Every public speaker stands before his audience naked. Well not exactly naked as in “unclothed”, but rather naked, since there is nothing that stands between you and your audience. This is both wonderful (you can connect with your audience) and terrible (it’s all you, baby). To increase the impact of your speech, you need all the help you can get, and sound effects are one way to do it…
Welcome to the world of sound… Effects
Here, in the age of technology everywhere, your audience has become accustomed to having their senses completely submerged in each experience in which they decide to participate. From 3D in movie theaters to Dolby surround sound in the home, we want it all, and we want it all the time.
As a speaker, you really can’t fight this ever-increasing level of expectations from your audience. You need to push your pitch to satisfy what your audience is looking for. Sounds are a speaker’s best friend – are easy going and can add depth to any speech you give.
4 secrets to use sound effects with your speech
Dean Sheetz has been researching how speakers can incorporate sounds into their speech and came up with four keys that can guide you as you prepare your next speech:
- Choose wisely: Adding sounds to a speech can be a powerful way to make your point stick in the mind of your audience. However, if you don’t choose your sounds wisely, then your audience will be distracted and spend their time trying to figure out how the sound relates to the point you’re trying to make.
- Time is everything: If you’re going to use sounds in your speech, then you absolutely must have perfect timing. The purpose of a sound is to support what you are saying. If the sound is not produced at the right time, its impact will be lost. For example, if you were talking to a group of high school students about the dangers of drunk driving and you were going to use a car crash sound effect, then you would need to be able to trigger it at exactly the right point in your story to convey the feeling. home danger
- Too much is too much: I don’t know about you, but maybe you’ve seen children’s books where you have to press a button to make a sound for each word as you read the book. This is great for small children, not so great for an audience. You should use sound effects to add depth and enrich your speech, you should not let sound effects overpower your speech.
- Have a plan: Any time you add something to a speech, you need to have a plan for when things don’t go your way. When it comes to using sound effects, there are a lot of challenges that could go wrong. These include your sound effects not working, the wrong sound effect happening at the wrong time, etc. As a speaker, you need to anticipate this happening and decide what you would do to keep your speech on track even in the most challenging of circumstances.
What all this means to you
All speakers want the same thing: make a lasting (good) impression on your audience. The challenge we face is that when making a speech, it’s really just us against the world. However, if we take the time to plan it, we can use sound effects to add depth and impact to our next speech.
When using sound effects, we must ensure that the sound effects work with our word and not against it. To do this, we need to keep four simple rules in mind: choose our sound effects wisely, remember that timing is everything, be careful not to overdo it, and finally, have a plan if things don’t turn out right.
Our audience has come to expect media shows In their lifes. As speakers, we can use sound effects to give them what they’re looking for and achieve our ultimate goal: to change the world one audience at a time.
