Library. He made it specifically for AS/HFA. It has animated facial expressions and voice recordings from six different people for over 400 emotions! (grouped into emotion 24 families, using some taxonomy system) I looked at it and it looks cool and like it will be helpful, although with over 400 emotions there's no way I can become familar with all of them!

I was thinking I could use the recorder on my cell phone and try to imitate the tone of voice for each of the major emotions groups, then play the recording back and see how well I change my tone for the emotion. Then I could practice it in real life to generalize; hopefully that works. I was also thinking I could practice the facial expressions in front of a mirror, since many people say I don't show much facial expression.

My NT husband has more of a monotonous voice than I've got. I used to speak in monotone out of odd strain when I had to use the bathroom and was desperately trying to contain myself; this became irrelevant as I'm medically incontinent now.