sound advice

Voiceover- SOUND4VO in Nashville!

September 26, 2014 by Dan Friedman

BookDetail October 4th – Home Audio Studio Guru, Dan Friedman and Booth Camp’s own, Joe Loesch will conduct a one day voice over workshop in Nashville at Creative License, Inc. 5532 Maplesong Drive. They’ll tackle topics every voice actor needs to hear. Plan to join two of the nations most sought after coaches on this special day!
Contact [email protected] – Book it now!

Sound4VO's Dan Friedman-097 Dan Friedman will offer tips on breaking down copy and how to deliver the unwritten messages within the script. He’ll give advice on recording auditions so you can be sure you are sending exactly what your agent or client prefers to hear, both sonically and in your performance. Dan will have several microphones on hand to help you discover what to listen for and how to sound your best. Signed copies of Sound Advice – Voiceover From an Audio Engineer’s Perspective will be available. https://sound4vo.com/.

20ec7f46-f58c-4e25-81ee-bffe8fdefb6c Joe Loesch will share the latest innovations from IK Multimedia and unique ways to set up your portable studio on-the-go. You’ll learn how to incorporate the use of a teleprompter app for your online projects and auditions. Joe and Dan will put you through the paces of an audio audition. Record, playback and critique.
Some lucky students will go home with some pretty grand prizes!
http://JoeLoesch.com

Contact Alan Dysert at [email protected] to book SOUND ADVICE today!

Voiceover Training | Racks and Stacks or Priorities Out of Whack?

December 5, 2012 by Dan Friedman

People new to voiceover are always asking me about effects stacks. For those of you who don’t know what effects stacks (or effects processors) do, or for those who don’t know what I’m even talking about, you are in luck. This article will help explain a couple of the most commonly used effects processors and will also help you steer clear of some things you probably should avoid… for now.

Compression and Equalization… What they do.

Audio effects processors including compressors and EQ (or equalizers) are very important elements in audio production. Compression is used to control dynamics, or the loud and soft parts of a recording. A compressor controls dynamics by lowering the output level of louder parts and raising the level of softer parts. This produces overall output levels that are more evenly balanced throughout the compressed portion of audio.

An equalizer is used to adjust the tones, or frequencies, within a sound. EQ can be used in several ways to enhance or alter certain tones by increasing or decreasing the level of specific frequencies to create an overall sound that is more pleasant. EQ can also be used to create an effected sound, such as simulating the sound of a telephone.

This is all very cool! However, if you are just getting started in voiceover, (and most of the time, even if you’ve been doing this for awhile) these effects are not really something you need to be overly concerned with… at least, not in the beginning.

What should you do?

Should you attempt to learn a little something about them as you are learning your craft? Yes.

Should you be running all of your voice recordings through rack or outboard processors as you are recording? Definitely not.

Should you be inserting DAW effects, effects stacks or presets on every voiceover recording you produce? No.

As you are working on developing your voiceover career, your number one focus should always be on your delivery.

The Magic is in Your Delivery.

When used properly or creatively, processing can make a good recording sound great. But a weak performance, will always sound like a weak performance no matter how much or how little processing is used. It is very easy for people to get caught up in the magic and mystery of the tools, rather than focusing on where the magic truly lies… in the delivery. Simply stated, compression and EQ will not turn a weak delivery into a magical one.

Speaking of deliveries, different scripts require different interpretations, enthusiasm, loudness and energy levels. How loud or soft certain elements are in your delivery are not the same for every script. Therefore, you cannot simply go to the same presets for every script you read and “set it and forget it”. One size, does not fit all.

Creativity or Correction? What Would Be More Fun For You?

Also, as a new voice talent, it is rare that you will be called upon to do a full production. Most often you will be sending your audio elsewhere, where it will be edited, manipulated and mixed alongside music, sound effects or other voices. The mix engineer cannot undo this type of processing. If you were to add processing incorrectly or inappropriately, you may have created a very frustrating situation that could make a mix engineer very unhappy. A new unprocessed recording could be the only solution to the problem and there are no guarantees that the client will come back to you to get it.

