Each public speaker stands before his audience naked. Well not exactly naked as in “unclothed”but rather naked, as there is nothing standing between you and your audience. This is 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 used to having their senses. completely submerged in every experience they choose to participate in. From 3D in movie theaters to Dolby surround sound at home, we want it all and we want it all the time.
As a public speaker, you really can’t fight this ever-increasing level of expectations from your audience. You need to boost your speech to meet what your audience is looking for. Sounds are a speaker’s best friend – They are easy to carry and can add depth to any speech you make.
4 secrets to using sound effects with your speech
Dean Sheetz has been researching how speakers can incorporate sounds into their speeches and has come 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 of view stay in the minds of your audience. However, if you don’t choose your sounds wisely, 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.
- Timing is everything: If you are going to use sounds in your speech, then it is absolutely necessary to perfectly control the timing. The purpose of a sound is to support what it is 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 were to use a car accident sound effect, then you would need to be able to activate it at exactly the right point in your story to bring the feeling of danger home.
- 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 every other word while reading the book. This is great for young children, not so much for the public. You must use sound effects to add depth and enrich your speeches, you must not allow sound effects to take over your speech.
- Have a plan: Whenever you add something to a speech, you should have a plan for when things don’t turn out the way you expected. When it comes to using sound effects, there are many challenges that could go wrong. These include your sound effects not working, the wrong sound effect being produced at the wrong time, etc. As a speaker, you need to anticipate that this will happen and decide what you would do to keep your speech moving even in the most challenging circumstances.
What does all this mean to you?
All speakers want the same: to make a lasting (good) impression on your audience. The challenge we face is that when delivering a speech, it’s really just us against the world. However, if we take the time to plan it, then 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 discourse and not against. 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 go right.
Our audiences await multimedia programs In their lifes. As speakers, we can use sound effects to give them what they are looking for and achieve our ultimate goal: to change the world one audience at a time.
