30 Day Voice Over Trial - Day 21

I decided to quit early.  I wasn't satisfied with the sound quality, and I'm unwilling to buy a microphone.  I'm also just kind of bored with it, and there's no point in forcing it.  I learned a lot and had some fun.  I call it a win.

30 Day Voice Over Trial - Day 12

This time I went back to trying to copy a good voice that was closer to my own.  I think his still has more bass in it, but its close.  I don't have the words for what I mean actually.  Its not that the pitch is lower, it just has more oomph behind it.  Maybe I'm thinking of timbre.  Anyway, here's his (start at :40):



And here's mine:



I recorded it MANY times trying to match and trying my own.  I eventually settled on this.  I had a lot of things to fine tune.  Because of my lack of professional hardware, I think my mic is always going to be my bottleneck.  It seems to distort quickly at medium-high volume.  I just softened my volume for the final cut.

I grabbed a music loop that seemed to match the tone of the commercial.  It wasn't the same at all as the original, but still seemed to fit.

I transcribed the words this time, but always have the problem of actually seeing them while recording in garage band.  I used the Air Display app on my iPad with the Mac to just show TextEdit on the iPad while I kept garage band open on the Mac.  Perfect.

I still have problems getting the volumes correct between the music and vocal tracks.  It sounds correct in garage band, but when I export the m4a, its way off.

The other thing I did was add a fade out at the end.  Pretty simple.

I learned that my enunciation isn't as good right off the bat.  I need to work on that.  I still need more modulation.  When I go up, it sounds a bit strained too.

30 Day Voice Over Trial - Day 10

I wanted to copy one of the movie trailer voice overs; so, I found the Geico commercial with Don LaFontaine.  I thought it would be neat to just record my voice right over his; so, I figured out how to get the youtube audio into garage band (see steps below).

Original from youtube:



My audio dubbed over on soundcloud recorded in garage band:



Steps to get audio from youtube into garage band:

1. Install Google Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ebidjllhlibdgnenghhnlkmffolcklnj
2. Reload youtube video in a tab
3. Download as mp3
4. Drag mp3 into an open garage band project

I tried a lot harder to get this one right.  I re-recorded a ton of times.  I eventually stopped trying to get the nuance of his voice and just focus on inflection and pace.  I learned a lot more about garage band and editing the tracks.  I figured out how to mute tracks, delete chunks of tracks, adjust volumes of individual tracks to make everything match, mess with different voice effects.  I even got to add a neat cinematic sound loop under my vocals to give it more drama like LaFontaine's.  That sound loop dramatically increased the quality.  If you tried to submit a commercial demo without the sound, you'd be stupid.

30 Day Voice Over Trial - Day 8

I haven't found a mentor (I've barely looked), but I decided to just try out my idea of reading the blogs that I like.  I started with a popular blog by Tim Ferriss: The Art of Letting Bad Things Happen (and Weapons of Mass Distraction).  To get over myself, I decided to just open up garage band and record the thing without any prep work.  That's not really true though, because I went through at least 5 other blog posts before deciding on this one.  Here's what I got:



Towards the end, I had to keep re-recording sections because I would mess something up.  Not sure if my focus dies off that quick, or I just started noticing things.  A few things I noticed/learned:

1. My tone got more natural very fast.  I was sort of doing "announcer guy" in the beginning, but got a little bit more conversational (which is more appropriate for this blog).  I fluttered back and forth with this.  I usually fell back to more stiff when I was concentrating on something specifically.
2. I smacked my lips a bunch in the beginning.  After having to re-record a few sections, I heard myself doing it.  You can hear that I did it much less in the last half.
3. As I get more relaxed, my voice raises pitch a bit, back into my normal speaking range.  It sounds better there too.
4. I think I have a bit of back-of-the-through, nasal sound in my voice.  I should work on moving the "forward".
5. There were a few sentences that sounded very bad when read aloud.  I had to to figure out where to put the accent(s).
6. I learned a few things in garage band:
1. Record/play/back up shortcuts
2. You can just start recording over an existing part of a track.  No need to delete anything.
3. So far the easiest way to get a project into soundcloud is to export to disk.  This creates an .m4a which is accepted by soundcloud.

I'm not even getting my 1hr/day average so far (I spent longer on this blog post than I did recording), but it's nice to get something out there.

30 Day Voice Over Trial - Day 5

I'm pretty much sucking at this.  I'm not event forcing myself to record something stupid or call one of these voice/acting teachers.  Weak.  I didn't do anything yesterday or today.

30 Day Voice Over Trial - Day 4

Having a short timeframe might make the coaching/training part of this harder.  Finding/contacting/meeting with a coach could take a lot of time (still haven't been in contact with anyone).  Considering I only 30 days, I might not get the full benefit of a mentor.

It occurred to me after reading that voice over/acting is a subset of acting.  Furthermore, my immediate, obvious shortcoming so far was a lack of dynamics in my voice.  That's the non-actor in me.  Here's a few more places I'm looking to contact with that in mind:

• http://www.neonvenustheatre.com/all-classes/beginning-and-intermediate-acting-las-vegas/
• http://johnarmondactorsstudio.com/classes.html
• http://voicecoaches.com/

30 Day Voice Over Trial - Day 3

I read some more blog posts and looked up a few books that I could read on voice over (aka voice acting).  I decided to get some audio down.  I transcribed the beginning of a great demo I found on SoundCloud (Anthony Gettig Commercial Voiceover Demo by anthonygettig).  Then I recorded a bit of me doing it in GarageBand.  I uploaded it to SoundCloud.

VO Trial - Day 3 - Commercial Voiceover Demo by Jeremy Barth

The main problem I think I have so far is a lack of pitch variance.  My highs aren't high enough specifically.  It takes the excitement out.

As soon as I had GarageBand ready to record, I realized something that I hadn't considered before.  I was extremely self-conscious about doing the voice.  Its not even a different voice than mine, but I had to wait until Angela left.  I could barely get more than a couple of takes.  I need to get over that.