Now let's consider volume, the power of your speaking, the sound pressure level, technically be conscious of this again, or you might become somebody who's sub castes. That's a lovely word isn't it, then it really means imposing your sound on people who don't want it. Typically, it's been used to describe hoodies on the top of a bass playing loud distorted music from very poor telephone handset loudspeakers. But that's not the only kind of podcasting that exists. And I would class white collar sub casting is perhaps the most irritating I've seen it many times in airport lounges, which I unfortunately inhabit quite a lot of the time. You'll get somebody with one of those dangly earpieces plugged into a phone walking up and down, pacing up and down to them speaking at an incredibly loud volume as if the handset doesn't work and they've got to be heard acoustically in the other country that they're talking to.

They seem oblivious to the eye rolling and tattling and irritated looks that surround them as they walk up and down, irritating, distracting. Lots and lots of people with the high volume of their output. It's not necessary to speak that loudly into a telephone. Other people can hear you perfectly quietly. And there are other people around in the lounge, having completely inaudible conversations while inaudible to us, but audible to the person they're talking to. Being unconscious of volume is unkind.

And it's also unkind to yourself. If at the other end of the spectrum, you're unconscious of how quietly you're speaking and you become inaudible particularly, for example, in a gathering of people where the volume level can get extremely loud you can get up to 90 100 decibels in a badly acoustically designed room full of people having a cocktail or something and talking to each other. The Lombard effect kicks in everybody starts talking louder and louder and if you are unable To compete, then you will not be able to speak effectively in that kind of situation. By the way, great tip, if you want to speak to somebody in a very, very loud place, for example, a nightclub or somewhere where there's pounding music, a gig or something, don't shout in their ear, because you'll damage their hearing, asked them to press the little flap of skin just in front of the ear canal, press it down on the ear canal.

And then you'll be able to speak at perfectly normal level right next to their ear and they will hear you It's an extraordinary but true thing. little tip for you. If you want to talk to somebody in a loud place, or they want to talk to you just press that flap down, turn to them, and they can talk to you with a normal volume. So becoming conscious of volume is really important. And again, extending your range. massively important, you can do this on stage.

You can go right down to whisper and people will be waiting And you'll hear a pin drop in the room. Or of course, you can shout, I move back from the microphone to do that. And you'll notice if you watch professional singers with microphone technique, they'll vary their volume according to what they're singing and they'll move the microphone away from their mouth when they're doing really loud things. And some vowels come up particularly loud. Singers know this. So you just watch next time you watch a singer singing with a microphone, if they know what they're doing, you'll see the microphone technique coming as they move it away and back towards their mouth.

With microphones Of course, the closer you get, the more intimate Your voice sounds. The further away you get, the more room noise you get in the louder you can be. So again, microphone technique can vary a great deal with volume and it's important to be conscious of that if you're using a mic