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Hello, everybody, welcome to a very special edition of The VO Meter Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. I am here with a very special announcement from Everett Oliver at myboothdirector.com. Everett, how are you today?
I’m well.
I am excited to be on your show, so thank you so much for inviting me. Last minute, but this is going to be fun.
This is gonna be great. So for those of you who don’t know, Everett is a legendary booth director that has recently, or maybe not so recently, you tell me, has branched out to have his own consulting business called myboothdirector.com, where you can dial him up and have him direct you as if he were standing right outside your booth for an audition. It’s fantastic.
I’ve used it several times. And I’ll let Everett tell you a little bit more about it and why you should contact him.
Yeah, well, I’ve been booth director for about five years at one of the local talent agencies here in LA. And I have really good connections with actors once I really get to know them. I love to pull performances out of them and help them really, really book those jobs that they feel like, oh, I’m not sure, or they need a little bit of oomph or help just for me to listen and say, okay, you might be missing a little bit of energy.
So I thought, why not me create this, everybody needs some sort of direction when it comes to auditioning for your auditions. So I basically direct you from where I am. I ask that the actors send me a copy of the audition and send me their first pass.
So at least I know where they’re going. And I set it up while I’m on Skype or use Zoom. And then I just really, really connect with you as a performer and get the best performance out of you.
Sometimes I have the actors send me the audition so I can hear it on my end, just so that I can either close the gap here or there or turn up the levels just a little bit louder. Very little, small little glitch, just so that I can edit everything for when I hear it on my end. Because I like for you as the performer to keep everything rolling.
So that way, in my head, I say, okay, send me everything. I can make the cuts really for you and I’ll send you back the final product. So that’s what I do.
Awesome. Talk to me a little bit about your style, because I’ll be honest with you, I was first introduced to you on an interview you did with Chuck and Stacey on VO Buzz Weekly. And to be honest, you kind of terrified me, because everyone was saying how brutally honest you are.
There’s no holds barred. And I think at one point you even said, you’re not happy unless the performer walks away crying.
Well, no, it’s more or less, I travel a lot through the different markets in different regions. And so the style that I have really developed for myself is that I love to know the performer. I need to know whether or not maybe you’re schooling.
I need to know a little bit about maybe your family. You know, little stuff about your family. Not much, you know, your in-laws, who you connect with, who you might have a conflict with.
I’m more or less a person to tap into you. So once I tap into you and I know you, then I can go ahead and pull a performance. My traveling, I can go ahead and sense, oh, which regions is right for you as the performer.
So when I’m going ahead and I’m directing, I’m listening, A, for your acting. I’m listening for, are you that actual character? That or, you know, are you selling that product really well?
Are you very conversational? And that’s how I direct. And then I go into your regions and I go, you might not be right for the region that you are auditioning for.
And I am brutally honest and I really tell the actors, why waste your time? That I know that I live in a number one market, I’m from a number one market, and you’re auditioning on two of the number one markets and you’re just not gonna make the cut. Because I’ve seen and I’ve heard, oh, I’ve worked with tons of actors on both coasts and I can tell and I’m like, mm, you might over enunciate too much.
You might not be right for the California market. You might be right for the New York market because everyone on a certain coast speaks a certain way and I’ve picked that up in my travels. So yeah, so I am really brutally honest, you know, and I tell it like it is.
And I think actors should know. And I’m not mean.
You can say that. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to do this because I think sometimes that is the impression that comes off when you’re in an interview. When you were on VOBS, it was a similar thing.
I’d already worked with you at that point, so it wasn’t the same. But I gotta tell you, I would have never called you if I hadn’t talked to you or seen you on another interview after that VO Buzz Weekly. But I’m here to tell all of our listeners and viewers that Everett is a sweetheart.
Absolutely, absolutely best at what he does, but will also help you along the way. So even though he’s brutally honest, and you probably should want that as a performer, you don’t wanna waste your time like you were saying. Everett is great to work with and I can’t recommend him enough.
So tell us a little bit about the event you have coming up in DC.
Okay, so I’m gonna be in DC October 14th at, I wanna say Clean Cuts. I’m gonna be teaching an animation workshop. We’re gonna have fun.
I’m gonna give tons and tons of copy. I’m gonna go around, a little bit around the room and I wanna hear people talk. I wanna know a little bit about them.
That’s like my style. So once I get a little bit, know a little bit about them. I’m gonna give them tons of information about the voiceover industry.
It doesn’t matter what levels that you are, beginner, medium, intermediate. You need to know stuff about your markets. You need to know about the agency, how to get agents from different markets.
You just need to know as a performer, the business side of the business, which actors sometimes just forgets about. And then also, I’m just gonna just give you a copy. I’m gonna pull performances out of you.
So it’s gonna be fun. I’m gonna have a lot of energy. I’m gonna be bouncing up and down like I normally do.
I’m looking forward to it. DC is a new market for me, so I haven’t really been to DC since I was about maybe 15. So it’s gonna be a little fun.
Friday night, I’m gonna be at the Tenley Bar and Grill. Is it Bar and Grill? So it’s a meet and greet.
So just come out, you know, tang, get to know me a little bit. I want to get to know you a little bit, just to loosen up the mood a little bit before we actually work one Saturday. So, but it should be fun.
I’m totally looking forward to it. You know, hopefully it won’t be cold. I’m not interested in cold weather.
We’ll see that.
We’re actually in the middle of a heat wave right now. I’m, you know, I’m just outside DC and Baltimore. So it’s going to be 90 degrees most of this week.
Hopefully it’ll cool down a little bit actually by the time you’re here. We’ll see.
Absolutely. Yeah, because we’re not dealing with 80, 90 degrees here in California. So no.
So all of my friends and listeners who are tuning in right now, please come on October 13th to the Tanley Bar, October 14th to Clean Cuts. Get some great work done with Everett and find out what a nice guy he is. Honestly.
And they can register. Right. And you can register on myboothdirector.com or you can email me as well at Everett A.
Oliver at gmail.com. And any information or questions that you have, may have about the session or whether I’d be willing to definitely, you know, email you back. But like I said, it’s going to be lots of fun and lots of information.
And usually people will come out of my workshop, they come out very, very satisfied. It’s very helpful. And they’re able to take their career to the next level.
Big smiles too. I’ve seen your picture from the event in Toronto. Everyone’s smiling ear to ear.
Yes. And yeah, and my clients who have worked with me, they have said, oh my God, if I didn’t book them on one project, they’ve used the stuff that I’ve taught them to something else and they’ve booked. So, and that’s the key issue.
I know that everyone constantly, constantly wants the books, but I want you to learn and raise your bar. I’m going to make you raise your bar and I’m going to stretch you. So if your range is here, I’m going to bring your range down here so that you know you can do those type of characters that you think in your mind that you can’t do.
Well, we’re looking forward to it. Thanks again for being here on the VO Meter and we’ll see you on the 13th, Everett.
See you soon.

The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hi everybody, and welcome to Episode 14 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
I’m Sean Daeley.
And I’m Paul Stefano.
We have an exciting episode planned for you guys today. I know Paul went to his first anime convention, that’s pretty cool. But before we get to that, current events.
So Paul, what have you been up to?
Well, let’s see. I’ve been doing some e-learning with the large e-learning company I signed up with a few months ago. I was actually picked up in Voice Over Extra, my blog post that I did about it, where I was talking about how July was a really successful month for me.
There was some Facebook chatter amongst some pros that July was their worst month ever. And I chimed in on my blog saying, you know, I think it might have been my best ever because I have these two projects from the eLearning company and then a third that is pending. And they were both completed and I wrote a little blog about it.
And thankfully, or I’m thankful to John Florian for picking it up and once again featuring me on Voice Over Extra, so that was fun. And I’m in the middle of recording four audiobooks for myself in various stages of completion. One’s in the can, one was released today.
Another one is being edited by one of my editors right now. And I’m recording a local author as well in my studio. I think I mentioned I did that once before, but we’re doing it again.
So how did you advertise your studio? How did authors know to find you?
Well, it’s all word of mouth. The first one was a friend of a mom whose kid I coached in soccer. She told me about this book and it was really successful in paperback.
So I reached out to the author and said, do you want me to do your book? She said no, but I want to do it. And I brought her in and re-recorded it and it’s been doing pretty well so far.
And then this next one is actually my pastor at my church. He and his associate wrote a very successful book. It was in the top selling list for religious books on Amazon.
And I asked them same thing, do you want me to do their book? They also said no, but also because they wanted to do it. And my pastor is a really dynamic speaker.
So I’m actually glad he’s doing it because we’re about halfway through it now. And he’s fantastic. He came out of the booth one day and I was like giddy, like a little child.
And I said, I knew you would be good at this. I’m so proud of you. So I just basically did all through word of mouth.
That’s awesome. That’s very cool.
So that’ll be out in the next couple of weeks. I think we’ll probably finish at the end of August and hopefully have it released before the end of September. And then I just finished my rebranding with help from our coach, Sean Pratt, and launched an entirely new website, put it out yesterday, and the response has been fantastic.
Yeah, it looks great.
So if you haven’t had a chance to check it out, please go to www.paulstefano.com and let me know what you think. What’s going on with you, Sean?
Well, it’s that time of month again. I’m gathering…
That time of month…
Where I’m super, super moody and I can’t get any work done, but I met for my regular e-learning clients, duh. Oh, of course. What do you think I met?
Every second or third week of the month, I’ll get the scripts in. I go over them, make sure there are no errors, and then I send it out to three or five different narrators from… First, it used to be all over the US, because Paul, you’ve done it for me before, and kind of same thing with Word of Mouth.
I’m like, hey, my friend Sean is looking for more voiceover actors, and so I grew my roster that way. And then we got a request for more international voices, because he wants to try people who… He wants to challenge our listeners with accents that are technically English, but might be more difficult to understand, like say New Zealand or South African or Scottish.
I’m seeing a lot of demand for South African recently. I don’t know what that is. Are you seeing that too?
A little bit, yeah. I don’t know where… It’s a well-kept secret, I guess, because I see all the requests, but none of the actors.
Yeah, exactly.
So there you go. But yeah, so I’ve been working on that. I’m working on my first official audio book for Learning Ally.
So…
Oh, cool.
Yeah, so it’s actually The Giver by Lois Lowry. I mean, a lot of people in my generation might have read that when they were in high school, as recommended rating and stuff like that. And I know I got made into a movie with Jeff Bridges a couple of years ago.
So excited about that. I actually visited my aunt and their family for my cousin’s wedding last weekend in Montana. And she’s a teacher and a principal and spent decades in the education system.
And she is just so giddy. And she’s like, my nephews are narrating The Giver. It’s so happy.
I’m so proud.
That’s awesome.
So I told her I’d get her a free copy when I’m finished. But so that’s all I’m working on right now. Actually, we just got a really cool elevation Q&A webinar for the Global Voice Acting Academy with David Rosenthal.
So every month we have these two Q&A sessions where you can kind of pick the brains of Christina Melizia and David Rosenthal who are just very, very talented voice actors who have with decades of industry experience between the two of them. And we had a big turnout for this webinar because there was a bit of an upset this week when we were recording the podcast because a certain pay-to-play site aggressively bought a certain voice agent network. We don’t want to talk about it too much in this episode because it would completely ruin the focus and has nothing to do with conventions.
So we’re just going to leave it right there. But there’s plenty of resources online that you can learn and figure out what the debacle we’re talking about is. But anyways, so yeah, speaking of conventions, tell us about your experience, Paul, because I know this is kind of like your first one at this kind of con, right?
Yeah, so first of all, I don’t know if we mentioned yet, it was Otakon, which is a Japanese anime-focused convention in Washington, DC. I was a little bummed because up until this year, it was in Baltimore, and somehow the local tourism board lost it, and they’re now in DC for the foreseeable future, but this was the first year in DC. So it’s still not too far away.
It still takes me about an hour to get down there with a drive or maybe an hour and a half on the train. But I went down there, and we actually had a co-host on site, friend of the show, Chris Dattoli from New Jersey. He came down and was doing a panel discussion on voice acting for the convention, and then in his spare time, he helped us by doing some interviews and then some co-hosting.
So it was a lot of fun. There was a lot to see. As far as the convention itself, it was kind of mind-blowing for me, really, because like you said, I had never really been to a quote unquote con before, and just walking in the door, the moment I saw 5,000 people dressed in costumes, you know, all the cosplayers, it just was completely overwhelming.
So I spent the first maybe hour just wandering around all the rooms by myself to see what was there.
Just like slack-jawed?
Pretty much, yeah. And I am not a cosplayer because honestly, I barely even knew what that was before this week. Although I do like to dress up.
And you could say that maybe I was a cosplayer 20 years ago. I think, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I was actually the mascot for my university. So…
Oh yeah, you did tell me that before.
I dressed up in a furry tiger suit and got in front of tens of thousands of people. So in some ways, I’m like an old school cosplayer.
You did it before, it was cool. Oh man, I know a bunch of anime fans are just groaning at that one, Paul.
Ha ha ha.
Interesting note though, cos I realised it’s called Otakon. So the Japanese word otaku actually is essentially nerd or geek, or someone who obsesses over one kind of nerdy geeky thing.
Oh really, okay.
Yeah, yeah. So that’s probably where…
So it’s geeked on.
Essentially, yeah. Sometimes it’s used in a pejorative way, but I feel like nowadays, and especially for non-Japanese people, they kind of use it as a term of endearment. But I just thought that was interesting.
Yeah, so we had some great guests that were actually on the show, and some that we didn’t get a chance to talk to. We did talk to Man at Arms Reforged, which is a web show that they build weapons based on video games and anime shows, and they actually create the real weapons. They’re based here in Baltimore as well, which is kind of cool.
They work for a company called Baltimore Knife and Sword in their spare time, and then they do Man at Arms Reforged. So we may have some fans that have seen that. Have you, are you familiar with that show?
I fricking love that show. So I went, actually, like, think about me. I haven’t done it in a while, but I have a sword collection, actually, of like, this was especially when Lord of the Rings films were coming out, and so I got a bunch of those.
And I just loved reading fantasy books when I was a kid. I remember going to like Germany when I was 18, and we went to a castle, and in the gift shop, they had like a functional mace, and I was like, I don’t need any other souvenirs. I’m just gonna get that.
Yeah, I was a huge fan of the Man at Arms show. Back when it, before it was reforged, it was a different guy based out of California, I think.
Yeah, exactly.
And then they only did one season, and then they moved to the Baltimore one. And these guys are great, though. I mean, they do all their own voice overs, which I’m sure you talked to them about, and they use a lot more modern machinery and engineering techniques to sort of craft these weapons.
But it’s still really awesome to watch.
Yeah, they were awesome. And we did talk about the voice overs, and because they’re local, I offered to help, gave them a business card, little two-for-one deal. So you’ll hear that in the interview.
Some good stuff there. And then we talked to Vic Mignana, who was an anime voice actor. So the focus basically, at least in my mind, was to go there and talk to the voice actors and see how they got into it and what they were getting out of the anime side of things.
Man at Arms was kind of a bonus because I didn’t actually ask to interview them. So you have to put in a proposal and they tell you who you’re granted access with. And Man at Arms was sort of a last-minute thing where they said, we have some openings for Man at Arms who wants to talk to them.
And Chris particularly was like, yes, we want to talk to them definitely. And it turned out great because they were awesome guys.
Yeah, yeah, I would be stoked about that. And I never, that’s the funny thing about cons is sometimes you never expect who the guests are gonna be because they’re kind of like obscure or like you just don’t know what the draw is gonna be. But I’m so happy you guys are able to do that.
Yeah, so then, like I mentioned, we talked to Vic Mignana, we talked to Jamie McGonigal, we talked to Stephanie Shay and Chris Neosi. And they’re all voice actors. You may know them from some of their anime shows.
And then a lot of them are doing more, I don’t know if I should say more traditional because it just seems that way to me, but…
Western animation.
Yeah, they do some Western animation commercials as well. And then, let’s see, there’s some audio that we have coming up with a panel discussion on voice directing, voice acting directing, and some people that do directing for anime. We heard from Tony Oliver, Lex Lang, and Michael Sinternicholas.
And those guys were all great. I actually got up to ask a question, and so did Chris. So we hear that audio where we played that back.
And then there was a panel that I went to by myself. Chris was, I think, setting up for his own panel with Toshio Furukawa. Oh, I forget the other lady’s name.
I have to look it up.
So these were actually Japanese voice actors? Some of the latter ones?
Yeah. I thought you might know this guy.
Well, in case some of our listeners aren’t familiar with some of the earlier names, Vic Mignona is probably most popular for playing Edward Elric in Full Metal Alchemist. And he tends to play a lot of short blonde teenage superheroes. And then Stephanie Shay, I think I knew her from a show called Bleach, which is basically like Dragon Ball with swords.
But anyways, she played one of the female protagonists, Orihime. And then you’ve got Lex Lang, who’s a voice director and producer, does a lot of impressions and ADR looping work. And then some of the other ones I wasn’t familiar with.
You were mentioning Jamie McGonigal and Tony Oliver.
Yeah, they’re both pretty famous. Jamie and Tony both have done a ton of characters, even some more traditional cartoons that have been on. Jamie was like five different characters in the Pokemon series, so that was cool.
And then that panel that he was on with Michael Sinternicholas, he was Leonardo in one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, so…
Yeah, he actually plays Dean Venture on the Venture Brothers, if you’ve never watched that. Sort of like a dark interpretation of Johnny Quest.
Okay, cool. So I didn’t get a chance to sit down with him in person, mostly because I didn’t know who he was and I didn’t ask about it. But maybe we’ll have him on the show sometime.
I’ve actually reached out to him. We’ll see if he responds.
Cool.
Maybe he’ll remember me for my panel question, because he was really helpful there.
Excellent.
And the final two I wanted to mention were Toshio Furukawa and Shino Kakinuma. They are both actually living and working Japanese voice actors and actresses. And they are married, which I didn’t know.
So during the panel discussion, there’s some funny stuff with those two, although they don’t speak English, at least not enough to be conversational. So they had an interpreter. Oh, okay.
That was interesting, where the fans would ask the panel questions, the interpreter would send it back and forth, and then spit it back out to us. So you’ll hear some audio from that too. But Toshio, or Furukawa-san, as they were calling him, I guess his most famous role is Piccolo from Dragon Ball.
Is that right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, so that’s one of his most famous roles you might know him from.
But all in all, it was really cool. We got some absolute gold from some of the guests as far as how to be a voice actor. And the theme that you’ll hear is that it really is about acting.
We didn’t prompt these people, and you’ll hear that every one of the people we interviewed brings it back to being an actor, taking acting classes, continuing to take acting classes. Over and over again was a theme. And it was good to have that backed up.
That knowledge to be reinforced, because we hear that from our coaches all the time. And it’s good to hear that from working pros that really is the key.
Wonderful. Well, I’m glad you got to experience that. Cause I know, like, I’m a big comic book geek.
So it’s kind of, like, it’s almost tradition to go to that every year. And as you mentioned before, it can be a great networking and or marketing opportunity for aspiring voice actors.
Yeah, so we’ll have to get you East side, East Coast side next year. So we can both go.
Next one, next one.
Maybe we’ll even be panelists ourselves.
You gonna buy my plane ticket?
Maybe, I don’t know, we’ll see. Or maybe I’ll come out to Seattle.
Yeah, that brings up a good point, because there was like a voice actors panel, very much like the one that Chris hosted, but it was actually some local Seattle voice actors. But I was kind of, like certain things were a little cringe worthy, because like, yeah, they’re actors at the top of their game and stuff, but they were a little disconnected because they got started like 20 years ago. So like they’re recommending like, well, this great blue snowball mic, it was just like, we can do auditions with that all day long.
I’m like, no. Well, it’s just a different perspective, you know? And that’s, I’m like, yes, once you’ve built a relationship with your agent, they will care less about your audio quality.
But when you’re getting started, you need all the help you can get to set yourself apart.
Or maybe it just doesn’t matter. George and Dan on VOBS are fond of saying, it’s not the microphone, it’s the acting, or is the acting stupid? And that was backed up at Otakon also when we talked to Jamie and Chris Neosi, Chris Neosi, Jamie McGonigal.
Chris Neosi literally did not know what microphone he uses in his studio. He said, if one of his friends set it up, he has no idea what it is. And Jamie, similar thing, he said he had a Sennheiser, and he didn’t have any idea which one it was.
And I said, is it a 416? He said, I don’t know. And I said, is it tiny like a shotgun?
And he said, I think so. But these two are at the top of their game, at least in anime, and it doesn’t matter what mic they use to them.
We should just end the podcast now. We’re doomed.
I know, really.
So that’s actually a great point. And I think it’s a hilarious time to bring up our questionable gear purchase.
So Sean, what did you purchase since our last episode?
Well, I’ve been trying to be good and avoiding any major three digit purchases and above. So I was just kind of, I was picking up a little things to kind of make my workspace a little bit more ergonomic. So I got like, it’s not very exciting at all, but I got this laptop stand that you’re supposed to use to kind of, basically you can put it on a table, it raises the height of the screen, so you’re not tilting your neck down.
I spend hours of editing almost every day. And so I’m noticing that my whole posture is really starting to bother me with all this tension in my shoulders and my neck. So I wanted to fix that.
And I was actually trying to get it so I could place my audio interface underneath it. Oh, cool. Because from the pictures, it looked like it’d be plenty of space.
Like that’s what it’s for, is to kind of free up desk space and allow like your laptop fan to vent underneath the laptop. So that’s kind of a flaw of many laptops, is like if you just put it on a flat surface like you’re supposed to, it heats up, because there’s no ventilation from underneath. So that’s what I bought that for.
But unfortunately with it underneath, I can’t really access the controls on the Crayon. So it’s more of just kind of like a storage thing when I have it out, but when I’m not using it directly. Other than that, yeah, nothing too exciting.
What about you, Paul?
So I’m an idiot, as everybody knows, and I went and bought another Audio Technica 875R, the short shotgun. For those that are keeping track, this is the third time I’ve bought this mic. And the reason I did this time is because I was having a session with our good friend, Everett Oliver, who is amazing, by the way.
Everybody should go to myboothdirector.com and hire him right away. He helped me with some auditions for an agent, or two agents, actually. Just knocked it out of the park.
I couldn’t believe the difference between what I was about to submit, the crap I was about to submit, and how it was after he was done with me. But one of the things he said was, you need to stand during the auditions. And he said, are you standing now?
And I was like, because I didn’t have the camera on. I said, no. He said, do you have the ability to stand?
I said, no. Because a couple of months ago, I made the choice to sit all the time when I’m recording, which 90% of the time works out for me. But Everett scared me, so I went and bought the shotgun mic again because it’s the best one I’ve ever had in here in the standing up position.
So I put it right back where it was eight months ago, and it’s in my standing space now in the booth. So next time I have a session with Everett, I’ll be happily jumping up and down in the standing.
So was the CAD that you’re using, did that not sound as good in the higher up position? Was it just bouncing off the ceiling or something?
For some reason, it doesn’t work in that same position. Maybe because it’s too close. Right now, it has a little more room to breathe.
It’s kind of in the middle of the booth, and I’ve always placed the shotguns, whether it be the AT875R or the Sennheiser 415. I’ve always had it up in the corner, and that’s the only place I can get those to sound right. So I think I’ve mentioned this booth has very specific sweet spots, and I know where they are.
So in order to make that work for Everett, I had to get that same mic again.
Well, at least you’re not afraid to buy it again.
That goes back to what we talked about, know your voice, and I know that works for me, even though I went on this crazy…
I was like, then why did you sell it?
Because I’m crazy. I didn’t think I’d need it again. So this time I’m going to keep it.
No, I won’t. Yes, I will. I’m going to keep it this time.
I really want to keep it this time.
Your little gear demon is like materializing as we speak.
I know, it’s crazy. But other than that, that’s really the only purchase. So I didn’t really go too crazy.
No, I’m proud of you.
I didn’t buy an interface this month.
Well, I didn’t actually buy this, but I got to do a review of the newest version of the vocabooth2go.com Carry On Vocabooth. So their 3.0 version. And I was really impressed with it.
