TAG: speaking about music

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Public Speaking For Musician Entrepreneurs: Draw In Your Audience with an Enticing Theme

Entrypoint

People love music. It has been around since the early days of human’s existence on the planet and it is not going away. But classical music is under attack for being too elitist, too difficult, too alien to the experience of today’s audiences.  That’s why it is important to find ways to invite audiences into the world of classical music.  …

Engaging Today’s Audience: 3 Things That Can Make A Difference to Classical Music

One of the “buzzwords” in today’s classical music scene is audience engagement:  how to create a meaningful experience in a live performance between the artist and the audience in order to attract new audiences to classical music, especially the elusive “young adult” audience.   This is a challenge in the era of the Internet where people can access music anytime and anywhere.  Therefore, it takes something special to get people to leave the comfort of their homes or unplug their earbuds and venture into the concert space in order to experience live music.  

Herein lies the irony:  as easy as it is to access music 24/7,  it’s lonely out there on the Internet and today’s audiences crave special and unique experiences. Thus, today’s musicians have an opportunity to create that unique and special experience for today’s audiences.

The TED Commandments: 10 Rules for a Great Speech

What makes for a great speech?

These days, one need only log onto Ted.com to see examples of the leading lights in our culture speaking with passion on everything from art to business to science to you name it!   In fact, in my class, I assigned my students to watch Ben Zander’s TED Talk on Music and Passion to show them the excitement that music can generate to tap into new possibilities, new experiences and new connections.

TED talks are wildly popular.  According to TED’s own records, TEDTalks have been viewed more than 500 million times by people around the world (as of July 2011).

Is it merely an accident that these speeches are so good?  Or is there some method to guide these talented people?

It turns out that TED’s organizer’s indeed issue guidelines, called the TED Commandments, which are apparently engraved on a stone tablet and sent to their invited speakers!  I am indebted to Tim Longhurst for transcribing the engraved  commandments from a photograph and typing then up.  Here they are:

Speaking About Music: How to Be Confident and Powerful

If you happened to wander by my classroom at Yale recently, you would have seen and heard my students and their professor (that would be me!) moving their arms, doing knee bends, rolling their lip, singing scales to the tune of “mi mi mi” and reciting tongue twisters under the tutelage of Professor Brian Lewis who came to my class to help us learn more about public speaking and overcome “glossophobia”(the fear of public speaking).

In fact, in some surveys, fear of public speaking is the number one common phobia, ranking even higher than the fear of death!  So Professor Lewis was there to give us some valuable tips on how to get comfortable with public speaking since he adn I both believe that this is an essential skill for today’s musicians.  Here is a summary of his remarks, together with my own observations on how to speak in public with power and confidence.