Some of the girls on American Idol are super talented but tend to over-sing. They kind of have to since it’s a competition and they need to show off a bit, but still… Overdoing doing things loses the subtly and nuance, especially for slower songs. (I love AI and have to talk about it, though I promise to try to tie it to Toastmasters.)

When I was taking piano lessons my teacher was a jazz musician and we did fake books. Fake books give the melody and chord symbols but the musician fills in the rest. I was really proud of myself when I came up with my own version of “Bluesette” to show off how proficient technically I was by putting in every trick I knew. My teacher told me to lay off. He didn’t say I was “tasteless” but he was thinking it - he’d called a lot of musicians tasteless. He told me how one of his music mentors told him it’s not the keys you play that matter, but the ones you don’t.

I always try to keep this in mind when speaking. Overdoing it here is laying on too many gestures, vocals, manipulative stories, and so on. Keep it simple, stupid. I’m sure my piano teacher would deem some of my speeches tasteless anyway, but at least it’s not all of them.

I once brought in a song my music teacher had never heard before and played it for him. He said, “Boy, that’s really cool.” (He wasn’t referring to my rendition of the song, which was also tasteless, but to the song itself.) So he went to the organ about five feet away, cranked his head ninety degrees to look at my music sheet still on the piano, and played the song like he was the original artist. The more I learned about piano the more he amazed me, just as the more I learn in speaking the more I’m amazed by really good speakers.