Tag Archives: microphone technique

Richard Lindzen engages

Posted on by
6

In March 2009 in New York City, The Heartland Institute held their second International Conference on climate change. Among the climatologists, geophysicists, economists and practitioners of sundry other kindred sciences was Richard Lindzen, atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He delivered this speech.

He was introduced by Joseph Bast, President and CEO of The Heartland Institute, who had a range of other announcements to make. That is why it is not till 7:04 that Lindzen begins.

Two or three months ago on this blog there was a period when every second posting would have me getting exercised about bad microphone technique causing popping. Here the phenomenon returns with a vengeance, though don’t look to me for signs of nostalgia.  I am slightly reassured that someone at least noticed, because at 7:55 a disembodied hand appears from the side to push the mics down, and Lindzen’s voice goes so quiet that cries from the audience cause him to bring them up again, making the popping even worse than before. Shortly afterwards an engineer, probably still trying to cure the problem, turns the volume right down; but this was never going to work: it just makes it more difficult to hear him. The cause is not volume but the tender bits of the microphone being assaulted by percussive columns of the speaker’s breath. Don’t speak into a microphone, speak across it.

(Isn’t it wonderful! That auditorium is lousy with scientific doctorates, but it apparently needed a mere rhetor to tell them how to make a microphone behave itself.)

He reads a script, which is a bit of a pity, though actually this is more the presentation of a paper than a speech.

Despite that and the popping, I found the speech fascinating. He strongly makes the point that global warming was never a scientific or even environmental issue but rather a political one. We have become accustomed, in the climate change argument, for academics to (ab)use their high-sounding titles as a licence loftily to wave away any dissent with cheap phrases like ‘anti-science’ rather than engaging with the arguments. Lindzen soberly engages with everything in sight using merciless rigour. Though it is very clear which side of the argument he favours, that does not stop him castigating his own side when their arguments have fallen short of the intellectual standards he demands.

It is quite difficult for us to read his slides on this video, but I am left in little doubt that his graphs are fed by data that is empirically tested for the purposes of scientific truth and accuracy rather than massaged for the purposes of promoting a pre-written narrative.

It’s an important speech and, because of it and a few like it, posterity will surely be less forgiving of the promoters of global warming alarmism and its monumental cost to Society and the environment. They shall never be able to claim that no one told them.

Blair – bad, not so bad, and splashing.

Posted on by
Reply

Today I am once again on the subject of talking heads . It’s a term I use rather disparagingly to refer to the speaker being merely a voice-conduit for a piece of literature. When a speaker just reads a script it will usually be a huge turn-off for the audience, and the ‘better’ the writing the bigger the turn-off.

You may wrestle with that, so let me explain. I put the word ‘better’ in quotes, because good literature has a tendency towards formality. Speaking, because of today’s fashion for a more casual style of conversational sincerity, tends the opposite way so better writing makes for worse speaking. On those occasions when a script becomes necessary we have to write it with speaking in mind. Remove its tie: loosen its collar!  There are guidelines for this which I don’t usually cover in a course unless specifically requested, but I did in the book.

I bet your experiences as an audience member confirm this; and if you have ever read transcripts of great speeches you have probably met with the converse – great speeches don’t make good reading. You needed to be there. Lord Roseberry said in his Life of Pitt,

“Few speeches which have produced an electrical effect on an audience can bear the colourless photography of a printed record.”

Let’s look at a debate held in Canada between Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens on whether Religion is a Force for Good. To watch the whole thing you would need an hour and three quarters, but I should like to refer you merely to small sections.

Blair’s first offering goes from 14:00 – 21:02. It is scripted and, though Blair handles a script better than most, he is being a Talking Head – even down to the occasional piece of smart-alec writing that just doesn’t work in this medium!  Later he and Hitchens each have two four-minute rebuttal slots, and those of Blair can be found here –

  • 26:40 – 31:13
  • 36:05 – 40:13.

Now he is shooting from the hip, and the improvement in delivery is huge.