Generally, compression and equalization are used in two ways; creatively or correctively. If you’ve chosen your equipment well, have a finely tuned acoustic environment and are always working on your technique, these processing tools can be used creatively as opposed to correctively. Rather than using these processors in an attempt to fix difficult acoustic or technical problems, the tools can be used to place your voice properly in a mix or to enable you to sound like you… only better! As you can imagine, creative, is far more enjoyable for the mix engineer.

As you pursue your career as a voice talent, it will be helpful to learn and understand all elements involved in audio production. However, have patience and focus on what is important for you at this moment in time. Above all, remember that no matter what level you are at in your career, the most important effect to the voiceover talent… is the effect your delivery has on the listener.

You’ll find more on compression and equalization in Sound Advice – Voiceover From an Audio Engineer’s Perspective.

What Else Do You Want From Your Voiceover Talent?

October 14, 2011 by Dan Friedman

This blog post is for everyone who uses voiceover talent in their productions. A voice talent’s job is to communicate the message of your script. But what else should you expect from the talent you choose? How do you prefer that the talent go about assisting you with achieving your goals? Other than being great communicators, what can the talent bring to your production that adds value and makes your recording session great?

What is most important to you:

Delivery?

Versatility?

Efficiency?

Tonal Quality?

Assistance?

Q: Do you like to allow the voice talent to give their interpretation of a script, or do you prefer to direct them first?

Professional voice talent are trained to interpret a script and use the words as a road map. The words usually determine the tone and delivery. Unless… they don’t. You can allow the voiceover talent to follow the map, or ask the talent to explore other paths.

Q: Do you prefer to hear several different deliveries?

Going into a recording session, you may not have a good idea of what the exact tone of your script should be. It could be very effective delivered in several ways. Asking your voice talent to offer a variety of options may allow you to discover a bit of magic you hadn’t thought of or help you make a final decision as to what delivery works best.

Q: Do you prefer the talent you are working with to deliver the script completely or do you prefer to massage each line and piece together the “perfect” read?

Reading a script straight through, or at least large sections in a single pass, allows the voice talent to maintain tone and pace. This will usually result in a more consistent and cohesive read. When necessary, the talent can pick up lines afterward to get the nuance you may be listening for if they didn’t get it on the first pass. With the assistance of your session’s audio engineer, you can have the best lines edited together quickly to see how they work together as a whole.

Q: Do you choose a talent based on voice quality alone?

Every voice talent has different strengths. Some are best suited for announcer reads, while others shine in more conversational or character roles. If you cast based on voice quality alone you may have mixed results when you get into the studio. This is where casting directors, who know the abilities of the voice talent, can help you choose the best voice for the job.

Q: Do you find it helpful if a voice talent has the ability to actively assist you with your script, whether it be grammatically or with overall tone and flow?

Professional voice talent learn to become good copy editors. Whether the problem is length of copy, grammar, or a scripts tone and flow, the voice talent you hire may have suggestions that can improve the final product. If your voice over script isn’t sounding right and you can’t put your finger on it, ask the talent for help.

You may find it helpful to ask yourself these questions as you begin each project. There is no doubt that your level of experience with voiceover production may determine some, or all of the answers. Furthermore, everyone chooses a voice based on different needs and what is appropriate for each project. But the answers to these questions could help you decide which voice talent is best for your current or future projects.

There are many voices available and often voice quality is not the number one factor in your choice. If you have narrowed your choices down to two talent and you know that no matter who you choose, the delivery would be great; would the answers to these other questions make a difference in who gets the job? Only you can decide. So, what else do you want from your voiceover talent?

Recording Magazine’s Room Acoustics Series Part 5

September 28, 2011 by Dan Friedman

Recording Magazine sends out a newsletter to its subscribers every few weeks. The newsletter is (coincidentally) titled “Sound Advice” and this month it features the fifth in a series about room acoustics. Room acoustics is one of the biggest concerns for Recording Magazine readers. I know that this is also a big issue for those of you in the voiceover world. I asked permission to reprint this newsletter (and will ask to reprint the others in the series as well) so that those of you with home studios can also benefit from the information. I want to personally thank Brent Heintz, VP/Associate Publisher for granting permission, allowing me to share this great information with you.

