When This Guy Talks, NPR Listens

David Candow, the man who makes National Public Radio sound like National Public Radio, has a simple piece of advice for anyone who wants to get in front of a microphone: Try to sound like . . . you.

Don't try to imitate the worldly sophistication of NPR icon Robert Siegel, or the next-door-neighbor chumminess of NPR's Susan Stamberg. And forget about trying to echo the likes of quirky hipster host Ira Glass. Because you'll probably fail. But you can be the "best prepared you," he says.

Of course, as Candow well knows, "you" still needs some work. Sounding natural and easygoing on the air can take years of practice. It's like Fred Astaire's dance moves or the "perfect" golf swing -- they seem effortless, if you forget all the effort that went into making it seem that way.

This is where Candow comes in. The Canadian-born consultant is one of the most sought-after vocal training specialists in the English-speaking world, a kind of Henry Higgins to broadcasting's Eliza Doolittles. Over the past two decades, Candow, 68, has coached hundreds of broadcasters on how to write for, and speak on, the air.

Candow's most prominent client is NPR, with which he started working in 1995. Almost all of NPR's most prominent voices have been through Candow's training sessions, and some several times. His knack for bringing out the most emotive, evocative and distinctive qualities in NPR's journalists has earned him guru status around the network's Washington headquarters and an affectionate nickname: "the Host Whisperer."

Candow usually begins his work not by lecturing but by listening. He pays close attention not just to what his students say, but to nonverbal cues like pitch, pace, volume, rhythm. All of it makes an impression. A little bend in a word here, a pause mid-sentence, even standing or sitting can affect the way someone sounds, he says.

Candow gives a crude demonstration. Turning to his interviewer, he asks, "How are you today?" His tone is flat and affectless. The question falls dead almost as soon as it leaves his lips.

"How are you today?" he says next. The emphasized word pumps concern and sympathy into the question.

"How are you today?" he says. Now his tone is insinuating.

It sounds a bit like acting, but that's the wrong idea. Candow says acting is when you pretend to be someone else; his goal is to make you a better you. "You have to own it. You've got to make it your own," he says repeatedly.

Candow counsels his clients to write for the ear, not the page. Too often, he says, his clients respect the written word at the expense of the way real humans talk. He hates it, for example, when he hears a host or forecaster tease a weather report by saying, "You're going to get two inches of the white stuff tonight."

" 'White stuff'?" he sputters. "It's snow ! And 'you're going to get'? Where does the weatherman live? He's going to get it, too."