acoustics

You know, if you've ever recorded yourself speaking, how awful it sounds when you hear your voice played back to you. You can't really explain why, or what about it is so creepy, but you just know that it doesn't sound anything like you.

I'm doing a module on radio playmaking this year, so to get rid of the collective stage fright, we talked about this first. You don't really hear yourself speaking so much as feel yourself speaking. The words come bouncing back at you off walls and people but mainly, you feel them, shaking up through your chest and your skull, ricocheting off your teeth on their way out. The world doesn't know what that sounds like, only you do. The world only hears what the tape shows you. That really is what you sound like.

For most people, once they've realised this, it's fine. We do these excerpts and improvisations, edit them on computers, add some zany sound effects and play them back to the class and, most of the time, it's not quite the ordeal you think it's gonna be.

Writing is different. The words sound different in my head, not because of the way they bounce around my chest and up through my voice box, but because of how they sound in my actual head. As in, right up here in my skull. The reverb must be different up here or something, perhaps it's the dust or the hangover. They sound fantastic. They echo and harmonise and variate and it's like a lovely symphony of all the things I want to say. Sometimes I'd swear there's even instruments.

But then they come out here - and they sound dead.

Not just dead but embarassing, like someone not only hearing you sing in the shower but knowing exactly how good you think you are and vehemently disagreeing. Letting them out of my head, not even the sounds but the words themselves, onto paper or computer screen - it's mortifying.

Maybe it's the acoustics out here. Maybe the internet is just plain unflattering for a voice like mine.

Or maybe they didn't actually sound so good to begin with.