We speak in music

On the train to London Bridge, the man and woman in the seats beside me speak together in one of the many languages I don't understand, but I can tell the conversation they are having without needing to know the meaning of the words. It illustrates something we easily forget: we speak in music.

Her low monotone is slow and occasional, especially when compared to his melodic twists and turns: his imploring little tunes end on an ascending note, inviting a response. A response that he isn't getting.

And then there's his artificially soft dynamic combined with an intensity of tone that says not only does he want her to rejoin the duet, he wants to have this conversation where others can't overhear.

Her voice makes a resolutely sluggish little music; it seems to view the world through a prism of lost colors or faded chances, but it's plain from the exaggerated playfulness in his voice that this is music that he believes he can coax into a different melody.

Melodies emerge

And sure enough, as our short journey continues, so there comes a change: some of those flat monotones gather a few tentative melodies.

As she grubs around among a few bass notes, her voice rises and falls slightly. Then, gradually, some of her phrases gather little spurts of pace: her melody ascends little by little into complex song-like flourishes and faster, rhythmic turns.

Where everything was a vague gloom moments ago, so fragmentary melodies that invite completion from her partner emerge, and what sounded like a soloist with a reluctant and very minimal accompaniment before has turned into a freewheeling antiphonal duet by the time we pull in to London Bridge.

What writing can't do

Our written language doesn't include music. It may be poetic, but what we write on the page is essentially a phonetic map— as we put together the parts of the phonetic map, so words emerge (as words are understood) and so concepts emerge. And as concepts emerge, so meaning and understanding appear.

But a large part of our spoken communication is music. And the specifics of music— such as pitch, rhythm, tone and dynamic— are entirely absent from what we write down (though certain languages such as Mandarin do contain some melodic components).

Is this observation significant? Can we learn anything from it? I think we can.

Often it's our music rather than our words that reveal our "inwardness," our inner landscape to each other. If you wanted to put it more poetically, you might say that music is the part of the conversation where our souls meet.

Phone conversation

Sometimes, when I've had long phone conversations with someone I haven't otherwise met— often on such uninspiring subjects as a computer problem or a gas bill— I have listened with great fascination to the music at the other end. Quite beyond what they are saying, the music seems to be telling me who they are, how they feel about what they are saying.

And sometimes, as conversations continue, they give a broader sense of how they feel about life. One voice sits in a dull monotone at the lower end of their tessitura (their natural vocal range)— it can barely be described as music any more, it has been reduced to the minimum necessary to convey information.

Others speak with wildly ranging melodies, displaying all manner of colors and dynamics. Still others deliver short, sharp-toned bursts of notes so that, while their words may be polite or factual, the melody is aggressive or hostile.

Saying yes or no

If we want to try to look at conveying the music of speech, then we could do worse than to begin with the system that we use for instrumental and sung music in the West, even though the limitless possibilities of speech, with its vast range of rhythmic complexities and microtonal accents and inflections make Western scoring seem extremely crude

Even a single syllable can be given an extraordinary range of meanings by varying the music: just consider how many ways you can say "yes" or "no." It can be a question, a plea, a command, an encouragement, a consideration, or a "but." And when we incorporate it within whole sentences and phrase structures, then a sophisticated melody emerges. If you listen long enough and carefully enough, then that melody becomes what I like to think of as the "song of our inwardness."

Happily, this isn't science. No statistic-savvy boffin has yet reduced it to a sell-more-burgers algorithm.

New York vs. London

I'm fascinated, for instance, by cultural differences. The melody of a New Yorker is generally different from a Londoner, and visiting New York in the years after 9/11 I heard a music that was softer, less dynamic and lower in range than it had been previously.

The music in the voices of my Jamaican and African neighbors in London frequently contains distinct melodic characteristics (as well as phonetic ones) that I don't hear elsewhere. This is because we learn and mimic the sounds of others. Their song becomes a part of our song.

The most traceable examples of this idea probably come from film or TV— it's subtle and unconscious for the most part.

Three little notes

Some years back a TV ad featured a series of people phoning each other and exchanging only the phrase "Wha's' up?" in a stylized little three-note motif. The ad portrayed the characters as fun, cool, sociable, laid back— and many people, perhaps wanting to identify with this image, borrowed this little three-note motif, so that it became a regular feature of conversation before, little by little, it was worn away again, back to the flat two-note motif where it began.

But our spoken melodies derive from more than cultural identity. If we compare similarities between the spoken melodies of children, for instance, we find that they transcend boundaries of nationality or culture and show us that what we're hearing is more than mimicry; it's a reflection of their inner landscape. But we'll also notice that as our phonetic language develops regional accents, so too do our melodies.

The ear has an extraordinary sensitivity to the speaking voice. For the most part, we listen to each other without being conscious of it, but we use this music to discern a vast array, not only about what is being said but also about who is saying it. And the more in tune we are with each other's music, I suspect, the more in tune we are altogether.

Robin's song

As I leave my house for the railway station, I often hear a robin singing— in fact he sometimes confronts me expectantly, hopping into my path in hopes of food (but that's another story). I marvel at his song; its effortless but dazzling virtuosity seems beautiful and gently magnificent to me yet. Yet while heading to the station, I'm no less humbled by the natural brilliance of the human music I hear there. It's no less virtuosic or magnificent.

But unlike what I hear from the robin, as I listen to human speech I'm struck by the feeling that I'm getting a peek at the human soul. And just like other manifestations of the human soul, it's a music packed with comedy, tragedy, drama, hope and, sometimes, something transcendent and indefinable— something one could never capture in words.