A Musical intro…..
Updated on March 3, 2009
By Simon
In the past, I’ve read in various places suggestions and claims that music, and in particular Mozart, stimulates people’s brains. It’s been associated with everything from better surgery to smarter kids. (I’m drafting this with my iTunes playing Mozart Symphony 40, so you be the judge!)
What I’ve noticed for myself however, is that before presentations – during that awkward time when people are arriving, seating themselves and getting sorted out – it’s often more pleasant for the arriving audience to have some kind of background music. That’s particularly true for the early-birds who can find themselves feeling somewhat exposed and socially awkward in the silence. Music can be very welcoming. Besides, if nothing else, it shows that you’re ready and relaxed!
That said, the choice of music can be critical. There can be few things worse than something which irritates people or winds them up. So with that in mind, here are a few simple (perhaps obvious bits!) of advice for background music, where-ever and however you use it.
Make sure you have the necessary license(s). They’re not expensive but the costs of not having them could be! Besides, by not paying them, you’re stealing. Simple as that.
Make sure you have an adequate sound system. For background music it doesn’t have to be the most potent system in the world, but if it’s full of crackles you’re going to turn your audience off, not warm them up and relax them.
Check that your music has a fairly limited dynamic range. You don’t want anything that gets too loud or goes too soft, otherwise it will intrude-and-disappear by turns. (In an ideal world you’d have something that didn’t have breaks between tracks too.) Classical music in particular is often a problem here, especially things like symphonies!
Make sure you’re not playing anything too obtrusive in other ways – lyrics, volume, rhythm and beat can all intrude into the foreground. Remember the idea is to make sure that the people in the room don’t feel too exposed, not that they feel they have to listen! Instrumental music is often more practical.
Perhaps this is a special case of the last point, but I always make sure the music I choose is relatively obscure. Nothing sticks in an audience’s head more than a favourite bit of music that they know well. Playing ‘Smoke on the Water’ is going to make your job harder, not easier, because once people have that opening guitar bit in their heads it’s going to stick around in their heads all day…
Make sure you can fade things out easily when you want to start to speak. Notice that I said fade, not just cut (unless the general level of chatter in the room has eclipsed it!). That means that if you’re showing a welcome slide, for example, you need to either know how to do things on your computer without losing that slide – or that you need to have the background music controlled in a different, independent way. (This can be pretty inconvenient, I admit, because the easiest thing in the world to do is simply play music from our laptop.)