I shan’t comment on what either of them is saying, because that’s not my brief today. Blair in his rebuttals may be reverting to the old touchy-feely, schmaltzy stuff that we remember so vividly from him; but even in the guise that so many find emetic he relates much better with his audience when unhampered by paper.

That’s why I don’t like Talking Heads: that’s why I metaphorically tear paper from out of the hands of trainees: that’s why I show trainees how to structure and prepare their material so that they can securely ‘shoot it from the hip’: that’s why I go to lengths to show them that they are – often to their amazement – perfectly able to do it: that’s why I wrote the book . This paragraph was anaphora, in case you hadn’t noticed.

I am also today returning to the subject of microphone problems. Usually I am castigating the speaker for bad microphone technique, but Blair in that recording was blameless. When a speaker is working so hard on what emerges from his mouth, it enrages me when the technology fails to deliver it properly. Blair in that debate had a lapel microphone attached to his shirt. With those things you are entirely in the hands of the sound engineer. The sound system disgracefully distorted and ‘splashed’ all his sibilant consonants. That sound engineer needs to take up an occupation better suited to his talents. Like sweeping streets.

[added in 2017: the video embedded in this posting was since taken off line and replaced with one that appears to have had its sound quality cleaned up.]

Rudyard Griffiths, the chairman of that debate was wearing an earset mic – one of those things that they try to blend in with your skin-colour. If you stick a ball of foam over the end – and they usually do – the colouring doesn’t hide it and it looks as if you have a boil on your cheek. The advantage of earsets is that if you turn your head you don’t go off-mic. They don’t need that foam-ball. It is theoretically there as a wind-break to lessen popping, but if you fit the thing right you won’t get popping and if you fit it wrong that foam won’t save you. He’s slightly sibilant, but he’s not splashing like Blair.

Two paragraphs ago it may not have escaped your notice that I suggested rather forcibly that the sound engineer was incompetent. There may be another less charitable explanation for Blair’s terrible sound quality. I have sometimes idly speculated that most audience members might not even notice these aberrations, because their brains filter them out.   Just for a moment suppose that this little theory is right, and that most listeners just vaguely register that one speaker makes for more pleasant listening.

Listen closely to Hitchens.  Do you hear the same scale of sound problems from him? This was a debate on a matter which polarizes people.  If the organisation staging the debate favoured one side of the argument, what a sneaky way that could be of subliminally handicapping the opposition. Am I being too fanciful?  Perhaps, but it’s a thought.

As a matter of interest, who was it that staged this debate in Canada?  There may be a clue in the introduction spoken by Rudyard Griffiths.

Popping!

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday I explained and enlarged upon my impatience with the practice of reading a speech from a script. I also told how there would be more examples in the next couple of weeks of speakers who would illustrate how much better they performed when shooting from the hip.

Today I want to focus on another matter that seems to have trended in this blog – and is destined to trend some more. I hate microphone popping. This is the name given to the little explosive sounds made by your percussive consonants – particularly ‘P’s – if you speak too directly into the microphone.

I’ve been trying to cast my mind back more than two decades to the days before I was trained for working on radio. One of the key things we were taught was how to prevent popping. I undoubtedly then became more sensitised to the sound; but how much did I mind it before?  I don’t remember. The reason this concerns me is that it may be that most people never consciously notice popping – till a busybody like me comes along, points it out, and ruins everything for them.

Nevertheless, even if they do not consciously pick it up, their subconscious will register whether one speaker just makes a more pleasant sound than another. My trainees quickly pick up on my argument that it is as easy to do things right as wrong; and because many of them are senior business people who are delivering presentations whose success or failure could make the difference of huge amounts of money, the few percentage points either way, made by ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, can  be pretty critical.

The key to correct microphone technique is not to speak into a microphone, but to speak across it – or at least anywhere into its arc of sensitivity except into the thing itself. It’s the sudden assault of a column of your breath that makes the pop. Don’t do what Boris did in that example speech covered last week. The stereo mics had been aimed at his eyes – which should have been fine – but at the beginning of the speech he wrenched them down to point at his mouth. Aaagh! Wicked man!

