Make Room For The Stuttering

I am learning a lot more about what stuttering looks like by editing audio.  And I am reminded of two experiences that bothered me in the past, which now make more sense as I actually “look” at stuttering.

Above is a screen shot of my voice recorded and captured as a sound wave in the audio program “Audacity”. Notice how some of the audio looks “dense and thick” and some is just a straight line with no depth to it. Well,  if you play that clip of audio, the part with no depth is where I stutter – its a pause or block.

Looks funny, doesn’t it? I never really understood how sound could look until I started using this type of editing software.

Podcasters (both the veteran ones, and newbies like me) use this free program to edit audio, much like you would if you were editing text. You can highlight, add, delete, copy and paste. It does take a little getting used to, but not as intimidating as I first thought.

When I did a radio program on NPR last month on stuttering, of course there was stuttering. It was expected that I stutter. That was the point of the talk, to raise awareness of stuttering.

Afterward though, the show’s producer asked me if I would record a testimonial for the radio station. They ask all the guests to do it. I just had to say my name, where I worked, and what I listened to and liked best about the station.

Well, after the first time, the producer suggested I try it again. After take 2, she asked what did I think. She said we could “edit out the stutters” if I wanted. I just looked at her. She said it was perfectly fine to leave them in. I said “Of course, I want them left in!”

She asked me to do it yet again, as she said it sounded like I was reading from a script. (I was!) She wanted me to sound natural. Each of the 6 times I recorded that testimony clip, I stuttered on the exact same words and in the exact same way. We didn’t change anything.

This reminds me of something similar about two years ago. I was feeling more confident than ever about speaking and how my voice sounded. I decided to “audition” to be a reader for the visually impaired through a program offered through our public broadcasting television station.

Readers read aloud from newspapers, books or magazines,and then people with visual impairments who subscribe to the service, can hear their favorite newspapers or magazines and keep up with the news. It’s a great program, and completely supported by volunteers.

Well, I “passed” my audition. I read a couple of newspaper articles.  Because of my stutter, which I did not disclose to the woman listening to me, I can often speak with good modulation and pausing, and speak very deliberately, which is perfect for this kind of thing.

But when the audition was over, she gave me some editing orientation. I was going to have to edit my own stuff. She let me experiment in a studio for a while, and let me know that I would need to edit out any “dead air”.

I recorded several clips and produced sound waves like above. Because she was not in the room, I spoke more naturally and had some stuttered moments. I remember they looked exactly like this clip looks. She had shown me how to drag and click, and I could “trim” out the “mistakes”. I did not want to edit out my stuttering nor did I want to trim away “dead air”.

That was me talking. Those sound waves were my voice, my stuttering. What did I do? I erased the sample clips I did that day, cleaned up my work space,signed out of the studio, and left. And never went back.

I had largely forgotten about that until recording the testimonial last month. And now doing audio file editing, where I am actually seeing what my voice “looks like” in the form of a sound wave, I get what radio or TV people who don’t stutter “see”. They just see a sound wave with dead space that needs to be trimmed away. It is totally impersonal to them. There is no connection, the sound wave doesn’t represent a person.

But that stuff up there – those different lines, some dense, some not, that’s ME. That’s my stuttering. That’s what it looks like.

And I will never edit any of that out. EVER. So be it, right?