"Say it with a Song" and "DO You Hear the People Sing?"-- October Reading, 2013

From http://magazines.toastmasters.org/publication/?i=171821, Page 20-21.

Say It with a Song
A different way to grab your audience’s attention.

As Toastmasters, we a constantly on the lookout for new speech ideas. Songs can be an excellent source of material for speeches because of their storytelling nature, short duration and infectious melodies. Because of these properties, almost any song can be used to create or enhance a speech in interesting ways.



The short duration of a song cries out for a speech to convey the details of the song’s story. I once wrote a speech based on the song “Saint John” by Cold War Kids. The song tells the story of a man on death row hoping for a pardon from the governor. He ended up on death row after throwing a brick at a drunk college kid who was part of a group that was harassing his sister. The framework for a speech was already in place in the song.

The song has a tragic element to it, which is amplified by its mournful chorus. I only needed to add some additional details to the story to transform the song into a speech. I also took the opportunity to try and emulate the singer who sang with a drawl, which added to the entertainment value of the speech. But, perhaps the most powerful aspect of the speech was the chorus line I sang to my audience as a break between the different parts of the story.

A Chorus Line
Choruses are meant to be catchy, with interesting rhythms and melodies. In fact, when most people think of a song, it’s typically a chorus line that first comes to mind. For good or bad, depending on your taste and the length of time you are forced to listen to it, the chorus line may be the only part of the song you actually remember.

Try using a chorus line to your advantage by singing it as part of your speech. In addition to the rhythm and melody, just the fact that you’re singing it will grab your audience’s attention. By doing so, you will also inject into the speech whatever emotional tone or attitude the chorus projects. In my speech, a chorus line provided smooth transitions between each part of the story. Singing adds emotional impact in a way that simply telling a story cannot do.



Imagine a humorous speech in which the speaker describes a situation that made him want to appear to be cool, but things didn’t work out as intended. Now imagine the speaker singing a chorus line from the song “Bad to the Bone” by George Thorogood and the Destroyers during certain parts of his or her speech. The singing catches the audience’s attention and also injects some humor into the speech.

Using Soundtracks
Soundtracks are another source for speech ideas. [A soundtrack can be recorded music synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game. Soundtracks are sometimes released commercially as soundtrack albums.] Soundtrack speeches use songs that remind the speaker of a specific time in his life. Typically these memories focus on childhood, a particular person or a romantic relationship. Soundtracks may be the most common types of songs that speakers incorporate into speeches.

If you have been a Toastmaster for a long time, you have probably heard someone give a soundtrack speech, or you may have given one yourself. This type of speech can work to your advantage because it will hold your audience’s attention. Additionally, hearing a song’s chorus may trigger feelings of nostalgia in audience members who recognize them.

Creative Use of Song Titles
Those looking for a challenge might consider a list of song titles by their favorite artist and write a speech that incorporates those titles directly into the speech narrative. In these cases the speaker doesn’t sing. The titles are simply used as phrases in the sentences of the speech. For example, a speech about an old car might incorporate titles of some Beatles songs:



My wife keeps threatening to have my ’67 Camaro towed out to the junkyard because she is tired of it taking up space in the garage. She affectionately refers to it as the “yellow submarine” because she feels in her words that “it should be rusting on the bottom of the ocean.” I told her I wasn’t getting rid of it because I know that “with a little help from my friends” I will get that car up and running as good as new.



Once the audience picks up on what the speaker is doing, they will appreciate the difficulty of the speaker’s challenge.

Tunes for Table Topics
Another use for a song is creating Table Topics questions. This is especially useful when you learn just before a meeting that the scheduled Table Topicsmaster can’t make the meeting and someone else needs to fill that role. People have songs they enjoy listening to, so it’s easy to recall a favorite. Try using it to craft part of a spur-of- the moment question. Here are some examples:

• Huey Lewis and the News sang about the heart of rock ‘n’ roll. What is the heart of rock ‘n’ roll, and is it still beating?
• Ozzy Osbourne went off the rails on a crazy train. When do you board your crazy train, and what makes it go off the rails?
• Steppen-wolf was born to be wild. What were you born to be?

These examples don’t require the responder to actually know the song, and you can use them to spur ideas for a vast amount of topics in a short time.

The next time you’re seeking inspiration for a speech topic, think about some of your favorite songs. It’s likely that you can transform one of them into an entertaining speech, or use a chorus to spice up a speech you’re working on.

The Song-Title Technique

To inject humor into a speech— especially one about a dry topic— I sometimes use a technique that involves grouping song titles into themes. It can work with any well-known musician or group that has recorded a large number of songs.

