Transcript
WEBVTT
00:00:06.480 --> 00:00:08.890
Thunder's Mouth Theatre presents...
00:00:08.970 --> 00:00:17.710
Hello, it's Floyd Kennedy here, writer, creator producer of "Am I Old Yet?" Podcast.
00:00:19.410 --> 00:00:20.620
We're on hiatus.
00:00:20.679 --> 00:00:22.269
I think I told you that already.
00:00:22.690 --> 00:00:25.030
Doesn't mean I'm not doing stuff.
00:00:25.469 --> 00:00:27.370
I'm out for a walk this morning.
00:00:27.710 --> 00:00:34.850
It's an absolutely glorious spring day. Late spring, I guess, because it is May.
00:00:36.869 --> 00:00:38.530
You hear the seagulls?
00:00:39.270 --> 00:00:43.810
We get a lot of them in here in Liverpool, which is where I live.
00:00:44.630 --> 00:00:49.009
And I just thought I'd share a few thoughts with you.
00:00:50.469 --> 00:00:56.420
If I sound a little bit strained, it's because I'm a bit stiff and sore.
00:00:56.460 --> 00:01:04.040
My hips are playing up, and all sorts of things that happen to you once you've turned 80.
00:01:07.859 --> 00:01:12.920
Yes, I passed the big 80 in back in March.
00:01:15.980 --> 00:01:37.480
Now, Helen is younger than me. She doesn't have her 80th birthday until June, and I am planning a bonus episode where the family will get together to help her to celebrate. So far, Helen has been blessed with slightly better health than me, but I'm hoping this is a temporary thing.
00:01:37.560 --> 00:01:43.260
That's why I decided to get up and walk, see if I can walk some of this stiffness off.
00:01:45.980 --> 00:01:56.379
Now, I did say that I'm working on a new podcast. I've almost, well, I've written seven episodes and I want to wrap it up in episode number eight.
00:01:56.420 --> 00:02:01.859
But it's a fact that we're all living very, very busy lives.
00:02:01.939 --> 00:02:22.939
And the actors—it's fully cast! Everyone is very excited to start working on it, but they're also really busy, the actors who have been volunteering their services to make these stories for you, which is why I have to do the call out.
00:02:22.943 --> 00:02:32.099
So if you have any pennies to spare, throw them in the bucket over at patreon.com or buymeacoffee.com.
00:02:32.439 --> 00:02:40.569
And that will all help to recompense the actors for, for their time and effort and their fabulous talents.
00:02:43.030 --> 00:02:46.969
No reason why they shouldn't get paid for what they do.
00:02:48.550 --> 00:03:14.400
Now. What else was I going to tell you? Oh, yeah, you know, it seems like a lifetime ago, but it was actually only ten years ago that I finally handed down my PhD dissertation thesis and was awarded my doctorate.
00:03:14.979 --> 00:03:38.830
It was finally accepted in May, June of 2014, and I got to walk up and pick up my scroll from the vice, what do they call them? Vice Chancellor of the University of Queensland, proclaiming that I could put DR.
00:03:38.840 --> 00:03:56.379
before my name, as if that meant anything. Now, you know, when you—I don't know if you're aware of this, but when you do some reasonably major research, such as a PhD, there is an expectation that you may get a book out of it.
00:03:56.860 --> 00:03:59.919
And I certainly had that expectation when I started.
00:03:59.990 --> 00:04:19.680
That was why I started, because I was so passionate about the human voice and the way we use our voice when we're performing to bring pleasure and engagement and interest and challenge to the people who hear our voices.
00:04:20.300 --> 00:04:26.050
And the voice wasn't getting much respect, in my opinion, back in those days.
00:04:26.550 --> 00:04:31.050
There's a lot more talk about it these days, especially with all this talk about AI.
00:04:31.350 --> 00:04:33.680
So to cut to the chase.
00:04:33.779 --> 00:04:54.790
I was chatting to some other people involved in podcasting the other night, and we got talking about AI and how the AI voice is a challenge to our livelihoods as—first as voice actors.
00:04:56.410 --> 00:05:20.759
And I chimed in with my personal opinion that it's a challenge not only to us people who gift our voices to the storytelling process, but it's going to be a challenge to the listeners who, if they buy into the AI, if they think, oh, it's good enough, it doesn't really sound like a real human being, but it's good enough.
00:05:21.420 --> 00:05:26.389
They will dull their capacity down to be able to hear truth in a voice.
00:05:26.569 --> 00:05:45.100
And I care about the transmission of truth in a voice. Authenticity, if you like, mean what you say, say what you mean in the moment that you're saying it, that's what good acting is about.
