I’ve been working alongside some other speakers and presenters recently, and after I’d finished my session, I offered one of them our equipment as a gesture of goodwill. I’d got everything there, after all, so it was hardly a matter of life and death for me to let someone else use it. The response..?
“No thanks – I’ve got a big enough voice. I don’t need microphones!”
Riiiiight, I thought. Given the tone of voice this was said in, what they clearly needed was a lesson in manners. It was as though I’d offered them something illegal and immoral. What’s more, there was a clear implication that I was an incompetent oaf for needing a microphone.
In a way, he turned out to be right. He did have a big enough voice. So big, in fact, that a couple of people left and a lot more people looked uncomfortable. Essentially, our anti-hero was mistaking being able to make a lot of noise by shouting with a projected voice.
Essentially what he was doing was using his throat a lot – and producing a sound which was loud enough to hear at the back (great) but in doing so was
- too loud at the front of the room
- aggressive sounding
- knackering for his throat in the long term
This last point means he’ll won’t make it as a professional speaker – his injury rate will be too high: given the first to problems, this might not be a bad thing! ;)
I’ve posted dozens of blogs about being able to project properly and the advantages of being able to do that (and the online course is available at the moment for only £0.13 as we test the technology!)
I’m not going to go into it here (but I will soon, I promise) but so many people mis-use microphones and so many venues have shocking systems that our default for presentations is not to use a microphone. For example, I recently spoke a a large regional expo in the north of England – great stage, great kit… except that the speakers were built into the back of the stage. As a result, every time a speaker tried to move to the back 60% of the stage, they risked feedback.
Not good. Not good at all. Very off-putting because even if you managed to avoid the feedback (and audiences hate feedback – it smacks of being an amateur) it means I had to concentrate more on how I was saying things and less on what I was saying.
What I’d like to talk about here is whether to use a microphone or not. No doubt your experience will be different (and personal experience tops generalisations here!) but for what they’re worth, here are our guidelines.
- If the presentation is being recorded, wear a mic. Distance-based mics just don’t cut it and you’ll end up sounding like you’re being recorded from the bottom of a toilet. Don’t forget, just because you’re wearing a microphone doesn’t mean you have to use speakers and so on – it can just be recorded
- If there are people in the audience using hearing aids that can patch directly to a special system, use a mic. Not everyone else needs to hear it but it helps people who would otherwise struggle to hear you
- If your presentation is to a huge audience – and by ‘huge’ what I mean is bigger than you can project to, reasonably comfortably. Of course, if your voice is properly trained you can project to audiences of a couple of hundred reasonably easily with all the advantages of that but until you’ve got yourself trained a microphone and sound system is a better backup than either not being heard or having to shout!
- If a microphone is expected as part of your professional image: see my opening comments to this very blog – there was no way I needed a microphone in a theatre of only 150 people but I chose to wear one for the sake of appearances. Not using one would have looked odd to that audience.
- If you’re ill in any significant way – as a professional speaker and trainer it wouldn’t do for me to have a sore throat and not be able to perform. A distressingly high number of illnesses include ‘sore throat’ in their list of symptoms :( There’s no shame in being ill – and if you’re ill you can’t get your voice to work properly.
- If the rest of you is injured in any way that affects your voice – for example, I recently had to work two days back to back, doing eight hour training courses with an injured knee. Standing badly to protect the injury has an impact upon my voice. I was okay, because of my training and awareness but if you’re not as lucky as me to have had the training I’ve had, maybe you should consider getting a bit of technological help rather than risk your voice not working the next day………
- If the system isn’t ready when you walk in to the venue and/or you’ve not had chance to test it.
And, of course, you should avoid microphones if
- the sound-system isn’t very good – I’ll be blogging about this next week but don’t forget that anything that gets between you and your audience is a bad thing! Even just the confusion of your voice coming from a different direction to your mouth (that is, if the speakers are offset) can reduce your audience’s understanding :(
- you don’t have the necessary technical knowledge or microphone technique – and I’ll blog more about that shortly too!
So, folks, what are your thoughts – when should you (and when should you not) use a microphone…?
