How to speak with a handheld mic? | Kaffy Rice-Oxley posted on the topic | LinkedIn (2025)

Kaffy Rice-Oxley

Your voice is integral to your sense of self and personal brand. I help you find it. | Coach at Voice Confident | Camera Confident Sports Media Training | CEO Notts ALC

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“How do I speak with with a handheld mic???”First up - the mic is your friend. It is not some weird object that you take from the organiser with a kind of, oh, do I really need this, ok, I guess I could… kind of attitude. The mic allows you to do far more stuff with your voice than you could without it - because without it you would need to be in projection mode the whole time, which is pretty limiting for variety of tone.With a mic… just off the top of my head, you can… ✔️Sigh down it after a self-deprecating comment - adds humour✔️Get changes in volume for emphasis super quick without effort✔️Save your vocal folds - if you aren’t an experienced speaker and can’t talk loudly for a long time (and even then…)✔️Create a range of different tonalities just by the way you use the mic - for variety and humour and interest.Dangers of the handheld mic:⚠️ Winding up with a slide clicker in the other hand. (This happened to me last week and you end up making gestures with your clicker hand… but you’re holding the clicker… so you’re sort of making gestures with a closed hand… far from ideal)⚠️ Waving it around. (It’s not a pen. Or a wand. It’s a microphone. Needs to be by your mouth.)⚠️ Holding it still and turning your head from side to side. (These mics are designed for close sound so when you keep turning away from the mic, the sound for the audience will dip in and out. You may not notice it, but they will. And generally you need to hear more than two words in five to understand what someone is saying.)⚠️ Holding it too far from your mouth or against your chest. (It won’t work like this and the sound quality will be poor and poppy. And no, it’s not the mic. It’s you. It’s you not knowing how to work with a mic. 😉)Top tips for using a handheld mic: ✅ Set the mic a couple of inches from your mouth. Set your elbow in this position. Wherever your face goes, that mic goes. Mostly your head and shoulders and mic are aligned and facing the same direction; use your feet to move you to face different parts of the audience, rather than just moving your head. If seated, you will be twisting from the waist.✅ Start off with the mic very close to your mouth. If the sound is deafening, you can move it away. But usually people instinctively hold handheld mics low at elbow height and they just aren’t designed for that. And then you get that awkward ‘we can’t hear you at the back’ conversation and it wrecks the start of your pitch. ✅ Hold the mic at a 45 degree angle, not vertical. You will get the best sound quality if the round bit of the mic is level with your mouth, inch or two away, 45 degrees.I prefer handheld mics myself because you can work with them much more - but lapel or head mics do give you more freedom of gesture… they have their dangers too… but that’s for another post! Hit me with any mic questions you might have and I’ll do my best to answer them. #mictechnique #publicspeakingskills

  • How to speak with a handheld mic? | Kaffy Rice-Oxley posted on the topic | LinkedIn (2)

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Flick Hamnett-Day

Helping business owners spend more time IN their business and less time ON social media 🤳 Get your business flying on social media with 🧚♀️The Social Dragonfly🧚♀️

6mo

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I much prefer a handheld mic to a lapel mic - my hair often gets caught on a lapel mic (when it's down) and then you get that horrible scratchy sound down the mic as my hair moves 😂😂😂

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How to speak with a handheld mic? | Kaffy Rice-Oxley posted on the topic | LinkedIn (32)

How to speak with a handheld mic? | Kaffy Rice-Oxley posted on the topic | LinkedIn (33)

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