The only real complaint I had about the previous unit, and this is kind of a similar flaw in a lot of those portable acoustic solutions, is that there was no great treatment behind you. So they made these sort of framework with their acoustic blankets. Like they added an additional piece, and you can just kind of put it over the lip of the booth and like, boom, no more reflections.
I admit like it might not be the most comfortable solution, but if you’re traveling a lot and you want to have a consistent sound, or you absolutely can’t dedicate a space in your apartment or what have you to like a full booth setup or even a blanket or closet booth setup, it’s a great option. And one I heartfully recommend.
Awesome. I forgot to mention during the current events, I actually had a deal, Ali of the owner of vocalboothtogo.com here in the studio a couple weeks ago. Yeah, he asked me to help him out with some testing of a new product they’re working on.
I don’t think he’s ready to announce it. Actually, he mentioned it on our show and it’s still a prototype. It’s called the Mobile Voice Over.
It’s all he’s got so far. He doesn’t even have a complete name. Is that the glove one?
No, it’s different than that, although it might be an evolution of that. It’s to house a cell phone or a really small camera or pocket recorder. So for like field recording, so we basically put it on top of a tripod and wrapped it around the phone.
And the idea, he really wants to market it to YouTubers, people who want to travel really light and are constantly doing quick recording to improve their… Audio quality, yeah. Streaming, yeah, their audio quality.
So the thing he mentioned was people who are doing makeup ads or makeup selling.
There’s a surprising amount of those videos on YouTube.
Right, and it made sense when he said, he said, and they’re always doing it from the bathroom, so it sounds terrible. So we actually went into my bathroom and recorded it here at the house and then did a control sample without the MVO and then when the MVO wrapped around it. And it was a really big difference.
I never would have thought about that. Yeah, it’s interesting.
I think there could be a huge market for that, for people that are just looking to improve their quality because it’s a really quick setup. It was just wrap it around the phone and markedly improve the audio.
So that’s like using that actual phone microphone to record?
Yeah, we used the phone microphone and basically treated that, treated my phone with this mobile voice over unit. And it was pretty cool.
I’d like to hear it with some of those, like those little thunderbolt, or not thunderbolt, the lightningbolt microphones that they have out, like from Shure and Rode and stuff like that. I wonder how that…
Oh, the ones that plug right in like a headphone?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that would be cool. I’ll tell you what, we don’t want to get too far into it, but it was really good for the high frequencies, which is not unlike the carry-on vocal booth. It didn’t do much for the lower frequencies.
So we actually took it outside, right in front of the highway, on my deck, where I have, if you listen to the podcast, you know it was notoriously bad for sound. It’s the entire problem I have. So the highway was still there, but what we did find out was that it was really good at eliminating the crickets.
So we had a ton of crickets when we were recording, and they were really loud without the the MBO unit on there. And then without it, the crickets were completely gone. So it did a really phenomenal job at eliminating certain frequencies, and it could be really helpful for some people.
Yeah, I know. I know sometimes you’ve got no other option other than using your phone to record an audition, so that could be helpful. So that pretty much wraps up everything for questionable gear purchases, but we really want to get to the audio footage from Paul and Chris’ ventures at Otakon.
So without further ado, let’s have that sweet con footage.
Okay, everybody, welcome to episode 14 of The VO Meter. We are live at Otakon 2017, and I’m here with Chris Dattoli. How you doing, Chris?
I’m doing well, Paul. How are you?
I am great. I’m excited about the show. Joe, what are you looking forward to most?
I’m looking forward to the most. I’m looking to the voice acting panel that I’m gonna be hosting on Friday night, which is tonight, around 7 p.m. I’m gonna give out a lot of tips about, you know, people who want to get started in voice acting, give some valid information, where to find coaching. And I’m also looking forward to that other voice acting panel that’s happening on Saturday around 2.45 with Lex Lang and Tony Oliver.
And we are actually interviewing Lex Lang on Sunday. So that’s one of the things I’m excited about. We are having interviews with Lex Lang, Chris Neosi, Stephanie Shea, Vic Mignona.
I don’t think I said that right. We’ll get to that later. And there’s one more I’m missing.
Oh, Jamie McGonigal.
Jamie McGonigal, yes. I’m actually looking forward the most to interviewing him. I’m a huge, huge fan of him.
So once again, we’re here at Otakon 2017. Can’t wait for the show. And we’ll talk to you all after our first interview.
See you then.
All right, so we are here with Matt, Bill and Ilya from Man in Arms Reforged. And we are talking about their experiences at Otakon and the show itself. And we’ll get into a little bit about the business of actually forging the material.
So first of all, guys, tell us how you got started. Was it first an interest in metallurgy or was it more an interest in video games and creating the materials for that?
Sheesh. You asked us the long question. Well, I think all of us started working with metal a long time ago.
I was a teenager. He was a kid. Bill and I have been working together for 19 years or something like that.
But as far as the show comes, I mean, our base business is Baltimore Knife and Sword and we make stage combat weaponry, some custom weaponry as well, and have been doing that for 30 years. The opportunity to do the man in arms of the show came up three and a half, four or so years ago now. And we’re all nerds in our own right, whether it’s video games, anime, or we all have our different areas that we love.
So it was pretty much a no-brainer once we got all the details worked out to go ahead and do that show. And it’s a really unique opportunity for us because we’re not just making weapons, we’re not just making a TV show. We get to interact with the fans so much with that show and really bring their favorite things to life.
So, I mean, this answer of how we got started could be quite breathy, but in the long run, we were friends with Tony Swatton, the guy who did the original show. After he decided to not do the show anymore, the fi media looked around the whole country for what knife makers and sword makers could do that show. Since we do six items in about eight days, that’s a tremendous amount of work to do in that short period of time.
Most shops and the custom knife makers can’t do that. So pretty much everybody pointed their fingers at us and we kind of just went from there.
That’s awesome.
Yeah.
In the business now, is it mostly producing for the show or do you do a lot of work to supply the materials locally?
I’d say it’s not, most of our business is not for the show, absolutely. We film about three and a half to four times a year for Reforged. Like I said, we do blocks of six.
So they come out for about 10 days. The crew takes two days off, but we’re filming for eight days and we film six episodes. So they come out every two months or so.
In the meantime, we’re making stuff for Renaissance festivals. That’s pretty much what we do.
What are the similar ones that you supply to? Obviously the Maryland one. What are those festivals?
We’re in almost a hundred different shows annually.
Colorado, Texas, Arizona, California.
Yeah, we’re everywhere. So it’s pretty… There’s only a handful that don’t have our weapons.
Legacy Forge is one of our big dealers that goes to all the different renderers, but we’re primarily wholesaling at this point.
And now you mentioned you get yourself, you do some voice over.
Well, doing the voice overs for the show, which if you watch Carrie and I both, like the first season of Reforge, we were awful at it. I mean, just bad. We’re pretty good in conversation talking to people, but when it came to that, it was like, and now Ilya does this, and now Ilya does…
So it took a while. It took maybe even three, four seasons before I started really taking some notes, taking and listening to different podcasts. Actually, people talking about voice overs and just the whole theory behind it.
Be more conversational. You don’t have to say, this is happening, this is happening, because they can look and they can see that that’s happening. So…
You’re doing it right?
It sounds like you might have.
A little bit, not anything professional. Of course, our producers all have had our input. Sit up straight, talk a little deeper.
That was one of his things. I talk a little deeper. I don’t stutter as much.
Little things like that. So that’s been a whole nother thing we’re learning. Because, I mean, obviously, learning as a craftsman, that just comes naturally.
That’s what we’ve done our whole life. But then, literally, having to re-teach myself how to talk is kind of funny. It’s been a fun ride.
It’s a whole new world, as most of our listeners know.
I think it comes easier for him doing voice overs and stuff, just because he has a natural accent, actually. That actually helps a little bit.
Well, in part is that, when I was growing up in Russia, they always make us talk to the class. So you do your homework, you go to the board, you write down the homework, proving that you actually did it, and explain it to the class. In language classes, it was always the case, you have to memorize a poem overnight, and say it out loud to the rest.
So public speaking was a big part of the curriculum. Second part is, anytime you’re in a setting where people expect a certain quality of an explanation, you have to learn how to speak. It’s not what’s in your head.
What’s important is how you deliver it very often. And consequently, having an accent allows me to hide some of the speech defects or technique defects. And since English is not my first language by far, it is fairly easy for me to separate myself from what I’m saying in my head because most of my thoughts are still in Russian.
And okay, this is how I’m going to say it. All right, accent a little bit here.
And he can turn that accent up, and he does often turn that up.
And then I show him my shaft.
But, and for me, what actually is fairly hard in talking in English and talking for the show is if I’m doing research, and the research is audio books from England, I start unintentionally imitating some of the pronunciation. I cannot help it. Oh, we all do that.
It messes it up. And then Matt always makes fun of me. Why are you saying it like that?
I don’t know. This is how you say it, and I’ve been researching a lot. And when you find out…
A lot of us voice actors will go around mimicking people we know, or just in the mall. We’ll trail people, not too close, and mimic them. So we had that voice in the back of our heads.
Everybody here mimics John. I’ll weld her at the shop.
Everybody has a different voice.
Aw, man.
So where do you record the actual voice overs? Do you have a studio? Do you do it in the shop?
We have… Because I have to say, the quality is really good, actually.
Yeah, the shop where we’re doing most of the filming is about a couple hundred yards away from where we do the voice overs. We actually have a church building that’s been converted into another kind of workshop that we don’t really usually film in. If you see me doing the AutoCAD on the computer, we do the voice overs right next to that computer.
Okay. It’s not always the best place because there’s no sound deadening room kind of thing, but I’ve got pretty nice microphones and stuff, so it usually turns out pretty well. We usually only have to do one take.
They fix it in post.
And sometimes…
That’s what we say.
Sometimes they get to edit together and the voice over that we may have recorded for that process might be too lengthy, too short. So, you know, Carrie and I are just… Even sometimes Ilya will just re-record something on our own and send it over since the equipment stays there.
So, it’s cool.
I want to ask about your projects and the craft work. What would you say is the most difficult piece you’ve ever made to date that you can talk about?
Well, this is a multi-layered question. If you’re talking about difficulty in terms of how detailed a piece has to be and how 100% right on it has to be, so far it’s been Excalibur from Kings of Avalon. I’ve spent one month engraving the blade on it pre-building because you can’t do it any faster than that.
That’s how long it takes. And it’s been 16 hours of engraving straight every day for a month. So that one is the most difficult in terms of, all the work is finicky and finicky work is maddening.
It drives you insane because it’s all small. You work one inch per day, blah, blah, blah, so on and so forth. And at the end of it, your eyes just don’t want to be in your head anymore.
They just want to run away because you’re abusing them. In terms of how physically straining something is, let’s say Optimus Prime, it’s a pretty big sword. It was a sponsor build, so everybody was a little bit stressed because it’s a big sponsor for the media company, means it has to be 100% right, but it also has to be big, it has to be impressively big.
Right. There’s multiple levels just to complexity of our builds. Sometimes it just is the sheer size of something, whether that means huge or small and tiny and detailed, like all of that goes into it.
Or like any katana build.
Yep.
For example, any katana build is absolutely insanely hard. And the reason is because there’s a whole school of craftsmen right now who are like, ah, you didn’t do that right.
There’s a point where you’re not allowed to slack and there are certain things that other craftsmen will pick up that we also have to include there, even when the regular viewer won’t. The other thing is the ways of appreciating that specific type of sword require us to always fight with the lighting guy, always fight with the director of photography. No, you have to get this at this angle.
Well, I know what I’m doing. We also know what we’re doing. So that’s always hard.
It’s always stressful for everybody, especially the beauty shots on those things, because it’s a different type of sword appreciation school. And we also always have to have that conversation with everybody. Always have to stress ourselves over polish, which was never quite as good as we want to, so on and so forth.
So I myself dabble a little bit in craftswork, primarily leatherworking, but still I worship your guide show quite often. I love the work you guys do. So do you have any advice for those who wish to partake in this, any words of encouragement or any professional advice you can give?
I mean, there’s tons of advice.
What was your favorite piece?
I mean, one of the things about the show, and I hate to kind of flip this question a little bit, it’s just been a great opportunity for us. We get emails, comments on the YouTubers saying, hey, you know, I’m not a blacksmith. I know I’ll never be a blacksmith, but you guys inspired me to go grab granddad’s sewing machine and start sewing it.
I mean, that’s just awesome. I feel maybe five years ago, I just felt like, wow, this generation coming up, nobody’s working with their hands anymore. Nobody’s making anything.
And since the show has come out, and other shows like us, just the whole DIY YouTube phenomenon has really, I think, brought that back in cosplay. I mean, cosplay is amazing. I just got back from San Diego Comic Con, and maybe a half a percent of the people were there in costume.
But you come back on the East Coast, and over half the people here are in costume. Most have been made by themselves or with help with a friend. And it’s just a great thing.
My biggest advice is, whatever you have a passion for, do it. There’s a video out there probably showing you how to do it. Just start and work with your hands.
Whatever you… There’s gonna be something you’re good at, you know?
For me, I’ve gone from working with metal and working with cosplayers. Working in stuff I’ve never worked with, but using some of my same tools, tools with leather and other stuff, and just keep pushing, keep learning, keep trying different things. What works when it’s leather, it’s certain thicknesses of leather don’t work doing certain things, but you can also take a big chunk of leather, boil it in hot water, and make it rock hard.
And another thing, we have cosplayers and stuff come up to our booth at conventions like this all the time and say, wow, check out my prop that I made. It might be a prop with a sword that we also made. They’re like, wow, you guys did it so well.
I just made mine out of foam. It’s real crap. And I look at it and I’m like, how did you do that out of foam?
I try to do some of that. I cosplay as well sometimes. It’s harder for me sometimes to think how to make it out of foam than it is to go grab a piece of metal and grind it to shape, or forge it to shape.
So it’s all, I appreciate all of it.
Yeah. One advice that will be helpful long-term, if you specifically stay with it, don’t do what you’re already good at ever, because the odds are you will not learn anything. Pick things when you’re within your respective discipline that are incredibly hard and learn how to do those.
Do things because they’re incredibly hard to do, and you will fail 100 times. You will fail. You will feel like you’re not worth anything, like your hands grow out of your ass.
But from that experience, first of all, you will actually land at least 70% the way there. So if the end goal is 100%, you’ll get to the 70% no matter who you are. Those 70% will teach you way more than anyone else who hangs out with you has ever tried to learn.
So if it’s leatherwork, pick the hardest leather braiding, leather stitching techniques you can find and learn those. If it’s metalwork, pick the fiddliest or most complicated detailed projects and just be prepared to crash. But the end result will be rewarding.
Absolutely.
Well, Ilja, Bill, Matt, thanks so much for joining us today on the VO Meter.
Thank you.
We really appreciate it. Tell our listeners where they can find your businesses.
Yeah, AllMe channel on YouTube. That’s where you find the Man-at-Arms Reforged Show or baltimoreknife.com to check out our regular products.
Great. Thanks again, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you. Okay, so we’re back live at Otakon 2017. We just finished our interview with Man-at-Arms Reforged.
What did you think of those guys, Chris?
I’m a huge fan of the show. I love those guys. I also love the advice Ilya gave about doing what’s hard.
That can be used for so many things. Voice acting, forging, what have you. And it was very inspiring to hear him say that.
Yeah, definitely on point. I found that myself. Even doing this podcast, just jumping into things, feet first, things you’re not familiar with and maybe not necessarily comfortable with.
But starting with the things that are hard will definitely help you along your way to learning more and expanding your craft.
Absolutely. Do the hard things first and then the easy things will seem simple, so we’re second nature.
So coming up, what’s our next interview? We have Chris Neosi on Saturday. That should be fun.
That’s right. We’ve got Vik Minyata too on Saturday as well.
And we will see you following those two interviews.
We’ll see you then, guys.
We are back at the VO Meter. Chris, pronounce your last name for me before I screw it up.
No problem. It’s Neosi. It’s like Neo from The Matrix and then the letter C, Neosi.
Okay. Without getting too personal, I’m guessing you’re a Paisan like Chris and I. Yes, of course.
Names have been butchered our entire lives.
That’s all right. Too many Italians, too many Chrises. We got to do something about this.
Yeah, that’s how it works. So tell us how you got started in the business. Was it something you always wanted to do?
So, funny story. I’m first and foremost still to this day animation. And I took an interest in voice over way back in the day when there was this little website called TV Tome, which is now defunct and kind of turned into a different website.
But I kind of learned about, oh, like, all these voice actors that I grew up with, wait, the guy who played da-da-da on this one show is also so-and-so on this other show? Whoa, my mind is blown. I’m in, like, middle school, like, slowly becoming this, like, encyclopedia of all this weird, trivia stuff that my friends can attest to.
I’m a walking, talking, like, rolodex of voiceover stuff. And I got interested in it originally kind of from almost the casting perspective of, like, who would I get to voice all my cartoon characters in my shows and movies and games I’m gonna make someday, you know? And then when I started making my own cartoons, I, you know, didn’t have access to voice actors until, like, way later when I was learning there was kind of a whole community on the internet of people that were interested in doing it professionally.
And now a lot of them are working professionally, people that I’ve known for years now. And so I was kind of aware of that world and I started to, I guess, sort of teach myself, like, enough of a standard of what made good and bad voice over, especially when it came to anime, where, you know, there are lots of great dubs and some bad dubs. So I kind of determined that difference myself.
And then I went to a convention, much like this one, where two different ADR directors were basically holding sort of a contest thing. I entered it completely on a whim at last second. I was like, yeah, why not?
And I ended up winning it. And by winning it, I got my first audition, which was for Pokemon. And I didn’t think too much of it.
I didn’t think I was going to make it into a career or anything, but I went in for my first audition. This would have been like 2009, I think I did it. And they said, hey, so I know that we like owe you because of the contest, but I wouldn’t really call you into this show if I didn’t think you were good.
And I was like, oh, okay, maybe I could do this. And then after that, my second audition ended up being my first job that I booked. It was a character called Cory on the Diamond and Pearl season of Pokemon, had about five episodes.
So my first job was a great starting point.
That’s a great way to start.
Yeah, especially with a show I grew up with for like 10 plus years. I’m like, oh my God, I’m on this. Now all the people who made fun of me for liking Pokemon and middle school pay, I made a paycheck on it.
I was like, I don’t have problems. No, it was a great first experience. The director was awesome.
The producer was great. Everybody was super cool, and they worked really hard on the dub of that show, still to this day. Yeah, and then after that, I wasn’t really sure if I was going to keep doing it, but more opportunities came up.
And then when I moved to California about three years ago, I had a lot of help from other people in the business out there that kind of took my name around and started taking classes a lot more. And then now I blinked and suddenly I’m here and I’m in Sailor Moon, and I’m like, what happened? What is my life?
So is that long-winded enough of an answer to start with?
That’s excellent. Now for animation and character, do you feel it’s important to find sort of your niche in it, or is it you want to try out different things?
I think that the first and foremost most important thing to do is just to have a strong grounding as a performer. I think that unfortunately a lot of people get this misconception of like, oh yeah, you got to just like… It’s either like, oh, I have to find my niche, like what’s my archetype that I’m always going to get?
Which yes, that does happen a lot, you know, unfortunately. But even on the opposite side, some people, oh, I just got to learn how to do a billion voices. And I’m like, you can either do a billion voices and be really good at character stuff, or you can have just your one voice and like the different, you know, kind of facets of that.
But you still have to have the good acting to back it up. And a lot of people, unfortunately, skip that step because they think of the voice part of the voice acting, even though the second part of the word is better, as Scott McNeil would often impress people. So that’s why, again, when I moved, the most important thing I got was taking classes.
Like Richard Horowitz, who’s the voice of Invader Zim and a billion cartoon characters. He does this amazing six-week course that just really breaks a lot of bad habits out of you. It gets you to completely change your line of thinking.
I’ve met a lot of veterans that understandably get frustrated that new people coming in don’t even take the actor’s journey. It’s just like, oh, I just like cartoons and video games. I want to do this.
I don’t care about acting. And it’s like, well, you should, because if you want to do this as a career, that’s what it’s about, you know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I mean, in terms of… I think that it is important to, like, you know, stretch your range and not be, you know, like, nailed down to one particular thing. I think it is important to show that you have a lot of range.
Because I mean, even if you’re just playing one character and that character has a lot of range in and of itself, you have to be able to know… Sometimes even… I’m surprised when, like, I’ll get auditions for something and it’ll be, like, one scene of a character and then I’ll find out later that they’ll be like, oh, they’re going to be screaming and yelling and dying and all these crazy things.
And I’m like, well, thankfully, I’m prepared for that, but my god, if you got someone who was only good at doing that one side of them at the time, you know, they might fall flat. You never know sometimes. So, yeah, being prepared with just, like, as much performance experience as you can have.
This is coming from someone, by the way, who’s never done theater, never done radio. I don’t have a traditional acting background. I’m an animator, but I taught myself enough and learned enough from other people to be able to know enough of what I’m doing, as I would hope from the amount of stuff I’ve done by now.
So nobody’s found out that I’m not an actor yet. Fooled enough people. They haven’t caught you yet.
No.
So you mentioned the courses with Richard Horvitz. What other things do you do to train yourself?
Well, in terms of vocal stamina, I sing. I don’t consider myself a singer, but I do sing, which I think is important for just maintenance and expanding your vocal prowess in terms of, I guess, just stamina. I said that already.
I also… I haven’t done this in a long time, and I do honestly miss it, but I used to play a lot of… And you can do this also with books and comics and things.
I used to play a lot of video games that didn’t have any voices, like RPGs and things from N64, Super Nintendo era. And I just do all the voices. Especially little exercise, little advice for anybody out there.
If you and someone of the opposite gender want to play a game together, and you do all the boy parts, and you do all the girl parts, or sometimes you can even switch off. I’ll play this girl, and you play that boy or whatever, and just experiment around. Even if you only wind up by the end of that playthrough of that game or reading through that novel or whatever, if you only end up with maybe one or two fully fleshed out character voices that like, oh, I’m actually pretty good at that accent or that personality, or oh, I just came up with this thing off the cuff.
I don’t even think about it. Just come up with weird stuff for all these characters off the cuff, and you’ll do great. And then you might have some cool material to put on your demo someday when you make that.
Maybe even record it.
Yeah, yeah.
USB mics are ubiquitous.
Stream it. Hell, go nuts with it. You can do lots of fun stuff with that.
Going back to when you said when you moved to California, and a lot of professionals recommend you, when you actually went to the animation studios, what professional advice can you share with people when going for an audition and meeting all the big leagues or a director?
Well, I’m actually kind of sad to say that since going to California, I’ve really only ever had a very small handful of in-person auditions since then. Most of the stuff that I was doing before I got my agency, I’m with Arlene Thornton and Associates, along with a lot of other great folks, people Sean Chammell, Kyle Ebert, Keith Silverstein, Steve Blum, Debbie Derryberry, Mona Marshall, a lot of really, really talented folks.
Oh, those people.
Yeah, them, man. Never heard of them, you know, whatever. Yeah, now that I’m with them, I get a lot of my auditions through them, and sometimes they’re right down the road for me, so I’ll just go there and I’ll record with some of the engineers who are wonderful.
I love doing auditions in person, or at least with somebody to give feedback, like if I can, because it just feels much more kinetic. I’ve learned to do auditions from home without being miserable, because I used to hate it. But, and, you know, the fact is, most stuff is done that way these days.
But in terms of, to actually answer your question, it’s just really important about staying professional, knowing when to ask questions, because asking questions can be helpful in showing that, like, you know, you are invested in care about what it is that you’re doing. But also not being too, I don’t want to say fanboyish, but like, you know, or fangirlish. Being too much of a fan and being too, like, asking a billion questions and not knowing when to turn it off and just focus on the job at hand, you know.
And also being prepared. Sometimes they might be like, okay, that was good. You got anything else?
Which might mean, like, yeah, that’s okay, but try something different. Because we like you, but maybe we don’t like that voice that you did or maybe we’re not entirely sold on it yet, you know. That’s something I learned from Ben Diskin, who’s been doing this since he was basically in the womb.
Not a joke. But, yeah, I think that just, yeah, being prepared, maintaining a professional attitude, and, you know, and just being cool. Really all you need to work in any business, no matter what, is being cool and being good.