00:05:45.209 --> 00:06:01.339
And I don't care how good the AI is or can be, it cannot replicate what happens to the sound waves of a voice when it's coming from a living, breathing human being.
00:06:02.319 --> 00:06:17.120
Because not a lot of people know this, but everything that's going on in that human body at every given second affects how that voice will sound.
00:06:18.939 --> 00:06:29.120
And you cannot replicate that with AI, and I don't think you ever will.
00:06:30.180 --> 00:06:40.680
More to the point, why bother when you've got human beings reproducing themselves at vast rates all across the planet?
00:06:41.139 --> 00:07:05.319
Why do we need to replicate them in a mechanical form and replace one of the greatest gifts that we have to give to each other, which is the genuine sound of our voices saying what we mean and meaning what we say? Anyway, did I say something about long story short?
00:07:05.899 --> 00:07:07.610
I should say, stop doing that.
00:07:07.709 --> 00:07:09.870
I can't tell a short story.
00:07:11.449 --> 00:07:27.430
So upshot of my involvement in that discussion the other night about AI voices, I shared a little bit of my passion for the contribution that the human voice is capable of making.
00:07:28.290 --> 00:07:39.600
And they said, have you written a book? I said, well, I've written a 80,000 word dissertation, was supposed to turn it into a book, but it was too hard.
00:07:40.139 --> 00:07:42.879
The whole business of finding a publisher.
00:07:47.019 --> 00:07:59.160
It's just as hard as getting people to contribute financially towards the production of a podcast, as finding a publisher.
00:08:00.949 --> 00:08:07.449
However, they did get me back to thinking about it and getting excited about it.
00:08:07.480 --> 00:08:31.180
So I am going to drag out the PDF of my dissertation and give it a jolly good shakedown and have a look at it and see if I can maybe adapt it into something, not so much for an academic audience, but for general consumption and try to do that thing.
00:08:31.480 --> 00:08:51.379
That was my goal when I decided and agreed to do a PhD, which was to raise the profile of the human voice in our awareness, give it a little bit of respect, share with people who are not aware.
00:08:51.409 --> 00:09:08.049
Because let's face it, if we're lucky enough to be born with a physical sounding voice,(not everybody is) but those of us who are, we just, you know, it sort of comes with the territory of being alive as far as we're aware.
00:09:08.200 --> 00:09:12.460
And we grow up, we learn how to speak without knowing that we're learning how to speak.
00:09:12.629 --> 00:09:27.980
We just do it, and we don't think about our voices until something goes wrong with them. And then we think, oh, that's interesting. So, yes, I'm not going to whitter on any longer.
00:09:28.519 --> 00:09:41.179
This is just... Well, I'm halfway around the park, and this chatting to you as I walk actually took my mind off the pain in my hips.
00:09:41.639 --> 00:09:45.419
I should do this more often. And yeah.
00:09:45.769 --> 00:09:48.190
Have I got anything else to report back?
00:09:49.250 --> 00:09:51.210
I don't think. No, not at this time.
00:09:51.350 --> 00:10:19.120
I shall stop whittering. And it's not that I'm ungrateful to the invention of AI, because AI is, as I speak, transcribing my speech into text, which I will go home, upload, download and edit very thoroughly, because it doesn't transcribe all that accurately, especially if there's birds and traffic.
00:10:19.220 --> 00:10:20.659
Can you hear that? It's a crow.
00:10:24.799 --> 00:10:28.980
I wish I knew what particular bird sounds were like.
00:10:32.840 --> 00:10:34.779
Is that a crow or a baby?
00:10:37.840 --> 00:10:40.500
And that lovely tweeting sound.
00:10:41.320 --> 00:10:43.340
Tweet, tweet.
00:10:46.279 --> 00:10:47.298
(High pitched then).
00:10:47.299 --> 00:10:48.580
Is it a blackbird?
00:10:49.919 --> 00:10:50.940
I don't know.
00:10:53.200 --> 00:10:59.779
I don't hear them all that often because my little house in the middle of Liverpool, I only get pigeons.
00:11:00.399 --> 00:11:02.259
They chase everything else away.
00:11:02.409 --> 00:11:09.190
Occasionally I'll see a magpie, maybe even a blackbird, sitting on a tree or a fence nearby.
00:11:09.240 --> 00:11:20.269
But they won't come down to my bird feeders because the pigeons are a bit thuggish. Funnily enough, the seagulls never come down to the bird feeders.
00:11:20.320 --> 00:11:22.980
They fly around above all the time.
00:11:26.440 --> 00:11:27.700
Can you hear that?
00:11:28.279 --> 00:11:29.860
I hope it comes through.
