In this episode of the Foster Your Voice Podcast, we continue our series on the 5 Building Blocks of Voice with a double feature: Pace and Melody. These two tools are vital for keeping jurors engaged and emotionally connected to your case.

You'll learn why your natural cadence must be paired with purposeful pausing—not just for drama, but because cognitive overload is real. And when it comes to melody, we’re not talking about singing—we’re talking about the shape of your vocal phrases and how they direct jurors' attention, signal energy shifts, and shape meaning.

If you’ve ever wondered how to slow down for impact, speed up for chaos, or break out of a robotic speaking pattern, this one's for you.

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READY TO PRACTICE?

Get the FREE practice guide I've created as a supplement to this episode. It's called Pace & Pause: The Perfect Pair and it gives you step-by-step instructions and practice passages to work on your pacing. I even tell you exactly when to pause. How long you pause is up to you, but the timer is on!

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What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

✅ Why pausing is essential for juror comprehension

✅ How your natural speaking cadence affects how long you need to pause

✅ How ascending, descending, and monotone melody affect listener engagement

✅ When to break vocal patterns to create contrast and emotional shifts

✅ Why strategic pacing and melodic variety can help you shape how jurors learn and feel

Key Takeaways:

🎯 Pacing is not just about speed—it's about pausing. Jurors can't process information while you're still talking.

🎯 Processing happens in the pause. If you're not pausing, you're not helping jurors “save” and understand what matters.

🎯 Melody shapes energy and focus. It’s not about punctuation—it's about intention and emotional direction.

🎯 All three melody types—ascending, descending, and monotone—have a place. But patterns create predictability, which kills engagement.

🎯 Strategic variation keeps jurors alert and emotionally attuned to your story.

Resources & Next Steps:

📺 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FosterYourVoice

🎧 Missed Episode 13 on Pitch? Go back and listen to build your foundation: https://www.fostervoicestudio.com/blog/podcast13

📩 Want personal coaching or have questions? DM Kristi on Instagram/Facebook or email [email protected]

🗓️ Next Episode Teaser: We’ll be tackling Volume—and revealing a secret formula you won’t want to miss.

Keep fostering your voice. Your jurors—and your client—are counting on it.

TRANSCRIPT:

Helloooo! Hello Foster Fam! Welcome back to another episode where we continue our mini voice lessons to start learning some vocal technique. This is a series on The 5 Building Blocks of vocal development — pitch, pace, melody, volume, and tone. In the last episode we played around with pitch, exploring how, when and why you can and SHOULD use chest voice, middle voice, and head voice ALL THROUGHOUT TRIAL. If you missed last week, make sure to go back and review.

You don't need to listen to these in order though. The order than i'm going in is not to suggest a hierarchy. Each building block is independent of the other but they work in tandem together to help you fashion your voice into the most powerful tool in your trial prep toolbox.

Today then, we're going to cover both Pace and Melody. So, let's get into it.

When we're talking Pace, we're talking about the speed at which you speak. Your natural cadence. Now, your natural cadence MUST be paired with pausing. How often do you need to pause? WAY more than you think or what feels natural to you.

Your audience, jurors in this case, can EITHER gather information OR process information. We don't do both at the same time. Gathering information is sensory input, and processing is a separate cognitive act.

This is all rooted in Cognitive Load Theory, which says our working memory (where active thinking happens) is limited. Our brains can only hold and manipulate a few pieces of information at a time. So, when too much new information comes in without time to process, overload happens — and comprehension drops off real fast.

Processing happens in the PAUSE. So, if you aren't pausing enough, you're going to lose your jury to cognitive overload.

Think of it like Save on a computer. Now, I'm dating myself a little bit, cause nowadays, computers do auto-save by default. But that didn't used to be the case. I had to learn, too many times, the hard way, that if you don't save your work, you lose your work. Anybody else have to start college research papers over again when you're already pulling an all-nighter? No? Just me? Okay.

Pausing is like letting your jury click Save. It's not an auto-function. They need you to give them a moment to do it.

Pausing also helps jurors put things into context. For example, whenever you have a date that you mention, pause immediately after saying the date so the jurors have a moment to think "What was happening in my life at that time."

It's important to remember that your case is NOT just about your client. It's about a principle that, when ignored or lived out recklessly and with negligence, will impact jurors as well. I think it was David Ball who first introduced the concept of "spreading the tentacles of danger". The idea refers to demonstrating how the defendant's actions pose a broader risk to society or to the jurors themselves, making the danger feel immediate and personal. Well that starts with you giving them the moment of pause to put themselves into the context of the story.

Don't skate by dates, or timelines. Pause. Let the jury anchor themselves in them.

Okay, so HOW LONG exactly do I need to pause, Kristi?

Well, this is determined by your natural speech cadence. If you are a fast talker, you need to pause often, and you need to make each pause longer than seems reasonable. If you're a slower talker, you still need to pause often, but the length doesn't have to be as long.

Regardless, all of your pauses will feel like an ETERNITY to you. When you're in that place of discomfort, your length of pause is probably close to being right. Remember, YOU ALREADY KNOW ALL THE STUFF. The pauses are not for YOUR benefit. They are for the juror's benefit and when you don't do them, you're leaving them behind, and you're leaving your client's verdict even more to chance.

