What we can learn from the vuvuzela!

What a commotion - or noise - that is being caused by the 'Vuvuzela' debate. Poor European football fans can't hear the expert commentary from the BBC or ITV; fans in the stadiums can't be heard chanting and, well, the English Team have an excuse other than the shape of the official tournament football for under performing.

The challenge is, of course, that the pitch and tone of the vuvuzela is in the most powerful part of the human hearing frequency. However, I have, against my better judgement, attended arena concerts where the volume has been equally loud and where quite frankly, it was impossible to hear the music as it was TOO loud.

The argument about the commentary being inaudible is an interesting one. There are situations where the pitch of our speech can make us inaudible, or more difficult for the listener to hear you. One example is teachers. For female teachers in particular, there is a tendency to raise the pitch of their voices when they raise the volume of their voices. Their voices become less audible as they are highly undistinguished from the children's voices. I work with teachers to keep the tone and pitch of their voices low, so they are more audible. Maggie Thatcher and Betty Boothroyd both adopted this technique in the Commons.

Also, actors wishing to be audible within a noisy scene, or comedians keep their voices low pitched to cut through the noise of audiences laughing. An acquaintance of mine: a very gifted amateur stand up comedian, had feedback that most of his jokes were being lost. Watching a video of his, I realised that his voice went higher and higher, as he was coming closer to the 'punchline'. He was laughing along with his audience - and they couldn't hear him!

So getting back to the vuvuzela; what relevance is this to football. Well, commentators need to be aware of their pitch; sound engineers that are mixing the sound in UK will be able to utilise these lower harmonics and frequencies, to make it easier for viewers to hear. Instead of becoming high pitched and squeaky whenever there is something exciting, they need to keep their voices low and modulated. Of course, there is something else BBC and ITV could do; provide subtitles, then we could enjoy the sound and atmosphere created by the vuvuzela!