Intro In a previous video, 25 Voice over tips Explained with examples, I cover 25 tips I learned while doing voice overs for a company project. It included the space you record in, the mic, recorder, how to handle the script, adding life to the voiceover, splitting sentences, pacing, and so on. You’ll want to watch that video, which will help you with doing voice overs, and will help with recording your voice in general. Reverb Effect Here’s 13 more things I’ve learned and I thought I would share them with you. Many watching this don’t have a studio setup that is super quiet, and things can get quite reverbery when the sound bounces off the walls. Anything that will reflect sound will bounce what you are saying – that includes ceilings, floors, and walls – back into the mic after you say it, which is what creates that boomy sound or reverb. I’m lucky enough to have a number of Blankets elements in this room that help, such as carpet on the floor. The easiest is just getting some cheap moving blankets and laying them on the floor, any table surfaces, and in front of you. I got these because they are thicker, work, and can get four of them for about $30 on Amazon. Many forget when using these shotgun mics, they are designed to reject sound from the sides, but you will get some bleed from behind, so hanging a blanket BEHIND you can really help cut out the reverb. It may seem funny to surround yourself in blankets, but when you hand over the audio to someone else, or edit them yourself, you’ll be glad you did. By the way, these circular sound deadening devices don’t work all that well. They really collapse your own personal space in on you, not a good thing while doing voice overs, and I’ve even tried two at a time, in front and in back, and I’ll go with the cheap sound blankets any day. In the voice over tips video I Mic Placement mentioned getting the mic close to your mouth. If you ever see a professional doing voice overs, they keep their mouth quite close to the microphone. No matter what mic you use, you will always get better sound by placing it close to the mouth. Let me show you. Normally, when I shoot these episodes I keep the mic up here out of frame. When doing voice overs, you wouldn’t do that. Here’s the mic in front of me about one foot away. Here’s the mic at about 6 inches away. Here’s the mic at a bout 3 inches away. It’s a dramatic difference. It’s usually 6 inches away, but you can step into the mic for a more intimate sounding voiceover. Of course, once you set up your mic, Audio Levels you want to make sure you set the audio recording levels properly. The usual rule is to see the levels on the audio device jumping between -12 and -6 db. Testing levels with the mic above me. Testing levels with the mic above me. Testing levels with microphone one foot away. Testing levels with microphone one foot away. Testing levels with microphone six inches away. Testing levels with microphone six inches away. Testing levels with the microphone three inches away. Testing levels with the microphone three inches away. This audio will look something like this when you get it into your audio editor. This sound will be all over the place, and that’s because our voices are quite dynamic. What you don’t want is your levels too low, as you’ll have to jack up the volume and you’ll also jack up any noise in the recording. You don’t want it too high either, as it will produce clipping, meaning, you’re overdriving the audio, and it sounds terrible. If you reduce the audio volume in your editor, it will sound terrible as it is clipped. Now you don’t want to eat the microphone, because if you get too close, you get too many mouth noises in your recording. Pop Filters This thing, it’s called a pop filter, is used to help suppress plosives, which is wind exploding across the mic. Like this, especially with P’s, Please portray portable Please portray portable These filters are really cheap, something like $5 to $10, and worth it. Setup properly, they allow you to get close to the mic, and keep you from getting to close. Once you have everything setup, you’re good to go. If you’re doing some type of narration, there may be passages where you have to be more energetic or loud, and that’s handled by just backing away from the mic a bit. He was angry, like really angry! YOU LOST THE AUDIO FILES? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU??? Warm Up Another thing I didn’t cover is warming up your voice, just like a singer or a musician. Spend a few minutes reading through the script or book and get your instrument, your voice, warmed up and ready to go. If you’re a musician who reads music, you’ve learned to “sight read”, meaning you can read the music a bit ahead of what you’re playing. Same with narration, which is a thing Sight Read you practice so you train your eyes and voice to be in sync. Next is a tip I haven’t found mentioned anywhere, but an absolute voiceover killer. Know What You Are Reading Know what you are reading. I know that sounds pretty basic, but I mean REALLY know what you are reading. When you are going along and keep stumbling you lines and