Let’s say you’re going to make a training presentation. You have to teach a group of people something really complicated—a computer program, details of complex new legislation, medical procedures, whatever. You might begin by saying:

It may sound strange, but I feel the Beatles are here with us today— because they recorded some songs on how you may feel about learning [the topic of your talk]. The top three titles are:

• "The Long And Winding Road"
• "It's All Too Much"
• "Help!

Fortunately, they also recorded some songs about how I feel. The top three are:

• "I Want To Hold Your Hand"
• "Ask Me Why"
• "We Can Work It Out"

This is a condensed version of Malcolm Kushner’s article “Want To Be Funny? You Can’t Go Wrong If You Name That Song,” which was published in the March 2007 Toastmaster magazine.

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Do You Hear the People Sing



Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?

Then join in the fight
That will give you the right to be free!

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Will you give all you can give
So that our banner may advance
Some will fall and some will live
Will you stand up and take your
chance?
The blood of the martyrs
Will water the meadows of France!

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Translation Comparison

Mandarin Version



Taiwanese Version



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Notes:
• infectious / ɪnˈfekʃəs; ɪnˋfɛkʃəs/ adj
quickly influencing others; likely to spread to others
• harass / ˈhrəs; US həˈras; həˋras/ v
trouble and annoy (sb) continually
• mournful /ˈmɔːnfəl US ˈmɔːrn-/ adj
very sad
• emulate / ˈemjuleɪt; ˋɛmjəˏlet/ v ~ sb (at sth)
try to do as well as or better than sb
• drawl [drɔːl] n.
a slow speech pattern with prolonged vowels
• synchronize / ˈsɪŋkrənaɪz; ˋsɪŋkrəˏnaɪz/ v ~ (sth) (with sth)
(cause sth to) operate, move, turn, etc at the same time, speed, etc
• incorporate / ɪnˈkɔːpəreɪt; ɪnˋkɔrpəret/ v ~ sth (in/into sth)
make sth part of a whole; include
• nostalgia / nɔˈstaldʒə; nɑˋstaldʒə/ n
a feeling that a time in the past was good
• tow / təu; to/ v
pull (sth) along with a rope, chain, etc
• rust v /rʌst/
to become covered with reddish-brown substance that forms on iron or steel when it gets wet
• get rid of
remove, extinguish, eliminate
• spur-of-the-moment adj. spur / spɜː(r); spə/ n
on a sudden impulse, without previous planning
• legislation /ˌledʒɪˈsleɪʃən/ n
a law or set of laws
• crusade / kruːˈseɪd; kruˋsed/ n
any struggle or campaign for sth believed to be good, or against sth believed to be bad
• barricade /ˈbærɪkeɪd, ˌbærɪˈkeɪd/ n
a temporary wall or fence across a road, door etc that prevents people from going through
• martyr /ˈmɑːtə US ˈmɑːrtər/ n
someone who dies for their religious or political beliefs and is admired by people for this

Mount St. Helens: Rising From the Ashes

Life erupts once again from the once lifeless mountain

When Mount St. Helens blew its top in 1980, it wasn't a surprise that it happened, but even today the extent of the damage is hard to fathom. The eruption knocked down 100-foot trees like matchsticks and killed just about everything in its path. There have been several smaller eruptions since then, but nothing like what happened in 1980.

Evolutionary biologist and ecologist John Bishop knows Mount St. Helens well; he has been working on the mountain for 20 years. "It began with the largest landslide in recorded history that uncorked an explosion that was directed horizontally and leveled the forest 13 miles out," recalls Bishop. "It was just a barren landscape, gray-and-pumice-colored, covered with rocks."

Today, dead tree trunks still litter the landscape. But, if you take a closer look, you'll see another kind of eruption; an eruption of life on the mountainside. For Bishop, it's a blessing. "It's a rare opportunity for scientists to get to study a devastated area and how it comes back from scratch in such detail," he says.

With help from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Bishop is documenting the return of living things to the once lifeless mountain. "Up until the last 10 years, the landscape has been completely dominated by lupins," says Bishop. He says these flowering lupin plants are able to create new soil from volcanic ash. That new soil has created a habitat for the Sitka willow. But, Bishop says there is a problem. "One of the things we've realized about these willows is that they're not getting big. And that's important because they create habitat for birds and mammals."

The culprits are small invasive weevils that are on the attack. They've taken up residence inside the willows' stems, stunting the plants' growth or killing them. Bishop says there is a lesson in all of this. "Seemingly insignificant organisms, like insects that consume plants, play an extraordinarily important role in the sorting out process of deciding, essentially, which plants are going to stay in the landscape and which ones are going to disappear."

