Video Transcript: Session 29 Vocal Variety

We're continuing in this session, session 29, on presenting your sermon, and  finding ways to present your sermon in such a way that it's memorable, but also  the message gets through, there are certain things you can do beyond using a  tricky illustration somewhere or a good introduction, good conclusion, that sort of thing. There are other things you can do that you should be thinking about. And  you'll notice the title on the session today create vocal variety. Or as they  sometimes put it in speech classes, play with your voice, how you use your  voice, can make a huge difference on whether people tune you in or not. And, in  fact, one study has shown that if you increase your variety, vocal variety, just  10% more, it will have a highly significant impact on how your hearers hear your  message and perceive your message. Now, you've all been I suspect, in a  situation where someone didn't use any vocal variety, but spoke in a monotone.  As I was working on this lecture, I was remembering a professor of mine when I  was in college, who sat there with a book, and he just droned on and on. And he would, I don't know how in the world he ever got tenure, because he was a lousy professor, he would take the book that we were supposed to read. And we were  responsible for knowing the content of this book. And he would just kind of pace  through it and mumble along the way. I want you to note on page such and such in paragraphs such and such these things, and then he read it. And then he'd  say, oh, and then on this page, and he turned another page on such a such a  paragraph, note these sentences, and you'd read them. And he would do this.  And there was it was kind of a monotone kind of expression. Now, how do you in the world? Did somebody get in that kind of position? And what in the world will  people remember those lectures, I just remember, it was one of my first classes  in the morning. And back then I would stay up late studying and get up early and go to school, and then go to work after that and then study. And I just remember  fighting to stay awake in that class, because it was so incredibly boring. And his  presentation was so incredibly, incredibly ineffective. And so one way to create  interest on the part of your people is to create vocal variety. Now, what does that mean? Well, there are four P's to vocal variety, pace, pitch, power, and pause.  We're gonna look at each of those morning briefly. First of all, pace. Now, some  speakers, many speakers speak too fast came across this cartoon in the local  paper here. You'll notice the young kid the teenager is just going to bed a little  note on the mother says what? And he goes on rolling. She says, Jeremy, I can't understand a word. You're saying. Can't you just talk slower? And he says, Well, can't you just listen faster? There's something that's lost when we speak too  fast. And I know that a bit. You're been listening to me for a long time now. And  you know that I have a tendency to speak fast. And I remember the first time my  father heard me preach. In fact, I think it was the only time my father heard me  preach. He had some comments for me afterwards that my father had some  hearing impairment as a result of working in a factory for most of his adult life  with machinery pounding way back then. And so he has slight hearing problems.

And he had hearing aids to do that. But when I would talk, it would be just  gobbledygook to him. He couldn't separate the words so that he wasn't getting  the message. In fact, the one person who got an email from a friend who wrote  an email to him saying that my typewriter is broken, so sorry, my email looks like this. But my computer fell out of my flight bag and my spacebar broke, right? So  it just all these words of blend together, that if if you're going too fast, that's  what's going to happen to people, they're going to have this thing of, I can't grab  it, I can't get the gist of it. So you may be that person. Now I know now I have  learned to adjust the pace slower when I'm in certain settings. When I go into a  nursing home as I do here in my home area. I will be speaking to people many  of whom have a hearing deficit. And there I will make sure that I slow my  speaking pace down. Now a couple of words about speaking pace one  conversational tone is somewhere around 130 words per minute. 120-130. A  150 is considered to be about optimal as far as the pace at which you speak.  But people can do 190. And people can still mostly, if they don't have a hearing  deficit, most people can understand 190 and process that well. In fact, the brain  can process things faster sometimes, and we can speak them if there is good  hearing, and we'll talk about that another time as well. So how do you if you talk  too fast if your pace is too fast deal with that? Well, here is an exercise by a  woman in New York named Marian Rich, she is a speech coach, she has  worked with actors, she's worked with speakers, she's worked with politicians to  try to help them be more effective, to be more memorable. And so she gives  these directions mark a paragraph, read it with the breaks, whisper it, and then  go back and read it at a good pace. And again, 150 words per minute, is about  optimal. And so let me just give you an example of how she marked out a  paragraph. She said Mark a paragraph slash in this manner, slash into the  shortest possible phrases slash first slash, whisper it slash with energetic lips,  slash slash, breathing slash and all the breath marks, slash, then slash speak it  slash in the same way slash. Do this slash with a different paragraph slash  every day slash. Keep your hand on your abdomen slash to make sure slash, it  moves out slash when you breathe in, and moves in slash when you speak.  Before you whisper each phrase, take a belly full of air and then pour all the air  into that one phrase. Keep your throat open. And don't grind your vocal cords.  Lift your whisper over your throat. pause between phrases. Relax, then take  another full breath and whisper the next phrase, whisper as if you were trying to  reach the back of the room. Once you whispered the paragraph, then go back to the start and speak it in a conversational way. But again, pour all the air into  each phrase and honor the silence between phrases. I can't stress that enough.  Take your own sweet time at the forward slashes also take deep pleasure in  enunciating each resonant vowel, and delicious consonant, give your lips and  tongues the assignment of shaping every lovely syllable. And then he says do  that every day. She says do that every day, once a day, at least, for 21 days, 