00:11:33.419 --> 00:11:35.519
Bird sound on a Sunday morning.
00:11:35.860 --> 00:11:42.720
It's always like, oh, doves! Yeah.
00:11:50.340 --> 00:11:52.799
Isn't the human voice a marvelous thing?
00:11:56.299 --> 00:12:02.779
Do you know what musical instrument a lot of people think is the closest to the human voice?
00:12:02.840 --> 00:12:05.389
It's the cello. Oh, what was that?
00:12:08.169 --> 00:12:11.309
Something else. Yeah.
00:12:11.690 --> 00:12:15.210
Have a listen to some cello music sometime.
00:12:15.289 --> 00:12:20.289
See what you think. So expressive, capable of a huge range.
00:12:20.309 --> 00:12:23.950
A variety of sounds as well. And it's.
00:12:27.480 --> 00:12:41.980
It's a built thing, obviously made from wood, which resonates in the shape—two curves attached to each other so that you get multiple resonances.
00:12:43.080 --> 00:13:03.509
And a bow on unfretted fretboard so that the changing length of the bow, just like the changing length of the vocal folds, is made to change its pitch by the action of the human fingers.
00:13:03.549 --> 00:13:09.289
And those human fingers will have an effect on those strings.
00:13:09.629 --> 00:13:19.450
That's not the same as if there was some mechanical arm coming down and pressing on those strings.
00:13:20.360 --> 00:13:38.659
The sheer fact that those human fingers holding the instrument against the human body is going to affect the actual physical acoustics of the sound coming from the instrument.
00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:54.570
Bear that in mind the next time you hear talk about AI. And, you know, somebody said the other night, but these deep fakes, people can't tell that it's not the voice of the original person.
00:13:56.789 --> 00:13:58.769
Most people probably won't.
00:13:59.309 --> 00:14:07.289
I suspect I would, because my ears became attuned, as I say, to that authenticity.
00:14:12.690 --> 00:14:16.350
I've always been pretty good at telling when people are lying.
00:14:18.570 --> 00:14:32.899
A good liar, like a good actor, actually means what they say in the moment that they're saying it. It is the truth for that speaker in that moment.
00:14:32.960 --> 00:14:36.870
And that's the only way they don't sound as if they're lying.
00:14:38.830 --> 00:15:03.669
Because if they are lying and they know they're telling an untruth that will seep into it, will affect the quality, the vocal quality of the voice. Okay, I'm banging on now, but I'm nearly home, so I'll let you go. And I've got a couple of podcasts to recommend to you to have a listen to.
00:15:03.809 --> 00:15:17.135
.By the way, these are fellow members of the AIRmedia AMPLIFY New Voices programme that I was on recently. Fabulous programme.
00:15:17.149 --> 00:15:20.129
If you're interested in podcasting yourself, check it out.
00:15:20.159 --> 00:15:30.634
They're open for applications for the next workshop programme.
00:15:30.710 --> 00:15:32.299
Traffic's getting a bit busy.
00:15:32.429 --> 00:15:35.090
I'll wait till I get home, and then I'll tell you about them.
00:15:38.440 --> 00:15:43.940
Okay, I'm home now, and rather than me banging on about other people's podcasts.
00:15:43.970 --> 00:15:45.570
I'll let them speak for themselves.
00:15:45.710 --> 00:15:47.590
I'll just include one first.
00:15:47.720 --> 00:15:53.009
This is an absolutely beautiful piece of work from Debra Jarvis.
00:15:53.190 --> 00:15:55.129
It's called "The Final Say".
00:15:55.269 --> 00:16:03.840
It's the podcast where you can get comfortable talking about death and learn some things about life from people who are facing death.
00:16:04.029 --> 00:16:07.620
I find it enthralling and enlightening.
00:16:07.759 --> 00:16:09.840
Here's Debra to tell you all about it.
00:16:12.539 --> 00:16:16.779
What's your biggest fear? Snakes? Spiders?
00:16:16.960 --> 00:16:23.649
Maybe it's talking to friends and family members about death. I mean, uh, well, fear no more.
00:16:23.779 --> 00:16:29.200
I'm Debra Jarvis, the host of "The Final Say", conversations with people facing death.
00:16:29.539 --> 00:16:37.730
This is the podcast where you can get comfortable talking about death and learn some things about life from people who are facing death.
00:16:37.899 --> 00:16:43.379
So join us wherever you get your podcasts or on the website, thefinalsafepodcast.com dot.
00:16:43.419 --> 00:16:46.039
There will be no snakes or spiders.
00:16:50.539 --> 00:16:52.960
And that's it from me for now.
00:16:53.340 --> 00:16:55.570
Thanks for listening. Stay safe.