your words, I guarantee you don’t totally understand either the concept that is written being communicated, or the words themselves. It’s common practice to read through the script a couple of times out loud, and when you get confused or stumble, you look prior to that and find out what words you didn’t understand, and look them up in a good dictionary, or work out what the script says so you understand it. When you are in Outlook, you can use Outlook peek to see mutiple and varied detailed viewing options of the applications with customization options that… Yuck!! If you’re writing the script, then by golly, if it’s confusing, that’s a big sign to re-write that section to make it understandable to the listener. Another thing I eluded to in the tips video but didn’t quite say it like this, is to mean what you say. In other words, speak with confidence and believe what you’re talking about. I believe if you treat others with kindness, you’ll always win at the game of life. I believe if you treat others with kindness, yo’ll always win at the game of life. If you are editing your own voice over, Editing Your Voice don’t get crazy with it. If you did all the things I mention in this and the other video, editing the voice should be a breeze. I usually open my audio in Adobe Audition, add a Broadcast compressor to my voice which gives it some depth, then I use the match loudness feature to get everything at a common -19 LUFS. Yours may be different for what you are doing, and your voice may need another treatment than mine, but for me, this is a simple, reproducable, and quick way to do it. Gear I’ve had a lot of questions about gear, do as far a microphones, many watching this channel will have a shotgun type mics like I do, and there’s nothing wrong with using them. But you should know that the preferred mics for voiceovers are Dynamic Broadcast Mics and Large Diaphragm Condenser Mics and they are all over the place in quality and range: The Blue Yeti USB at $89, the Audio-Technica AT2020 $129 The Rode NT1A $228 The Shure SM7B $399 The Electro Voice RE-20 $499 and all the way up to this Neumann U 87 at almost $3200. It will all depend on the cash you have and whether you are doing this professionally or not. Audio recorders The audio recorders will vary too, as you can use some of these mics directly into your computer, but I found these very fiddly, and, now you have the computer’s fans embedded into your voice over. Again, you can pay rediculous amounts for audio recorders, at the low end I suggest a Zoom H1n at $139, although plastic and easily breakable, the Zoom H4n Pro at just over $200, great unit, but the startup time and card formatting time is too long for me, or my favorite, this Zoom H6 at about $300. You can also check out the various equialent tascam models and like our microphones, you can go crazy with something like this Nagra VI 8-Channel Digital Recorder coming in at $8500. Next is headphones. Use headphones when doing voiceovers, mainly to hear if there’s sounds happening you don’t normally hear. Headphones The A/C may be white noise to your ears, but is unmistakable with headphones. Also, I can’t count how many times I’ve gotten ready to start a voice over, put on the headphones, only to realize the recorder is not in recording mode, or some cable is fragging out. [STRANGE ELECTRONIC NOISE] Testing. Testing, testing, testing. Testing [more strange noise] testing. Without headphones I wouldn’t have known that. Like everything else, you can go crazy on headphones too, but I recommend these Sony MDRV6 Studio Monitor Headphones as they have great dynamic range, and more importantly, they don’t add anything, such as mid or bass to your voice, as they’re nice and neutral. Again, there are better headphones, but at $71, they can’t be beat. Lastly, it’s just doing it, and not Not Being Afraid being afraid or whatever. A lot of people who listen to their voice for the first time and wonder why they sound so funny. That goes away after awhile, and in no time at all you’ll get used to your own voice. The voice over you do today, will not be as good as the next twenty you’ll do, and that’s OK, as that means you’re getting better. Here’s a quick recap: Recap 1. Watch the previous 25 voice tips video 2. Isolate your room with sound blankets 3. Get the mic close to your mouth 4. Set the audio recorder levels properly 5. Use a pop filter 6. Read the script to warm up your voice 7. Practicing sight-reading your scripts 8. Know what you are talking about and speak with confidence 9. Edit your voice to your liking 10. Use a good mic 11. Use a good audio recorder 12. Use good headphones 13. Do it and get better I’ve included links in the description below to the things I’ve talked about, including the previous 25 tips video. I hope that helps, thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next time! [BEEP] In Outlook, click on your mailbox name, and you get what is called Outlook peek. This shows a snapshot of your calendar, tasks, and unread messages. Much better! [FRAZZLE SOUND] [FRAZZLE SOUND]
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