Please visit Recording Magazine‘s website and Facebook Page.

Catch up or skip ahead: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8.

Here is the fifth newsletter in the series on Room Acoustics:

Welcome to Sound Advice on Acoustics! For the past several months we’ve been dealing with the basics of controlling bass buildup in rooms, using ratios of room dimensions and active bass trapping and other room treatments. Bass is by far the hardest problem to deal with in tuning a room, and with it under control, we can now turn our attention to the mids and highs. Read on…!So far we’ve considered the effects of low-frequency waves in the room. There are other issues, related to the propagation of mid and high frequencies. When a mid- or high-frequency sound wave moves through a room, it eventually hits one of the various boundary surfaces (walls, ceiling, floor). When this occurs, the sound wave is either absorbed, transmitted, or reflected.

Absorption means that some or most of the wave’s energy is converted into heat. Transmission means that the wave has some of its energy passed—through the wall, for example. Reflection means that most of the wave’s energy is directed back into the room.

This will happen repeatedly as the sound wave hits various surfaces until all its energy is eventually dissipated.

A room where all the surfaces are completely absorptive sounds dead and unnatural, and is unsuitable for music-making or listening. Such a room, called an anechoic chamber, would be used for testing purposes, as in the manufacture of loudspeakers for example, to isolate the sound quality of the speaker under test from the room effects. An overly reflective room is also not ideal—too many reflections tumbling around the room obscure the clarity of music or speech (see below).

An ideal room strikes the right balance between the original sound from the source (i.e. instrument or loudspeaker) and the amount of reflected sound present. Furthermore, it is desirable for the reflected sound to be distributed as evenly as possible throughout the room, providing a comfortable and pleasant sense of ambience (liveness). This even distribution of reflected sound energy is called , and is generally desirable, as we’ll see. But along the road to this ideal room, there are many pitfalls that we’ll now examine.

Reflection of sound waves is the behavior we’ll be most concerned with in the next few paragraphs. Just as happens with lower frequencies, when mid- and high-frequency waves reflect back into a room, the positive and negative peaks of the direct (original) sound waves and those of the reflections will cancel and reinforce. This happens because the reflections are delayed in time relative to the direct sound, causing their positive and negative peaks to be offset from those of the direct sound, which results in the interference (see Figure 5 for an illustration of this).

In describing this, if we express the duration of a single cycle of a wave in measurements of phase, the delayed reflections as shown in Figure 5 can be said to be “out of phase” with the original sound. This phase-induced delay, or phase shift, is inevitable in any normal reflective environment.The short wavelengths of mid and high frequencies means that these cancellations and reinforcements occur more frequently all throughout the room rather than being clearly localized to specific broad areas as with standing waves. In a typical room, many complex interferences like this at higher frequencies result in changes in the frequency balance of sound in that room, as illustrated on a frequency response graph in Figure 6. This is called a comb filter response.

While this resulting frequency response may look very ragged, in actuality our hearing systems tend to average out and largely gloss over these subtle, myriad cancellations and reinforcements, and instead may perceive this as a not unpleasant coloration of the sound in a casual listening environment.

However, a recording studio is not a casual listening environment. For example, we depend on what we hear in the control room to make important decisions about the way the sounds in a recording blend and balance. We need to hear exactly what’s in the recording, not a “pleasantly colored” reproduction. Consequently, we need to exert some degree of control over any such effects that impact the neutrality of the monitoring environment.

With all this knowledge under our hats, it is time to look at another fundamental (excuse the pun) aspect of acoustics: how we hear. Next time: a crash course in how our ears and brains interpret sound. See you then!