You’ve seen microphones with sponge balls on them. That sponge is designed to make the mic more forgiving of bad technique than it would be otherwise. But it won’t forgive the worst; and anyway why not develop habits that give it nothing to forgive? Right is as easy as wrong.

If you find yourself in a TV studio, and a sound engineer has clipped a lapel microphone on you, microphone technique no longer applies: you have no choice but to put yourself in that engineer’s hands. Likewise if they equip you with an ear-set – one of those things that look as if you have a boil on your cheek. You will be asked to say something for a level check. The only thing you have to worry about is that the volume you use for that level check is near enough the same as you use when on air. Seems simple, but I could tell you stories…!

At any rate you should stand by for a severe rant coming soon in this blog, because someone who used to be the British Prime Minister, speaking at a conference, is wearing a lapel mic. He is not popping, but badly ‘splashing’. That is another horror, wherein sibilant consonants – particularly ‘S’ – cause distortion in the sound system. As I stated earlier, with a lapel mic you are in the hands of the sound engineer who, in that case, should have been put out of our misery.

As you might have gathered, we have fun and games coming soon!  I hope you find them entertaining and helpful.

Brendan O’Neill – should shed the paper.

Posted on by
Reply

This is from the Auracle newsletter of July ’12

As I sometimes do I was browsing one evening in a desultory fashion through YouTube, wondering whether I might happen upon interesting material.  I did.  What caught my eye was the name Brendan O’Neill. He is the editor of Spiked, one of the online newspapers that I sometimes read; and though I don’t always agree with what he and his paper say I enjoy the maverick muscularity with which it is argued.

I was eager to discover whether he carried that characteristic through into his speaking. I like mavericks. I came across two speeches that he made in the past year.  Firstly let’s look at one he delivered at St Stephen’s Club in Westminster on 7 September.

He’s a talking head. He’s reading a script. His natural medium is writing so he has written this speech as a script, enjoyed turning some well-crafted sentences, and now he’s regurgitating it orally. Anyone who has done a course with me, read The Face & Tripod, or just read this blog knows how ferociously eager I am to tear paper props away from speakers. This speech contains some pleasing bits of writing and I would have enjoyed reading it, but I absolutely don’t want to hear it.  I want him shooting from the hip.  He wants it too, though he doesn’t know it.  Look how uncomfortable he is. He never stops fidgeting; and it’s that particular brand of fidgeting that indicates a want of inner calm. You may remember I pointed to Boris Johnson’s unwittingly displaying stress by rubbing the back of his head. O’Neill does it at 1.55, and again later several times.

Shortly after the 8-minute mark he begins lifting his eyes for longer periods from his script, and every time the quality of his speaking lifts also. As he passes 10 minutes there’s very little dependence on the script, and the delivery becomes immeasurably better. Look how well he narrates the Notting Hill Carnival incident. He is following Cardinal 1: he has ‘something to say’ and he is shooting it from the hip. He could not be illustrating more clearly the case that I repeatedly make to trainees, and also made in The Face & Tripod, for throwing away your paper.

Now let us examine a speech he made in a debate at last year’s Wilderness Festival. The motion is “New technology is creating more serious problems than it is solving”, and O’Neill is speaking for it. My comments are largely the same as for the previous, except this time with added microphone popping. This last point is not entirely his fault. As he begins, someone is still crouching in front of him adjusting the microphone. He speaks too loudly for a microphone and, though we might sympathise with his having to cope with speaking in a tent, he spoke too loudly also in the previous speech.  He needs to work on microphone technique.

He concludes his carefully scripted-and-read presentation, and then from 7:35 onwards he is cross-examined. Essentially therefore we are into Q&A. Now he has no choice but to shoot from the hip; and of course he becomes a different speaker, a much better one. Now he is absolutely proving that scriptless he is not only coherent and articulate but also that he still spontaneously trots out the well-turned phrases.

Using a script is for him worse than useless, because not only is it unnecessary not only does it rob him of his spontaneity, but it acts as a screen between him and his audience.  He does not need to read his speeches. He does not need paper.  He needs to learn how to do without it.  He needs The Face & Tripod.