HOW TO ADD MUSIC CLIPS TO YOUR POWERPOINT! Part I

4. MUSIC CLIPS

BACKGROUND: Using music as a tool for presentations and teaching across all disciplines is not new. However, the technology has made it so easy to execute that music has become a powerful add-on to increase the impact of PowerPoints.

I started including music clips in the form of cassette tapes (Remember them?) before PowerPoint in my statistics courses 20 years. They were used to accompany classroom demonstrations, parodies and skits, and introductions to new topics.

In 2005 I converted over to PowerPoint, but the trip was painful. No one in my academic circle knew how to extract a clip, convert it to wav format, and insert it into PowerPoint. Neither PowerPoint instructors nor IT experts knew the mechanics of that process. Certainly, there was no faculty demand for music, so IT support didn’t bother to address it.

After many hours of trial and error as a nontechy, I finally learned to do the conversion in spring 2006 with 1 piece of software. Almost 4 years later, music has become an integral part and, in fact, trademark of every PowerPoint presentation I make on every “serious” topic. It contributes an emotional dimension to each presentation that sets the tone throughout and engages my audience. I have conducted numerous workshops in the past 2 years to faculty audiences at conferences and institutions on the mechanics because they too don’t receive the support they need.

To start the musical ball rolling, I would like to identify a few key sources on music below. My future blogs will list the (1) types of music you could use, (2) generic techniques for infusing music into any presentation, and (3) available software for importing music into your PowerPoint.

BERK SOURCES: I recommend you download my most recent article on music from my Website (http://www.ronberk.com/; see link in right margin) which reviews the research and describes the techniques in depth with loads of examples (click Publications, then Articles):

Berk, R. A. (2008c). Music and music technology in college teaching: Classical to hip hop across the curriculum. International Journal of Technology in Teaching and Learning, 4(1), 45–67.

That article extends the work in a previous article:

Berk, R. A. (2001b).Using music with demonstrations to trigger laughter and facilitate learning in multiple intelligences. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 12(1), 97–107.

and chapter in my Humor as an Instructional Defibrillator book (Stylus link in right margin).

If you are interested in using music to create parodies of TV programs, movies, and Broadway shows, parody scripts for Star Wars, Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, and many others are in the Defib chapter. The step-by-step procedures for developing a parody using CSI as an example are presented in the final chapter of my latest 2009 book Top Secret Tips…(see Coventry Press link in margin).

My next blog will cover types of music and a dozen generic techniques. See you then. Let me know if you have experimented with music.

COPYRIGHT © 2009 Ronald A. Berk, LLC