and you will have slowed your pace of speaking. So if that's your issue, if people say to you, and it's good to have a good friend, listen to you preach some time.  But if they say to you, you know you speak too fast, then practice slowing down.  So that's what you do. If your pace is too great. But your pace can be too slow.  The human brain, as I said, can process words faster than we can speak them.  If your pace is too slow, you're gonna lose your audience. Right? And doesn't  matter who it is. One of my worst experiences in that regard was listening to a  worship leader. And she had a wonderfully soft and smooth voice and  comforting voice. But as she led worship, she would pause she would give  another direction. And I remember being in a service, and I fell sound asleep.  And unfortunately, started snoring a bit. My wife, thankfully was sitting next to  me and woke me up. If you speak too slowly, people will tune out. You won't be  able to hold their attention. And they will start thinking of all the things they have  to do. They'll start thinking about tasks that they need to accomplish. They'll  think about what someone said to them. They'll think about whatever children  will think about what in the room can I focus on for a few minutes because I am  bored, stiff. And so if your pace is too slow, remember that you've got to get up  to about 150 words per minute. All or, if you get up to 190, there are some  studies that say, if you're one function at about 190 words per minute, that's  where people will say, he or she really knows his or her material. And they  accord to us maybe more understanding and more expertise than we perceive  possess. But it's in that range 150 to 190. Now, how in the world do you figure  out how fast you talk? Well, it's very, very simple. You do a test, you have a timer that's running, you read a paragraph, or you read a section of so many words, or you speak it, you say your message, and you time it so that it stops, you divide  and say, How many words per minute, am I functioning at right at this moment.  And so remember, you've got 60 seconds, and so time a five or 10 minutes, or if  you're too slow, then you know, I've got to pick it up, I've got to pick it up. So  pace is one of those things, a vocal variety that you can vary your pace, as well.  And when you vary your pace, people will stand up and listen. Now, that's a  different thing. They'll wonder what's going on. If you vary your pace by saying,  Oh, I can't find my notes, I gotta find my notes. So. So you just kind of mumble  for a few moments trying to find your notes, that that's not a good thing. But if  you're trying to make an important point, like pace is very important to how your  message will be received by your audience. Then learn to make an effective  pace variant, and your speaking will be better. So pace is one thing of the vocal  variety, pitch is another. Now pitch simply means what high or low voice Do you  have, for instance, I can speak down here or I can speak up here. Now when  you're speaking publicly, and you're though, you're a monologue presentation in  the world, that's very dialogue oriented, vocal, changing the vocal pitch that you  are working at, will help people tune in. Now there are some situations where  that's especially helpful, I tend to listen to books in the car. Now, as I'm going 

around in my car, got a book going. And I found that most of the readers of  those books or read them to for recordings, tend to adopt different voices at  different times. And it's very helpful for me to figure out what's going on in a  

situation. So for instance, and, you know, if they're talking about little child, as a  little child looks up and scared, you'll say, I'm scared in the pitch goes up. Or  talking about somebody who's horribly depressed, the pitch goes down, I just  can't stand the thought of another day. Varying that pitch, from down here to up  there, can allow people to all of a sudden tune in. Now, sometimes, it could be a  male, female thing that she'll adopt a female voice, if you're a male, or a male  voice, if you're a female to say, You know what, and then she said, get out, get  out of my sight or something like that, or he said, Get out of my sight, that  changing that pitch will allow people to tune in to what you're doing. And then, so we got pace, we got pitch. The third one of the keys of vocal variety is power, or  the volume by which you speak. You'll notice the cartoon there that somebody is just going on, like my professor in college, bla bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla bla  bla bla, is going to be tuned out and people will fall asleep. So you have to  speak with a certain volume that is appropriate to your speaking situation. Now  there are a couple of reasons why you want to focus on volume, a one is to be  heard. Now you want people to hear you, if they can't hear you, they can't  process your message. They can't or you won't be the channel of the Holy Spirit  that you want to be in your preaching. And so what you have to try to do is  minimize noise as much as you can. Now is noise coming from a noisy machine. Well then turn the thing off. Is noise coming from an open window? Well, maybe  you should think about closing that window because noise distracts people they  noise draws people that direction. In the first church, I served in Southern  California before we relocated into a new building. We are moving changing  worship style into having songs on the screen rather than having them you know just in the hymn book. And we have the screen that would come down behind  the pulpit area, so that people could have the words to the songs projected on  there. And then I would come up to preach. And they would put the screen up  while I'm preaching. But when I would come up to preach, but the problem was  the, the motor on the screen was so loud, it would be going over trying to give  an introduction or read the scripture for my message. And so finally, okay, what's the compromise here, this thing's got to stop. And so we found a way that they  put the screen up before I would go up there, or something like that, because I'm trying to eliminate noise, I'm trying to minimize it. Now, you can't minimize  always a crying kid, or something like that. But as much as it was within your  power, minimize the noise, minimize the distance. If there's people are sitting  back there, ask them to come forward, you want as close as possible, so you  don't have to shout too badly, you want to reach the back of your auditorium.  Now, hopefully, you'll be speaking with a microphone most of the time. And so  the people who are operating the sound system will be the ones who will 

