Vocal Fry & The Voice of Authority
And Donna Summer
I’m going to get straight to the point.
Recently the vocal coach who does YouTubes for Wired put together a woke collection of historical narratives in explication of the reasons why certain ethnic accents are what they are, along with a bit of verbal fine print reminding us not to be categorical. I used to think it was just cool to listen to the accents and understand what parts of the mouth were doing what. But it really annoyed me when he implied the sexism of hearing a woman’s vocal fry and as compared to that of a man in another video of his. Has this fool never heard Britney Spears or Donna Summer? Vocal fry is sexy. There may be some men whose measure of respect might be measured by their attention to pillow talk, not me.
Now listen to this:
Singing isn’t speaking. I know that. But women singing sexy has all kinds of vocal fry. I learned that when I was a teenager. My teacher? Probably not the best…
So that’s basically all I wanted to say. I have that pet peeve against upspeak and vocal fry. And once again, I’m going to mention Simon Prebble once more because I love his voice. And while I’m at it I also recognize the excellent voice of Judy Dench. Is she demonstrating fry? Arguably so. So there’s that too.
I first encountered vocal fry as a label in an article about Adele's hit "Someone Like You." [1] I found the song both depressing and compelling. If I imagine Adele singing that song without vocal fry, it's just depressing. The vocal fry connects it to the blues and makes it more believable, like she's experienced what she's singing about.
There's some interesting research around this. For example: "Vocal Fry May Undermine the Success of Young Women in the Labor Market." [2] I was working at a consulting firm in 2012 and passed this paper along to a female coworker who then used it to good effect. When presenting, she used what she called her "Yale voice" - clear, precise, and smooth. When attending the often obligatory cocktail hour with clients, she'd use a bit of vocal fry and capture buckets of likability points. I spoke with her several weeks ago. She has her own consulting firm and mentioned that this skill has served her well.
I think of our voice as any other tool, it needs training to use skillfully. Vocal fry doesn't work for me. In fact, it would in all probability have the opposite affect that it has with my female friend. But I do leverage the advantages gained with my lower pitch voice. (See Running Head : "Voice Pitch Predicts Labor Market Success among Male Chief Executive Officers" [3])
For myself, I find vocal fry in the spoken word annoying. When overdone, it pushes the needle on the nails-on-chalkboard-o-meter. Plus, since I'm familiar with the research, the first thought is that I'm being played for something. Judy Dench may be an exception and I have to wonder if what we hear in her voice is due to age. On the other hand, she is a phenomenal actress.
Cheers...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLQl3WQQoQ0
[2] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0097506
[3] https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Running-Head-%3A-VOICE-PITCH-PREDICTS-LABOR-MARKET-Mayew-Venkatachalam/ca2f2d4738c41ab67b38a7a1461e5465006af6d5?p2df