Its always an honor to be recognized by your peers. Voiceover talent Dane Reid has listed Sound4VO among his list of “Top 10 Voiceover Websites”. I’m thrilled to have been considered and listed among the nine other fantastic voiceover industry websites. Be sure to visit each of them.
Thank you so much Dane Reid.
Please check out Dane’s video:
While out on a hiking trip this past weekend, I took the time to simply listen to nature. For several minutes, not a single device of modern technology could be heard. It was truly music to the ears. Listening… truly listening, seems to be a lost art. When was the last time you sat down and listened to an album? I don’t mean casually, with the music playing in the background as you perform other tasks. I mean sitting down in front of some speakers, or putting on headphones, and simply listening.
I’ve been around many younger people lately, high school and college age, and they just don’t listen. I’m not talking about, “hey, pick those clothes up off the floor and put them away”… and they don’t do it, kind of listening (although that is certainly an issue as well). I’m talking about truly using their ears and hearing the world around them.
This isn’t limited to young people. When teaching home studio> classes (mostly to adults), I’m often asked, “how do you know which (whatever piece of gear) sounds better?” The answer is, you have to listen and compare in order to know.
This isn’t entirely the fault of today’s typical listener. Tiny and inefficient earbud, computer and television speakers have become common place. These are all truly terrible devices for critical listening and are barely good enough for enjoyable listening. Then of course, there is the MP3 format. Listening to an MP3 of a song and then listening to that same song on a record or CD (on decent speakers and in a decent environment) is a truly ear-opening experience.
When it comes to voiceovers, I’ve often said that listening is more important than speaking. The best voiceover coach is your ears. But, in order for your ears to guide you properly, you must train them… by using them. Take the time here to open your ears when listening to commercials, audio books and any voiceover you hear. Ask yourself, “what do I hear?” Is the delivery speaking to you? Why? What words are emphasized and how? How does it sound? Harsh and edgy? Dull and muddy?
By the way, want to know what your studio sounds like? Record yourself and play the recording in your car. Mix engineers and musicians have been referencing their mixes in cars for years. It makes perfect sense; the car has traditionally been the place where we do most of our listening. Furthermore, modern cars are well-designed for sound.
Take the time to listen. Notice what you hear. Compare sounds and learn what sounds good to you. It can be like opening a door to a world you barely knew existed. You’ll be surprised to discover the difference between what you think you hear… compared to what you actually hear. You may even benefit from the experience in ways you never thought possible.
Remember: You have two ears and one mouth to remind you to use your ears twice as much.
Its been awhile since I’ve posted here on Sound4VO. For those of you who are regular readers, I apologize for the silence. Truth is… I’ve been busy!!
Over the last several months, some remarkable opportunities unfolded before me and I owed it to myself to pursue them (and I’ll continue to pursue them). First and foremost, I had the opportunity to co-star in a television pilot… Rockin’ A Hard Place. In a nutshell, the show is similar to Taxi or 30Rock, but it takes place in a rock and roll club. This was BIG! It was fun; a chance to spread my wings and learn some new things.
Television, as an on-camera actor, wasn’t on my radar. I had never even considered it to be a possibility or a direction I would take. But I am glad this path revealed itself to me. After I was encouraged to audition, I got the part and jumped at the opportunity. Although we’ve had the live premiere of the pilot, the show is still undergoing editing, mixing and tweaking. I feel as though I performed well and the producers told me that I had. 🙂 The entire experience has been very exciting and it was a thrill to be a part of it. They’ll begin pitching the show in the next several weeks. As for the future of Rockin’ A Hard Place and my role in it, that remains to be seen. But, before moving on about the future… allow me to jump back in time for a moment.
Nearly twenty years ago, I was working as a photographer, manager and graphic designer for a few local bands. I was in rock and roll clubs that featured live music almost 4 nights a week. One night, at a gig, the house sound engineer told me he had to leave town for a couple of weeks and needed someone to fill in. He asked if I wanted to learn how to run sound and I responded by saying, “HELL YES, I want to learn how to run sound!” Five months later, I was getting complimented regularly for my work. However, I still didn’t feel confident that I really knew what I was doing. So… I went to recording school.
