birds of a feather in the kitchen together, 
we all share this meal,  we've made a life, a pie,
many hands in the mix

another crow homeward at the end of the day,
the sunset hour when the veils of light and shadow
blend like cake batter

your echoing cry and my wing beats together in the blender
whipped up a thick recipe
a sound pouring over us

these crows in the kitchen, a sunset parade
my daydream traveler come home to me
you live in my heart

birds of a feather in the kitchen together
what will we create next? your birthday cake?
it could be any day to celebrate your flight, your music,
your echoing call across the canyon country,
from coast to coast
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all the crows coming home at the end of the day
we share stories, we hear ourselves in each other's words
we the family, makin' cakes
birds of a feather in the kitchen together

Part memoir, part look into the healing power of songwriting... author and performing songwriter Mary Gauthier's book Saved by a Song : The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting potently delivers a heartwarming display on how songwriting can soothe the wounds of the creator and  listener.  

I particularly like following Mary's journey from discovering songwriting as a means to communicate about her own traumas to the honorable service of songwriting with veterans to help them give a voice to their own story.  Through recalling her troubled past as an adopted child and her struggles with substance abuse, without oversweetening but far from minimizing,  Mary describes her creation of songs and lyrics as a therapeutic force in her life . 

 “Witnessing other people’s lives through stories is a kind of medicine, and the magic is getting the story emotionally honest.”    - Mary Gauthier

This has been a uniquely meaningful book for me to read.  It does not exactly lay out the nuts and bolts of how to write a song. In other words, this book is not for songwriting techniques, chord progressions, melodic notation,  verse/chorus formats and such…which is fine, there's plenty of other books for that and Saved By A Song's honest approach is what makes this personal story of songwriting so valuable.  In the book, she is basing her songwriting on the emotional landscape of expression, the motivation there is more inspiring then reliant on rigid templates, it’s the source to say what needs to be said through song.  Mary reminds us that her collegue Ralph Murphy said “It’s not your job to sing the listeners your diary.  Your job is to sing to the listeners theirs.” 

The book is for songwriters and artists of all kinds, therapists and even mental health professionals.  Mary's book helps one understand that one can be saved by a song but also that the world can be changed by a song. Saved By a Song is a heartwarming story, an easily comprehensible philosophy on why songwriting is important, and a solid source of  inspiration.

“artists are like firemen; when the rest of the world is running away from the explosion, they run to it and report back...
                 The ask is this: no matter how many songs you’ve written - each time, the struggle is to get back to that singular place where it is just you and the fire alone in the room.”   
                                                                                                                        - Mary Gauthier
 

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We are a world of sound, vibrationally communicating with each other and our surrounding environment.  The power of words is held in their definition as well as in their delivery.  The way we produce our words and the tone that they are delivered with directly affects our communication with one another. 

My fascination with this began with the foundational aspects of music; melody, meter, the sound of emotion, and essentially, tonal vibrations.  With this sense as a guide for communication and listening,  one can develop an awareness of how spoken words carry more meaning than just their definition.

Exploring the field of how vibrations communicate emotions, one can develop a sense of how words affect a conversation and how they act in resonance or dissonance within a single person or in a relationship.  This experience is like being a piece of an orchestral movement, with your unique instrument, harmonizing with the thematic melody.

Resonance / Dissonance

How do our emotions affect how we deliver our words? How do the vibrations of our voice affect our listener’s nerves?  We listen to voices and words simultaneously, and consciously as well as somatically and subconsciously. Dissonance happens when the tone of voice clashes with your emotion, two notes that don’t blend well, don’t sound good together.  We can notice dissonance, sometimes from passive aggression, between the different ways that someone else communicates, and we are left with a sometimes confusing, conflicted, and perhaps traumatized feeling.  While on the other hand, we notice resonance in a tone of voice and are often left with a peaceful, uplifting feeling. 

Good Vibes / Conversation as Song

Our tone of voice can be in alignment with somatic experiences like fears and turn-ons.
Certain tones of voice can vibrationally resonate with you, like how vibrations resonate in the body of a guitar.  In these situations you might find yourself thinking that a certain feeling “resonates with me”.  When you are on the same page as the person you are talking with, you are attuned and the tones of your voices can resonate with each other and you can be in harmony like two separate tones that harmonize together in a song.  This is an important skill to develop your tone of voice to play your distinct role in the orchestral movement. This can be a conversation, a business meeting, customer service and other situations where you want to instill a certain feeling which you can tailor to the unique recipient in the performer / audience relationship. 

Each conversation brings its own topic to light through tone of voice, the underlying sentiment or frustrations that are being communicated with dynamic vibrational delivery.  The sounds/vibrations of emotion in conjunction with the way in which words are formed themselves determine vibrational receiving of the message.  When we talk to a baby or a cute puppy we automatically manipulate our voices to be higher pitched, to sound sweet and gentler. 

