your masters' voices

[rone]

2wanda needed to record a ten-minute conversation and transcribe it for one of her classes, down to every oral wart uttered.  She's always enjoyed listening to me and palecur chatter, so i suggested that she record us, which she did two Sundays ago (3.7 MB MP3).  It is, of course, immensely ironic now that my brother starts off asking me how things are at ProTrade.  I was surprised by how much more he knew about sports than i suspected.  I was also amused by how, well, funny i speak; besides the normal tongue-twister-type mistakes (i say "shelf" instead of "self" at one point), my vowels will occasionally wander towards the Spanish side, my diction becomes at times almost painfully crisp, and of course i think my voice just sounds strange and alien.  I tried mimicking how i think my recording sounded, and it sounded close enough to me, but Kim thought i was way off.

Comments

[it-gurl.livejournal.com]

Voice sounds different in our ears because we're hearing it vibrating through our skulls instead of through the air. Sound travels better through the solid mass of our heads than the thin air, so a lot of the vocal variations we think we're making are never heard by anyone but us.

Sucks, don't it?

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, i knew that. I was just indulging in some wanton description.

[it-gurl.livejournal.com]

*gasp* wanton description? In your own journal!

[sagespot.livejournal.com]

And now I have a voice to hear the snappy wit which is Rone.

[eviltofu.livejournal.com]

Hrm. Looks like you put on some weight! :P

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

That's what my mom said.

That's got to be

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

the worst "yo mama" putdown I've EVER heard.

[waider.livejournal.com]

Wait, now I have to do a voice recording as well? That wasn't in my Evil Twin contract, dammit.

[iayork.livejournal.com]

You don't recognize your own VOICE. You don't recognize your own FACE.

Hmmm.

Aaaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhh!

[kawgirl.livejournal.com]

Oral histories are not among my favorite methods of research, though they are fascinating. I find them frustrating to transcribe because I never feel like many of the nuances in the conversation come through. They are also frustrating because you end up having to write a gazillion pages for relatively short talks.

I hope you at least had fun participating! (:

Re: Aaaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhh!

[2wanda.livejournal.com]

This instructor has us transcribe every little detail, including ums, ohs, stuttering, and where conversation overlaps. She has focused her own research on the things that nobody else in linguistics has spent much time studying. Maybe I should post the transcription at some point.

Re: Aaaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhh!

[kawgirl.livejournal.com]

A couple of years ago, I was working on a research project and had to re-transcribe some tapes because the original transcriptions did not include enough oohs, ahs, and ohs. The kicker? She wanted us to transcribe from scratch and then compare the new and old transcriptions. Needless to say when I had a choice to do a transcribed interview or an ethnographic observation for an assignment this semester, I chose the latter. ;)

I would be curious to see your transcription some time. What is your professor studying?