Faith Works 8-17-19
Jeff Gill
Can you hear me now?
___
This is an exhortation, a challenge, and a confession, all at once.
I'm talking to you, and also trying to continue to remind myself. You know, "do as I say, not as I do."
It's this thing about microphones. And primarily, this is intended for everyone who says, as I have in the past, when offered a hot mic: "oh, I can make myself heard – I don't need that."
Using microphones is an art right up there with riding a bicycle or using a keyboard to type. It's not beyond almost anyone, but not everyone knows how to do it without some lessons, some practice, and some continual attention to what you're doing.
How to hold it, what can cause you to create feedback (the relationship of the mic to speakers being the main challenge), and how to speak into it means that not everyone is just automatically good at using the sound system.
Which leads many of us to decline, and try to bellow. Because we're confident and proud and sure we don't have to have the darn things, unreliable and tricky as they can indeed be.
But here's the thing: if you get offered a mic, you should take it. If there's one around, you probably need it. Not because of any failing of your own, not that it's an admission of weakness, but because frankly expectations have changed, and listening patterns, too, and if you don't use amplification you are going to miss reaching part of your audience.
And here's another thing. As I've become much more aware of the need to use amplification when it's available, I've become acutely aware of when people airily brush aside an offered pick-up and say "Don't worry, they'll hear me!" Very, very often that's true for the first couple of sentences – and then they slowly slide back into the normal speaking voice and cadence which is fine for conversation, even loud face-to-face, but in any space bigger than a restroom gets lost past the first row. Human bodies soak up sound waves, they really do. And you put forty, fifty, a hundred people in a room you can fill with your voice empty, and those sound sponges that are your audience are going to get left out. Generally, loud people don't stay loud, they just think they do.
I was that guy, for a long time. Readers know I've spent the last two years going through learning how to deal with spasmodic dysphonia, and earlier when we thought I had a different problem with my vocal cords I was already giving myself permission to use tools I had always declined before.
The scientific jury is still out on whether or not use and abuse of your voice creates spasmodic dysphonia, but there's plenty of evidence to show it helps. When I began my public speaking career, I didn't have easy to use and portable amplification, and I had to learn how to project over a walk-in cooler compressor kicking on during lunchtime announcements in the Scout camp dining hall, or in an outdoor firebowl surround by trees and a few hundred kids. I did fine for many years, but I know I strained my voice, almost every summer losing it for a time or two. Or as the years went on, three or four.
As equipment became available, I should have used it, but I didn't. Now I need it, and I have to, but it's helped me both look back for my own vocal maintenance, and now around me as others speak in public (or sing on the radio, a whole 'nother subject). Too many people make me wince by casually, even sneeringly, push aside mics saying "I'll have no trouble reaching the back row, am I right?" And the back row to the first bellow smiles and nods, but soon looks lost and confused as the sound level drops.
Recently, though, I had a microphone in my hand that sputtered and whined and squeaked, and I had to put it down and speak up. I still can, to a degree, but it just made me think all the more about needing to check out the sound system in a strange place in advance. Because most of us, most of the time, need it.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he used to be louder, but quieter isn't all bad. Tell him how well you can hear speakers for programs or preaching at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