Not only do we choose words to say to one another but we express how we feel through our tone of voice.  Often unaware of the way we might sound to the person we are talking to until it’s too late, because we may think that we are effectively masking our inner feelings, and furthermore, we may have even been masking them from ourselves. 

The tone of voice can be a distraction from content.  What if we made a conscious effort to deliver our words with a tone of voice that enhanced the conversation instead of sweeping it up in a wave of emotion? Is this conscious verbal economy sustainable?  What if we ask ourselves what we want to be communicating through the tone of our voices alongside the actual words?  

Physiological Response

Licensed Therapist Stephanie Mae Neilson describes tone as communication in and of itself; Tone of voice is its own conversation, the felt conversation, the known conversation that doesn’t make it into the words. This conversation is always happening within, alongside, in tandem with, the words and meanings level of the dialogue. This is the conversation of the animal self, the body, of the nonverbal,  preverbal realm. The animal body has vibrational exchange with the animal body of someone else. This content and energy of the exchange can be accepted no matter whether “good” or “bad” , as long as there is no dissonance between content, energy. Words can be chosen intentionally in order to direct vibration through the correct instrument, like sending air through a pipe organ.

Embedded Tone

Words shape sound. Choosing words intentionally to shape tone is a quality of an instrument.  It gives the speaker a choice in how sound is channeled, alleviating some of the pressure from the body to project, accent or blow through sound to create vibrations. Some words carry their own tone, an added complexity to intentional vocalizations.  Words can sound condescending, patronizing, sarcastic, manipulative and confusing.  The tone of the words can create cognitive dissonance if they are used in a way that is misaligned with the meaning of the word or used as part of an act. Explosive words, harsh words and expletives blast their way through a conversation and can be damaging while soft and sweet toned words imply a certain tenderness.  Certain words are built for delivering a message regardless of how you say them because they have an embedded tone.

Love Language / Tone as a Tool

We can use tone as a tool. We have choices in speech and listening. Are you, or is the other, communicating from a place of safety and security in the physical body? The sound of security in a voice and strength in a voice can help someone who is struggling with fear or paranoia. Forced shifts in one’s tone of voice can lead to confidence and ability to be seen or get needs met.  What would high versus low pitch or fast versus slow ask for from the listener?
Beneficial Tonalities . How can vibrations aid in a challenging conversation?  We can be mindful of how we use our voice to shift the energy of one another or match the energy of one another. How do you respond to speaking with someone who is highly anxious and speaks with a higher pitched tone versus someone who is grounded and happy versus someone who is depressed speaking with a droning low tone? The awareness of the way we produce our words and with what tone they are delivered with has the potential to benefit our well being, our relationships and our businesses. 

Join the Conversation

What experience have you had that has been influenced significantly by tone of voice?

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 You can play with these experiments across devices – phones, tablets, laptops – just by opening the site on a web browser such as Chrome and explore the visuals of sound and more with the Chrome Music Lab  ( << click to explore ) 
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Here's what my voice looks like: 

what does your voice look like?
take a screenshot of it and tag #magneticwestmusic and #chromemusiclab on Instagram for a chance to win some music prizes. 

we are sound chambers.

I can always hear it behind my thoughts, just waiting there for me patiently.  

It is a pulse. 

​Music moves me and intends to even when I am too darn heavy to budge. 

There are songs that are particularly inspiring to me, music that opens me like a piece of fruit.  The rind just peels away and I spread each juicy section of my emotions splashing out.  Finally, I explode, turning inside out by an intricately crafted arrangement of vibrations.  When I allow music to move through me like this then I become the instrument.  My body resonates like the hollow wooden body of an acoustic guitar. 

We are all sound chambers for one voice or another.  When we let sounds bounce around inside us we keep that vibration going, like we collectively step on the sustain pedal of a piano. 

the giant guitar

On several occasions, my 12 year old son and I like to entertain each other by talking about a giant guitar.  One so large that, as it lays there in some wide open west coast valley, or better yet, at a proper establishment for such a creation like The Clark, you have to look at its entirety from a distance.  We imagine you can set a ladder against it and climb up to the top surface, plant your feet there and stare across the girth of the gleaming metal strings, down into the sound hole like it’s some sci-fi, space station on an alien planet.  

Here’s where the idea has steeped enough to step into.  Lowering yourself down into the hole you hang from the largest string, the bass, and once your body relaxes a bit, you let go.  The string, which, to scale, would be a large metal cable, like the kind used to build bridges, vibrates with such a fantastically Earth shaking shutter that the sound chamber that you are dropping into becomes so thick with vibrations you could almost feel it slow down your fall.  Gravity itself is denied by the levity of reverberating sound.  You float down as the sound waves disperse into the open air and gently land.  Inside the great hall of the instrument, the music swallows you.  The light patterns in the room are shifting with the skylight sound-hole. 

A part of you may never want to leave.  The part of you that will pay respect to the new discovery inside the echo chamber.  The other part of you that perhaps wants coffee or to hold close to one you love will get you headed home but most likely with a new way to listen.   

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