determine how loud you should be there. But you have to be conscious of this  too your idea is to be projecting to those people so that they hear your voice and understand and reach the back. And so if you're in a fairly small crowd, you can  ask them to come forward, and then you can speak more conversationally, you  can have a greater variety to your vocal pitch, you can do all of those things, but minimize the distance. And then to adapt as much as possible. Adapt your  volume, adapt your volume to the words, you're saying, you're talking  emotionally, you're talking about being very sad, when you automatically get  quieter. If you're talking about being excited, you'll automatically get louder,  adapt to that situation, as well as adapt to your audience. And as I said, when I  go to the nursing home, I know some of those people have hearing difficulties.  And so I raise my volume, several pitches, just so that they will be able to hear  me. So we want to deal with our volume in such a way that we are heard. But  we also want to deal with our volume in such a way I went backwards sorry, we  that we are effective. And that means varying our volume. So it's not the same.  It's not just that we're shouting at them all the time that they they sense that, you know, blast coming at them from us all the time, we vary it. We emphasize key  words. Now, in your study and preparation of the message you've identified, you know, this is the theme that I want, you got some main points in an organization  somehow, those points should be said with greater volume than the lesser  points. And people will receive that volume in a way that will make it  understandable. For instance, you know, here's Philippians 4:13. I can do all  things through Him who gives me strength. Now, let me read it differently. I can  do all things through Him who gives me strength. Or I can read it. I can do all  things through Him who gives me strength. Or I can do all things through Him  gives me strength, I can do all things through Him who gives me strength, I can  do all things through Him who gives me strength, I can do all things through Him who gives me strength, I can do all things through Him who gives me strength,  who gets to get some differences, a slightly different emphasis as I put a  different level of volume on key words, and that gets the message across to that  I'm trying to get to you if I wanted to choose one of those I would say that verse  the same way every time. So pace and pitch excuse me, I want to go back to  this. Emphasizing key words. Your points should be louder and that will help that message get across You should finish sentences strong. Don't drag away many  people I have a guy that practices dropping at the end of sentences. Back when  I was in a sermon classes let the speech guy came and said, You know what,  you dropped your sentences and finish loud. Don't finish dying away. So I can  do all things who gives me strength. we're finally up to pause. I love this banner  that I found the right word may be effective, but nothing has ever been as  effective as a rightly timed pause. There are two reasons why you'd want to  pause that will add to the effectiveness of your speaking. One is to build  suspense. I'm going to tell you a story. And I'm not going to give you the 

punchline first I heard David Platt was talking about being in Nepal and talking  about climbing way up into villages that are far away from the major cities. And  as he's talking to families there, he finds that there were some people who've  been around and had purchased daughters, young daughters had paid these  families who are extremely poor, they struggle with feeding their children, but  here was a young prepossessing, prepossessing girl, that they give him 100  bucks, which is a fortune there, and say they were going to take this child to  down in the main city, and they would become kind of domestic servants. And  when they were domestic servants, they would earn money, and they would  send money back home, ideal kind of situation solution to the overcrowding of a  household, but they were actually taking these girls to brothels. And David Platt  talked about this, just pause. And he said, $100 $100, to save a child, why are  we still letting this happen? Wow, powerful. And then pause to allow reflection.  Think about that for a second. So these are ways in which you can use vocal  variety to improve how your message is received by the people who are hearing it. And I encourage you to practice it, practice it. If you got to record what you do  for a while. Practice it just to make sure and just practice it have someone else  listen to it, and begin to practice and use of vocal variety in your messages.  We'll see you next time.