In 2000, I began working as a studio manager for a voiceover studio. I had just left radio and voiceover, as a career, was new to me. Voiceover seemed like fun and I was very interested in learning more about it. I took a two month long workshop and learned skills that every voice talent should know. While I had the desire to be a talent, my focus wasn’t quite there yet. At the time, the greatest benefit to me was that the workshop taught me how to speak the language and how to direct voice actors. As a result, I became a much better producer. Years later (after engineering, directing and producing hundreds of VO sessions, listening, and practicing on my own), I was finally able to put that knowledge I had gained in the workshop (coupled with years of experience as a director, producer and engineer) into practice as a voice talent myself.
While I’ve just shared some of my personal journey, this post is not about me or my history. It is really about the relationship between opportunity and preparation.
For the past several years we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of people interested in getting into voiceover. I’m guessing with the release of In A World and also of I Know That Voice, interest is going to explode over the next year. Sadly, many voice demo factories are going to capitalize on this and start cranking out demos for people who aren’t ready. Additionally, many people are going to put a profile up on a P2P site and offer their services as a “voice talent” without any knowledge, training or experience. Both practices are shameful.
For those VO demo factories and so-called coaches who offer “get rich quick” promises and have plans to seize this “opportunity” by taking advantage of those wanting to pursue this career, those of us us who have been around awhile… know who you are.
If you are an individual who is inspired and truly interested in working and building a career in voiceover, here are some things you need to know. I understand that you may do a great Ronald Reagan or Fran Drescher impression or can imitate a commercial or preview you heard while watching TV or waiting for the movie to start. While imitation is flattering, it is not a truly necessary element to achieving success in voiceover. No matter what you’ve been told, this business is not right for everyone. Furthermore, it is a business. It requires time and ongoing effort applied to developing relationships, marketing, advertising, accounting and… training.
Training is by far one of the most important elements to success in nearly any career, including voiceover. If you truly want to make the most out of an opportunity and position yourself for more and possibly greater opportunities, you must seek the wisdom of reputable people and organizations who can help you achieve your goals and prepare you for that next big thing. Don’t forget about the hours, days, weeks, months and possibly years of unrelenting effort that you must also put in on your own. As I have written in past articles, a voiceover career “cooks” as though it were a meal in a crock pot, not a microwave.
For those of you who are thinking about getting into voiceover… go for it! But as the saying goes, luck favors the prepared. Prepare yourself for every step of the journey. In the beginning, find reputable people and organizations to help you and get training before offering your services. Attempting to build a sustainable and successful career on a weak foundation (or none at all) is difficult, if not impossible. Also, quality training will provide you with confidence so that you don’t feel as though you need to work for peanuts… unless of course you enjoy being paid like a monkey (I mean no offense to monkeys or peanuts… I like both). And, once you’re working, expect to continually invest in your training, your studio and your business.
For those of you who are already working in this industry, I encourage you to seize new opportunities when they present themselves. It can be terrifying at first, but ultimately, you may have some fun while learning something new. Acting on camera seemed like a reasonable extension of what I’ve already been doing as a voice actor so I thought it was well worth taking the chance and auditioning for the role. By the way, my role in the pilot… live sound engineer. Funny, you just never know how your past experience will help prepare you for your present or your future.
Which brings me back to today…
I’m “seizing the day” with this on-camera opportunity, just as I did in 1995 and again in 2000, by getting educated. I am now enrolled in acting classes and loving every minute of it. I’m certain that acting classes will not only allow me to pursue opportunities in a new arena, but will also benefit my career as a voiceover artist. Preparation leads to opportunity and seizing an opportunity, in my experience, has meant more preparation so that I am ready for the next bigger and better opportunity.
Each opportunity I’ve been offered along my career path was merely a seed. The training… growth. My career… the harvest.
What is your experience?
It is as simple as this… if you want to work in voiceover, you need a home studio. I know it seems hard to believe, but it is true; the days of being chauffeured around from studio to studio where you talk for a few minutes and line your pockets with cash are long gone… and have been for years. More recently, the need for racks filled with expensive magic audio boxes has also become unnecessary. Today, with nothing more than a USB microphone and an iPad, you can be recording high quality audio in no time. Well… sort of.