My Second First Faffcon

September 27, 2011 by Dan Friedman

On Saturday night while most Faffers were out to dinner, Amy Snively, Pam Tierney and I sat in the mezzanine of the Crowne Plaza Hotel Harrisburg and talked. Among many other discussions, we talked about our favorite parts of the event and past events. I mentioned at one point that I thought everyone’s first Faffcon would be their favorite.
Let’s face it, if you’ve been to Faffcon, you already know you will be coming to a second and probably more after that. The only Faffcon I’ve missed (and therefore hope I will ever miss) is the very first in Portland, OR. It is the one Faffcon that set the stage for all others and I’m sure it will never be duplicated. However, just 24 hours after my conversation with Pam and Amy, I had an amazing experience that I will never forget.

Pam actually had offered to “hire” me to help her with her studio. We were going to go through her entire signal chain from “soup to nuts” (Pam… FOCUS!) ;-). But, as far as I was concerned, this was a great opportunity to continue faffing, so we invited others to join us in the mezzanine. About 20 of us spent over three and a half hours talking studio stuff. It was an incredible thrill for me to share my knowledge, and also learn from everyone who participated, in a truly unexpected Faffcon session. I was told later that this impromptu session captured the essence of the very first Faffcon exactly. How cool is that!

Like any “first,” everyone’s first Faffcon will probably always be their most memorable. However, and this is the true beauty of Faffcon, each session and event is filled with “firsts”, opening up the possibility to new opportunity, new connections and handfuls of “golden nuggets” each and every time. It is truly an inspirational event. I hope that everyone in voiceover gets the opportunity to experience these “firsts” for themselves.

And now some very special shout outs:

David Goldberg – I really appreciated the opportunity to work with you and to get to know you better this time around. I know we can make things happen and I’m excited about the possibilities.

Colleen Colin – Voicebank and Voice Registry provide such a vital service to our community, I’m thrilled to be a new member. Thank you for all you contribute to Faffcon and our industry.

Pam Tierney – Your adventurous spirit and sense of humor is infectious. Thank you for all that you do for Faffcon and for your friendship.

Paul Strikwerda – Your session on blogging was fantastic. I was inspired to write an entire blog based on just one thing you said (this will be forthcoming). I know that my blog will benefit greatly from your advice.

Peter O’Connell – Your improv sessions provided me with some of the best laughs I’ve had in years. They also got me out of my comfort zone and offered an experience that I will never forget.

Melissa Exelberth – Where would I be without you Melissa? Probably under a table at the Firehouse. Thank you for being such a good friend and pouring me into the rickshaw on Friday night and getting me where I needed to be. I’m not ashamed to admit how much fun that night was!

Corey Snow – It was a pleasure to meet you. I know we will be talking more and working on some things in the future.

Philip Banks – Thank you for just being there. It is incredible that you traveled half a world away to share your knowledge and experience with us. While that alone would have been enough, your support for my efforts and words of encouragement were greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Cris Dukehart – I think you may have been instrumental in opening a new door for me. Thank you for that. I really look forward to getting to spend more time with you in the future.

Liz de Nesnera – I am so thankful for your friendship, support, kind words and everything else… and yes… your demo deliveries ROCK!

Cindy Neill – It was a pleasure to meet you face to face. You are always a blast to work with and I’m happy to help you (directly or indirectly) any time you need it.

Tom Dheere, Trish Basanyi and Lauren McCullough – I loved hanging out with all of you on Friday and at various times throughout the weekend. You are all ROCK STARS!

Special thanks to my ProComm family:

Amy Snively
Amy Taylor
Cindy Neill
Mike Harrison
Rowell Gorman
Zak Miller
Bob Souer
Philip Banks
Melissa Exelberth

I love you all!

Bob Souer – Your generosity, expertise, and knowledge is simply unmatched. Thank you so much for all of your kind words, support, information and help with my personal journey as well as everything you do to help make this event happen.

and… our QUEEN BEE…

Amy Snively – Words really cannot express the level of appreciation we all have for what you do and for how you have enriched all of our lives by bringing us Faffcon. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of the Faffcon crew. It is an honor and a pleasure. You literally work to the point of exhaustion and WE LOVE YOU and THANK YOU for everything!!

I would also like to thank everyone who has ever purchased a copy of:

SOUND ADVICE – Voiceover From An Audio Engineer’s Perspective

Thank you so much for your support and kind words. Let me know if I can ever be of help.