Because if you’re good, you get the job done. If you’re cool, they want to work with you. And then being cool, that could mean any number of things.
Just being cool in whatever way that you are cool and natural and not being a tryhard.
So tell us about your home studio. You mentioned doing some auditions from home. Do you have a fully set up studio or do you…
It’s a closet. It’s a closet with a preamp and a chaotic eyeball.
Really?
Yeah, I forget what type of microphone. And it was all set up lovingly by my good friend Ben Diskin after my basically kicking and screaming of not wanting to make my closet into a booth. He basically just did it, and then it’s what I’ve been using for all my home auditions since then.
And it’s quite nice.
What’s the percentage of time you do auditions from home versus going to the studio or your agent?
Probably like about 60-40 home to agency. Just because out of convenience. Even sometimes my agency will send me stuff to do from home.
And I’ll just do it that way if I have to. I’ve gotten used to it. It’s not my favorite, but it’s like you got to adapt with the time.
All right.
Well, Chris, it’s been a pleasure. We appreciate your time. And I look forward to hearing more from you.
Yay. Look forward to Sailor Moon Supers or Unvoicing Pegasus. That’s coming out soon.
If any of y’all are big old school anime fans and stuff, love that show very much. Thanks for having me, guys.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you.
So we’re back at the VO Meter with Vic Mignana.
Excellent. You nailed it. He shoots, he scores.
VO Meter. That’s kind of cool, as opposed to a VU Meter.
I like it.
Very cool.
Thank you very much. And we are talking about how he got into the business. My first question, really.
How did you get into the business, and was it something you always wanted to do, or was it something that…
It’s noon. That means it’s noon, everybody. That’s my gratitude alarm.
I set an alarm that goes off every day at noon to remind me to be grateful for my life.
That is fantastic.
Yes.
Yeah, that’s really positive.
So we’re going to take these two, three seconds right here of silence.
I can do that.
Thank you. You know, I never intended to be a voice actor. I’d been acting since I was very young.
And I just loved acting. I loved performing. I did a lot of singing, and musical theater, and stage plays, and got into it anywhere I could.
But I never intended for it to be a career. It was just something I enjoyed doing. You know, it’s like if you play the guitar, you know what I mean, or whatever.
And you never imagine that you’re ever going to be a rock star. You just like playing the guitar, or drawing, or whatever. So about literally 18 or 19 years ago now, I was working in Houston, Texas.
I was doing video and film production work and writing music professionally for ad agencies and producing records for people. I do a lot of music work. And a guy that I was working with on a video production said to me completely out of the blue, I don’t even know why, we may have been imitating people or making little funny voices, or whatever.
And he said, hey, you’ve got a lot of acting experience, don’t you? And I said, oh my gosh, yes. I’ve been acting stage, theater, on camera since I was young.
And he said, you ought to go and audition for this place here in Houston, called ADV Films. They buy these Japanese animated shows and they dub them into English, and they’re looking for actors. He didn’t say they’re looking for voice overs.
He didn’t say they’re looking for announcers. He didn’t say they’re looking for DJs. They’re looking for actors.
And that’s all I heard. I heard, oh, they need actors? Well, I love acting.
So I went and auditioned, and I got cast as Vega in Street Fighter II. And I did it. I didn’t know what to expect.
I’d never done it before. And I did never expect to do it again. I thought it was a one-time weird little thing that somebody asked you to do.
Never really thought about it again. And like two weeks later, they called me, and they said, hey, we’ve got another Japanese anime show. Do you want to come and do a voice in it?
I said, sure. And more and more and more. And at this point, anime was very small.
It was very much of a little niche thing. And so I didn’t even know what they did with these shows after we finished. I thought, I mean, I assume they sell them somewhere, right?
They distribute them somewhere. They got to make their money back. I didn’t know what they did with them, what happened to them after I voiced the thing.
I thought it was a fun. It was yet another outlet for acting. And it just grew from there.
And I, after that, somebody invited me a couple years later. Somebody invited me to an anime convention. And I was like, wait a minute, there are conventions for this stuff?
And I went to the convention, and I met people from other studios, Funimation in Dallas, studios in LA, studios in New York, and they asked me to come and do stuff in their shows. And so I did. And next thing you know, it’s been 18 years, and I’ve done over 300 different animated series and video games, and I never charted this course.
I never strategized. How am I going to get into the voice acting business? I just…
door opened. Seemed like it would be fun to do, and I kind of stepped through it. I had no idea where it would ever lead, and here we are.
Which is why I have a gratitude alarm set. Kind of a full circle, you know? Because I didn’t plan this.
I didn’t, you know, I didn’t send out hundreds of demo tapes and knock on doors and try to get into studios and auditions and scour the internet for… Nothing. A door opened and I kind of stepped through and I had no idea where it would lead me, and it led me here.
So I am among all people most grateful.
It’s not an uncommon story, actually, among voice actors, especially those that started before, say, the last 10 years.
Oh, it is uncommon. You’re right. It is not uncommon at all.
Most of the voice actors I know, with the exception… I probably have a hundred friends that are voice actors, and I can think of two that did not do any actual acting before they started into voice over. I mean, like, voice acting was literally, for most of us, was literally just another avenue to express your acting love and passion.
So yeah, it’s a very common story.
Do you have any suggestions for those that are maybe starting out now? Because the landscape has changed quite a bit, especially with the advent of the internet.
You know what? It really has changed a lot. And I hate to be one of those people that kind of is a downer, but the reality is, because it’s so big now and because so many people want to get into it, it’s hard, a lot harder than when I started, you know?
Like when Henry Ford started making cars, there weren’t a lot of people making cars. Not a lot of competition. And when I started, with very few exceptions, there just wasn’t a lot of anime readily available, and there weren’t a lot of people doing it.
And you would never expect Houston, Texas, why in the world would you ever think that somebody would be dubbing anime into English in Houston, Texas? You think entertainment, you think LA, New York, right? Houston.
But I was in Houston when that happened, and so I was very fortunate. I often tell people that if I were to try to get into it today, I probably wouldn’t ever get cast. I would probably not even be good enough or whatever, you know?
But I was fortunate enough when it was small. Now it’s a lot harder. There’s a lot more competition.
But that’s the nature of almost any creative endeavor. If you want to wash cars, you could probably get a job tomorrow. If you want to, you know, make burgers, if you want to fix plumbing, things that there is a specific skill set to do.
You know the skill, you get the job. It’s really that easy. But when you start talking about creative endeavors, acting, singing, writing, drawing, dancing, whatever, you know what I mean, name it.
There are so many people who want to do it and so few opportunities in those fields that it’s a lot harder. And you need a lot of tenacity. You can’t be somebody that gets discouraged easily.
That’s for sure. If you’re somebody who is easily disappointed by not getting what you wanted or things not working out right away, then creative fields are not the thing for you. And they’re unpredictable.
You can be a big superstar today and then tomorrow nobody will hire you. And what happened? Yesterday I was really good and nobody wants me.
You never know.
I wake up every morning extremely blessed and grateful that I get to do what I do.
But if you’re interested in getting into the business, into this business, one of the main things you need is acting experience. As we talked about a minute ago, that’s one of the commonalities with most of us that are regular working, veteran, have been doing it over and over again, is that before we ever got in front of a microphone, we were acting. Some of us have college degrees in theater or drama.
So acting experience is the key. It’s not about making funny voices. It’s about playing a character and playing the character authentically and believably so the audience buys into the character and the story.
Do you call yourself a voice actor now, or do you just not even go there with that terminology? Are you still just…
I’m a voice actor. I’m certainly… But I’m an actor first.
You know, a voice actor acts with his voice. I mean, you’re still an actor. I’ve often said the operative word in voice actor is actor.
You know, I’m never going to get cast to be the drive time DJ on a rock station. You know, I just don’t have that kind of a resonant voice. You know, 25 past the hour.
I can’t… That’s not me. But I can play certain characters.
And that’s where the acting comes in. I certainly would never want to discourage anybody from it, but just know what you’re getting into. Be prepared at things…
You’re not going to just move to Dallas and start working for Funimation. That’s highly unlikely. It’s not impossible, but be realistic.
The parents out there would hate me if I didn’t tell their kids, be responsible, learn a trade, figure out how you’re going to pay your bills and take care of your bills and have a place to sleep and some food. Feel free to continue to pursue your dream. But be realistic and go into it responsibly.
Mick, that is just an absolute goal that you just gave. We did want to get into one quick question about your work because we do have some fans.
Oh, sure. Absolutely.
Is the majority of the work anime or original animation? And how is recording for each genre different?
The vast majority of my work is anime. And you know what’s interesting is that most people, even in the business, even people that do what they call pre-lay, even people that do original animation will tell you that anime is the hardest kind of voice acting because it’s not enough to just give a believable performance. You have to do it within a very strict, finished confines of mouth movement and the flaps of the character.
You don’t have the freedom to do the line however you want. That makes voicing anime much more difficult. It’s actually much harder.
And it doesn’t pay anywhere near as well. It’s nowhere near as highly regarded. A lot of people in the voice acting business consider anime kind of the redheaded stepchild, so to speak, of voice acting.
And yet people who have done both will immediately tell you that it’s a lot harder than original animation. I have done some original animation, one that I’m working on right now, Ruby. Great show.
And it is so freeing because I can perform the line however I want. I don’t have to pause right here because the character stops talking, and I don’t have to race through the last part of the line because the character goes real fast. I don’t have to perform the line very loudly because the character’s facial expressions are so big that you have to match what the animation did.
Pre-lay, original animation is much easier and more freeing, and it pays a lot better. But I’m predominantly an anime voice actor.
Excellent. Thank you for that. Well, Vic, I think we’re out of time.
I’m so sorry that our time went so fast.
Well, you’re a popular guy.
You are. I appreciate you guys taking the time to chat.
We appreciate having you.
Thank you so much.
So we’re back live at Otakon 2017 with Stephanie Shea, and we are going to talk about the VO industry. How you got into the business is my first question. I’d like to know, for our listeners, how you got into the business and maybe what they could do if they’re looking to get into the business as well.
Well, they cannot follow how I got into the business because I have a very strange, unique story, I guess. I was a fan, and then there was a startup that was starting an anime company, and they didn’t really know anything about dubbing or anything. And then they were like, oh, you have a mass communications degree, and you’re also an actor.
Why don’t you come and do our dub, do our English production wing? And so I was hired as a producer. It was like 23, maybe.
I didn’t know how to do anything. We got two licenses. It was Tenchi ni Narumon, I’m Gonna Be an Angel, and Furikuri, and those were my first two titles.
And then because I worked there, I auditioned for roles, and then I got cast, and that’s kind of how I got started. So it’s…
Where is your degree from? Because I had that same degree.
UCLA.
Oh, cool. Mine’s from a local school here at Towson University.
Mascom, that was my degree. Yeah, so that’s kind of how I got started. So I can’t really recommend.
Get a job as a producer in a startup anime company.
So from a voice director standpoint, what advice can you give to those starting off in professional attire and how to condone themself in the booth from a voice director perspective?
I think the most important thing is to be an actor. Take acting classes and to take improv classes and do as much training and work experience as possible. Because I think right now there’s a trend to use newer actors and younger actors and actors from the fandom.
And having worked and listened to demos and listened to auditions, the thing that I have… I think that my biggest kind of gripe with that new crop of talent is that they’re not actors and you can hear it. They’re really good at mimicking sounds, but then they don’t take direction well.
Most actors don’t really prefer line reads because they like the process of exploring and discovering and creating a character. I find that the newer actors just want to be told how to do it and they want to mimic you. So I think one of the things that if you go to a panel with original animation voice actors, when they’re always goofing off doing things, they have created a character and they embody the character and if you wanted them to do a scene and to improvise and to do whatever in said character, they’re able to do it.
It’s harder for dub actors because they’re kind of doing an adaptation of another character. But I find it even harder, like I find newer actors struggle even more because all they know how to do is parrot a sound. So yeah, my advice is to actually get acting background and acting training and it doesn’t have to be voice acting specifically because I think the core elements of acting, your motivation, your wants, your needs, your psychological state, all of those things are really important when creating a character and voicing a character.
I’d also suggest for people who are really nervous and insecure to work that stuff out. Like don’t… be a professional.
Don’t bring that into the booth with you. If you need to get therapy, then get therapy. There’s nothing wrong with that.
And if you need to take class, then get class. I don’t understand that I’ve encountered some newer actors and they think, oh, well, I’ve been in a few shows. I don’t need to take acting class.
I still take acting class. Anytime there’s an acting class, I jump at the opportunity to take it because I don’t think as an actor that I’m ever going to be at a plateau. The arts is something funny.
You can always be better at it, which is what is always appealing to me at the arts. You’re never going to be like, oh, well, I’m now an expert in this field because there’s so much to explore. If you’re an actor that’s like, I don’t need to take class, that makes me wonder how serious you are about the craft and how serious of an actor you are.
What kind of acting classes are we talking about? What’s the best resource to start out? We have a lot of listeners that I know are approaching this from a second career.
If you don’t have that theater background and it’s too late for you to go back to your undergrad, what’s the best resources to take acting classes?
I think it’s going to vary depending on where you are, but for me, I didn’t get… My degree is in mass mutations. I didn’t get a theater degree.
UCLA at the time had a strange thing where you are allowed to double major, but certain majors you couldn’t double. You have to pick a more major major. It had to be a prominent major, then you had a second less prominent major.
But then certain majors, that one had to be your prominent major. And so if you were an acting major, that one had to be your prominent major. If you’re a mass comm, that one had to be your major.
So I could not double major in that way. So I think you can take whatever classes that are available. I will look up and I ask my actor friends for their opinion on stuff.
You can look at community college courses and just open the yellow pages. I think that if you’re unsure about a teacher or a class, ask to audit. They should be able to audit.
So that means that you sit in one class for free and you observe. You don’t get to work, you don’t get to perform, but you get to see other people perform and you say, is this something that I can get something out of? It can be theater, it can be scene study, it can be improv.
Music lessons also really help because you’re using your voice. You get to learn about your instrument. Music also gives you a better sense of timing.
And specifically with anime, you have to match lip flap. So having a good sense of timing is good. Knowing how to use your breath is good.
So yeah, beyond that, there’s also voice over classes as well, specifically for voice over. But I really do think that any sort of… If you have no background at all, then any sort of class should help you.
And then as you learn more, you can get pickier and pickier.
Again, for the voice directing, what are some skills you look for when casting?
As a director? So directors don’t always get to pick who they want in their cast. Sometimes they get a say, sometimes they don’t.
But as a casting director, if you’re talking about anime, there’s things that I look for. One is vocal type. Does the vocal type match the Japanese?
Because that’s the trend nowadays, that they really want it to sound similar to the Japanese. Same voice type. It doesn’t have to sound like exact voice match, but just is it low or high?
Is it textured? Is it nasal? Is it clear?
Things like that. So that is one of the most important things. It’s kind of like when you cast for a movie, if someone doesn’t look the part, then you don’t consider them.
If the role is for a Latina character and this person doesn’t look Latina, then they’re kind of not going to fit the bill. That’s like the vocal equivalent of that. And then beyond that, you want to look for what are they doing with the…
Does it sound real in the moments and the lines? Does it sound pushed and faked and very like high school theater acting? Is it very on the nose?
I like to listen to see if this person has ideas. Is it very generic? Are their reads very generic?
Or is it fresh and exciting? Do they have a sense of presence of the body, which means that if this is a line that’s called out, is it called out? You like to…
For voice over auditions, all you’re hearing is audio, so you don’t get to see what’s going on. But it doesn’t mean that as an actor, you don’t have an idea what’s going on, right? You should know if your character is sitting or standing, are they walking around, and it should sound like they’re walking around if they’re walking around.
It should sound like they’re sitting down or lifting something. All of that should be in the voice. If it all sounds the same projection, the same energy, the same just words on the page, it gets really stale in voice over, and I think that’s what makes it sound kind of dubby, where everybody’s talking at the same level, and everybody’s like, there’s no difference between someone who is sitting right next to you and your energy level, how you’re talking, to someone who’s a little farther away, like across the room, to someone who’s even farther away.
I’m not shouting, but there’s a little bit of extra something. All of that has to come into play, and I need to hear that the actor is aware of that to make it real and to make it a real entity instead of just a disembodied voice.
I think we’re close to running out of time, but along the lines of directing, do you prefer people who focus just on anime when you’re directing them, or do you have a preference for people who have a wide variety of acting backgrounds?
I do not actually look at that when I’m casting. I just prefer good actors, and if that person is a good actor and they’ve only done anime, great, so be it. If that person has done a lot of stuff, great, so be it.
It does make me nervous sometimes if the person has only done anime, because usually anime is the easiest to get into, right? It’s much harder to book an original animation job. It’s much harder to…
I will… So I guess it could give me pause, but as long as the audition wins and the audition is good, I’m fine with that. If I’m getting an audition and I’m on the fence and I look and they’ve only done, let’s say they’ve done a lot of commercials, that would make me worried, because commercial, you use your voice, but there’s not that much acting in it.
It’s a different type of skill set. It’s definitely a VO skill, but it’s not necessarily… I would be worried that if I brought them in, they wouldn’t be able to deliver.
I would be nervous if I got an audition and they’ve never done… If they’ve only done other acting, they’ve never done VO because the experience might be a little strange to them. They might not be able to match the lip sync.
But then I weigh in and I just say, is this audition good enough that I will work extra hard to get them where they need to be at that place? There’s always risks when it comes to it, but I would never say never to anybody who’d never done anime or to anybody who has only done anime.
And anything you want to promote before we go?
Let’s see. I guess Gundam Seed, the redub of the remastered, is coming out. That’s awesome.
The other thing that I want to give a shout out to, but this is for US audiences, but hopefully it will come to US., is we worked on the dub of Napping Princess, which is an amazing movie. And then we also worked on A Silent Voice.
And A Silent Voice is a movie about bullying and there’s a deaf lead in it. And I was fortunate enough to be able to cast a deaf actress. So I don’t think it has a US distributor yet, but it is a really, really important film.
Maybe someone will inquire and sign on to distribute.
Yeah, that would be awesome. And then I think your name, Blu-ray, comes out this fall.
Stephanie, thanks so much for your time. Enjoy the rest of the show.
Thank you.
I want to play the voice of the witch that appears in the Disney movie, and I’m practicing. I can do it anytime.
So I really want to do an old lady. So my image of an old lady doing this is the queen’s old lady form in Snow White. So every day I’m practicing that.
So I’d like to do a sample right now.
I agree that the major change throughout the years was the shift from analog to digital.
For example, when we recorded the first episode of Sailor Moon, that was the first time everyone, all the voice actors got together, and there was like 20 people. It’s the first time seeing the film, and it’s the first recording ever to happen. But to finish one episode, we only spent like 2 hours and a half.
So we are back at Otakon 2017 with Jamie McGonigal, and we are going to talk about all things voice acting. So welcome, Jamie. Thanks for being here.
Thanks very much for having me.
Of course, thank you. So Paul and I are both voice actors. We’ve done commercials, e-learning.
What advice can you give to do the transition to anime?
There’s something very different from doing commercial voice over to voice acting in the anime or any kind of animated features, cartoons. And the acting is different. It’s creating a character.
So I think frequently people say, hey, I’ve spent my life making up silly voices, and I do a great job with it. And those are the people who come into the booth, and they’re sometimes great, and they have something to offer. But I would much rather hear in a booth someone who started out as an actor, someone who has that background as an actor, and can bring that element of being able to create a character to the role.
It’s not about silly voices. The operative part of the term voice acting is acting. So I think the best advice I can give is to get as much experience as possible acting.
And that can be on stage. It can be in your living room. It can be being an extra in a film somewhere, just as much experience possible before you step into a booth.
Directors always want to see… It’s easier for a director to make you be smaller. I’m a stage actor by trade originally, and so I could go into a booth and do a damn musical in front of you if you want me to.
And make the character huge. And Mike Sinoniklis, for instance, has directed me in a lot of things, and he’s great at taking that huge character and making him intimate enough for the microphone. And so that’s, I think, that stage acting, any kind of acting experience you can get is helpful.
Great. So you mentioned acting and directing when you’re in the booth with a director like yourself. What can folks do when they’re self-directing, because so much of the world is going that way now with self-submission.
What can you do when you’re self-directing? Some tips you can give to get that performance.
Self-directing. I think you have to watch as much as possible. You have to figure out what you’re trying to get out of yourself.
And if there’s any opportunity for you to bring someone else, whether it’s your boyfriend or girlfriend or a mom or dad, to come in and give a listen, a lot of people maybe don’t have directing experience, but they know what they like to hear. So having an extra eye is always really, really good, or an extra ear in this case. Yeah, I think that’s…
I definitely advise to, if it’s at all possible to have someone else come listen and give you feedback, and someone that’s honest, that’s not just gonna say, oh, you’re great, honey. That’s awesome. You’re wonderful.
You know, that’s the mom approach is, it would be good. It would be good to have some sort of critical eye or ear.
That’s funny you mentioned that. I actually wrote a blog about that a couple weeks ago. That I had my nine-year-old son sitting outside the booth because he was being punished and wasn’t allowed to play any video games.
If I said, just sit and watch me work, okay? So I was in the booth. And the performance was so much better because I knew he was there listening.
He had the headphones on. And just having him there with almost no experience or critique, just having someone there that I knew was listening to me, helped tremendously.
Yeah, and honestly, kids are the best critics and the best and worst critics in the world.
Oh yeah, when I came out, he told me he was bored, which gave me all the direction I needed.
Yeah, I mean, I remember doing in college, the best training that I ever had was doing children’s shows. And you have an auditorium of 2006 to 12 year olds. If you’re not holding their attention, you are gonna hear the creaky seats.
And the best compliment I ever had, I was playing kind of a, actually very scary character for a children’s show, I thought. I was like Jack Pumpkinhead from Wizard of Oz, but it was like a different Wizard of Oz story. And it was a terrifying character.
And there was one little kid in the front row, and I looked at him and he was holding his program over his face. He couldn’t look at me. And then I was cleaning up the theater afterwards, and I find his program on the floor with an actual hole chewed through it.
Like it was bite marks. You could see the bite marks through the program. I was like, yes, I did well.
So touching base on the voice director thing, what advice can you give to any actor when stepping in the booth, seeing a voice actor for the first time? What advice can you give for handling that situation?
Any actor seeing a voice?
Maybe their first session in person, as opposed to doing months, years of self-submitting.
Oh, okay. Yeah, and just listen. It’s the director, trust the director to do what they need to do.
It’s okay to mess up. You can be overly critical of yourself in a booth if you’re not giving the director precisely what they want on the first take. That doesn’t make you a bad voice actor.
So don’t be overly critical. Listen to the director. That’s, you know, they’re there to guide you through this.
Obviously, with ADR, with any kind of animation recording, usually they make it pretty easy for you. You have a script in front of you. You have the, usually the animation in front of you.
You have the three beeps in your ear before you’re supposed to start. So it’s pretty easy once you’re in there and once you have the job. The tough part is auditioning, and that’s 90% of what most actors have to do.
The job is auditioning. The job is not actually getting on stage or getting in a booth. And yeah, I think just trust the director, listen, trust yourself, and don’t be afraid to make big, stupid sounding choices.
That’s what gets noticed when you are, here’s my musical theater background that allows me to go into a booth and be completely crazy. And my first four kids’ role was Zoda in F-Zero, and they wanted me to play a villain. And I see this big purple guy with this yellow tube coming out of him, and they said, we just want him to sound crazy.
And so I just started screaming basically, and he was, you win the dollar prize! Just, I don’t know where that voice came from. It’s nothing I’d ever practiced, but obviously, it’s something that got me the role.
And then the tough part then was making sure that I still had a voice at the end of a two hour recording session. But yeah, trust yourself is the biggest one. Make bold choices and trust the director.
Awesome. So we have a lot of gearheads on this show, especially the hosts. We go through a lot of equipment trying it out.
Do you have a home studio currently? If so, what’s it made up of?
I have a Sennheiser mic and in a… This is strange. So in our house, we live in a bungalow in Hyattsville, not too far from DC.
