Day 22 - James Edward Mateo West - Testing, 1,2,3 Testing

James West

I am a fierce advocate of using a microphone when you are performing. It is an amazing tool that allows you to fill a room without straining your instrument. Who knew there was an African American inventor to thank for it?

James West was born in Farmville, Prince Edward County, VA in 1931.

He was a smart kid who was fascinated with - wait for it - taking things apart. Because of his love for dismantling things, he had a bad experience with electricity when he was a kid. It had something to do with taking a radio apart.

"If I had a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, anything that could be opened was in danger,"  James West

Me? I stuck a knife in a toaster when I was a kid and got a bad shock up my arm. What did I learn? Electricity is not a thing to play with. Oh, and I never stuck a knife in a toaster again.

What did James West learn from getting shocked while taking a radio apart? He shocked himself badly and decided he really needed to play with electricity some more.

This is why he is an amazing inventor, and I am a person who just points at amazing inventors and says, "Wow, look at that."

West's parents were not too keen on his love of tinkering. They knew their son was brilliant, and they were worried if he wasn't careful he wouldn't be able to get a job. Jim Crow was still ravaging the southern United States and his parents couldn't think of any black scientists who were working or making a living.

They wanted him to be a doctor.

He wanted to play with electricity.

So, he went off to Temple University and in 1957 he got a Masters in Physics.

Bell Labs hired him.

(An aside here - we owe quite a bit to Bell Labs. They were clearly more worried about getting trained scientists than having a homogenous workforce.)

Electric Transducer

In 1962, James Edward Mateo West, physicist, invented electric transducer technology. He was working to improve hearing aids. Today, this technology is in use in baby monitors, telephones, camcorders, hearing aids, audio recording devices, and microphones.

That's right! West is responsible for the technology that you can find in ninety percent of the microphones manufactured in the world.

Look at all of these storytellers using microphones!

Sherry Lovett

Nancy Donoval

Donald Davis

me

Lyn Ford

I have never James West. I love him.

He is something called an acoustician. He helps balance acoustics in a space and measures sound levels in people's workplaces. Spaces can be designed to either increase the pleasures of a sound in a performance space or decrease the stress of a work environment by tempering the level of noise.


He has also done a great deal of activism work encouraging minority middle and high school students who are interested in going into the sciences.

He co-founded the Association of Black Laboratory Employees (ABLE) which deals with placement and promotional concerns of minority staff members.

He established the Corporate Research Fellowship Program  for Grad Students In Science as well as a summer institute for non-white students

In 2015 Dr. West served on the board of directors for the Ingenuity Project in Baltimore that supports talented middle school students who want to go into the sciences.

Aside from holding over 250 patents that deal with acoustics, he also has been given tons of awards. Here are a few:

National Medal of Technology

- National Medal of Technology and Innovation
- 2010 The Franklin Institute - The Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering
- He's been elected into the National Academy of Engineers
- In 1999 he was inducted in the National Inventors Hall of Fame

Thank you, for the microphone Dr. James West!

Celebrate Black History!

The Microphone Is Your Friend

Today I taught a workshop at Northlands Confabulation! 

It was all about using the microphone. I've written about this in the past, but mostly to encourage people to ask for one, and why.

 Today I had the joy of playing with the mic with some storytellers.




Let's begin at the beginning -

Why should you use the mic?

It allows you to be conversational with a large number of people. It also allows you to get volume without having to do so much work. It saves your voice.

You only work as long as your voice is intact if you are a voiced storyteller. If you are in multiple venues, use interesting vocal work, or want any kind of nuance, you need a mic. Without one, you are likely to hurt yourself from overstressing your voice over time.

You also lose so much texture and tone without a mic.

I gave examples of how different something sounds when you move the mic away. Still, there are those who stress their voices.

There are lots of articles about the care and feeding of your voice if you do have trouble. You can check out my hot tips about that here.

Next, we talked about movement with a standing mic - 

The story happens in the space all around you. Whenever you move into that space, you break the storytelling illusion. Trust the story to fill the stage. Here is a deeper discussion about that.

Our next discussion was about sound effects -

We talked about sound effects with a mic

I started with a little bit of the Boo Hag, which is one of my favorite ghosty tales to tell.

I shared the scene where she spins off her skin. Very creepy.

Then, we talked about two different types of sound effects.

Unvoiced sounds - 

These are the sounds you make with your lips, teeth, and tongue. They do not involve your vocal folds. When you use unvoiced sounds with a microphone, the thing that adds volume is the air that comes out of your mouth and interacts with the mic. The more air you use, the louder the sounds, but none of it involves your voice! This often requires practice, but it is a very effective way to make great noises that don't stress your voice.

We also spoke of effective lip placement to get the most out of unvoiced sound effects.

This requires stretching your lips forward and parting your lips wide enough to allow the air to flow.

Voiced Sounds. - 

Voiced sounds require you to engage your vocal folds, and they are the animal noises, squeaking, walking, and any other kind of sound that involves adding voiced sounds that are not narrative or conversational.

Microphones allow you to exploit using a small amount of effort to achieve a great amount of sound. Some of these sounds could hurt your voice if you power through them.


Then, we talked about my absolute favorite thing....Jump Stories!

Jump stories happen when you lull the audience into complacency by creating a soft, even hypnotic

Antonio Rocha

mood and then you assault them with a sound. The "Boo!" moment.

How do you set that moment up to get the jump?

1 - Don't broadcast it.
2 - Slow down, move into a comforting tone.
3 - Use air and voice to make a loud enough sound to cause the jump.
4 - Use a far more quiet voice leading into the jump
5 - Don't just use your voice - Give your body a percussive moment as well.


One of the things we discussed was connecting your body, voice, and face. When you put all of these elements together, you will be able to figure out what parts of your story need sound effects and which do not.


Controlling Loud and Soft Sounds


We moved on from jump stories to talking about how you use the microphone to control how loud you want voiced sounds to be, and how you go through a story using the distance from your mouth to the microphone to make appropriately loud or soft sounds.

Some you make into the microphone, some you make away from the microphone.

Your body doesn't move away from the mic, your head does. Some sounds, like a crying crocodile, I make away from the mic, and other sounds like the wind or a whisper, are made right into the mic.

We ended our session by talking about how you control an audience with a microphone.

Controlling An Audience

If you are in front of two hundred kids, you can either use the mic to tell them to come back to center, or you can start speaking soft enough to catch their ears.

With really little kids, you can make odd noises into the mic that catch their attention.

Ultimately, what I recommend is that you think about the age group of the students, and tell age-appropriate material crafted in a way that makes it easier for the audience to consume.

Here is an admittedly dense post about using the audience. It has links to some of my posts about choosing and executing stories for various age student audiences.

To everyone who shared the workshop with me: Thank You! I had a great time, and as always, I learned many things from you.

To everyone who just checked in to see what we did: Welcome! I hope this little summary offers you a bite or two at the apple we consumed today.

Happy Telling!