One Year, One Voiceover Book… A Whole New Chapter

September 1, 2011 by Dan Friedman

Since starting my webpage and blog, I have attempted to provide information that can be beneficial to several facets of the voiceover industry. I’ve written articles for directors, new talent, experienced talent and offered commentary on things going on in my VO life and in the industry. On this day (September 1st) last year, I published something that has had a profound effect on my life and has hopefully helped others. So today on the anniversary of the release of my book, Sound Advice – Voiceover From An Audio Engineer’s Perspective, I’d like to do something I’ve largely avoided, which is to write something about the book itself and how it has created a new chapter my life.

When I began writing Sound Advice – Voiceover From An Audio Engineer’s Perspective, I had no idea how it would be received by the voiceover community. I was nervous. But my mind was quickly set at ease when several letters and posts began to appear thanking me for writing it. While many of these letters were complimentary and some full of praise (for which I am so appreciative) two of my favorite letters came to me in just the last two months.

Submitted on 07/17/2011
Kelley Carruthers Buttrick
“Hey Dan, “Sound Advice” saved my bacon on Thursday. In the past, I would have freaked out at the problem and immediately called the engineer who installed the studio. Instead, I just did your first line of defense and unplugged and replugged the item giving me grief. It worked like a charm! Simple I know, but for someone who is technologically challenged like me, it was great! THANK YOU!!! See you at Faffcon!”

Submitted on 08/08/2011
Cindy Neill
“Hey Dan!
I just wanted to say Thank You for writing your book! I was getting a nasty hiss in my records this morning and started to freak out but I read through your book, calmed down, retraced my connections and settings and found the issue! When I’m not in an ISDN session, I’ve got to turn the ISDN pot down on my board otherwise, I get the hiss. Apparently I’d forgotten to turn it down after a session yesterday afternoon and thus, freak-out mode kicked in! But by reading through your book and following just the simplest of instruction, I was able to fix the problem on my own!!! YAY ME!! And YAY YOU for writing such an awesome book!!
Thanks Dan!”

These letters are my favorites because, almost one year later, people who have had the book are now turning to it and solving their studio problems. This is exactly what I had intended.

The only thing I knew when I began writing the book was that the information was needed. Over the years, voice talent had been calling me, asking for help with everything related to studios, recording gear and sound. Often the questions were very similar and I heard myself offering the same advice time and time again. Coincidentally, within a week or two, a couple of voice talent said to me “you should write a book”. At that time it was just an interesting idea.

I knew that voice talent didn’t want to go to school for recording and sound engineering. That would far exceed their needs. However, some knowledge of audio engineering was a necessity and there was no other source available that spoke to the needs of the voice talent. Many talent were actually afraid of their audio gear! The manuals and catalogs could be intimidating. Books about sound recording could not only be intimidating but overkill for anyone who simply needed to get a professional recording of their voice and perform some editing. After years of working with voice talent as an engineer, as well as years of working as a voice talent myself, I knew I could help. I wanted to help. What had started as an interesting idea, turned into reality.

Thanks to letters like those above I know that I have helped, but the biggest reward I’ve received from the book has been meeting and talking with so many of you. I’ve had the opportunity to meet hundreds of people I may never have met. I’ve been part of group discussions, online conferences and Faffcon2 (and Faffcon3 coming up). Many people in this industry have inspired me with their abilities, generosity, talent, and determination. I’ve made new friends who’ve been incredibly helpful and supportive. I’ve also met people who I was able to get added to the ProComm Voices talent roster, one of the finest group of voiceover artists anywhere in the world. I am so fortunate to be in such amazing company.

To everyone who has purchased or recommended Sound Advice – Voiceover From An Audio Engineer’s Perspective, thank you so much for your support. Getting the word out about a book is actually much harder than I ever imagined and I could not do it without your help. Please keep sharing and recommending it to anyone who you think could benefit from the information contained within its pages. I wish you all great success with your voiceover careers. Keep on talking and keep on listening.