There Is Something about His Voice

37-year-old singer Lee Hyun-woo has been enjoying great popularity among young women. Female fans say that Lee is `a man they want to live with` rather than `a man to date with.` It is because he delivers an image of some stability, they reason. And producers point to that 90% of the stable image comes from his voice.

Lee is in fact enjoying his second prime years. He has been hosting MBC TV`s `Wednesday Night Live Music` for more than 6 years and recently took a narrator`s role in SBS TV`s new series `Human Story-Women.` He is also hosting SBS radio program `Lee Hyun-woo`s Music Live.` And the key to these programs is voice.

Lee is now set to take a new challenge of acting. He will play a supporting role in MBC new series `A Cat on Rooftop Room.` Since he made his debut with 1991 hit song `the Dream,` he has continued to gain popularity slowly but steadily. If you want to know about this musician, show host and actor, you must know about his voice first. And here we offer an in-depth analysis on his voice based on speech and phonetics experts` advice.

● Secrete of Lee`s Way of Speaking

Lee is very selective when it comes to speaking, while others rushing to pitch their voices. He only uses necessary words when they are necessary, so he sounds refined and simple. Most people say something like `ah….` `uh….` and `eum…..` as they speak, but Lee hardly uses such words even during interviews.

He chooses not to make sound when he needs some time to think. There are some lapses during speech, but they hardly interrupt the entire flow. He speaks almost in the same tone and at the same speed whether he feels happy, sad, angry or bored.

HIs slow-pace speech serves to draw attention of listeners, making them wait for what he will say next. Once this kind of expectations is formed, people tend to laugh a lot whenever he tries to say something after a pause. The audience often burst into laughter when Lee says ˝I see…..(two or three seconds of silence) What`s next?˝

This unique way of delivering verbal messages sounds poetic to his fans, but slow and vague to people with little acquaintance. And this has something to do with the fact that the number of Lee`s fans increase slowly over time.

Lee`s way of speaking can compared to Lee Jong-hwan`s, a legendary radio disk jockey from the 1980s and 1990s. Lee Jong-hwan speaks slowly (even mutters sometimes) in a low and deep voice, delivering the feelings of sincerity and warmth. He speaks clumsily yet eloquently. The image against the world of sophisticated and precise speech is shocking and fresh. This type of speaking never carries the feelings of snobbishness. It is different from Johnny Yoon`s style, which emphasizes the clumsiness of speaking to make people laugh.

When Lee hosts `Wednesday Night Live Music,` he hardly takes his eyes off from those of co-host pianist Kim Kwang-min. He is not trying to look at the camera lens. He just puts focus on `eye contact` when talking to people. With this gesture, he turns the image of the TV show into that of his private world of music

● Secret of Lee`s Voice

While most people perceive his voice as low, experts classify it into right middle. ˝Lee`s voice is not low but it sounds soft and low, conveying comfortable feelings,˝ experts explained. Then, why is it so? The secret lies in adjustment of voice volume.

Lee has a rich voice, but he uses only one fourth of his voice, experts say. Subdued voices carry feelings of closeness and warmth. According to the `half voice` theory argued by Japanese NHK TV anchor Suzuki Genzi, people mostly use 50% of their voice volumes. But they sound the most persuading and friendly when they use 25%. This means that when Lee speaks to a number of people, listeners tend to think that he is talking to them only.

Lee`s voice sounds very friendly. Prof. Bae Myung-jin at Sungshil University who recently developed the Voice Feeling Monitor, equipment measuring friendliness of voices, analyzed Lee`s voice for about ten minutes as he hosted SBS radio program. According to the analysis, friendliness of Lee`s voice was 61.2% compared to people`s average 50%. The momentary friendliness, which measures 3 to 4 seconds of voice, was more than 70%. The findings indicate that Lee speaks with unique rhythm, which is based on vibration of vocal cord.

Lee spent his high school yeas in the U.S. So he pronounces Korean by moving his tongue dynamically syllabus by syllabus just as he does with English, adding intonation and rhythm to rather monotonous sound of Korean language.

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