Bishop points out that the imbalance between plants and insects on Mount St. Helens should be expected in rudimentary systems and will cause instability until a more complex community of plant and animal species is sustainable, or until the day Mount St. Helens itself changes the equation once again.

Miles O'Brien, Science Nation Correspondent
Jon Baime, Science Nation Producer

Dragonflies: The Flying Aces of the Insect World

Transcript

Miles O’Brien: This dragonfly is grabbing the meal on the go.

Stacey Combes: This attempt is so fast that unless we film it in high-speed we can’t see whether it caught the prey. But when it gets back to its perch, if we see it chewing we know that it was successful.

Miles O’Brien: With support from the National Science Fundation, Harvard university biomechanist Stacey Combes, wants to understand how dragonflies pull off these complicated aerial feats; hunting, and even reproducing in midair. She and her team set up their lab near a pond outside Boston, right in the heart of dragonfly country.

Student: All right, I got one. I lost it.

Miles O’Brien: Clearly it's not easy to catch a dragonfly.

Student: I got one.

Miles O’Brien: Check out this frog. In this specially built netted enclosure, Combes’ team set up eight high-speed cameras. Then they release a dragonfly and some tasty fruit fly prey to watch what happens next.

Stacey Combes: They’ll go up in midair, catch the prey with their hands, or with their feet turn upside down and glide back to stick. And the whole capture will take maybe a second, or a second and a half. This one’s missing about half of its left front wing and yet it still does an amazing job catching the fruit fly in midair.

Student: It only takes about half a second for this to happen.

Stacey Combes: They caught, you know, about 90 or 95 percent of the prey that we gave them. And interestingly, they’re one of the most ancient groups of insects. They’ve had a long time to evolve their skills as predators.

Miles O’Brien: About 300 million years. These four-winged insects predate dinosaurs. They can fly straight up, straight down, hover like helicopters, and disappear in a blur. And their eyesight?

Amber DesLauriers: Almost its whole head is eye.They can see pretty much all the way around their head, except right behind them.

Miles O’Brien: Dragonflies mate and lay eggs in flight.

Stacy Combes: Do you see her like just dipping in the water?

Student: She’s trying to lay eggs; the male’s trying to mate with her.

Miles O’Brien: Combes says engineers are looking to the dragonfly for inspiration in small scale aircraft design.

Stacy Combes: There's a lot of interest in building, you know, robotic, smaller robotic devices.

Miles O’Brien: And she says better understanding of dragonflies could lead to more effective mosquito control strategies.

Stacy Combes: They may consume 30 mosquitoes a day. They could even consume hundreds a day.

Miles O’Brien: And that’s an idea that could really take flight.

Miles O’Brien: For Science Nation, I’m Miles O’Brien.

Discovery Files: Slow V. Go!

Slow V.[1] Go!

Michigan State University researchers show that more adaptable bacteria that are oriented toward long-term improvement prevailed over competitors that held short term advantages.

Credit: NSF/Karson Productions

Audio Transcript:

Take Your Time -- It's Evolution.

I'm Bob Karson with the discovery files -- new advances in science and engineering from the National Science Foundation.

An evolutionary study of generations of bacteria reads a lot like the fable, 'the tortoise and the hare.'[2] Led by the University of Michigan, it showed that if you're a bacteria, sometimes it's better to be a slow, adaptable tortoise than a fitness-oriented hare.

In the fable, the hare is all like full of himself and instantly gets way out front. So far ahead, he figures he can take a nap. By the time he wakes up, the tortoise is plodding across the finish line.

How does that relate to bacteria? The MSU study recorded evolutionary change over an unprecedented 52,000 generations of bacteria grown over 25 years. The team was able to clone two distinct lineages from a population of frozen E. coli[3]. Welcome to bacterial family feud! And here we go!

One lineage makes a mutational move early in the game that gets them ahead initially, but closes off certain routes for later improvement and eventually winds up extinct. The other lineage is less fit early on, but over the course of several evolutionary moves, produces more beneficial mutations, overcoming its short-term disadvantage. By maintaining greater potential for further adaptation, the tortoises prevail.

Turtle power!

"The Discovery Files" covers projects funded by the government's National Science Foundation. Federally sponsored research -- brought to you, by you! Learn more at nsf.gov or on our podcast.
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Notes:
[1] Slow V.
“Slo-V” is a slow flying model aircraft. For more information, please visit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ParkZone_Slo-V

[2] the tortoise and the hare
it is a fable attributed to Aesop. The story concerns a hare who ridicules a slow-moving tortoise and is challenged by him to a race. The hare takes a nap midway through the course. When he awakes, he finds that the tortoise has won the competition.

