A short and not excessively dramatic story of loss and gain Some seemingly random and certainly uninvited bugs ganged up to cause me quite a hefty a throat infection this week, with the usual range of symptoms that such an ailment entails: difficulty in swallowing, running a temperature, lethargy - and more or less losing my voice.

That I could still just about speak made things interesting to observe on one front. Since I've been having to speak “around” the swelling, I have automatically reverted to my most relaxed, my most sonorous voice - but for some reason not my most natural.

I’ve been noticing of late how I have developed, especially at work, a sharp-edged “scratch” to my voice. It's almost certainly a subconscious attempt to project my voice through the hubbub and grandstanding of the office environment, in a similar way to how city birds have increased their pitch and volume to overcome the ever louder traffic and general background noise of the city. This may even be resulting in damage to their vocal chords and additional stress as a result. Fortunately, I don’t think that I’m that far gone yet, but this throat infection has made me realise that I could try to relax things once more.
My most relaxed voice is a fairly mellow baritone - but it is quiet. The “scratch” that I have induced, adding almost a "hiss" or distortion to my voice allows it to penetrate the room more effectively (a piping flute was better suited to stroke keeping on rowed ships such as triremes than the archetypal bass drum beat).

So to keep the soft voice, yet get it heard, I need to raise the overall volume - hopefully without it becoming too boomy (as I'm simply not that type of person).

Theoretically, I should have no problem with volume control - I do sing, too, after all. Opening and relaxing the throat cavity to give the sound room to develop is a key part of projection in singing. But speaking seems to a different mode altogether, at least to my instincts. This means that raising the volume whilst maintaining the mellifluous tone requires something of a mental shift, too - in one sense it’s modifying my personality, the way that I come across to others.

The present limitations on my throat with the infection do however mean that I’m not able to modulate my voice as much as I’d like. Whilst reading a bed-time story to my daughter last night, I could hardly differentiate the characters as I normally do (Piglet really shouldn't sound the same as Pooh!). Indeed, the addition of a “grating” tone to the voice does give it greater flexibility as well as help it to carry. I recently listened to a short story read by Benedict Cumberbatch, who also has this more modern element of scratch to his voice in contrast, say, to Richard Burton reading “Under Milk Wood”, which is to my ears plummy beyond belief, if lovely in its own, classical way).

So - my challenge is to figure out a way of improving my voice, to make it carry more without the “artificial” distortion or equalisation - but also without it becoming some boorish, booming tool to hammer others with. It will be an interesting project!

As for the birds, well let’s hope that, for their sakes, we all end up driving electric cars (without excess anti-silence regulations) - but without increasing the number of wind turbines that do put paid to the occasional bird before it dies from voice-stress... But that's another theme altogether...

 Of course, it was but a fleeting experience and of course we were soon scraping and poking, huffing and puffing, snow-squeaking and technical clothing rustling through the forest, but those few moments of silence, interspersed with the occasional thud of snow falling off the branches and even a timid soundbite of birdsong, provided me with memories that are far more powerful than the photos could ever reproduce.