And underneath the eaves of the house, it’s a very small space that I pretty much can only sit down in. And it’s quiet. It’s super, super quiet.
It’s carpeted on the floor and parts of the walls. So it makes it easy for me. But yeah, I have a Sennheiser mic.
I don’t know what brand it is or anything like that, or what style and model it is. It’s something that a friend gave me.
Is it like a shotgun?
Yeah, it’s a shotgun.
Okay, so it’s probably the 416.
Sure. I wish I was more of a gear head. Mike Sinternicholas is the biggest gear head I know.
Yeah, so if you chat with him, he will know all of those things.
As you’ve said, and actually everyone has focused on, it’s the acting. It’s the acting stupid, you know? It doesn’t matter the equipment.
If you’re good, you’re good.
Yeah, that’s absolutely. I mean, you can use your built-in Mac microphone if you need to. And frequently, if I’m traveling, I’m not traveling with a studio, but if I’m in San Francisco for work, or something like that, I don’t have a studio in front of me, and sometimes I have to count on what I have on my MacBook if someone says, hey, I need this audition tomorrow.
So yeah, it’s the acting stupid, absolutely.
We sat here yesterday with Chris Niosi, and he didn’t even know what kind of mic he used. Didn’t even have any idea. Doesn’t matter.
He’s working with it.
Yeah, exactly.
Absolutely.
So what style of director do you feel works best with actors? Are you more tough-loved? Do you like to work with the actor to make sure they understand their character?
What do you feel works best?
I think every actor works differently with different directors. It depends on the actor. It depends on the director.
For me personally, I like someone who can be as detailed as possible. I don’t mind doing a hundred takes if that’s what’s necessary to make the character great, but I need someone to be specific with me. And sometimes they don’t necessarily pick the right word.
Sometimes they say things like make it gayer, and that’s the most utterly inappropriate direction I’ve ever received, because voices aren’t gay. Shouldn’t be an adjective. Yeah, exactly.
So it’s a problem. That’s a problem. And then I’ve had directors say, make it more purple.
And I’m like, that’s not a thing I can do with my voice. And in those cases, sometimes you can tell they’re not necessarily seasoned directors, and you just say, yeah, okay, I know exactly what you’re talking about, and then you just do the same thing again. And they’re like, yeah, it’s brilliant.
But yeah, directors, tough love versus a soft hand. I think gentle, gentle, but precise is my favorite kind. Mike Center-Nicholas, hands down, best director I’ve ever worked with.
Excellent, thank you. Yeah, my pleasure.
Jamie, we’re out of time, unfortunately. We thank you for being so gracious, and have fun with the rest of the show. What’s left of it?
Thanks very much, thanks for having me.
Get training, that is the most important thing. You wanna work on your craft before you go and dive in any equipment. You learn so many things.
We’ll go over coaches later on, but that is by far the most important thing. Before you invest in a mic, in a booth, in anything, you have to work on your craft. It’s sort of like you’re buying tools to be an electrician without learning how to be an electrician, right?
Yeah, and in training, they’ll teach you techniques and ways to use the microphone or be able to use your body to create these amazing voices that sound like they’re at work in World of Warcraft versus the little accountant that’s sitting there trying to steal all of your money from your bags in an MMO. There are people that play both of those kinds of roles, and that’s only through training that they really get to discover how to reach those characters and really bring that forth through the script. So training is very important for that.
But as we were mentioning earlier, business cards, they’re useful, but to an agency or to anybody in the business, this is great, but what they really want to hear is your demo. They want to hear what you sound like doing these particular types of roles.
There are actually USB business cards that another voice talent gave to me. I’m like, here, here’s my card, and that’s actually a USB chip. You plug it in your computer and my demos are on it.
So they’re a little more pricier than your average business cards, but if you’re giving it to an agent or a big marketing firm or Anaplex or what have you, that’s a good idea.
Also, if you’re treating this as a career, you have to think of stuff outside of just your voice now. Now you have to think about your equipment. You have to think about how you’re going to market yourself, how you’re going to make people aware that you exist as a voice actor and you want to get going somewhere.
And also figuring out the difficulty to charge people because that’s not an easy charge to find. It’s not like something you can just quickly Google and have the best prices available, especially when you’re not signed on with an agency or with a union. You basically have to figure out your way for yourself.
And of course, getting representation. We’re going to go over all of this and break it down into each one. What are the most important traits that voice directors look for in voice actors or actors in general?
The most important traits that voice actors and directors look for?
Wow, it depends on what they’re playing, but for me, it’s first of all, confidence in acting. It’s not enough to sound good. You have to have something behind it.
Honestly, I tend to go for people who are more calm, who are not nervous at the audition, who tend to come and just kind of give me what they have, even if it’s not right. I know if they’re that calm, I can take them where they need to be. If they’re too wrapped up, then I can’t really move them where I need them to go because they’re too worried about doing a good job, and the minute you start worrying about doing a good job is when you start doing a bad job.
I know for me, if the actor is malleable, and we can actually form the character a bit together, that’s very good. If they’re not too rigid in the sense of they have a preconceived notion of what that character should be, sometimes an actor will come in and go, well, I have a feeling I know what this is gonna be. And so first we say, okay, let’s hear what you got.
But if it’s not the right for the character, then it’s very important for that actor to be able to switch it up and be very flexible with what they bring to the part.
I look for a lot of money. It’s a pay to play thing. If you give me a lot of money, you can have a part.
I’m so kidding. If everything they said to Yes And and Piggyback, directability is huge. I’ve had people come in who are perfect for the role, but then they cannot be redirected.
So if they just happen to have the wrong idea about a certain line or scene, you can’t fix it. And that means you can’t fix it.
Well, also in anime, a single change in a read in episode one can absolutely affect the last episode in the series because that’s the way the stories are written. So you gotta be… You know, sometimes the actor won’t understand.
Well, but it’s perfect.
This, yeah, that’s great, but that character attribute needs to be different in order to make the end work. So that’s part of what we are. We’re story…
We’re the guys that are in charge of making sure the story gets told.
That’s a very good point. We are the crafters of the storytelling.
Thank you very much.
Hi, everybody.
Hello.
Nice for being here today. Tony, you mentioned making the actors comfortable is a big part of your job. What can actors do before they get to you in the booth to make themselves comfortable, especially if it may be their first time in a directed session?
I have a whole four week class about that.
Where did I sign up?
It’s called How Not To Voice Act, by the way. Getting out of your head, How Not To Voice Act is the name of the class. It’s, I don’t know.
I wish I had it. I wish, look, if I could write a book and give you the 10 steps to feel comfortable on by yourself, it’s stuff you have to do before you get there. It’s a matter of getting comfortable with yourself, which is a really hard thing to do as an artist, to be just comfortable being who you are.
When you get in the booth, the things that you don’t want to be thinking about is how do I sound? Am I any good? Is the producer or director like me?
Am I doing the best job ever? All of those things are performance killers, okay? Because they put you in here.
You need to be acting from here. The best thing to do is figure out how to turn this off so that you are just there when you’re focused on that, the words, the script, and what the feelings are. And if you can focus on that, the rest of it kind of melts away and there’s less to be nervous about.
So when I got cast as Leonardo for Ninja Turtles, I thought it was a mistake. And for the first entire season, I went into every session thinking I’m gonna be fired. Not helpful.
And I talked to a couple of people like, you’re crazy, what are you talking about? I’m like, okay, I’m crazy, that’s not helpful. But it was miserable, and I could have cost myself the role.
The thing is, when good people cast, it’s not just for a vocal type, it’s for something else that you bring and no one else really can. There’s something real specific about the way you play a hero, not just I’m a hero, but what kind of hero is that? Like when, Optimus Prime, when Peter went into audition for that, his brother was like, who I think was in the military, was like, what are you doing today?
Yeah, he’s like, well, I’m auditioning for a truck. He’s like, what, a truck? He’s like, yeah, he’s like the leader of some robot race, and he’s like their leader and his hero.
He’s like, well, if you’re gonna go in there and be a hero, don’t just be some truck. Be the best goddamn hero you can be. So he goes in there with Optimus Prime, and like it was kind of revolutionary, and it was great, but he did something that was…
He’s such a, I met him a few, about six months ago.
He’s the dad of one of my wife’s colleagues.
Yeah, so there’s that thing. So if you can trust that you were picked for a reason and it wasn’t some grand mistake or a prank, then that’s step one. The other thing that I learned, and this is a rule for me, hopefully you’ll have a wonderful director like one of us, but if you have a hard ass like some people, then do this for yourself.
Never say sorry. It puts you in the wrong mental state. Don’t go, oh, if you get a redirection, it’s an opportunity to make it better.
Maybe you did something that makes it worse now.
Maybe the response is, oh, great, thanks. Yeah, thanks for the input.
That’s my rule. So say thank you, not sorry. If you wanna say sorry, go, thank you.
And it will literally just like, even just forcing yourself to use those words will change your mindset and make you ready to play.
It’s a really interesting, changing mindset is really important. And one of the things that I do teach is that if you wanna change a read, you have an emotion that director says, I need something different. If you try to just change the way it sounds, it’s just not gonna quite do it.
I went with this to a director, I was eight, nine takes, I’m still not getting it. So finally, I just kind of set back to basics, let me think differently. So I’m gonna feel this and just let it come out.
And then, well, that’s the take, we got it. So it’s just by changing a thought, I was just automatically changed the way it came out of my mouth. So I guess the last little bit of advice is don’t try so hard.
As actors, we make it really hard on ourselves. We try so hard, and then trying is the head stuff. You need to be feeling.
Love me, love me, love me.
We’re all sick though.
All actors are insecure, pretty much. That just comes with the title of act.
It’s a coping mechanism.
Okay, everybody, we are back live at Otakon 2017. It’s Paul and Chris, and we are wrapping up. So Chris, what were some of the highlights of the conference for you?
I loved our interview with Vic Mignotta. He gave out such valuable tips, and he’s really an inspiring man, just saying every day at 12, he just stops and gives thanks for everything that he’s done, and thanks for how far he’s come, and so many great things. And what he gave us was pure gold, and I loved him.
I loved meeting Stephanie Shea and Chris Neosi, seeing a fellow geek like myself, seeing someone who it’s really inspiring to see someone young get into the business, and knowing the same attributes that I have can really succeed.
Yeah, that’s awesome. For me, it was eye-opening, because I had never really been to a con, quote unquote, before, so I didn’t really know what to expect. So I walked in here, and my mind was immediately blown seeing all the cosplay people, all the artists’ alley, the exhibitors downstairs.
It was just amazing to see the scope of the convention, and that was the most impressive thing for me. And then as far as the interviews, I think the big takeaway was that each and every person, both in person and then on the panel discussions where we sat in, they all mentioned being an actor and taking acting classes.
Absolutely.
And you’ve worked with coaches, I’ve worked with coaches, that’s what they tell us in person, but it was really good to hear that reaffirmed by the people who are at the convention and successful in the business.
Yeah, it’s almost like they’re trying to tell us something.
Yeah, you think it got through the thick skull of you and of me, I’m not sure.
I think so, maybe a little bit.
So I’ve actually signed up for some acting classes at a community college. It was one of the things that Tony Oliver mentioned yesterday and it’s been canceled three times.
Really?
I don’t know what it is. It’s my local community college in Baltimore County. I’m gonna try again in the fall.
I tried the winter semester. I tried the spring semester. There wasn’t enough interest.
I think it was just me. Maybe I was signed up. So if you’re out there, especially in the DC metro area or the Delmarva area as we call it, sign up for the freaking classes because I wanna be involved.
Yeah, if you’re ever up in Jersey in the Freehold area, there’s actually improv classes that I signed up for at a local theater there off on Main Street in Freehold. So I’m actually starting those around September.
Awesome. And I was so inspired that yesterday I went home and I immediately contacted Sarah Jane Sherman out in LA. I’m not sure if you know her.
She used to be a casting for Disney. And I signed up for some classes with her. So we’re gonna go with some character development classes probably as soon as next week.
All right, excellent.
So I’m definitely inspired. How about you?
Oh, I’m definitely inspired. I signed up for Tony Oliver’s classes for September up in New York. Already?
Yeah, I just signed up for him last night.
You sound like me.
It’s really reassuring to say like, you know it’s difficult to get in, but if you put your best foot forward and if you focus on the acting part, you could do it.
Awesome. Well, thanks everybody for joining us at Otakon 2017. And we’ll see you in the next episode.
We’ll see you then.
Wow, that was great. I mean, you guys did a great job with those questions. That’s really, really cool.
And I love how just again and again, you hear the actors emphasizing that voice acting is acting. So like again and again, do not think about like obviously voices and being able to do different voices is important, but is not the most important skill. Like it’s acting, it’s voice acting with a capital A.
And get excited about it. I know Chris and I were both inspired. Chris mentioned that on the spot he signed up for classes with Tony Oliver because he got that bug planted in the back of his head.
And so did I. I actually came home on Saturday and immediately emailed Sarah Jane Sherman, who I think we’ve talked about before, to take some acting classes with her. I’m starting next Tuesday and…
Very cool. Does she do Skype or…
Yeah, she does Skype, because she’s in California now. She’s actually from Maryland, but now she lives in California.
Well, when you work for Disney, they want you nearby.
I couldn’t convince her to come back home. Yeah, we’re doing it by Skype. We start next Tuesday, so that should be fun.
Very cool. Yeah, I love going to cons. It’s definitely a very reinvigorating event for people like us.
Yeah, I think we should try and do that again. Maybe book ourselves at another conference, maybe even San Diego next year. We’ll see.
Baby steps, baby steps. But hey, I love Emerald City Comic Con, man. It’s the biggest one in the Northwest.
You know, I’ve actually never been to Seattle, so maybe I should plan to come out to that one next year.
Yeah, cool.
That would be awesome. But coming up…
Oh yes, we got some exciting announcements for next episode.
Yeah, we are going to do an audiobook roundtable. We have confirmations. We haven’t actually scheduled it yet, so pending everyone’s schedule being open, we have confirmations from Stephen J.
Cohen, Sean Pratt, Andy Arndt, and Scott Brick. Nice. And Deborah Dion from Dion Audio.
So we wanted to mix in a producer, a production house in there as well. So it should be fantastic.
And what a production house. I mean, Dion Audio prides itself on the quality of its narrators and their projects. They’ve won numerous awards for all of their productions.
So I can’t, I’m super excited about this. Like, and I don’t even do audiobooks yet.
Well, maybe you’ll be inspired a little bit more.
I’m sure I will.
But until then, this has been Paul Stefano.
And Sean Daeley.
For The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
We’ll see you next time.
Have a great day, everybody. Thanks for listening to The VO Meter. Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.

The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to episode 13 of the VO Meter podcast.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
I am Sean Daeley with my host, Paul Stefano.
Hi, everybody.
Hi, everybody. It’s like the clerks on The Simpsons, oh, my pimples.
A mix of that and maybe President Clinton.
Oh, gotcha there. Well, that’s a lot of fun to do. So we have a wonderful guest on today, voice actor and coach Terry Daniel.
You might know him from his very open Facebook presence in the voiceover camp and the voiceover pros groups. But other than that, since we have a coach and demo producer on the show today, the topic of the day is demos and demo production. Some exciting stuff.
So, before we talk about that specific topic of the day, let’s quickly do some current events. What has happened in your VO world in the last couple of weeks, Sean?
Well, just kind of recovering from the summer. I just got back from vacation, as we talked about in our last episode, so just trying to get some projects wrapped up. Every month, I’ve got these very long e-learning projects from my first and most loyal client, and so I have to make sure that those are all polished and done in a few days.
Other than that, I got some new international clients that I’m excited about, and working on an audio textbook for an actual English Language Institute in the Middle East. So some increasingly fun projects. I’ve seen some people complain that July was an incredibly dead month for them, and for me, it’s actually been one of my most successful ones this year.
So, yay! What about you, Paul?
Yeah, I’m actually in the same boat. I wrote, I think, that same post you were reading from Dan Hurst. I wrote that I’ve had my most successful month, I think, too.
I just wrote a blog post about it that John Florian picked up, and it’s going to feature on Voice Over Extra this week, so that’ll be cool. But it comes from a couple of e-learning projects that I did, where I signed up with this big e-learning company about six months ago, and waited patiently till they got me a few jobs, but now they’re starting to come in, and they’re all union scale or close to union scale for explainer work or e-learning. And I’ve done three of them so far.
I have another one that’s coming up this week, and they pay on time, and it’s fantastic.
Wonderful, wonderful.
I also am in the middle of four audiobooks that are in various stages of completion. One’s almost done, one’s in editor’s hands, and two more have to start. And then, finally, I have done some work for that giant 10,000, or was it 60,000-word e-learning project I mentioned in episode 10.
I’ve done the first couple jobs for them. They’re coming in very slowly, a few sentences at a time. So whenever they come in, I just knock those out, send them off.
They pay me the per-minute rate, and it’s worked out well so far. Hopefully, those will keep coming.
Very cool. I actually, unfortunately, I did lose a recent e-learning client. It was like an 18,000 word project.
So they auditioned My Voice. It was actually a referral from our friend, Mike Norgard. And it was a project that the time-to-rate ratio was no longer working out for him.
So he recommended me. And unfortunately, they’re just like, we can’t quite get the sound from you we want. But they’re very cordial.
And I felt like it was a bad fit too. So I’m not too disappointed. But yeah, something that I wanted to bring up is because, as you noticed, Paul and I, we do a lot of either audiobook work or e-learning or corporate training stuff.
And that kind of work doesn’t really have dead periods throughout the year, unlike say commercial or some of the broadcast television work that you can be doing, which tends to kind of peter out during the winter and summer holidays because everyone’s on vacation. So…
Especially if you’re working with other countries.
Yeah, exactly.
Because maybe vacation here in the US., but I’m working with a company in Australia, where it’s winter.
Exactly, exactly. So, I mean, these are all things that you should consider. I mean, if you get to a point where you’re doing multiple genres of work, you could basically be working through the entire year because you’re like, oh, like during the bulk months, you got your commercial and promo work.
And then during the quieter ones, you can work on your longer e-learning or audio book stuff.
So that brings us to our topic of the day for discussion. And we’re going to talk about demos and some faux pas that some people might make when they’re starting out. And we’ll talk about our experiences with our demo production.
So I’ll start off with the biggest faux pas that everyone tells you not to do. And I think we talked about this in episode one as just the biggest overall newbie mistake, but producing your own demos. And I was totally guilty of this.
I created some that I thought sounded good. I used a friend’s music catalog because he was offering it to me for free. And great tunes, but that wasn’t necessarily the best fit for the copy I was writing.
I wrote my own copy with zero experience other than my bachelors in journalism. And they were terrible. But I put them out of my website and we’re actually going to play one right here so you can hear just how terrible it is.
But it suffices to say, it didn’t get me any work. And all it did was get me criticism from, and rightfully so, from all the VO pros that are out there. When you have a job to do, the last thing you need to think about is where to lay your head.
You want to know when the day is done, you can relax, recharge, and get ready to do it all again tomorrow. You have a dream, but you’ve put it on hold. Maybe it’s about the kids.
Maybe it’s about the house. Maybe it’s about the time. Well, the one thing it doesn’t have to be about is the money.
With the Next Day Small Business Loan from Mayfield Community Bank, you can make that dream a reality. Open your eyes. Stretch your arms.
Do you hear that? No? Nothing?
Exactly. When you go camping, all the hustle and bustle of your normal world just melts away along with your cares. Go.
Oh, Paul, Paul, Paul. How far you’ve come.
Or a little bit, at least.
Well, to your credit, it can be a great learning experience to try and produce your own demo. It’s like writing those letters that you don’t end up actually sending because it could get you in trouble. Yeah, that’s a fair point.
But it’s important. I’m working on some new demos with the Global Voice Acting Academy, and they really want me to be as involved as possible. They want me to do my own research, figure out where my voice fits in with what products, try and find my own scripts, maybe write my own scripts.
And they do want a much higher level of involvement. But whether or not you want to do that for your first demo is debatable. And as Paul said, you should definitely get some feedback from trusted sources before you go off submitting it to agencies and stuff like that.
Yeah, that was the key. Once I heard from the pros out there, mostly on the VOBB, that was a terrible idea. I did immediately take them down, and it was a good choice.
But it’s interesting that you brought that up, though, Paul, because recently in our sort of VO support group, we’ve been talking about genres where making your own demo might actually be a good idea.
Yeah, that can’t be the case. Audiobooks specifically, the coach that we work with, Sean Pratt, has suggested that you create your own samples for your audiobook work, and that was echoed at VO Atlanta when I was listening to Amy Rubenet talk, where she said the same thing, that your audiobook samples really only need to be you reading an audiobook or the text of a book. And there are some criteria that Sean recommends.
It’s that it’s about a five-minute length and that it’s one genre, one piece, so it could be young adult, drama, it could be historical or non-fiction, but it should be one genre that showcases your talent in that specific type of work.
And another thing is that since a lot of people are self-producing for say ACX or just have a home studio, your demo is selling your studio as well. So like with commercial and narration, you might be going into an external studio still when you’re working with an agency. But for things like e-learning or audio books, you really want to showcase your studio sound too.
Yeah, exactly. So let’s shift gears and talk about professionally produced demos. I know you had one done early on I believe with our guest today.
Let’s talk about those experiences.
Yes, I actually had several demos done with Terry, because I wanted to do all of the voice over.
I will do all the voice over.
I will do all the voices. All of them. Oh God, don’t get me started.
My girlfriend and I just slip into German all the time. There was one time we went on a nature hike, and we were just talking like this for the whole time. And then when we got to the top of this beautiful, it’s called Moana Falls, we heard some…
We were eavesdropping on some people talking behind us, a couple of tourists, and it was like, so where are y’all from? Oh, via from Germany. I hope they didn’t hear us on the way up.
But anyway, so I wanted to do Oz devices, and I talked with Terry, and I was like, I want a commercial demo, I want a narration demo, I want an audiobook, and I want a telephony or IVR. And he hooked me up with all of them. And that was about, four years ago.
We worked together for about six months, and then I actually told him, you know what, I think I’m ready for a demo. And he’s like, you know what, I think you are. As I mentioned later in the interview, I actually traveled home to the States to visit my family.
I was still in Japan at the time, and then had booked a local studio from there. That way it was a lot easier to coordinate schedules, and I could communicate better with the engineer, and didn’t have to use broken Japanese. And Terry didn’t have to try and navigate the Japanese at all, which I’m sure he appreciated.
How did that work out for you?
Really, really well. Like I said, this was almost four years ago, and depending on what circles you inhabit in the voiceover realm, people will recommend different amounts of time before you should update your demos. Some people say once every three years, some every two, every year.
I’ve heard as often as every six months.
Wow.
Yeah, I mean, if you can afford it, you want the most current content you can get that really showcases your ability. But honestly, I’m still booking work off of my demos from four years ago. As long as it showcases your abilities and it sounds like you, why change it?
Awesome. My first professionally produced demo was done with Edge Studio, and that was as part of their training program where there was a package deal, and there was a set amount of weeks where you were doing classes and then individual coaching with some of their coaches privately, and that was to be determined how many sessions you had until they thought you were demo ready. So once that was done, we did the demo.
I went to a professional studio in Washington, DC., and they recorded it for me there with a phone patch into Rachel Butera, my coach at Edge, and mine came out great. It signed me to my first five agencies.
Wow.
They seemed to love it, and I had a really great experience there. Now, the one thing I want to caution against is that in that sort of environment where you have group classes and a pre-determined time where you’re going to produce your demo, you want to be careful that you’re ready, because I have heard people have bad experiences with that type of environment. Where they felt like they were pushed out the door because they weren’t ready.
Now, in my case, similar to what I did with Terry, which we’ll talk about in a second, I was champing at the bit. I was ready to go. I was studying all the time, practicing as much as I could, and I thought I was ready.
And I pushed that process along. And I also made sure that I was heavily involved in the process. I think that’s another problem that sometimes people have.
Especially if they’re brand new, they feel like they shouldn’t put in any input because what could they possibly provide to these professionals up on high that must know better? And I would caution you to know thine self, as Shakespeare said, and know what you want to get accomplished with your demo. I definitely had that mindset where I had a certain sound I wanted to get across, and I was not going to let them tell me any different.
