I joined Toastmasters in 2013 to improve my public speaking. In the past seven years, I’ve learned a lot about being aware the many aspects of vocal variety. Using skills I’ve learned at Toastmasters, I make an effort to adjust the pitch, speed, and tone of my voice to keep my audiences engaged. So it came as a surprise to me this morning when my speech evaluator pointed out a problem having to do with the way my voice sounds.
The Engineer’s Sine Wave
Vocal variety is something we value highly in Toastmasters. It involves all aspects of the way you make your voice sound when you’re speaking to others. Examples include speeding up the tempo of your speech when you’re talking about something exciting, talking loudly or quietly to emphasize points, and raising and lowering the pitch of your voice to avoid a monotone.
This morning, I gave an training speech on how to navigate a particular website. As a teacher and trainer, I’ve taught skills like this in front of an audience countless times. But this was the first time I’d ever heard of the Engineer’s Sine Wave, which is when the speaker constantly fluctuates between a higher and lower pitch. It sounds like this:
The Problem
I realized that this is a vocal pattern I fall into whenever I’m teaching at the computer. Even though I’m making a conscious effort to vary the pitch of my voice, it’s too regular with its consistent highs and lows. The regularity of the “sine wave” of my voice can be as easy to predict and boring as a monotone!
When I’m demonstrating the way things work on a computer, I’m concentrating on flawlessly executing tasks so that I don’t look foolish in front of a live audience or need to redo a screen recording over and over again. And I’m also narrating the action as I go. Since it’s easy for me to raise and lower the pitch of my voice without thinking too much about it, that’s the pattern I’ve fallen into.
The Solution
Since now I realize it’s a problem, I’m going to concentrate on avoiding the Engineer’s Sine Wave while teaching. I need to remember the other tools in the vocal variety toolbox, such as pace and tone, to lend interest to my vocal performance. I can also stop working on the computer to say something directly to the audience, rather than narrating the step-by-step process I’m showing them, to break the monotony.
The Takeaway
Predictable, repeating vocal patterns can be as boring or distracting to an audience as maintaining a flat monotone. Injecting some vocal variety into every speech you make or class you teach will help the audience to focus less on the way your voice sounds and more on what you’re saying.