93. Microphone Tips with Simone Heng
Tune in for some quick microphone tips from former broadcaster and professional speaker Simone Heng.
Transcript
Today I’m sharing a great little piece of advice about microphones from one of biggest inspirations and dear friends Simone Heng.
Simone is a speaker specialising in human connection and very soon to be published author. Her book Secret Pandemic comes out next Feb, Feb 22. I can’t wait to read it, not just because she’s my friend and it will be amazing but human connection is right up my alley.
Of course I come from the voice angle, of course the sound of our voice, the words we use, the way we speak has a huge impact on how we connect with others. And if you want to do that I believe you must first connect with your own voice. If you’d like to forge that connection, access your powerful voice, speak your truth then I invite you to join my course Speak from Your Soul.
It’s a 6 week course which will be voice and soul refreshing – each week we have different focus, embodiment, the chakras, breathwork, vibrations, alignment and gratitude. And you’ll come away with a whole new way of looking at your voice and public speaking.
We get underway on November 7th, pre-sale is now open so click the link in the shownotes, or DM me on any platform to join Speak from your Soul.
But first lets hear from Simone Heng. As a professional speaker and a former radio host (I used to be a radio news reporter) so we have that broadcast background in common. Microphones are something you get pretty used to. Of course a lot of events are still virtual, but we’re slowly getting back on stages, so it’s a good time to revisit the topic of microphones with Simone Heng.
Simone: Sally, I will never forget one of my first radio shows and I did it and I thought I did really well. And I wrote out all my breaks this is like 2007. And then one of the guys at the radio station was like, you were popping. He goes, you were popping all through that. And I was like, what do you mean I was popping? And I didn't know about the fact that if you spoke too closely to a microphone, your p's start to distort and pop. And I had to learn about about distortion. This goes as well for singing, like when I was little kid and I learned singing lessons. When you do a big blasting note, you pull the microphone away from you instead of pulling it deeper inside so that the dynamics are right. So one big thing that I use because I know that I'm loud.
And I know that I have an accent here in Asia compared to other people, is that I have the microphone a little bit away. I project into the mic as opposed to a lot of MCs will actually place the microphone. And you wouldn't want to do this now during COVID mind you as well, it's a communal microphone and they place it on the edge of their chin when they talk - particularly the kind of emcee that we'll do a full day spruiking just so that they don't have to project as much. Most of the gigs I do are like one to four hours. So I don't think that's necessary. But so I would advise just against that firstly for hygiene reasons. And secondly, it just looks really awful on stage of you're resting a microphone on your chin. You should learn to project anyway. So if you learn to project properly, regardless of the microphone, people will be able to hear, you won't have to rest it right on you. The other thing as well is I prefer onstage when I do a keynote to have a headset mic, because part of great storytelling and engaging an audience is using your hands. There's a great study that I learned from about the fact that when we were evolving as cavemen, we would have our hands - basically, whenever you meet a new person, the first thing they look at is your hands. Because when we were cave men and we met someone from another tribe, the first thing they do would be looking at our hands to see if we had weapons. So gesticulation is really, really important. The world's best TedTalks have double the gesticulation as the world's worst TedTalks. So because of that, I really, really prefer headset mikes. And normally for keynote speaking, 99% of the time, they will supply that or lapel mic. I hate lapel mikes because the battery pack has to go onto the waistband of something. And as a woman, if you're wearing something kind of form fitting, even if it's a suit, just that simple two inches and a half of the battery pack can cause your whole front of your suit to kind of stretch out and make lines that the lights on the stage hit. So my preference is always kind of the headset mic. And then I put the battery pack on the top of my blazer facing internally inside the gap between my shoulder blades, as opposed to around my waist. Just because it kind of pulls everything really tight, affects, my diaphragm breathing.
Amazing and to hear the full chat with Simone, scroll on back to episode 41. To up-level your speaking skills join Simone’s community at courageousspeaking.com and you can also join my speaking community which is called the Members Only Masterclass Vault. I’ll link to both of those in the show notes.