And I think it bared… The results speak for themselves, where I was immediately signed to some agency, so it must have gone pretty well.
Well, it’s an important skill set to start building as early as possible, because one thing that we don’t consider is that we’re creative collaborators. We work with a whole other team. Even though we record on our own, we’re still kind of collaborating with the producer or with the agency, trying to get a specific sound out of whatever we’re recording.
So it’s really good to kind of build that collaboration from the beginning and being able to communicate as part of a creative team.
Yeah, because those skills will serve you well later. When you’re in a session, especially if it’s in your own studio, the director on the other side of his remote session may not hear you walk into the wall or drop that glass of water. And you would want to say, oh, you know what, we need to redo that because I tripped or I just heard my dog bark in the background.
Now, you don’t want to have that happen all the time because then you’re not professional, but you want to make sure that you’re aware and being professional on your end so the professionals on the other end can do their job. So not long after my Edge demo, because as we’ve talked about, I’ve only really been doing this about three years, I looked into getting another demo done because my demo with Edge was only a commercial demo. And I wanted to get a narration demo done, so I started doing some research and asked some of my peers, which I highly recommend doing, ask your peers who they worked with, who they like, and get some advice on who does a good job out there and also might fit into your budget.
And Sean, you said that your demo was done with Terry, and I was a big fan of that, so I contacted him and started working with Terry as well. And I didn’t do any specific coaching, it was just the coaching and preparation for the demo production, so my process was much shorter, probably only about six weeks. But we wrote some copy together and recorded it in my studio, which didn’t have to happen, but I was pretty confident in the way my studio sounded.
It was Volvo Studio approved, yeah, Volvo Studio certified by the tech committee there. And I was confident in the way it sounded, and when I sent a clip to Terry, he thought so too. So we did it in my studio with him passion, via plain old Skype, and it worked out great.
Now, I want to say again, Terry, as you’ll hear in the interview, has a very strong personality, if you don’t already know him. And that could have a detrimental effect on the result, if you’re not strong-willed, like I was saying before. So even with somebody who has a strong personality, you want to make sure that you can work with them, and they’re going to listen to your feedback.
Now, it turns out, Terry is really receptive to feedback. So I had a script that I wrote myself. So there was, I think, four clips he wrote, or five clips, he wrote four of them, and I wrote the last one.
And it was because it was an Edgar Allan Poe piece. And a lot of my work is based on sort of a low, dark, creepy voice. I’ve done a lot of horror audiobooks.
I’ve done some character work where it’s a creepy serial killer. And that’s a voice that suits me well. So I made sure I got that in there.
And the other reason is because living in Baltimore, I wanted to have something that represented my local flavor. And everybody here loves Edgar Allan Poe because of him spending some time here and ultimately passing here. And his grave is a local landmark.
So I put that in. At first, Terry was like, I don’t know about that. And I said, no, we’re doing it.
And we did it.
I thought it was one of your strongest spots.
Yeah, I think so, too. That’s what most people say. So again, the point is, know yourself and make sure you get your own flavor into your demo, even if someone else is producing it.
Very cool. And so kind of going off of that, like really having your own input. Like I was saying, I’m working on two new demos with the Global Voice Acting Academy right now, a new commercial and new narration one.
Because like we were saying, every now and then it can be important to try and reevaluate, see if your demo is still the best representation of your current skill set and talent. And my friends and coaches over there, Christina Melizia and David Rosenthal, were like, yeah, this is good, but it doesn’t showcase your whole, like enough variety and it doesn’t showcase your full abilities. So that was the main reason why they would encourage me to make another one.
Right now, like I said, like I had a lot of help from Terry for my previous ones, but this one, it’s just like, you really get what you put in because it’s like, they really want me to have a much higher ownership of these demos. So Christina was very helpful. She sent me a couple of talent who she thought had a similar kind of voice and style to me.
She’s like, study all of their work, listen to their demos, figure out what kind of products they’re marketing for, figure out what kind of products you want to do. And then, like nowadays with the internet, it’s so easy to just research commercials. I mean, we have YouTube.
You can literally just do like BMW commercial, like 2017 commercial and see what they’re doing right now. Or another popular one is ispot.tv, which is where it’s pretty much just like all commercials all the time. And you could even like learn about who voiced a spot or who produced a spot.
And just learn about, like you can learn so much more and be so much more involved in the process. It’s kind of, it’s a little intimidating, not gonna lie, but it’s also very empowering too. And I know that when we are, that we’re done working on these, they’re just gonna be amazing.
So before we get started with Mr. Terry Daniel, we will actually have a VO Meter stick from a mutual acquaintance, Mr. Rob Marley. No, not the reggae musician. This is voice talent and blogger Rob Marley.
He’s got an incredible blog and a wonderful free ebook that you should definitely check out. But before you do that, why don’t you listen to this episode’s VO Meter stick?
Hey, everybody, it’s time for the VO Meter shtick.
What did he say?
It’s time for the VO… Oh, nevermind. The VO Meter shtick?
Oh, got it.
Hi, Sean and Paul. Thanks for allowing me to share my shtick with you. Wow, that sounded bad.
Anyway, I was listening to your last podcast, and Paul had mentioned that he had his first live directed session with a client, and I thought I’d share my first experience. Now, I thought I’d planned out everything perfectly. I’d worked with hundreds of clients so far in my voiceover career, but this was my first experience with the client.
In this case, the producer and engineer of the spot listening in while I did the recording. It’s one thing to be able to flub a line and redo a take while you’re by yourself in your little studio, but man, it’s a whole different ball game when there’s someone watching or listening closely to your performance live. I didn’t know if the client was gonna use video with Skype, so I made sure my background looked professional.
I mean, come on, I work out of a closet. Now, I’ve studied acoustics for several years, and I understand the finer points of wave propagation and acoustic absorption. I’ve done the work, treated the walls, carefully isolated all interior noise, and my room boasts a very respectable negative 73 dB noise floor.
In other words, it’s pretty good. I work really hard to be as professional as possible, but the trust that a client has in me might be completely nuked if they catch a glimpse of a T-shirt hanging in the corner of the shot that says, damn right, I’ve been naughty, now spank my evil butt. As it was, the client connected via the audio-only mode of Skype, so it wasn’t really a problem.
The first take went well enough. I thought I hit all the key points and the client seemed okay with this take. They asked for a second take, and while I was setting up for that, I discovered that the first take didn’t record.
I don’t know what happened. I apparently never started the record or thought I did. I hit the shortcut keys I use for my software and thought things were recording, but they weren’t.
So it was at this point that I have to then tell the client that there was a problem with the first take and that we would need to do it again. They understood and I quickly delivered a respectable second, third and fourth takes. The client seemed happy and the audio sounded good, but I never heard from this particular producer again.
The moral of the story is try to be prepared for anything, but know that it’s gonna be the thing you can’t imagine that will probably be the thing that trips you up. Knowing how to fix the problem and how to handle yourself while you do it is what separates the amateur from the pro. And it’s something we all need to be reminded of from time to time.
Anyway, thanks for letting me ramble at you. Love the podcast, keep up the great work.
Okay, so now we are pleased to welcome our guests for this episode. We are so excited to have coach, voice over talent, marketing extraordinaire and dare I say, ambassador to the voice over community, Terry Daniel. Welcome, Terry.
You know, I like to be preferred to as the pharaoh of voice overs.
Very nice.
Yeah, so please address me as that from moving forward, or I’m going to hang up on you bastards. Just kidding. I mean, honestly, I’m very, very happy to be here.
Fantastic.
Yeah, we’re very excited to have you. So Terry, let’s jump right into it. I’m sure people are wondering who aren’t familiar with you.
How exactly did you get started with voice over?
This is a true story. My parents, this is going to make me sound like a real dinosaur. My parents bought me a Donnie and Marie microphone when this is the latter part of the 70s.
I’m probably about maybe nine or 10 years old when this is happening. This is like Mr. Microphone. This is where you put the battery in, you turn on the mic, and you find that empty frequency on your FM dial, and then you can kind of sing and talk through.
Go look up Mr. Microphone commercials on YouTube. It’s hilarious. You’ll watch it 10 times in a row because it’s hysterical.
I had one of those actually. I think we’re close to the same age.
I had one as well. I would put on concerts for my parents and it was just brutal. I would try to sing the entire album from Paul McCartney and the Wings.
Nice.
I would sing Terry Jacks, that depressing freaking song, Seasons in the Sun, which I believe was very depressing. And man, I was one screwed up kid. And that’s kind of how I got started because I had a microphone in my hand and I really haven’t put it down since because after that, that’s when I kind of got into radio.
And I started just a quick funny story with you guys. In the, you know, about 18, 19 years old, you know, we all had like those silver Panasonic boom boxes. I would record commercials off, you know, various shows.
And then I would practice along with the commercials. And on television, I would record the TV spots, you know, in between The Love Boat and The Dukes of Hazzard, you know, with my Montgomery Ward’s video cassette recorder. And I would practice along with those commercials.
But then I would do like fake radio shows. I would record them onto a cassette with my Sears Home Stereo. I would plug a little Radio Shack microphone into the input and, you know, play songs and write and perform fake commercials.
And I would even record phony prank phone calls. I would stick the microphone to the ear part of the landline phone. And I would call up businesses like McDonald’s in the area and bullshit them and tell them…
You know, I told one manager of McDonald’s, and I’m recording this, by the way, I said if he could get everybody in the entire restaurant to stop eating their breakfast and stand up and sing Here Comes Peter Cottontail, that I would send the restaurant $50,000. And, you know, I’m pretending like I’m this hot DJ in LA. You know, hey man, this is Chuck McCann from K-Rock LA.
And then I would have him go do something really stupid. And this guy did. You could actually hear him slam the phone down.
And you could hear him in the restaurant area coaching people to stand up. And you could literally hear about 30 people sing, Here Comes Peter Cottontail. So then he comes back to the phone all excited that I’m going to send him a check.
And then there’s this kind of subtle, dramatic pause. And I said, well, Bill, I think Bill was his name. I said, Bill, you’ve just been the victim of a prank.
Sounds very Howard Sternish. He tells a similar story about starting that way.
19 years old, kind of a jackass, 19 years old. I would never encourage people to do that. I mean, you could get away with so many weird things back then.
Do you guys remember when…
Lose no caller ID.
You could call somebody, and then you could click the receiver, and then get the other line, and then call somebody else, and then you click your receiver again, and then you connect those two people, and then you can just sit there and see what happens.
Yeah, I think I technically still have that service on my phone, but I haven’t used it in 20 years.
So these people think, you know, I didn’t call you, you called me. No, you called me, I didn’t call you. You know, you just sit there, and they just bitch back and forth.
This is pre-internet, so life was pretty entertaining back then. But long-winded story short, that’s what really got me excited about doing voice overs and just being able to do this for a living has been a lot of fun and really such a joy, gentlemen, such a joy.
Well, you’ve obviously grown up quite a bit. But what is the focus of your voice over business from a talent standpoint now?
Well, it’s interesting because we all fall into that specialty. We all fall into that niche. And many, many years ago, I was more of a commercial e-learning type dude.
That’s pretty much all I would do. The occasional IVR gig, I guess, would come across my desk. But really within the last few years, I’ve gotten more into theme park announcements.
For example, if you’re on a roller coaster ride at Six Flags, you guys have heard that voice.
Mind the Gap.
Please keep your hands and feet inside the car until the car comes to a complete stop.
It’s so assuring and authoritative.
Yes. And what’s nice is it’s a beautiful fit for my attention span, which is very limited at the ripe old age of 49. I’ve tried to do a few audiobooks.
I couldn’t stand it. I would entertain the idea of maybe doing another one if I were to play a character in the audiobook, but some of these long 300-page audiobooks on search engine optimization and various car parts, I would prefer to send those gigs to you guys.
Yeah, it takes a special breed. I’ve done a nine-hour book on… I’ve done a nine-hour book on Radhaswami, the Middle Eastern religion.
Try that.
Well, you know, and you hear from people all the time, you know, that have these ACX accounts, and they’re doing it just to get experience. And I think that’s great. You know, it’s a good service for that.
But I just, you know, as the years kind of went on, I got a little spoiled with these promo announcements that I’m doing at theme parks and baseball games and state parks and all that. You know, they just send me three sheets of announcements at pretty much the same rate as some of these audio books would pay. So I got pretty used to that, and I’m pretty happy with it.
Very cool. And so about how long into your career did you start transitioning into voiceover coaching, Terry?
The coaching part of it was, you know, I did a lot of theater back then. You’re going to hear a few bumps. My crazy yellow lab is right above the studio, so she might get a lot of hand here.
But I got into the coaching aspect because, you know, I directed some plays back in the 90s. You know, I used to be a drama coach and ran an improv group. I’ve always enjoyed the mentoring and the teaching part of it.
But what really got me motivated to do it was, you know, I would get calls from people who, you know, dropped about six or seven grand on what we call demo mills in the industry. And I’m not here to bash my competition or, you know, hang anybody out to dry, but there’s plenty of them out there now that charge way too much money for too little. Everybody’s reading from the same scripts, everybody’s demo sounds the same, and you’re really more of a number than a person.
It really broke me when somebody called me, and literally, this is not a joke, they started weeping because they had paid like five or six grand. And, you know, this coach or program, they promised her stardom, and they filled her head with all these empty promises. And I just got kind of tired of it.
I’m like, you know what? I’ll start taking a few students here and there and just kind of showing them what worked for me when I launched into this full time many moons ago. And it’s just a straight up mentorship program.
I’ve tweaked it, obviously, a few times since. But that was really the birth of Terry Daniel, The Voice Over Coach.
Very cool. And so what do you feel separates you from, as a coach, from either these demo mills or even some other coaches out there today?
Well, I’m not much of a smoke blower. I’m a pretty candid person. You guys have known me for a long time now.
And I don’t really mince words in Facebook groups or anything. And honestly, I’ve put my foot in my mouth a few times because of it. But you heard my story when I was young and doing the prank phone calls and just being kind of a class clown.
I mean, that certainly hasn’t changed. But the only part of the reason… What was the question again?
See, I told you, ADD voice talent. I warned you guys.
He’s got his prescription right there, folks. It’s real.
All right.
It’s been confirmed.
The separation thing. I think it’s because I’m real. I don’t try to…
I love the teaching end of it, but I’m not teaching science. I’m not one of those big grouchy history teachers that you had in high school. I take it seriously to a point, but we have a lot of fun with it.
It’s very candid training. I think people have gotten a lot out of it. At least that’s what they tell me.
And I think that’s just the separation, is because I treat people as an individual, and I try to find a niche for each person, as opposed to inviting 500 people into a weekend seminar and then forcing them into a studio that Monday morning to do a demo. My God, I think even some of the top tier talents in the country aren’t going to be ready for a demo that quickly. So mine’s a little more of a drawn out mentorship where we just kind of keep working until I feel that they’re ready, until the talent feels that they’re ready.
There’s a mutual understanding that, all right, you know what? We’ve been working together for 35 years. Okay, well, maybe not quite that many.
Let’s take the next step.
But I never like to pressure anybody. I’m like, okay, we got to get this done by then, and this done by then, because we got to get you into the demo session by Thursday, July, such and such. And all that does is create anxiety and tension, and people are a little more too keyed in on their calendar than just learning the craft and practicing.
So I kind of take that off the table.
That’s what I was going to say. I mean, you’re so just genuine when you work with people. Like, you don’t put on any kind of teaching persona.
And like, you’re just incredibly flexible and relaxed and fun to work with. So I miss our old coaching sessions, Terry. You never call it anymore.
Speaking of which, I think Sean and I worked together back when I still did have the Donnie and Marie microphone. So I think, you know, I don’t even remember. I think Sean, you and I, that must have been…
That was about four years ago, I think.
Oh, was that only four? It felt like 14. Well, you were such a jerk to work with.
I would have been 14, 14 years ago.
Oh, don’t rub it in.
You were so high maintenance and you were such a diva. No, I’m kidding.
Well, Terry, talking about the way people approach the coaching and the demo production, do you feel that it’s better to listen to what the coach or the demo producer says wholeheartedly? Or do you feel that it’s better to come with your own ideas and have sort of a give and take? Because I know when we did our demo, and it’s been very successful, thank you very much.
I appreciate all the help.
I’m very happy about that.
When we were working together, I felt like I was maybe pushing a little too hard, but I definitely had some ideas in my head. I tend to be a little stubborn. Do you find that that’s a better style where the person comes with their own ideas, or do you feel more comfortable when you’re providing the direction almost wholeheartedly?
Somebody like you, Paul, you had some experience, obviously, so you weren’t super green. So I welcome ideas, and when I work with people for the first time who have zero experience, sometimes they’ll bring ideas, and it doesn’t always work very well. As long as I can have some veto power, I definitely want it to be an established, good working relationship.
And it’s never my way or the highway. Somebody, a student might actually write his own, her own scripts. Now I have somebody to write the scripts because my programs have received a complete makeover.
I’ve got a website designer. I’ve got a marketing person, and it’s a little more than just Terry Daniel. There’s other players involved as well as we slowly kind of get out this other program.
But I’m always up for ideas. I think that’s part of being a good coach is being open to listening to creativity from the talent. Now, well, I’m the teacher, you’re the student, so what do you know?
It’s not that kind of a relationship, and especially with demos. Those are going to be very important to come up with scripts that not only are a good match for that person’s persona and skill level, but to also come up with content that matches with their personalities and their hobbies and interests, because you have to be engaged in the content that way. And there’s just different methods that we use now.
Back then, when I first started doing the demo thing, I was kind of learning as well, so I would do what a lot of companies did. Oh, let’s just find some scripts online, and we’ll do that for your demo. That’s no longer the case at all.
That was a learning experience, and although there were some good demos that way, I didn’t want to use the same scripts as 15 other companies were using. So now, when I do demos, all of the scripts are 100% originals.
Awesome. Very cool. Do you ever turn people away for either coaching or demo production?
Nope. I’ll just take their money. No, I’m kidding.
I just contradicted everything I just said in the last 20 minutes now with that stupid joke. No, I do turn people away. I don’t exactly put them through a Peter O’Connell entrance exam.
Entrance? You know what? That’s one of those words where it looks easy on paper and I can never say it in conversations.
Entrance. I don’t necessarily put people through an entrance exam, but I do have them read a few scripts, fill out a form, learn a little bit about what they’re able to do technically. You don’t have to be perfectly technically sound to work with yours truly, but you have to have a little bit of skill, let’s be honest.
And I do turn plenty of people away. I do get a lot of emails and phone calls from people all over the country and overseas, and it’s a little bit of a process before we get started for sure.
And then just wrapping up on the demo production, what percentage of people working with you would you say you’re able to record from their personal studio versus making them either come to you if they’re local to Minneapolis or go to a local studio where they are?
That’s a great question. You know, more and more… Paul, you did it from your home setup, and that worked out great.
It’s getting to be more and more… Yeah, I think…
It’s getting more and more likely that they can record from their home setup, but I usually have to send… They’ll send me a couple MP3s, and I’ll kind of dissect the audio a little bit. It’s got to be A1.
I might throw the MP3 over to a Cliff Zellman or a Dan Leonard and go, you know, this sounds great to me, but I’m just wondering if I could get a second opinion, because we’re going to do this person’s demo from their recording studio. And if it’s not the case, you know, I typically book somebody in a studio in their area, and they patch me in. Sean, I think we did your…
Didn’t we do yours in Japan or something like that?
No, I actually timed it. So when I visited my home for Christmas in Washington, I found a local studio over there.
Oh, that’s right. Yep, yep, yep.
So that way you were only like three hours ahead instead of like 18.
Yeah, that was very helpful. So that was a perfect example of just recording in a studio in their area. I do invite people to come and see me.
I mean, they’re always welcome to fly here if they want to do the demo live and have that face-to-face time, but that’s what we do for local talents here in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. But it’s pretty easy now with studios that have Phone Patch, Source Connect, and even Skype.
It’ll work as long as both parties can hear each other. It works really well.
Yeah, it can certainly be tempting to use your own studio because it showcases the quality of audio you can come out with, but in the same vein, it’s still so much to be the engineer and the assistant director and the talent. It’s a lot to worry about for your first demo.
I agree, and that’s the beauty of doing it in a studio. You have the coach, you’ve got the engineer to worry about all the audio, and I love doing it in recording studios for that main reason for sure.
And so one thing I’ve noticed and really like about you, Terry, is that you’ve been pretty much an early adopter of social media as a marketing tool. So could you tell us a little bit about your web presence on the various social medias out there?
Well, I believe social media is a fantastic platform for political piss matches. And I love to just soak it all in and waste at least eight or nine hours of my day pretending like I know every f***ing thing. I’m sorry, is this show rated PG-13?
Because then I think I can get away with that.
We might have to roll back that.
We’ll get your own Terry bleep, it’s fine.
All right, no, serious answer. You know, social media has been responsible for probably about a dozen or more brand new clients every year. You know, some of them stick around to become regular clients.
Some of them don’t, but still, you know, have relationships based on like Twitter, Facebook, and even Instagram. I have not, and this might sound silly, because people always think, oh, well, you got to be a part of LinkedIn. I mean, LinkedIn is a major business, you know, blah, blah, blah.
But I just honestly have never been, I’ve never really liked it that much. I like to stick to just two or three different social media sites. You know, I’m not much of a Snapchat guy.
I know all the kids love that one, but I’ve gotten some pretty good gigs, you know, via relationships that were started via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Very cool. And like I said before, you’ve really built a Facebook community for voiceover talent, because you’ve sort of started two pages with fellow talent, Dave Courbassier. So why don’t you tell us about those?
Well, there’s two groups, and here’s where it all started, honestly, and a lot of voice actors that are listening to this podcast are going to remember it. It really all started on Voice Over Universe, the website. Many, many years ago, when Facebook was just kind of getting going, there weren’t really all these groups in there.
I mean, you had your profile, and you had probably about 20 or 30 friends, and it was fine, but Voice Over Universe was really the place where we all came to kind of chat with one another. They would schedule events in there. The beauty of going to a voiceover conference, I believe it was Voice 2008, where everybody that met up met on this Voice Over Universe website, and it was terrific.
It was almost like a class reunion or something. Everybody kind of knew each other, and it was a heck of a lot of fun. Of course, back then, there was one voiceover conference.
Now there’s one every day somewhere.
Seems like it, doesn’t it?
Yeah, it’s gotten a little watered down, to be honest with you, but there’s still some good stuff out there. But the Penny Abshire James Alberger event in the early years of 2008, 2009, 2010, they were just lights out fantastic conference. But then Facebook got around, and suddenly these groups popped up out of nowhere, and they started to become popular.
As a matter of fact, it kind of put Voice Over Universe about six feet under once they got popular. But Dave had a group called Voice Over Friends, and I had a group called Voice Over Pros. And the same people were in both groups, and we were both kind of doing the same thing.
I’m like, you know, I called Dave up one day. Why don’t we just combine the two groups? This doesn’t really make a hell of a lot of sense, right?
So he agreed to do it. So we got everybody together, and then just called it Voice Over Pros. So there’s, you know, tons of people in that group, and there’s a lot of good discussions.
You know, occasionally there can be too many chefs in the kitchen, and everybody’s an expert at just about every subject, but that’s, you know, you’re going to get that in just about any forum. I also created Voice Over Camp, which is really created for the new talent. You know, people interested in either getting into voice overs or they’re just getting started, and they don’t want to be overwhelmed by, you know, sag after a voice actor’s and all this stuff that they’re not going to be familiar with for a very long time.
That’s kind of a place for them to go. So it’s VO Pros and VO Camp. I don’t know the exact URLs for those, but if you do a search in the little search box of Facebook, just type in Voice Over Camp and Voice Over Pros, and you can find either of those two groups.
There’s a search box?
I know. Can you believe it? I never know the actual URL for these things, but people obviously find them because we get requests for people to come into those every day.
And it’s really amazing because now I think there’s about 100 voice over groups out there, and that can get very overwhelming. And by the way, it can be quite distracting to your career while you’re sitting in there, about 15 to 20 different voice over groups, soaking up some of the information and asking questions and giving out your expert opinion. Suddenly it’s like 9 o’clock at night, and you haven’t done a damn thing.
