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Let Your Note Crack:
Welcome back. Since the last briefing I’ve pretty much lived at the Royal Albert Hall after treating myself to a season pass to this year’s Proms.
(86 concerts over eight weeks, the greatest music festival on the planet, and as the BBC battles to demonstrate its uniqueness it seems odd how quietly it whispers about the festival’s existence beyond the flag waving stuff of the Last Night.)
The reason I mention this: something I thought about as I stood with the other Prommers – “imperfect excellence” and its relevance to us as on air spokespeople.
Here’s an example: Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic. A rockstar conductor with an iconic orchestra playing one of the world’s great symphonies, Beethoven’s Pastoral. Performed beautifully, with one exception. The principal Horn player, clearly a brilliant musician, just had one of those nights. Exposed notes cracking at crucial moments in phrases.
What was interesting about this moment (and many others across the season) is that it didn’t ruin the experience at all, in fact it enhanced it. The air crackled. This is after all what live performance is all about. And while there’s a tipping point where imperfection compromises excellence, we were miles from that line.
So it seems strange for a media trainer to advise you to be anything other than perfect, but who wants perfect from an interviewee? Who wants slick? Nobody. Um and ur away, correct yourself, pause to think of a word…
Do too much of that and you lose the excellence and it just becomes imperfection. But most people judge an interview on small slip-ups which nobody else notices or minds. In fact they like them. It makes you authentic. Human.
So feel liberated to be imperfect on air. In a world where standards are increasingly defined by AI precision, just let your note crack occasionally.
(Watch the performance)
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