In this final installment, of the three part series(part 1) (part 2), I’ll discuss a third type of voiceover recording setup. In this setup… the sky is the limit! Keep in mind, that in any recording setup, there are at least two common denominators that will remain constant. They are, and always will be, the two most important factors in your sound and your success… you and the space in which you record. The cheapest setup can sound great (or at the very least… useable) with an amazing talent, performing in a great sounding space. A great performance on expensive equipment can be useless in a noisy or terrible sounding space.
With that in mind, let’s checkout setup number three.
While setup 1 and setup 2 are portable, portability was never the goal. Consistency from one session to the next is a critical element to success in voiceover. Therefore, remaining in one space is preferred. Recording setup 3 is stationary, and there are other big changes that will have you prepared for anything. One of the biggest changes is incorporating a mixer into the setup, which will allow you to include phone patch and (when you are ready and if the technology is available where you are geographically) an ISDN codec.
I could very easily have added them to the other two setups but with setup 3, the other big change is the necessity for studio monitors (speakers). Nobody should be listening critically to audio on headphones alone. Headphones, by design, do not give you a true picture of how we hear sound in the real world. We hear with both of our ears in combination, not with the left and right sides in isolation. Studio monitors are a personal preference. Whichever monitors you choose, you should give yourself some time to get familiar with their characteristics. More importantly, they should be comfortable for you to listen on over long periods of time.
Most components listed in setup 2 will remain the same for this setup. Instead of a laptop, a desktop computer will serve as the focal point for this studio. This will likely increase your storage capacity and speed. It will also give you more visual real estate due to a bigger computer monitor (the screen) and you can get even more real estate by adding an additional monitor.
With this setup, the sky is the limit when it comes to options, components and prices. Upgrades are possible in all areas of your audio chain. While the $300 microphone may still be perfect for you, it may be worthwhile to explore more expensive options. The same is true for your preamp, interface, cables and… well… everything. The price ranges I’ve listed below, now reflect the cost of higher priced equipment that can be found in many home voiceover studios.
Overall estimated cost:
High quality desktop computer w/OS and basic software – $1500 – $3000
DAW – $0 – $1800 (Audacity and “lite” DAW software = $0, full versions = $1800)
Separate Preamp – $500 – $2500
USB/Firewire Preamp or standalone AD/DA Converter – $150 – $2500
Mixer – $100 – $1000
Standard (XLR) LDC microphone – $300 – $1200
ISDN Codec or Source Connect Pro Software – $1000 – $3000
Phone patch – $175 – $500
Headphones – $100
Studio Monitors – $300 – $1600
Cables/adaptors – $50 – $200
Heavy duty microphone stand w/boom – $150
Setup 3 cost = aprox. $4325 – $17,550
Your home studio. For just over $1000, which was discussed in part one of this series, all the way up to over $17,000 (and beyond) you can be recording, editing and producing voiceovers. Note that these costs don’t take into consideration acoustic treatment or sound proofing (the prices for Whisper Rooms, for example, begin at just over $3000). Furthermore, if you’re interested in doing full production and mixing, you’ll need music, sound effects and audio processing plugins to go along with your DAW software.
Some of the items listed can be combined and many of the items are transferable from setup to setup, allowing your studio to build upon itself and grow with your career. Also, it is more likely that setup 1 could be the last setup you buy rather than your first. The portable studio is far more useful to voice talent who’ve been working at this awhile and are in higher demand.
So, now that you’ve gotten your studio budget figured out… start working on your budget for coaching, marketing materials, website, travel to industry events and your very own… chauffeured limousine. 😉
It is as simple as this… if you want to work in voiceover, you need a home studio. I know it seems hard to believe, but it is true; the days of being chauffeured around from studio to studio where you talk for a few minutes and line your pockets with cash are long gone… and have been for years. More recently, the need for racks filled with expensive magic audio boxes has also become unnecessary. Today, with nothing more than a USB microphone and an iPad, you can be recording high quality audio in no time.
Well… sort of.