Yeah, that certainly has happened to me on occasion.
We’ve all been guilty of it, believe me. But that really has become… I mean, Facebook…
I know there’s groups on LinkedIn that people kind of swarm to once in a while, but really these Facebook groups are really huge now for lots of different industries, not just voice over, but podcasting and photography and theater acting, on-stage acting and improv. It’s become quite the empire.
Well, speaking of podcasts, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention your own podcast, which is where I was really introduced to you first, The Voice Over Cafe. I was an ardent fan listening to every episode. You mentioned Voice 2008.
I remember the interview that you and Trish did from there live, which was just hilarious. Because, frankly, it was just a mess. But it was so much fun.
And Sean and I actually tried to mimic that when we went to the Mid-Atlantic Voice Conference last year. We did it live from there as well, trying to drag on your coattails.
It gets a little noisy, and people are talking over each other. The Voice Over Cafe was actually spawned from an older podcast that Trish and I did called Voice Overs On Demand.
I think technically that’s who you were representing in Voice 2008.
Yes, and you can still find those old episodes on iTunes. And the hilarious part about that podcast is the audio never sounded the same on every episode.
That sounds familiar.
Kind of like ours.
It would be like I’d use a different mic, or it’d be louder, I’d use different… It was just a mess. But yeah, Voice Over Cafe, we record that podcast about once every two years.
Because it’s been so hard to get together. When you’re working with like five or six people, unless you all work together in the same office, it gets to be a little challenging. Oh my God, yeah, so we’ll definitely be back at it.
There’s no question about it. And it’s voiceovercafe.org for that one. But I did create a mini podcast series for the voice talent with ADD, and that would be 95% of all voice talents.
What? What do you say?
You can go to voiceoversermons.com and the beauty of it, yeah, it’s me rambling and ranting about stuff, but there’s good information in there, and I think the longest one ever was like 10 minutes long, so that one does pretty well. It’s just something you can kind of plug in and take a little lesson and just be done with it by the time you get off the toilet.
I love your voiceover sermons because they’re short and sweet, and it either gives you a nice reminder of something that I had been failing to do in my own business or just new ideas. Sometimes it can kind of pick you up and you’re like, oh, I’m not making any progress. Like, shut up and get back to the mic.
And sometimes it can really get me into trouble. I’ll give you a little story here. One time I bashed a talent agency here in town because they didn’t sign me.
The former owner, this is how it got started. The former owner was going to bring me in and add me to the roster, and decided at the last minute that I wasn’t a fit for the agency. And I was kind of young and stupid back then because I let my ego get the best of me, and I started lashing out, and sent them along, drank a bunch one night, and left a big, long, angry voicemail.
You know, this is like quite a few years ago now.
Like almost one?
And then they have new ownership, and then I tried to get back in with the agency, and the funny part is, they like the demos, and it sounded like it was going to happen. So I go in, and the new owner brings this up at the meeting. I’m like, wait a minute, what?
I understand that you did a little podcast episode, and I literally just shit my pants when she said that. Because I was not kind in the episode about that particular agency. I apologized profusely for it, regretted it, deleted that episode.
So I have been known once in a while to put my foot in my mouth. But it had a happy ending because they’re a terrific agency. I get a few gigs every month from them.
They’ve been very good to me. We had to start from scratch, and I had to kind of earn their trust, which was justified, really, after my horrible mistake of just teeing off without really thinking about it. And then it’s really become quite a very, very positive relationship.
Awesome. Well, Terry, as you may know, our podcast focuses mostly on the newer talent who are just starting out, and our focus is really to try to educate them on the stupid things we’ve done, and maybe you’ve done as well, to maybe sandbag their career and try to avoid those things before they get into trouble. What’s some advice you can give to talent that are just starting out, either equipment or where they should go for coaching?
What’s the right path to start down so they eventually have a fruitful career?
Well, you mentioned, I mean, I’ll start with… Let’s start with the equipment, because if you’re gonna spend $200 on a USB mic, you might as well spend $400 on a really good mic. If you’re really serious and passionate about it, spend the extra money.
It will go a long way. USB mics are good for on-hold messages and maybe a podcast or maybe an explainer video, but if you really want to get into more of the commercial broadcast work, it’s gonna benefit you to buy that better mic. And I know that even I used to say, I’ll just get a USB mic for a couple of years until you build up your clientele.
I used to say that many, many years ago and I’m like, you know what? You could get a Rode NT1A for like $200 more. It sounds incredibly better than like an AT2020 or a Samsung or an MXL or one of those mics.
So not to really put the cart before the horse, but you should definitely learn how to read a script before you start buying equipment. But if you’re gonna buy a microphone, what’s an extra $200 if you’re truly passionate about doing this?
So speaking of, what are some other kind of shortcuts that you see newer talent trying to take that really just like, oh, why won’t they listen?
Well, for whatever reason, if you really look at any kind of industry, universities, schools, training programs, they all cost money. And sometimes newer talents will read blogs or read things online where they’re almost floored when you tell them that it’s going to take a little bit of an investment to get into this. You know, coaching, equipment, demos.
Time.
Websites, time, exactly. And for whatever reason, there’s books out there that can be very mythical about this, and they think they can just take a free ride and jump over the rainbow to the pot of gold without putting any effort into it mentally or financially. And I think that’s where people really get snake-bitten because they realize, oh, man, I did everything the wrong way.
I’m not getting anywhere. You know, maybe they got a couple of Fiverr gigs, you know, or something like that. I know, that’s kind of a…
That’s definitely… The cheap shot. Yeah, that’s profanity in the voice over pro world, but…
And they just kind of stumble, and they’re never going to get picked up by any talent agencies with that type of mentality. And honestly, that’s where people really make the mistake. They assume that they can…
This isn’t something that you can do. Oh, I’m unemployed. I’ll just get into voice overs, and that’ll take care of everything.
Make a quick buck.
Yeah, it’s just… It’s not that. And for some reason, voice overs once in a while have…
You know, the industry… It’s not like it has the reputation of that, but at least one out of every five inquiries that I get from somebody who wants to get into voice overs, somebody is absolutely astounded when you tell them the pricing for either coaching or a demo or just building up the business, period.
Indeed.
And one thing that… I mean, it’s funny that they do that to you, because frankly… And I’ve done this a lot on the voiceover camp.
Terry has some of the most reasonable coaching and demo production rates out there. Shh!
Don’t say that.
And still do, by the way. And still do, I’m still way under what any of my competitors are charging. Thank you very much.
Well, we’re not tossing out numbers here, but you get a lot of bang for your buck. Like, for example, Paul and I were both previous students of Terry’s, so we actually still have access to an entire archive of all of his webinars, and we’re welcome to join his bi-monthly online classes and just practice scripts or learn more about marketing. And of course, you’ve got all of your free content through your blog and your voiceover sermons.
You really are pretty generous with all the content you offer to students and non-students alike.
And dare I say, it’s actually quality. The demos you produced for Sean and I have signed both of us to agencies.
Across the world.
That’s really good to hear. And I started to kind of branch out a little bit on the programs. I’ve got an excellent copywriter.
I’ve got a couple of other coaches that I’m kind of honing in to my big program that I’ve just recently… Well, it’s kind of a soft launch. And even a website designer.
Because if you really think about it, people tell me that they like my programs. They’ve gone through the coaching, they’ve got a great demo. It’s like, oh man, now I need a website.
And I never really had that as part of the program before. But now I have a website designer on my staff. I really wanted to create a program that was really the full toolbox.
The full plate of meat and potatoes, so to speak. Where it’s like, alright, so coaching, some group classes, some demos, some after demo mentoring, and website. It felt like I needed to kind of add to the toolbox just a little bit.
Why don’t you tell us about your new staff?
Oh, absolutely. I’m using a terrific talent named Tawny Plattis. She’s the one who writes the scripts for the demos, and she’s very, very good.
She also used to own a retail store and has got a ton of marketing experience. She’s done very well in voice acting as well. And Rob Marley, who’s a great blog writer and does a lot of narration work, really.
Not like a big commercial broadcast guy, but just a ton of big kind of independent contractor like Voice Talent, but a very, very good coach. And then Josh Risser, who’s a very talented young man. Designing websites is what he does for a living pretty much, and I added him to the staff as well to help design and develop Voice Over websites for students.
So it really has become quite the full menu, so to speak. Not necessarily menu. My brain is shutting down.
I’m not using the right words now all of a sudden.
Josh, by the way, is the most recent like on the VO Meter Facebook page, so thank you very much, Josh.
Oh, terrific. Yeah, he’s a good talent all by himself, but he’s a really good web master, and he’s got an understanding of what… He doesn’t build websites that suck.
There’s your marketing tagline.
I know, your tagline right there.
We build websites that don’t suck. He’s really cool, a very talented guy, and just a hell of a good website designer too. And it was just…
Even if things are going well, I’ve been a solo voiceover mentor for many, many, many years now, but it’s still nice to change things up here and there and add a few pieces and take some pieces out. I’m always trying to improve my craft as a voiceover coach as well. Paul, you’ve been very voiceless with your opinions.
I sound like I’m being sarcastic, but I’m really not. I like people who have a quote-unquote clue. I enjoy getting feedback and ideas from them, and both of you guys have been gracious with that type of feedback, so I do appreciate it.
Yeah, well, we were inspired by you, and it’s the whole reason we started this podcast, among others, but to give back to that community, to some of the knowledge that we’ve gleaned from all the successful pros like yourself.
Well, I appreciate that, and this is episode number… You guys have done pretty well with this podcast, especially considering… Yeah, this is number 13.
I know there’s people… And Rob Marley actually… Paul, you told me that you were doing it, but then Rob Marley told me about it, thinking that I didn’t already know about it, and he was a fan, really, ever since the first couple of episodes.
You guys are newer in the industry. You don’t try to pretend that you’re an expert at everything. You’re kind of like new guys who are trying to find your way through the voice over world.
You’re very real, you’re very genuine. You’re not a narcissistic elitist. It’s not your way or the highway.
And you don’t… Never mind, I was going to rip on a couple people, but forget it.
No, I’m just kidding.
Like you were saying, we don’t blow smoke. We just kind of want people to know the reality of getting involved in the business if it’s something they want to do.
Absolutely. And I will tell people who are listening to this, and I wrote a blog on this recently and maybe even did a sermon on the same blog, it’s just that there are so many different opinions out there, and there are so many chefs in the kitchen when it comes to voice over advice. So make sure that you’re getting advice from all over the place, not just like one voice over group.
Because I’ve heard people that, well, What’s-his-name said that in this group, so I’m going to just go ahead and be an auto mechanic instead. And somebody that just wants to give up. I’m like, you know, in this day and age of forums on Facebook and LinkedIn, people are going to have about 150 different opinions on the same subject.
And you really have to just dig deep and really do your research and not base everything on what one or two people say.
Yeah, it’s a valid point. And to be certain, most of the community will help if asked, as long as you’re respectful about it.
You’re right. It’s a very, very helpful community. There are people out there that kind of troll new talents, and they like to just tell them what idiots they are.
And there’s just no place for that. I see this stuff in these, quote unquote, professional voiceover groups. I’m like, who the hell is this guy?
You got a guy who’s got about a year of experience going into 25 different voiceover groups and spewing out a bunch of bullshit to people when…
Wait, are you talking about me?
When they have no idea what the hell they’re talking about. And honestly, if you’re really that successful, you probably don’t have eight or nine hours out of the day to give people advice.
Well said. Sage advice. Well, Terry, it’s been…
So put that in your AT2020 and smoke it.
Well, Terry, it’s been such a pleasure. We’ve been waiting for this for such a long time.
That smells good, Sean.
Well, I am in Washington, but…
That’s true.
That’s true. I’m sorry, Paul.
I was trying to wrap up in a nice little way. But anyway…
So was I.
It’s been a pleasure. We were so happy that you said yes to come on. We have admired your work and benefited from your coaching for so long.
It was really great to have you on.
My pleasure, guys. I’ll come back any time. This is a lot of fun.
I appreciate you having me.
So before you leave, Terry, what’s the best way to get a hold of you if people just want to ask you questions or get some coaching?
Well, I like it when people come to my door and knock. No, I would say you can hit me up on Facebook. I’m easy to find.
Come into Voice Over Camp on Facebook, or you can send me an email, terry, T-E-R-R-Y, at universalvoicetalent.com. And the website is the same address, universalvoicetalent.com. Doing a makeover of that one, thank God.
That one’s been collecting dust for a little bit. Not collecting dust, meaning that it’s not working, but it’s time for a makeover. No question about it.
But those are different ways that you can get a hold of me.
And we’re back, man. Isn’t he just sound like a guy you want to have a beer with? Thank you so much, Terry.
Learned so much, and had a blast talking with him. So you can find him up on Facebook, or you can find him at his personal website, universalvoicetalent.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Thanks again, everybody. Have a great day. Thanks for listening to The VO Meter, measuring your voice over progress.
To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.

The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Episode 12, a full dozen hard to believe of the VO Meter podcast.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. We almost got a baker’s dozen there.
Yeah, a baker’s dozen will be the next one, I think.
Yeah, it’s 13.
I’m just flabbergasted that we made it to 12.
I’m flabbergasted that we’ve had over 2,000 downloads.
Yeah, we are at 2,458. Wow. So hopefully this next episode will push us over 2,500.
And that combined with 12 episodes will be a real milestone in my mind.
Maybe we should add more incentives.
Maybe, and I think we have some ideas on a way to do that.
Oh, yeah. You have to listen to the rest of the podcast, though, so don’t leave now.
Please don’t. I know nobody will. So, just so everybody is clear, I am coming to you from Sonny Duck, North Carolina, on the outer banks of the North Carolina coast.
I’ve been on vacation all week, but I have sucked it up to come back for our fans and conduct an interview with our special guest and do episode 12.
Very nice. And who is our guest this time, Paul?
It is the fabulous coach, blogger, voice over talent, none other than the nether voice, Paul Strikwerda.
Yes, awesome. I totally forgot to turn the W into a V in the interview, but it was close and he was very polite. I’m sure he’s used to people messing up his name.
Yeah, I’m sure as well. So we will get to him in just a moment, but before we do that, let’s talk about some current events. What’s going on with you, Sean?
Well, it’s funny that you’re traveling now. I actually just got back from a two-week pseudo vacation in Hawaii because my girlfriend lives and works up there. And so I’ve actually been up there, it’s like my third time this year, but it’s the only way we can see each other with her schedule, because me doing freelance, I definitely have a little bit more flexible, and I just bring a whole bunch of gear with me and try to pay off the trip while I’m there.
Well, that sounds like a great excuse to go to Hawaii.
All right, like anyone needs one.
You want to trade?
Hey, you sound pretty happy out there.
I can see the beach, I’ve got a glass of wine in my hand, things can’t be better.
Sounds wonderful, man. Sounds great.
So let’s talk about your travel setup. We want to talk about that theme for this episode, how we maintain work or at least work in an emergency situation when we’re traveling. What’s your travel rig like?
Well, it’s relatively simple. It does take up a little bit of room though. It’s mainly my laptop, my 416, my Sennheiser 416, and a newer interface, a one channel interface by Audient called the ID4.
And I’ve been following them since back when they only had the ID22 as it was the only entry into the line of digital interfaces. And it honestly sounds just as good. Obviously doesn’t have all of the features, but it sounds fantastic.
And for $200 or less, if you go refurbished or a demo unit, I think it sounds incredible. And it’s incredibly simple to use. And it actually has dual headphone outs.
So you’ve got the typical quarter inch headphone connector for studio headphones, and then an eight inch one for earbuds and the like. Or you could just have two people listening on it at the same time. It’s just so much packed into that little box.
Yeah, that’s fantastic. I know we actually recorded episode three on that very unit.
That’s right.
At the Atlantic Voice Over Conference.
Yeah, at MAVO, and then that’s what I used again at VO Atlanta for my team. So we had that, and we actually had what I’m speaking into now, the Carry On Vocal Booth. And I use it as sort of like additional treatment in my, I call it my blanket booth.
But yeah, as you can see, it sounds great. Or actually, no, we’re using the Yamaha AGO3 today for ease of interview purposes. But also a great sounding travel unit.
Yeah, for sure. So my setup’s a little bit more simple, maybe, depending on your opinion. I’m using the Blue Raspberry USB mic, and I have that running to a Dell Venue Pro, which is one of those hybrid laptop tablet machines where you can remove the tablet or plug it into a keyboard and it becomes a full-fledged laptop.
So I use that, and then I have it inside a homemade Harlan Hogan-ish portable. If you remember, when he first started, his deal was to put out plans on how to create your own version of his portable. So I had this fabric case, I guess that’s what it’s called, from Bed Bath & Beyond, and I lined it with acoustic foam on all five sides.
And those are those little collapsible fabric boxes that you can use for a shelf or just laundry bags or something like that.
Or you can use it to hold toys, that’s what I use it for home actually when I’m not recording. And then I stick the microphone in the back of it, stick my head inside, and you probably hear the birds and the seagulls because I’m literally on the beach right now. But it sounds great inside a regular house room, or for the last week, I’ve been using it inside my car for auditions, and it sounds pretty good.
Yeah, a lot of people have used cars either when they’re traveling, and as long as you’re in a reasonably quiet spot, most cars are already, like they already have quite a bit of sound isolation and absorption just to make it a more comfortable driving experience.
Yeah, and I did a remote session with our good friend Marisha Tepera two days ago. We were doing a dual point of view audition. I was in the back of the car with the Porta Booth, and she said, that sounds great.
And I said, well, maybe I should just use this all the time.
Use what you got. And doesn’t the Raspberry have some kind of like noise canceling technology too?
Yeah, I won’t say I exactly know how it works, but it does do a pretty good job of canceling out some of the ambient sound. I mean, if one of my kids comes out here and starts asking for dinner, I’ll be in trouble.
It won’t erase them.
Yeah, or go back on the boogie board. But for now, it sounds pretty good.
Yeah, it does sound nice. All right, so anything else for current events?
Well, as I said, I’ve been on vacation, but when I get back, I’m booked for four audio books until probably the end of October, where I just have my schedule entirely taken up, and that’ll be pretty exciting.
Very nice. Yeah, my schedule… The first half of the vacation was nice, but then I got at least four different gigs or auditions that came my way, or while I was in Hawaii.
And so my girlfriend was very supportive, and she gave me full reign of her room. Yeah, it’s great. So I just moved all the clothes on either side of the mic, and then just shoved every pillow in the house in there as well.
And then she didn’t have too many blankets because it’s really hot in Hawaii, so I used a lot of beach towels behind me, and it sounded pretty well. None of my clients complained. I even checked in with a few of them to make sure it was okay, and they’re like, yeah, it’s totally acceptable.
And it was a lot of fun. I even did a remote session with this German client for this sort of medical assistance app, and that was a lot of fun. It was only one sentence, and those guys were hilarious too, so it was a lot of fun.
One sentence, and then that was the whole job?
That was the whole job.
Fantastic. I should promote the one book I have that was released recently. It’s called The Fat Kid by Mark Roeder.
That’s R-O-E-D-E-R. If you’re looking for a new book to listen on Audible, please check that out. It has one rating so far.
That’s five stars. I’m pretty proud of that. And yeah, I’d love to have some more.
So go on there, download it, and let me know what you think.
Will do, yeah. I’ll do that after the show. And I meant to say, though, that was really smart.
Actually contacting Marisha to have someone to play off of for that dialogue was a really good idea. And you guys are similar age range and voice types. I think it would be totally believable.
Yeah, it worked out pretty well. It’s always nice to have somebody to bounce off of when you’re doing an audition.
You know how Facebook has those ridiculous… Do you want to find out who your soulmate is of your contacts? Like quizzes?
I clicked on it and Marisha was my soulmate. Yeah.
Okay, well I thought you would just come back from your girlfriend’s house.
This was a long time ago. I just thought it was funny. Obviously my girlfriend is my soulmate.
Obviously.
Perfect for each other.
So before we get to Paul, we have to go through our regular segments with the show. Our fans literally clamor for it. So before we go any further, let’s get to this week’s Questionable Gear Purchase.
So this week, like I said, I’m on vacation. And that’s really probably the only reason I wasn’t able to buy anything. But just before I left, I decided to upgrade my headphones in the studio.
And I picked up some Biodynamic DT-770. They’re pretty popular with a lot of our colleagues. And I plugged them in, and they sound really good.
I’m wearing a pair right now.
Oh, really?
Yeah, no, they were my first big headphone purchase, for sure.
Okay, yeah, I got a pretty good deal on them. And I wasn’t sure if they would be a big improvement. But I gotta say, if nothing else, they’re much more silent than what I was using before.
The ones that came with the Scarlett Studio Kit.
Oh, there’s no hissing or electrical noise?
Well, I just mean actual noise canceling.
Oh, yeah, the isolation in these is fantastic.
That’s the word, isolation.
Yeah, yeah. And they’re so freaking comfortable. I think someone described them as kittens on your ears.
Yeah, I will say I don’t find them as comfortable. Oh, is it the Scarlett? Maybe because I have this big giant head.
Well, I do too. I got a big old pumpkin head.
What hat size do you wear?
I don’t wear hats.
What kind of statement is that? I don’t wear hats. They’re not cool enough.
No, but when I wear a baseball cap, like a fitted one, it’s a seven and a quarter. So I know that’s on the big side. So these are a little tight, but they do, like you said, they isolate fantastically, and they’ll work great for the podcast and also for editing.
Yeah, because you won’t have any headphone bleed-through issues. But hold on to those buyers. I’m sure they don’t…
It’s mostly metal. The spine that holds the earcups is completely metal, so it takes a little bit more time to break in.
I’m not planning on getting rid of them. I know they sound great, and they’re definitely an improvement for editing, which is really what I wanted them for.
I actually got a new pair of headphones as well, because I was very lucky. I actually won a pair of really nice headphones when my team won the Team Challenge at VO Atlanta. Those were like the Sennheiser 280 Pros.
And those are about $100 headphones. And I found out after the fact that voice actor Crispin Freeman is also a big fan of those, right at the $100 mark. But they were talking about head size.
They’re just a little bit too uncomfortable, because they’re very springy plastic, so it really wants to stay closed, clamped on your head. And just after long sessions, I’d be getting these pressure headaches, because it’s digging into my temples.
It’s because you got a big head. It’s too big for your body. Seinfeld reference.
You might be a little young for that.
Just barely. So I got another pair that I see recommended a lot, which are actually very affordable ones, the AKG 240s. They’re super comfortable.
They look really nice. They’ve got all these golden trim on the earcups and looks very nice design-wise. Some issues though is that they’re semi-open.
So like the isolation we were talking about with the Biodynamics, you don’t have. So if you turn up too much or your volume too much during a directed session or recording a podcast, you might have some bleed through. But if you’re just editing playback from a recorded session you did earlier, they’re perfect.
They do add a little bit more bass, but for… they’re $120 less than the buyers, so if your budget is limited, they’re definitely ones to look into.
Awesome. I also forgot to mention, I bought some monitor speakers. Which I’ve never used before.
But I bought them because they have someone else coming in to record an audiobook when I get back on Monday. I wanted them to be able to hear themselves with decent audio.
What did you get?
I got the Behringer MS-16.
I don’t know if it’s Behringer or Behringer. Pretty sure it’s Behringer. It’s from the Germans.
Whatever, I don’t work for them. At least not yet. If you’re listening, we’d be happy to be a sponsor.
Or have you as a sponsor. Yeah, so they sound pretty good. I just have them sitting on top of my bookcase where I have the rest of my studio equipment.
Hopefully they’ll be good enough for my guest on Monday.
Nice, nice. Well, I’m sure. And there are some other affordable options.
I know the Personus Eris E5s are recommended a lot, as well as the KRK5s. So right at the 150 per pair price point.
Yeah, awesome. So any other purchases from you?
Actually, well, a bit of a bet. I got the Yamaha AGO3. I got rid of it because of personal reasons.
It was a gift from an ex. And then I got it back because it made the podcast and playback for some of the Zoom room meetings that I have that much easier. So I was just like, curses, there’s nothing at this price point that does quite what that unit does.