So, pacing is about your natural cadence and your relationship to pausing as a result of your cadence.

Okay, now that I've really hammered home that idea of nice even pacing with great pausing, I'm going to talk out of the other side of my mouth. hahah!!! Because there's GREAT VALUE in NOT being even and steady.

It's important to provide some disruption to the evenness, strategically, to get us out of the sabotaging patterns that lull folks into dangerous complacency.

This is particularly true when you're in the storytelling sections of your opening. As the danger in your story ramps up, so should your pace. Talk faster — especially when there's a car crash, or a slip & fall. (demonstrating) Speed up your cadence to help sonically represent the chaos of the moment, and then be able to contrast it with the stillness that comes after the car stops spinning, after your client has landed hard on the ground.

Use a faster pace when you're driving home a point. (demonstrating) When you're ramping up the righteous indignation that you feel and that you give the jury permission to feel, that requires a faster pace, so then you can juxtapose it with the weight of the decision they need to make.

Can you FEEL how Pace can be used as a vocal building block to infuse MEANING into your words? It's powerful.

The 3rd building block, and the second one we'll cover today, is Melody. You may recognize that as a musical term, and you may think, "Oh my gosh, she's gonna make me SING."

Side note. Did you know studies consistently show that a significant portion of the population experiences anxiety or fear when it comes to public speaking, which also encompasses singing in public. In fact, some surveys even show that the fear of public speaking is more prevalent than the fear of death itself. 

So, no...I'm not gonna make you SING, but let's explore some non-singing applications of Melody.

First off, what is it? It's the shape of the tune in your voice, the direction your voice goes as it moves through chest voice, middle voice, and head voice. (again, if you haven't listened to Episode 13, you'll want to visit it so you know the different voices I just said).

There are three possible shapes to your vocal phrase. 3 variations on Melody: (demonstating) ascending melody, descending melody, and monotone melody.

Okay, so let's practice each one. Repeat after me:

(ascending) "Start from the bottom and work my way up"

Again..."Start from the bottom and work my way up"

That's ascending.

Now descending. "Start from the top and then work my way down."

Once again..."Start from the top and then work my way down."

Now pick one pitch and try to stay there for monotone.

"Staying on one pitch and trying not to move."

Do it again..."Staying on one pitch and trying not to move."

It's okay to have a little bit of movement so you don't sound like a robot, but the point is that it's pretty static, the opposite of dynamic.

(demo Asc) Okay, now, as always, we ask ourselves the question...(demo Desc) WHEN in the world would I use these in trial?

Now, with a keen ear, you might have JUST heard me do something. I'll demonstrate it again here in a second.

First though, let me take you WAY BACK to...kindergarten, let's say. We all learned at an early age that when you end a sentence, your voice goes down. And when you ask a question? The voice goes up.

But we were LIED TO! Shout out to Mrs. Kurth, my kindergarten teacher, who I did not know to be a malicious lier. However, the "rules" we were taught are NOT as hard and fast as we were maybe led to be believe. Let me do my demonstration again. Listen for the melody.

(demo Asc) Okay, now, as always, we ask ourselves the question...(demo Desc) WHEN in the world would I use these in trial?

I REVERSED the hard and fast rule. I went up for the statement part and down for the question part. And it made perfect sense. It didn't FEEL disjointed or incorrect. Why?

Because melody isn't always just about indicating PUNCTUATION as much as it's about the direction of ENERGY.

(demo Asc) You can hear as I begin talking, I'm using ascending melody, and you might feel like it's suspending the energy, so you know it's still my turn to speak.

Now, listen carefully, WE DO NOT WANT A PATTERN, ever. So, you should never find yourself speaking how I just demonstrated. I just was doing it so you'd particularly feel the suspension.

(demo Desc) But just like we don't want to find ourselves, in a pattern of ascending melody, we also want to always avoid, a pattern of descending melody. Hear how I'm constantly descending, always landing in the same spot. It become really hard to listen to.

Okay, again, I'm modeling extreme applications here just for demonstration purposes. BUT, don't be surprised if now that you understand how melody works and how it shifts and suspends energy, you'll start to notice when people DO get stuck in patterns, and notice how it makes you FEEL and how it impacts how you LEARN from them.

So, while we don't want a melodic pattern, we definitely want a nice easy mix and playfulness of tune as you use both ascending AND descending melody throughout trial.

But what about monotone? That was the third option right? Should we avoid being monotone?

Yes, and no. Avoid it as a PATTERN, just like you avoid ascending and descending patterns. But there is a time and a place for using a monotone melody — (demo Mono) like when you want to slow down the action, when there's thoughtfulness and contemplation. Whenever you physically still yourself for an intentional moment, you should vocally flatten out as well. Slight variations so you don't sound robotic, (demo A/D) but definitely not a dynamic & active shape of melody.

All three have purpose, infuse meaning, and help you shape the energy of your presentation.

Now, next week we're going to continue our series on The 5 Building Blocks by discussing Volume and also a really interesting thing that happens when we combine a secret formula. So you don't want to miss that.

Until next week, keep fostering your voice.