In this installment, of what will be a three part series, I’ll discuss the second of three types of voiceover recording setups. Each setup will cover reasonable price ranges that will, at a minimum, be capable of providing an acceptable level of quality as well as varying degrees of flexibility. A professional working voice talent could easily own all three of these setups at different points in their career, or even use any one of the three interchangeably with the other two. With proper planning, the smallest, most portable and least expensive setup can easily grow with and become an integral part of the most comprehensive and expensive setup.
While these setups are different, there are at least two common denominators that will remain constant. They are, and always will be, the two most important factors in your sound and your success… you and the space in which you record. The cheapest setup can sound great (or at the very least… useable) with an amazing talent, performing in a great sounding space. A great performance on expensive equipment can be useless in a noisy or terrible sounding space. Keep that in mind as we explore the following VO setup.
For recording setup two, rather than going with a tablet (which was discussed in The Anatomy of Three Voiceover Home Studios Part 1), choose a high quality laptop computer.
Personally, I believe that this setup is the one everyone needs at a minimum. The tablet based recording studio is very limited when it comes to choices and flexibility. Going with a laptop, rather than a tablet, opens up a world of possibilities. With a laptop computer you’ll get far better: storage capacity, ease of use, compatibility with hardware interfaces, including both USB and firewire, and access to most all of the DAW options (depending on which OS you choose). The flexibility alone is well worth the additional cost. The computer is the foundation of your studio. So, no matter what level you are at, spending the most money here is always well worth the added investment.
When using a full featured computer, the world of available interfaces increases dramatically. You can use USB interfaces or upgrade to the faster firewire or thunderbolt options. Most interfaces in this category offer preamps and phantom power, and many have multiple preamps. For this studio setup, I’ll assume that you’ll still want to keep it portable. Therefore most of your options will fall between $150 and $750.
Having at least two inputs on your preamp/interface allows you to add another key component to your studio… the phone patch. The phone patch allows you to pipe in a client/director to your headphones and receive direction live during a session. Most phone patch devices are designed to work with land lines but the JK Audio Daptor 2 works with cell phones. This is a bit more practical since many people are abandoning their land lines.
While recording, even on a powerful laptop, it is good practice to close other applications on your computer and use only those that are most critical to getting the job done such as your DAW, interface control panel, etc. Its not recommended that you surf the internet, talk on Skype and manipulate Excel spreadsheets while simultaneously recording audio (like you would want to work on a spreadsheet… HA!). Attempting to multitask in this way is not only difficult for you, but can make it possible for erroneous sounds, possible anomalies and errors to sneak into your recordings. For this reason, it is still very useful to add a tablet into your studio setup.
With a tablet, there are many useful apps that you can easily incorporate into your workflow including apps for reading and editing scripts (no more paper), timers/stopwatches and communications apps such as Skype. Perform these peripheral tasks on your tablet while recording and editing on your laptop.
Besides being far more flexible and overall easier to use, there is also at least one area for cost saving that is available by choosing a laptop. While a comprehensive and full featured DAW is recommended, Audacity software is FREE and available for both Mac and PC. Compared to most DAW’s, Audacity is a bit “clunky” in its operation. But, it is capable of doing most recording, editing and even processing tasks that are important to a voice talent. Another consideration is that many hardware interfaces come packaged with DAW “lite” versions. Not only are they capable of performing critical recording and editing tasks, they are also a great introduction to the full versions of the software.
High quality laptop w/OS and basic software – $1200
DAW – $0 – $500 (Audacity and “lite” DAW software = $0, full versions = $500)
USB/Firewire PreAmp-AD/DA Converter – $150 – $750
Standard LDC microphone – $300
Phone patch – $175
Headphones – $100
Cables/adaptors – $50
Heavy duty microphone stand w/boom – $150
Setup 2 cost = aprox. $2125 – $3225
Add a tablet for an additional $550 (If you started with setup one and are adding components… you’ll already have a tablet).
In the final installment of this three part series, the sky is the limit! I hope you’ll check it out.
It was an honor to be interviewed by Voiceover Assistant, Karen Souer. If you have a minute, please check out the interview and her blog. THANKS!!
http://voiceoverassistant.com/2013/02/dan-friedman-interview/#
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