And a lot of our fellow talent rave about it, too. So I’m like, well, it’s all right to have a backup. Still waiting on Mixerface, though.
Lord knows if that’s going to happen at this point.
Oh, boy.
But then other than that, sort of a backup option, I got another SKB case with that, where you can sort of adjust… It’s just a really nice mic case where you can adjust all of the cushioning inside of it to fit whatever mics or mounts or interfaces you want.
I remember you talking about that a couple episodes ago. You love that thing.
Yeah, I know, I know. Well, someone gave me a Neumann TLM 103 wrapped in bubble wrap, so I needed a better case for it.
It rides safely, didn’t it?
It did, I’ll give you that. Sounds good. So good that I don’t use it very often because my space is not quite that isolated.
416 isolated, not 103 isolated. Which brings me back to another point about traveling. With equipment, I really recommend that USB mics can be great because they tend to have a smaller capsule and a smaller pickup pattern than your average large condenser mic.
And actually, there are some like the Yeti and the new MK4, which are pretty much just like digital versions of analog mics. So I wouldn’t recommend taking those. You just have to be aware of how much ambient noise is in whatever space you’re recording in because just like in your home studio, the space is the most important factor.
Yeah, that’s a great point. As you can hear with my USB setup right now, it’s not isolating at all. You’ll hear every seagull, every crow, even probably the fly that’s on my arm right now that I’m swatting away.
So the space, as always, is the most important thing. So with that, before we get to our special guest, let’s move on to this week’s VO MeterStick. We have a demo from one of our fans, Sonny James, who sent this along along with a question about mic placement.
Hey, everybody, it’s time for the VO Meter Strik. What did he say? It’s time for the VO…
Oh, never mind. The VO Meter Strik? Oh, got it.
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His report from Vietnam had won him widespread respect and he was at his best as he held the peace as the convention devolved into violence. The question is, what is the diversity measure of your personal and professional stakeholder network? You know, we hear often about good old boy networks and they’re certainly alive and well.
But to some extent, we all have a network of people we’re comfortable with. This module is about your capacity to develop relationships with people who are very different than you.
So, Sean, what Sonny really wanted to know was how to properly place a shotgun mic within his booth. He’s interested in buying a 416 or an NTG-3, and he asked me what’s the best mic position for him, and how do we normally address that?
You have to experiment and find out yourself.
Yeah, and that’s kind of exactly what I told him. We sound like a broken record, but it really is true. I’ve tried both of those mics, and what I found was neither of them was really good fit for my booth and my voice, and really in any position.
I tried above the nose. I tried below the chest, pointing up. I tried at my right ear, at my left ear, pretty much every possible combination, and it didn’t work for me.
And that doesn’t mean it won’t work for Sonny, but the point is you really have to get it in your space and experiment.
The 416 is definitely one worth trying. It’s probably the most accessible industry microphone out there. It’s still very cost prohibitive for some, but still, if you can afford it, you should definitely try it.
But my 416, it took me almost a year to get a placement where I’m like, oh, that sounds really good. And it wasn’t until I was with a place with better acoustic treatment that I was able to find a better placement for myself. So you really just have to keep experimenting and exhaust all your options before you give up on a mic.
Yeah, and I would say, find a place where you can either borrow the mic or maybe rent the mic and get it in your space before you make a commitment. And then send it out to friends or colleagues that you know that would give it a listen and tell you, hey, that’s not the best placement. Maybe try it in a different space.
Send it to us.
Exactly.
We’d be happy to play the audio and say, or play it on the show and tell you how it sounds.
We are cruel but kind. So with our feedback, so. So like I was saying, we offer cruel, but we like to think instructive feedback.
We want all of our listeners who reach out to us asking to help improve some aspect of their sound or their business to be receptive to our feedback. So speaking of being receptive to feedback, our next guest is actually extremely generous with his time and his experience and in the education that he tries to bring to new talents who are trying to get into the voiceover industry. So without further ado, we’re gonna take you guys into our interview room at Source Connect Now and bring you our guest today, Paul Strikwerda.
All right, so we are using Source Connect Now right now and we have a very special guest today on the VO Meter. He’s a dear friend. I’ve been following his blog and his book for the last several years.
We have today, I hope I get his name right, Paul Strikwerda.
Very good. Woohoo, thank you.
How are you doing today, sir?
I’m doing great. Looking forward to this. I’ve been looking forward to this for a couple of months now.
I’ve been following you guys too. And we met up in Atlanta finally. And I remember you asking me, would you like to be a guest on the podcast?
And I said, can we do it tomorrow? It took us a little while, but finally we’re here in different places on the planet, but we’re together.
Yeah, I just want to make sure you actually said yes under your own free will. But thank you so much.
Because people can be so much more polite in person and then just kind of quietly fade away over email, you know.
Oh, no, I would never do that.
I would, but apparently you’re nicer.
Hey, he’s a real mentions this.
You know I’m almost the nicest guy in voice overs. The nicest guy that must be Bob Sauer, right? That’s how he advertises himself.
And I’m the third, so that makes you the fourth, I guess, at least. So for some people in the voiceover community who might not know who you are, Paul, why wouldn’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to the States and became a voice talent?
Ooh, I could fill the entire podcast with my life story. But it begins in the Netherlands. Because many people know that I am from the Netherlands and a lot of them still believe that I live and work in the Netherlands.
But I came to the United States at the end of the last century, which is so long ago now, 1999, December. I remember it well. I came in the same plane that took the boy band in sync back to the United States.
Are you kidding me?
So I have no idea who these guys were. But imagine this, the door swung open. I came out as one of the first people and all I saw was a whole group of teens yelling, yelling, yelling.
I said, what a warm welcome.
And they all ignored me.
They said, Lance Bass, will you marry me? Oh dear. But anyway, I came to the States because I wanted to start a new life.
I’d been in radio and in television for most of my life in the Netherlands, working for public radio and television and our Dutch World Service. And it’s kind of this, Holland is a very small place. It’s this been there, done that part of thing.
I was coming out of a relationship and I decided to pack my bags and I literally arrived at Philadelphia Airport with two suitcases in my hand. And then I came to a nice place called New Hope in Pennsylvania. And I looked at myself in the mirror and said, okay, I’m here, now what?
And I said, okay, I want to do something with microphone, with my voice, but how, where to start? And I found a note in the paper talking about a talent agent in Philadelphia, Mike Lemon Casting. And Mike Lemon casts all the actors in the M.
Night Shyamalan movies, but he also has a big voiceover roster. And so what I did was I went to one of those cattle calls. There were like 500 people wanting on-camera work.
There were like four people for voiceover work, and they hired me on the spot. And I spoke with a very British accent at this time, and that’s because a lot of Dutch kids grew up being taught English with the Queen’s English. So they thought I was English, and that’s how I got my start, pretending to be an Englishman, doing all kinds of commercials, like for Dorney Park.
I remember that was the first one that I did, and said, boy, this is fun. I could do this for a living. And I’ve never looked back ever since.
That’s fantastic.
Well, Paul, I know you eventually settled down in the borough of Easton, or technically you’re in Wilson, I think. And as we’ve talked about, that is where most of my family is from. My grandfather made a similar trek from Italy and settled in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, and eventually moved across the river to Easton.
And my dad grew up in a house. The address was 1621 Northampton Street in Wilson, which is so close to you, it just boggles my mind. My first introduction to you was the interview on East West Audio Body Shop with George and Dan.
And I turned around when you mentioned where you were living and I said, did he just say Easton? So that’s when I immediately looked you up. And tell me a little bit about how you ended up in the Lehigh Valley and how that is for your voiceover business.
Oh yeah, that’s a great story. It’s a fantastic neighborhood. It’s only 19 blocks from New Jersey and probably a two minute walk from your family.
And I absolutely love it here. People in the Netherlands and Europe who know me just don’t believe this when I tell them that yesterday, we had a bear in our neighborhood. They had to sedate the bear who was up in a tree and he fell down eventually and they caught him and now he’s in a better place.
Doesn’t mean they killed him, but…
It’s like humane treatment, right?
Yeah, we have roaming bears and deer and sometimes a wild coyote too. So those things do not happen in the Netherlands. So I really feel that I’m in the United States right now.
And the reason I’m here is really love. I married the love of my life and she had a home here and she wanted me to move in and said, hey, do you have a soundproof basement?
And she said, of course.
This is Pennsylvania. Yeah, we have basements with nice thick walls. And I thought, hey, voiceover studio said, honey, I’ll be here tomorrow.
Well, it is a great town. I’m actually headed there right from the beach on Saturday to visit with my family who still lives there. And unfortunately, we’ll just miss each other, but I’ll have fun in your place.
Yes, but this is one of those places where you really are part of a community if you choose to be part of a community. And that’s what I love most about the borough of Wilson and Easton as well. One of the things that I do here is that I’m one of the announcers of the local farmer’s market.
And many people say, ah, farmer’s markets, that’s no big deal. And it, well, maybe it’s not. But on a Saturday, we get about 4,000 to 5,000 people and they don’t have a billboard, all these vendors, so they need somebody with a mic who really announces the specials on a Saturday.
But we also have live music and we play music, some kind of a DJ. I’m the lost and found department. So sometimes I get cell phones.
Sometimes I get lost husbands. It’s really fun to be there in the middle of my community doing some volunteer work. And I became part of a band of actors called the Bachman House.
Now the Bachman House is one of the historic public houses from 1753. And as actors, we are kind of reenacting history that is part of the roots of Easton. So you might find me on a good day dressed up in like 1750 clothes, pretending to be one of the founding fathers.
Isn’t that fun?
That’s great. I’m familiar with that farmers market. My cousin is a chief of police in your town and often has to be there to help with crowd control.
And my aunt is a big fan of the farmers market itself.
Well, it’s the oldest continuously ongoing outdoor farmers market of the entire United States. And I hope you can tell from my voice that I’m really, really proud of that. And we were, last year, we were voted the number one market in the United States.
And, of course, I didn’t know all these things when I came to Easton. But I’m really, really happy in this community. And if you were to walk down Main Street with me, you wouldn’t go far because every minute or two I see people I know and love, and it couldn’t be better.
Well, that’s great. So just to wrap up on the towns we are in at the moment, just so everybody knows, I’m at the beach. I don’t want to rub it in too much, but if you hear some stray seagulls or people yelling on their surfboards, I apologize, but that’s where I am, and I’m having fun.
So with that, let’s move on to talk about your business… Sorry, I muted myself for a second. Let’s move on to talk about your business and some of your publications.
Sean, can you ask the first question about that?
Yes, actually, one of the first resources that I found when I started researching voiceover about five years ago now was actually your blog, The Nether Voice Blog. So why don’t you tell us a little bit how you got started with that?
You know, when I started my voiceover business, I wanted to find a way to advertise myself without really advertising myself. Because nobody knew me, I knew nobody in the whole voiceover community, and I knew that I loved one thing, I’ve always loved to write. So I just out of the blue one day said, hey, why not write about my experience in Europe and my take on the voiceover business here in the United States?
That’s kind of an angle that not too many people cover who are blogging. And I love telling stories, you know, that’s part of our profession. We are storytellers.
So it started very simple with just one blog post, and three people read it. Second blog post, four people read it. And now I have over 38,000 subscribers.
And that’s in about seven years. So I find it a very efficient way to advertise my business, as well as becoming kind of someone who loves to stir the pot and push the envelope every once in a while. Because there’s lots of things that I like in my business, and there’s lots of things that I think could be improved.
And I write about that. And thirdly, I have this whole thing of giving back to the community who has given so much to me. So I don’t think that people need to reinvent the wheel who are part of the community, who are new to the community.
So as a service to them, I want to pass on my experience, and I do that in my blog.
And it’s a very generous experience. I just got to say, you can definitely tell that you love to write because it’s just filled with poetic devices, and there’s such a sense of wordplay and actual play. It’s really a joy to read.
And you mentioned how you do like to stir the pot, though. Could you talk about some of your less popular posts or less popular ideas that you talk about in your blog?
Oh, that is risky, isn’t it? But okay. I mean, I started it…
How about the ones that generate the most buzz?
I might as well dig in. Some people know me. At least that’s the impression I got when I was at VO Atlanta.
Some people know me for my criticism of pay-to-plays, in particular one Canadian one, voices.com. A couple of years ago, I wrote a number of blogs, and I wasn’t too flattering, and they got thousands and thousands of hits. Some people still tell me that if you type in the word voices.com in like a Google search engine, the things that come up, number two and number three, are my blogs.
And it really started the discussion, I think, or continued the discussion about this whole pay-to-play model. And I described how I first started off as being a fan. I even won a prize at one point from voices.com because I was so complimentary of what they did and how they had started my business.
But once I started doing better as a voice over and learned more about what their model was about and how their way of doing business was gradually changing, my opinion of pay-to-plays and particularly voices.com started changing. So people who have been following my blog probably have been following in my footsteps and noticed that shift in my perception. So, oddly enough, when I walked the halls of the hotel in Atlanta, some people looked at me and said, oh, he’s the guy who brought down voices.com.
Well, not too fast, my friends, because they’re still in business. And they attracted a big investor recently, as you probably have heard, and they are looking to expand. So they’re not going anywhere, just staying put and they’re expanding.
But I will continue to scrutinize whatever it is that they’re doing and hopefully write about it. Because I need to say a big thank you to voices.com, because every time I write about them, my blog goes through the roof. So I hope that they stay in business and keep on doing what they’re doing in the way they’re doing it, because it’s good for me.
Another thing that I write about is really the people who think it’s just so easy to break into this business. You don’t need to know anything. We’ve talked about this before many times on your podcast as well.
They think it’s easy money and you don’t need any education. And I hold up the mirror and say, is that really true? Do you really think that you can make a fortune in voice overs?
You know, I know a lot of people who are in voice overs, and they’re no millionaires. Have you ever heard of someone who’s doing voice overs as a millionaire? I don’t.
And I’m not in for the money, but it’s not a get rich quick scheme. So I write about that too. So one of the blogs that I wrote was about five reasons not to get into voice overs.
A lot of people hated me for that.
I remember that one.
Oh gosh, yes. But what they forgot is to read the very last line. So I give these five reasons why you shouldn’t get into voice over.
And at the end they say, well, I can’t really imagine doing anything else because I love it so much.
Well, Paul, I can say from being at VO Atlanta as well, I know that look you were getting from people because I kind of had a similar impression. Even though we had talked socially over social media and emails, I kind of did see you as the pot stir and antagonist. But I want to tell our fans that a nicer person both in VO and the whole world, you will not find.
I think within five seconds of seeing each other, we were embracing a big hug. So Paul is just so friendly. And really, I think what it comes down to is journalistic and professional integrity.
And that’s what you have above reproach. And I really admire you for that.
I can only say it takes one to know one, really, because I had the same thing. And there are, you know, so many people have a wrong impression because I tend to be very critical. But I also am admiring people who have reached the pinnacle of their careers in voice overs.
And I talk about those people too. It’s not just that I’m blogging to take people down. But as in blogging, as it is in the news, people tend to focus on things that are not positive.
That’s what they tend to remember. So they look at me and say, oh, that’s that guy that likes to push the envelope and be kind of a crumudgeonous type of writer. And I use some snarkasm too.
So I have to take credit for that. And I love stirring the pot because there’s so many people who are blogging these days, and they’re all fighting for your attention. They all want to be read.
So in order to attract an audience, you need to be controversial. So it’s also a tool that I use to attract new readers, and it seems to be working.
Well, let’s talk about so-called anybody blogging. You mentioned in your book, Making Money in Your PJs, which everybody should go out and get, by the way, that you really want to focus on advertising yourself without being a blowhard about it and tooting your own horn. So is it your opinion that everybody can and maybe should be blogging as a means to advertise their business?
Or is it really a specialized skill that only the people who are good at it should do?
I’d say that it’s not for everybody. Because first of all, it takes a lot of time. I think my average blog takes maybe five minutes to read, but I spend the morning or afternoon writing it and maybe even longer researching it.
And that’s a big chunk of your week. And not everybody enjoys writing either. It’s not everybody’s strength.
I’ve always loved writing. I’ve been a journalist in the Netherlands and I’m used to cranking out some copy and coming up with headlines and things like that. But there’s other people who are much more into vlogging or into podcasting.
I know people who are really good amateur photographers and their blog is filled with photos. So I’d say if you don’t feel that inner urge to share your ideas with the world, if you’re not ready for people to comment on those ideas, often in a negative way, then you really should not start vlogging. It takes a long time, in my case, six to seven years to really get an audience that gives you some clout as well.
So it’s not an immediate payoff. And we live in this time of instant gratification. So people, if they don’t immediately see results of their efforts, they’re ready to give up.
And you have to have, I think, a unique point of view. So you need to, I think, talk about topics that a huge group of people is interested in, but you need to give your spin. And if you have to think about what that is, maybe then you’re not ready to blog either.
Well, good. I’m glad you clarified that, because, yeah, frankly, there are people who shouldn’t be blogging and people who shouldn’t be hosting a podcast. Maybe some that are talking right now.
Maybe, maybe. So another thing we wanted to ask you, one of the chapters in your book focuses on equipment. And how maybe the most expensive mic isn’t good for you.
Maybe the most inexpensive mic isn’t good for you. I know you, at least last I checked, were using the Gafel M930. Talk to us about how a newbie, because frankly that’s a lot of our audience, should go about looking for their first VO equipment.
You know, I am very lucky, because the mic that I’m using right now, the Gafel that you just mentioned, was a mic that I won. In a raffle, they literally took my name out of a hat.
That’s great.
There is this website called Recording Hacks. I don’t know how active they are, but it’s basically a review of all kinds of microphones. So if you want to find out what new model Blue came out with, what the difference is between one shotgun microphone and another shotgun microphone, go to recordinghacks.com.
And they used to have this giveaway, so I entered and out came my name and they gave me this very expensive German microphone. It’s $1,750. Well, you don’t…
It’s a wonderful thing. I love it to pieces, but you do not need a $1,700 microphone to get started. I would advise against it.
What I would do is just not get the cheapest of the cheap, but one microphone that I particularly like is the CAD-E100S microphone. Every now and then, you can buy it new for about $300, and it’s type of a shotgun microphone because it has… It focuses on your voice like a laser beam almost.
It has very low self-noise. It’s very well made. It’s built in America, and it looks fun too.
And it just has this great sound that sounds really good on most voices.
I actually use that at home.
See?
There’s a really funny story about how I acquired it in our last episode. I’m sure we won’t bore our fans again with that.
Exactly. Well, you know, then you know all about the CAD E100S, and I’m not getting paid by CAD to advertise them, but I mentioned that microphone in my blog about five years ago or so, and I called it the best microphone for voiceovers you’ve never heard of. And after that, I think it really took off, and I still see lots of people talking about the microphone.
They’ve had some quality control issues, but there’s a good warranty, so if you get one that’s not to your liking, they’ll fix whatever the problem is. But most people seem to be really happy. So I’d say get something that’s not too cheap, not too expensive, but something that at least will give you a good shot at producing quality audio.
I’m also a big fan of the British company Audient. I have a preamplifier. It’s an ID22 from Audient.
But you can get an ID4 for about $300 as well. And once again, it’s very well built, built like a tank, so you can take it on the road with you. It has very quiet preamps, and it’s just solid.
It will never ever let you down. And I use Twisted Wave as my digital audio workstation. And really, apart from getting some monitors, and my monitors are not more than $100 a pop, then you should be in business.
And I want to say, Paul, your gear reviews and that mindset really helped me along my journey, because I got an Audient as soon as I could afford it, and I’ve had a long loving relationship with them since. I’ve tried their ID14 and ID4, it’s still my favorite portable unit yet. And what’s really funny is my 416, I also wanted a raffle last year.
Yeah, it was at VO Atlanta, actually. Oh, right! You should talk to our mutual friend David Rosenthal about that one.
Which reminds me, because I found out, like, I do a lot of… I’m what’s called our membership liaison for the Global Voice Acting Academy, which David Rosenthal is our president of. And I know that you did a lot of sort of educational materials with him through the Internet Voice Coach.
So I’d love to know a little bit about sort of the mentoring role and the coaching role that you play with voiceover students.
Right. Well, David, he is just an all-around great, phenomenal, wonderful guy. Super talented and a nice person.
And we immediately clicked. And he had this idea way before, well, this was a couple of years ago, Internet Voice Coach. And he had read my blogs and he said, hey, could you start writing, from the international perspective, some blog posts specifically for my site?
And that’s what I started doing. I did one every week. And I did a blog for my website as well.
So at some point it became a little bit too much and I stopped writing for him. But I think that I produced about maybe 20 different blogs for Internet Voice Coach. And what I do with my company is that I also coach people.
It’s not easy to become one of my students because I want people to go through several hoops and different layers before they are accepted by me. Because I want to make sure that they are so motivated and totally committed to the whole process. Because I notice that people who just want to try things out and experiment are just not in it for the right reasons.
I want really people who want to become a professional voice over and not explore options. So I think it’s so important. And it’s so much fun to teach people.
And I learn so much from my students every time that I coach them that when I start listening back to myself, I learn a lot too simply by listening to other people. And I did that the other day in a kind of a different context, because one of my clients said, I’ve recorded something with a different Dutch voice talent. I have no idea what he is saying.
And if he’s reading the script, could you review it for me? So I was actually proof listening, and I got paid for it. And my goodness, I couldn’t believe my ears what I was hearing, and it wasn’t good at all.
There was so much noise from the mouth, from the environment. He wasn’t reading the script. He was putting emphasis on the wrong words.
It was really rubbish. I couldn’t believe that this guy got hired. So I did a very comprehensive review, and it was like four pages for five minutes of audio.
And the next thing I hear from the client was, thank you very much for the review. I just fired your Dutch colleague. Can I hire you?
That wasn’t intended, but that’s certainly an interesting way to get clients.
Yeah, kind of an ideal turnout for that situation. Yes!
It was not one of those things where I was begging for a job, but I thought, hey, maybe this is a new model, because there’s so many people who hire us that also need proof listeners. So even if you’re not suitable for the job, we can all check whether someone is listening to the script, reading the script or interpreting in the right way. So who knows?
I’m going to try this again.
Exactly. And I’ve done some proofreading and transcription work because I do work for a lot of international clients and Asian and European clients. And sometimes the scripts are just riddled with spelling errors or just don’t sound natural in American English at all.
Absolutely. And that’s one of those, I call it, hidden powers that we have. You know, I think the ideal voiceover should be like a superhero for their clients.
But people don’t realize it. If you’re working, especially with clients abroad who have to translate scripts, and you’re right, a lot of clients have to not spend too much money, and so they hire somebody who’s not really good at translating.
Or they use software.
It shows. So one of the things that I offer my clients as well is I’d be happy to go over this script. Of course, I’ll charge you for it, but then you know that you don’t embarrass yourself by having somebody read a script that simply is unprofessional.
Wonderful. And that’s something that I encourage a lot of people too. I know that costs can be prohibitive, but if there are certain things, and I learned this from a lot of your blogs, if there are certain things that you’re not good at, or not as good at as, say, just acting into a microphone, try and outsource it.
Work with a team, because you’ll eventually come up with a much better product than you would by yourself.
I think that’s so important. And I started to realize that as I got busier and busier and busier, you have to play your strengths. So I’m really okay with words, but I stink with numbers.
But I happen to be married to somebody who is really good with numbers, and who even seems to enjoy balancing the books.
That’s my secret weapon, too. My wife’s a CPA.
Yeah, exactly. Aren’t we lucky, right? And that allows me to focus on what I think I’m good at.
The same thing with editing. You can make much more money narrating an audiobook than editing it. So why do that stuff yourself?
I mean, Richard Branschland didn’t get to be one of the richest people on earth by doing everything himself. When you look at people who have so-called made it in life, they made it in part because they found people who were brilliant at the things that they were not. So I use the same model for my voice over business.
Wonderful. And one thing that I’ve always liked about you, Paul, is that you’re so generous with your experience and you offer so many educational materials. I mean, you’re a coach.
And I know, again, coaching, like many other aspects, people have to prioritize what they can invest in. But if they can’t afford coaching, one of the first places I send them to is your blog. And if they can afford a little bit, then I send them to your book.
So why don’t you tell us about your eponymous Making Monies in Your PJs book?
