The initial idea for this work, the title being a reference to President Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy catch-phrase "Speak softly and carry a big stick," was that the percussionists would play large wooden sticks of varying sizes.   Musically, the work is highly rhythmic in nature, with pitch being totally a matter of stick size.   That being said, it is interesting to note that the largest stick does not always produce the lowest pitch.   The result is a composition of controlled rhythm and randomized pitch, perhaps suggesting that no matter how organized something is, it can still be set to chaos by randomizing elements.

Lasting approximately five minutes, Speak Softly was originally composed in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2003 for part three of Jessica Fogel’s site-specific dance triptych, entitled Red Trail to Open Field.   The new version, created for the inaugural season of the Original Skin Percussion Project, was completed in Aspen, Colorado in August of 2004.