Friday, 22 September 2023, the FEB UGM Master of Science and Doctoral Program again held an activity entitled thesis development with vocal training material for academic presentations. In this material, the MD FEB UGM Program presents Mr. Rayhan Sudrajat, a professional musician and Indonesian ethnomusicologist as a resource person. This activity is carried out online and is mandatory for all students who are writing a thesis and is expected to provide solutions to students related to problems in presentations such as not having a loud voice, unclear articulation, tense tone of voice, monotone or nervous voice style.
At the beginning of his material, Mr. Rayhan explained the importance of vocal techniques in academic presentations by providing an understanding of sound production in the body. Several things to pay attention to when giving a presentation are an upright body posture, a calm feeling, a good mood and most importantly a focused mind.
In his material, Mr. Rayhan emphasized that good academic presentations can be produced using diaphragmatic breathing techniques. When using the diaphragmatic breathing technique, the pronunciation of words during the presentation will be clearer, the body posture will be straighter and the presentation will be more interesting. Not only that, mastery of the topic to be presented is also very necessary to avoid mistakes.
Overall, the conclusion from the material presented by Mr. Rayhan is that diaphragmatic breathing can be used to overcome voices that are not loud; training lip, tongue and jaw muscle movements can overcome unclear word articulation; a tense tone of voice can be overcome by smiling when presenting the material; a monotonous voice can be overcome with intonation; and stage fright can be overcome by remaining calm and having thorough preparation.
The enthusiasm of the participants in vocal activities for academic presentations was very high. This was proven by the discussion that took place throughout the material at a very high level and all participants followed the exercises given by Mr. Rayhan well.