[3] E. coli / Escherichia coli
A bacterium commonly found in the intestines of humans and other animals, where it usually causes no harm. Some strains can cause severe food poisoning, esp. in old people and children. 大腸桿菌

Curiosity Has Landed on Mars

Transcript:

Things are looking good. Coming up on entry.

Vehicle reports entry interface.

We're beginning to feel the atmosphere as we go in here. Alright, it is reporting that

we are seeing G's on the order of 11 or 12 Earth G's.

Bank reversal 2 is starting (cheering). We are now getting telemetry from Odyssey.

We should have parachute deploy around Mach 1.7.

Parachute has deployed (cheering).

We are decelerating.

Heat shield has separated, we are locked on the ground.

We're down to 90 meters per second at an altitude of 6.5 kilometer descending.

Standing by for backshell separation.

We are in powered flight (cheering).

We're at an altitude of 1 km descending.

Standing by for sky crane. Sky crane has started

Signal from Odyssey remains strong.

Touchdown confirmed. We're safe on Mars (loud, sustained cheering).

We got thumbnails (cheering).

What's Up for August 2012?

Transcript:

What's Up for August? View Mars as the rover Curiosity lands on its surface this month.

Hello and welcome. I'm Jane Houston Jones at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

On August 5 at 10:31 p.m. Pacific time NASA's Mars rover named Curiosity will touch down in Gale Crater. The best time to view Mars this month is right after sunset. Saturn, Mars and the bright star Spica [1] form a trio almost all month long. Look low in the west, 30 degrees above the horizon. You should be able to see the difference in color between the three. Saturn appears golden. Spica is blue-white. And Mars is rusty red.

On the 21st the moon joins the lineup.

On the night of the 5th, Mars sets a few hours after sunset everywhere in the U.S.
You can find a Mars viewing party on this night by checking with your local planetarium, science center or astronomy club. If you get a chance to view Mars through a telescope on that night, you might be able to see the dark Martian feature called Syrtis Major [2] near the center of the planet.

Although you can't see Gale Crater, Curiosity's landing site, through the telescope, it's near the limb to the east of Syrtis Major that night.

On the opposite limb is the rover Opportunity, who's been exploring Mars since 2004.
The most popular meteor shower of the year, the Perseids [3], peaks on a summer weekend Saturday night through Sunday morning, August 11th and 12th.

The constellation Perseus [4] rises in the northeast soon after sunset. Just follow the Milky Way from the south to the north to find it.

You'll see dozens of fast, bright meteors, some leaving persistent trains or smoky trails.

You can find information about Curiosity's landing at www.nasa.gov/mars and jpl.nasa.gov/mars. And look for MarsCuriosity on Twitter and Facebook.

You can learn about all of NASA's missions at www.nasa.gov.

That's all for this month. I'm Jane Houston Jones.

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Notes:

[1] Spica 角宿一

[2] Syrtis Major
It is a "dark spot" located in the boundary between the northern lowlands and southern highlands of Mars. For more information, visit at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrtis_Major_Planum

[3] Perseids 英仙座流星雨

[4] Perseus 英仙座

The Discovery Files: Sleep Study

Want to nail that tune that you've practiced and practiced? Maybe take a nap with the same melody playing during your sleep, provocative Northwestern University research suggests.

Credit: NSF/Karson Productions

Audio Transcript:

To sleep--perchance to learn

I'm Bob Karson with the discovery files--new advances in science and engineering from the National Science Foundation.

A Northwestern University study has participants sleeping during class. Specifically, testing the effects of brain stimulation during sleep on skill enhancement. Participants were given two simple random melodies to learn to play on a key press. After working on the task, they were allowed a 90-minute nap. As subjects entered the stage of sleep associated with cementing memories the "slow wave"[1] stage, researchers played one of the tunes in their ears, but not the other. Could these external cues enhance learning? The researchers say, 'yes' noting that afterward, when asked to recall the tunes, participants made fewer errors in the sequence that was presented during sleep.

Does this mean you could, say, learn a new language while you sleep? Not really. The findings show you must study and learn the language first. But stimulation during sleep does seem to provide enhanced memory of a skill you have already recently learned. So you may be able to reinforce those language skills.

The team is thinking about ways their findings could apply to other types of learning as well, such as different types of motor skills, habits and behaviors.

Seems like the only skill I've improved on while sleeping is sleeping itself.

"The Discovery Files" covers projects funded by the government's National Science Foundation. Federally sponsored research -- brought to you, by you! Learn more at nsf.gov or on our podcast.

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Notes:

[1] slow wave
Sleep is divided into two types: rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM). NREM is further divided into four stages. Stage 3 and stage 4 are similar and both fall into the category of slow wave sleep. They are deep sleep stages.

Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rapid_eye_movement_sleep