Technical Speech: The Physics of the Violin

I really enjoyed giving this speech because I was given the chance to talk about something I love! Most people do not think about technicalities in music and I really wanted to show that people our age need to learn more about classical music and instruments like the violin. It also calmed my nerves knowing that I could tell you about the violin for days on end. Knowing that I had the background knowledge to back up my presentation made me feel a little less nervous than I have felt in the past presentations this semester.

Overall, I thought that my presentation went very well. I always love engaging the audience, especially in this class because I learn so much about everyone every week this way. It also helps me feel like my presentation is getting through to the listeners! I definitely practiced a lot more for this speech and didn't use notes so there was no possibility of me looking down at notecards. I did have to look at the screen though because I needed to point to different parts of the violin, etc so I decided to move to the other side of the classroom so I could still make constant eye contact. Overall, I thought the class enjoyed the presentation and they really saw why the topic was important and why it was being presented. :)

I do still need to work on refraining from saying a billion "UMs" during my speech though. It slips out so easily and I don't realize how annoying it must be to hear it every 5 seconds when you're in the audience. I also think I could still practice a lot more just so I know my slides without having to look back to the screen for confirmation. However, I think that sometimes slides are there to be referenced in one's speech and I definitely needed to point back at my slides to go through the different aspects of the violin to the audience. I think that you just need to use really good judgement and depending on the topic of your presentation, use common sense and gauge how much referencing you need to do to your slides. Giving a speech is never going to be a process that can be duplicated identically every time you do it. I can definitely sense that you have to see where your audience is that day and how they are reacting to what you are saying. I'm really enjoying this course- the psychologist in me has so much fun trying to get a "feel" for the audience every Wednesday!