Well, it’s just one of the ways I make money in my PJs.
Because at some point, I’ve written so many, many blogs. And the thing about a blog and a little bit about podcasts as well is just it comes and it goes. It doesn’t have a lot of staying power.
A book, though, you buy it and you can put on the shelf and you can pick it up and then read a chapter and put it away again. So I thought I need to find some way to give my blogs some staying power. So I selected, I think, the best 40 or 50 blogs and I put them in a certain order, different chapters, and all of a sudden I realized, my goodness, I have a book!
And it’s over 400 pages. And it’s so easy these days to self-publish. I was a little bit impatient.
I didn’t want to go from publisher to publisher and say, can you please do this? You can just go to Amazon and they have a machine that spits them out on demand. And not only that, you have the version in paper, of course, the paperback, but also the digital one for the Kindles, the iPads.
And so a number of years ago, I decided to take the plunge and produce this book. And it’s been doing really, really well. Like I said, it’s making money for me and my PJs.
And it’s one way for me to monetize my blog. But again, not just for the money, because I don’t feel very motivated by money. If I were, I probably would be driving a different car.
But it’s also because I know that the book is making the rounds. A couple of months ago, one of the guys I saw on that TV series, Mad Men, he contacted me out of the blue and said, Hey, my name is so-and-so, and you may have seen me on Mad Men. And I said, Yeah, yeah, I just watched your episode on Netflix the other day.
He said, Well, what many people don’t know is that I’m teaching voice overs in New York. And I’ve just read your book. And is it okay if I use it in my class?
So I know it’s making the rounds. And I thought, my gosh, that’s the best compliment someone ever paid me.
And what I love is that… Whatever happened in the audiobook version? Oh, you know…
I know a guy. I started it. I started it.
And then I got so busy with stuff that would make me more money that I kind of put it on the back burner.
Gotcha.
And now I’m at the stage where I said, I need to work on a second edition. I need to update the information in the book. So that’s one of my projects for the next couple of weeks after my vacation.
I’m going to update this Making Money in Your PJ’s Book. And then if I have time, I will record it.
Well, if you need an editor, I’m pretty familiar with the content. So I’d be happy to take a look at it for you.
Yes.
Hey, practice what you preach. Very nice.
I was thinking of outsourcing it.
Well, Paul, that pretty much wraps it all that we had planned to ask you today. I just wanted to say thank you so much. It’s a little surreal, actually, to have followed your work for so long and then to actually become a bit of a friend and mentee to you.
So thanks again for everything that you offer the voiceover community, just your unique voice and just your generosity of spirit. And thank you so much.
Oh, it was an absolute pleasure getting to know you in person and now being your guest. And I think the next time we got to get together, you’re welcome here in Easton. I’ll show you the town, and I’m sure that Paul knows a couple of other places that I might not know.
And we’ll have a pint here and a pint there, and we’ll talk voiceover, we’ll talk life, and I’m looking forward to that day.
Sounds wonderful. Thanks so much again, Paul. Enjoy your vacation.
Maybe I’ll pass you on the turnpike on my way there while you’re leaving.
Be sure to wave. As we say in the Netherlands, hartelijk bedankt, ik heb het met heel veel plezier gedaan.
I have no idea what that means, but it was eloquent.
Thank you so much, it was a great pleasure to do this interview.
Wonderful.
Fabulous.
And how can people get a hold of you or find out about your blog?
Good question. nethervoice.com. That’s all you need.
nethervoice.com. It’s one word. Nether is in Netherlands.
Voice is in voice.
And that’s some brilliant marketing right there.
And that’s where I find my blog, my demos, and how you can get in touch with the Dutch guy.
Awesome. Well, thanks again, Paul. It’s been a real pleasure.
All right. So we are back. And wow.
And that, like, talk about generosity of spirit. It was so great to have Paul on again. How are you feeling after that, Paul?
Yeah, he’s just a breath of fresh air. Like I mentioned, meeting him personally in VO Atlanta, when you talk to him in person, you just want to give him a big hug.
Exactly. He always has, like, a big smile on his face. He’s so genuine.
And he’s just a very charming guy.
Yeah, indeed.
So, and speaking of which, he has generously offered the first 15 people to comment to this podcast.
A free copy of his book, Making Money in Your PJs by Paul Strikwerda. I’ve read this book at least five times already. I read it almost annually just to make sure that my voice over business is as good as it could be.
And it’s one of the first books I recommend to new talent who are interested in the kind of mindset that you need to have in order to have a successful voice over business. So, once again, if you’re one of the first 15 people to respond to this podcast in our Facebook comments section, we will contact you and we will get you a copy of Paul’s excellent book, Making Money in Your PJs.
So if you haven’t found us yet on Facebook, please go to our page. It’s The VO Meter, in case you didn’t know that. On Facebook, make a comment.
If you’re one of the first 15, we will send you that book.
Awesome. Thanks again, Paul, for that incredibly generous offer. And then once again, if you want to contact Paul or if you want to read his blog, that’s the nethervoice.com.
So nether, as in the Netherlands, where he’s from, and voice, as in voiceover.com. And then you can thank him as well for being on the podcast. So that wraps up this episode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Thanks again for listening, everybody. Have a great summer. Thanks for listening to The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.

The VO Meter… Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. Hi, everyone.
Welcome to episode 11 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
We have a super exciting show coming up. We are basically like kids in a candy store because we are interviewing two of our idols, basically, George Whittam and Dan Lenard, from VOBS, formerly the East West Audio Body Shop. We watch their show every week.
We’re in the chat room contributing. They, I like to say they taught me everything I know, and I’m just so excited to get to that interview.
I am too. George and Dan have been very generous with their time and have agreed to come on our set after being on theirs. Was it two months ago?
Yeah, about that.
Very cool. Yeah, so I hope you guys are interested in a gear-centric episode because that’s what these guys are all about.
Yeah, it got a little geeky, but that’s okay.
Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. Len, we’re raising the sophistication of our podcast.
Exactly.
But with that, let’s talk about some current events. Do you have anything exciting that you wanna talk about, Paul?
I do, actually. I mentioned last episode that I had taken on a long title or just finished a long title under a pseudonym, and I went looking for some more work under a said pseudonym, and I just landed a six-book series that’ll be coming out in the next couple of months. I’m working on the first one now.
They’re all about an hour to an hour and a half, short stories in the same genre. So those will be coming out shortly. Again, if you’d like to go check it out, listen to episode 10 with the little Easter egg about how you can find the pseudonym.
Do that, and you can look me up on Audible.
Now I just can’t get that theme song out of my head.
Which one’s that?
He’s the man with the name that you want to touch.
Oh, right, you’re right, right.
But you mustn’t touch.
And then I have another client on Freelancer who is sending me an audio book every two weeks. And I have one of those coming out this week and another one I should be working on starting tomorrow. And then finally I have a client today who has sent me the first of what is supposed to be a 30,000 hour English lesson job.
30,000 hour?
Right, I should explain it’s an ensemble where sort of like the work I’ve been doing with you, actually, there’s several different narrators playing different parts for English language learning for non-English speakers. And I’m doing one of the roles. So I don’t know exactly how many lines it’ll be, but it’s supposed to be 30,000 hours total.
It’s a job out of India. And I’m working on it obviously remotely and did the first job today in a small piece and we’ll see how the rest goes over the next couple of months.
Very cool. I mean, it’s nice to have a giant, gantic gig like that that you can rely on. That’s very cool.
Yeah, unfortunately, I didn’t bill at that rate. So it’s not like it, and there’s no retainer. So it’s not like it’s a guarantee.
So I’m hoping that they’ll keep me on and they’ll like what they hear, but it sort of remains to be seen. I have to make sure I do a good job, which I always do with my clients, but especially this time, because that carried out there with so much extra work.
Very cool, and if they need a young 20 to 40-something-year-old voice, just let me know.
I will let you know for sure. Although I watched the… They have a scratch track with a computerized voice, and I watched the video today, and there’s like seven women characters and me.
So I don’t know what that means.
Lucky man.
So what’s going on with you?
Well, last episode, we were talking about when I went out to Seattle to get some professional headshots made for my new agent, and I finally got those back, and they look awesome. I try not to be too vain about it, but I posted some of my favorites on Facebook, and I got 200 responses that ranged from the hilarious to the downright raunchy.
Yeah, I participated in some of those as well.
What was that?
I participated in some of those comments as well.
That’s right. But I mean, largely they were all positive. It was pretty hilarious.
Yeah, I saw them too. I think they look great.
Well, thank you very much. A lot of my friends were like, you’re a lot handsomer in these than I remember you being. And so, I’m like, really?
I saw you like three weeks ago. And so, I don’t know.
That’s not where they saw you. I mean, I was talking to you offline about how the last time I saw you in person was at VO Atlanta, where you were basically on no sleep and tearing your hair out over the challenge.
Just drenched in sweat and emaciated and like bags under my eyes.
Falling up a stairwell. So, you definitely didn’t look as good as you do when you’re all coiffed and taking headshots.
Well rested and cleaned up.
Yeah. That’s great. Congrats on those.
They really came out great.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.
So, Michael Doucet out of Seattle did a really good job on those. Other than that, I’ve just got my monthly e-learning project that I’m working on right now. Just sent some scripts to you this week, actually.
I just finished some huge narration projects that I was working for this lovely German production company. We have a very nice rapport going so far. But this was 31 individual scripts, about half hour each.
Yeah, it was a pretty long project. But the rate was very nice as well. And they were a pleasure to work with.
So, hopefully they will come back for more.
Now, did you do those all at once and then split them up later? Or did you record them all individually?
I usually do it in a couple of sessions. I focus on long form mainly. So I do try to record long stints for an hour or two and then just kind of divide it up later.
If I’m smart, usually I’ll start and stop and record individual files just for archiving purposes. But you can do the same thing in twisted way, just using the markers and the split by markers feature.
Yeah, that’s kind of what I was thinking. I’ve done similar work in the past where I use that exact feature, put the marker in, split by marker, and it will put them all in the same folder for you with that file name convention that you create. It’s really awesome.
It is very awesome. And Dan Lenard actually has some great tips about getting very specific with how you arrange your markers so it’s like everything has the same amount of opening of room tone and everything is uniform. And it’s very cool.
You should definitely check it out.
Awesome. Well, we will get to our main topic and our interview with Dan and George in just a minute. But first, why don’t you tell us about our VO Meter Stick this week?
So up next, we have the very talented Jack DiGoglia. You might know Jack as the incredibly talented transcripter for the VOBS podcasting episodes. Like he’ll watch these episodes and write very detailed notes and transcriptions, including time codes of interesting things that happen in a given episode.
So as my workloads increased, I can’t watch these episodes as consistently as I used to. So I’m very grateful to Jack for always providing these detailed, just wonderful write-ups of the episode. And if I read them and I really like what it was about, I’ll still go back and watch it.
I don’t care. So thank you, Jack. That is a great volunteer service that you’re offering us.
This is a slightly different VO Meter Stick than we usually do in that Jack has actually sent us a series of bloopers from some of his audiobook recording sessions. So without further ado, take it away Jack with our VO Meter shtick.
Okay, everybody, it’s time for the VO Meter shtick. What did he say? It’s time for the VO…
Oh, never mind. The VO Meter shtick? Oh, got it.
He touched Coulter’s cheek. He touched Cotter’s neck. Judy countered as she paused to push her thick glasses back up her nose.
As she paused to push her thick glasses back up on her nose. Her pace failed. Her face paled.
Hiding his hands in his trembling hands. With an amused look in his eyes and a well-modulated tone to his voice that carried a hint of condensation. That carried a hint of condescension.
Emergency medical personnel transported the city to city hospital under heavy escort. Several minutes passed and his version became blurred. Hoffmeyer grabbed a set of cufflinks from his belt.
Hoffmeyer grabbed a set of handcuffs from his belt. She held up her two favorite Barbie dolls. They look like the beach.
They like the beach. The Huey was painted in drab olive. The Huey was painted in olive drab and had seen better days.
Server virtualization is a mythology of dividing the resources of a computer. Server virtualization is a methodology of dividing the resources of a computer. He pulled the hair off her forehead.
He pushed the hair off her forehead. This pre-Columbian artifact is made with such intimacy. This pre-Columbian artifact is made with such intricacy.
He had a preposterous gut that spilled out over his belt. He had a prosperous gut that spilled out over his belt. Nazar al-Bayati supported a heavy brush of a mustache.
Nazar al-Bayati supported a heavy brush of a mustache. They were all chanting among themselves. They were all chatting among themselves.
Flocked wallpaper, brass wall scones, brass wall sconces, her head gently cradling her son’s head, her hand gently cradling her son’s head. You’re looking at images from the side scan solar system. You’re looking at images from the side scan sonar system.
The Sphinx is southwest of the Great Period. The Sphinx is southwest of the Great Pyramid. As lunchtime approached…
As lunchtime approached… Willie’s second tug pulled her through the side of the garage. Willie’s second tug pulled her through the side door of the garage.
By three years of age, a child’s speech skills and vocabulary. By three years of age, a child’s speech skills and vocabulary. Mr. Javier asks them if there were any new words in the book they don’t have on their P-list yet.
Speak freely.
Thank you, Jack, those were hilarious. Something I hadn’t thought of, creating your own personal blooper reel. Good stuff.
So believe it or not, we actually do not have a questionable gear purchase this week. I know our fans are going to clamor for it, but I managed to not buy anything stupid this week.
Pretty much the same for me too. I have some knickknacks and just minor purchases that I have varying levels of satisfaction with, but nothing to bore or like to tell your ears off. So no questionable gear purchase this week, folks.
Sorry.
I was also a little scared that Dan and George would yell at me. So I tried to restrain myself at least this week while we talk to them, and hopefully it’ll go over well.
Well, they might anyways. I don’t know if they like poking fun, but who knows? Maybe they can tell us about some of their questionable gear purchases.
That’d be awesome, yeah.
All right, but speaking of Dan and George, we’re sure that you guys are chomping at the bit to get to hear what they have to say about all things audio. So without further ado, here are Dan and George. All right, we are moving on into our Source Connect Now studio, and I am very excited to have these two upstanding gentlemen.
They have over 200, that’s 275 episodes of their East West Audio Body Shop slash Voice Over Body Shop podcast. They’ve had agents, celebrity voice talent, anyone under the sun that’s related to VO, you name it. We have the home studio master, Dan Lenard, and the audio engineer of the stars, George Whittam.
How are you guys doing?
Fabulous, great to be here, guys.
Yeah, man, it’s really fun to join you. Fun to join you guys here today.
All right, and we are so excited to have you. So we’ve got a lot of questions, and Paul, why don’t you start off with that?
Well, guys, we are big fans, as we talked about in the show, but we may have some people that may not be as familiar with your show and your individual backgrounds. And I thought maybe we could start by just talking a little bit about how you got started and some of the things that brought you to where you are today. And actually, if we talk about backgrounds, we have a lot in common.
George, I don’t know if I ever told you this, but my wife went to Virginia Tech at the same time you did. I think it overlapped by three out of the four years. And my brother-in-law was the exact same year as you were there.
And Dan, I sold insurance for a while, which is something I know you got into and got out of quickly. There’s a lot of commonalities there. And I was wondering if you could just talk about where you started and how you’ve gotten to the point you are now with your businesses and the show.
All right, well, you know, I’ve been in broadcasting. I started like in 1975. Yes, there was human beings on this planet back then.
No one was alive then.
I was in radio and television until about 1992. And then I sold insurance, life health, long-term care, disability insurance, broke a few telephones trying to do all this stuff for all that.
Got your Series 7 in 66?
I did. And then, and I did sell mutual funds and things along those lines and annuities. But I hated it.
So I got out of that. And my mother-in-law, bless her heart, suggested that perhaps I go back to school and teach high school what I really loved, which was social studies. And US history and the Constitution.
And I did. When I was 40 years old, I went back to college, got my teaching degree, and ended up teaching in our public schools for three years and really enjoyed teaching, despised the very ground that administrators and other people, you know, they’re horrible. I mean, there are some wonderful people in education, but…
As an institution, you’re saying.
As an institution, it’s pretty bad.
Not narrowing it down to anybody in particular.
Well, I could narrow it down to a couple of people in particular. We won’t mention any names, and they’re not in Voice Over and they would never know this. I ever said this.
That’s every teacher, by the way.
Yeah, but I tend to think that our educational system was run by a bunch of insane Marxists who really were hell-bent on making sure that this country got completely dumbed down. So when you tell kids, hey, you know, you can be something, they don’t like you telling them that. It’s kind of interesting.
Anyway, education and I obviously split ways around 19, or in 2001, and I found myself at home finishing up my master’s degree and a project that I did got me involved in recording again and doing voiceover again. And I just checked out to see what was going on in voiceover. And voiceover was in 2003, was really just starting to take off as far as an internet business was concerned.
So I had the chance to really get ride the front crest of the wave on that. But because I had experience working in radio studios and recording studios, setting up the proper environment for proper recording was a real simple thing for me and using the right equipment. And people started…
I would list it… Back in the early days of online forums and stuff, I would start to type in things and people started to notice that I was commenting on it and they started writing me questions. And after about a year of spending a long time writing questions or answering questions, the missus said, you know, you really should hang out a shingle.
You can’t take 30 years of experience and just sort of like dole it out for free. And so about 2005, I started becoming the home studio master and been doing it ever since. And it’s always fun to teach people.
Having my master’s degree in education, I apparently am able to relate fairly, what is seemingly complex to make it a little bit more simple. George?
Oh, whoa.
Remember, you’re here too. He’s only heard that story about 30, 40 times.
Well, my background is really in music. And then I studied music at Virginia Tech, got a degree in recording and audio engineering and music performance and a minor in communications. I did radio in college, just for the hell of it.
I was on AM and FM and didn’t think much of it. I just thought it was fun. It was an activity.
It was neat to be on the air, but I wasn’t thinking of it as a career in broadcasting at all. I was really focused on recording. That’s what I wanted to do.
At graduation…
Can I pause you for a second? You said a minor in performance. What was your instrument you played?
I have a major in music, and I have a minor in telecommunications.
Oh, sorry.
But my music performance, I played trumpet.
Oh, I didn’t know that.
Oh, I did too.
That’s another commonality. I have a trumpet sitting right outside the whisper room.
My dad’s still an active musician. George A. Whittam in the chat room is still being…
He calls himself Brass Lips sometimes.
Yeah, I was the exact opposite in undergrad. I was a communications major and a music minor.
I love it, man. There was a lot of commonalities.
Funny.
And I just never was big into performance. I hated practicing. That’s probably the big problem.
So I was in engine engineering. I started a recording business in 1997 with my dad called Eldorado Recording Services, which was built into an Eldorado RV. You ever see those tan and brown striped aluminum siding chunker RVs you see in Venice, California along the side of the road?
I used to have one of those with a studio in it. That is awesome. And it was for doing remotes and stuff.
It was a lot of fun, didn’t make any money, burned a lot of money, but my dad was very supportive. He thought it was really cool and fun. Recorded a bunch of stuff, but then decided it was time to move to LA.
Came out in 2004 after three years of doing radio broadcast for the Eagles Radio Network for football. That was where I got the…
E-A-G-L-E-S, Eagle… Eagles!
Yeah, that’s where I got to spend some time in real broadcasting, doing real stuff where actually people were listening and…
Did you work with Meryl Rees?
I did.
I worked with… This is Meryl Rees.
And you’re listening to 94WYSP.
And I worked with that guy for a couple years. For our fans that don’t know, he’s the classic voice of the Eagles for the last like 50 years. He’s amazing.
Yeah, he’s been there a long time. He’s like the Harry… Is it the Harry…
Harry Carrey?
Harry Carrey.
Harry Carrey was the fifth.
The very… The Vin Scully of the…
Yeah, you know, those guys that have been doing this forever, that’s him. Anyway, left that world after three years and came out here, started doing answering ads on Craigslist for film production sound mixing, because I figured that was the way to make a living here. At this point, Voice Over was still not really on the radar.
I had helped with setting up one studio in Philadelphia and just, that was it, you know, it was just me helping out a buddy. Moved out here, did that film production stuff for a while, started getting a referral or two from an agent, actually a manager named Jason Marks, because I had helped out that one voice actor, his name’s Howard Parker. I call him my client zero.
Ground zero.
Yeah, he’s like client zero. He’s the origin of the disease. And he’s still a very successful…
Yeah, very successful voice actor to this day. But, and then he referred me to his manager, his manager started referring me clients. Somewhere along the way, Connection led me to Don LaFontaine, worked with him for a few years.
And then not long after Don passed away, Dan and I met at… Maybe it was around the time or a little bit before. Dan and I met at…
Yeah, we met at…
We met in 2008.
2008. I met Don in 2007.
Yes. Yeah, Dan and I met at Voice 2007.
And then you and I met at 2008.
Correct. Dan helped me out. I was doing my first presentation in front of people live about Voice Over, ever.
And Dan helped me on the fly, dumb it down, so it didn’t glaze everybody’s eyeballs over in the room. And well, we hit it off ever since. I mean, we just stayed friends after that.
So how did that lead into the show itself?
Well, we started doing a few things together online. Remember, we did a webinar, I think, for one of the pay to play services.
Oh, we did.
Yes.
I forgot about that.
Yeah, hey, it was like seven, eight years ago.
So that was the first thing we did together.
Together, and we collaborated on that. And then we did a workshop at the Don LaFontaine Lab. Yes, we did.
Because my mother lives out here in California, and we would come out here a lot, and so I’d come visit George, and we’re like, hey, why don’t we do an all-day workshop? Or was it a two-day workshop?
I think so.
I think it was a two-day workshop. And that was a lot of fun, working with a lot of people that we knew and a few fresh faces. And then how this came about is, originally, we were thinking, yeah, we should probably just do a, everybody is doing podcasting these days.
Maybe we should do a podcast about Voice Over Studios. And then I’m not sure why we decided to do it as a TV show. I think it’s because you thought you could.
We were talking about how we love car talk. That was part of it as well. Remember the car talk show?
I mean, it was the way the report of those guys had, and they made it really funny and fun. And we’re like, we could do that. Maybe people would want to listen to that.
So we wanted to do it live. We knew that. We wanted to do it live.
We didn’t want to have to edit it and post. That was a big… We’re like, if we’re gonna do this and commit to it and do it every week, we can’t have a lot of post time.
So that’s why we did it live. And since we’re doing it live at the time, when did we start, 2000?
March 11th, 2011. March 22nd, 2011.
Man, I’m so glad I have Dan.
Yeah, that’s about all I remember.
He has a memory. But, and I was like, well, we’re gonna do this audio, but then we’re gonna have our webcams. Let’s just have them anyway.
And at the time, Ustream was the only way I knew how to stream it live. So we were like, let’s just turn on our cameras. It was really incidental.
The cameras were really not the focus. It was more about the audio, but the video stuck. And I’m regretting it ever since.
Because it just gets more and more complex.
It’s so complicated.
And then we did it for five years. I was in… Remotely, I was in Buffalo.
George was in Santa Monica. And occasionally we would get together, which was always a lot of fun, especially when we would get at FAFCon or something, and we would have a live audience.
The VO Peeps, we did it at one time?
Twice we did it there, yeah. We did the anniversary show there, and then we were over at the VO Peeps. There’s like 40, 50 people at that.
You guys actually built a booth in Anne’s room.
Oh, yes. That was great. That’s a classic video.
That is classic.
And actually that booth, I think somebody else is using that now.
It will live on.
It lives on, as does the studio suit that it was based around. And then for a number of reasons, my family had to move out here. It had to.
We really wanted to, but we had a good excuse to come out to California. And now George and I are 20 minutes apart. And…
There’s a no brainer to do it here.
To do it here.
Because Dan has a studio.
Yeah, the studio here is really nice. It’s cool.
Well, you really lucked out on a house too. I mean, I know you guys had a very specific criteria for it, but wow, it’s a gorgeous studio and house. So well done, Dan.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, I mean, they nailed it. Being in LA, your chances of finding a house with a studio are slightly increased.
Well guys, I know you didn’t want to rehash that story, but even though I’ve watched all the episodes, there’s still some great nuggets in there that I didn’t know about and I’ll bet our fans will appreciate. But we would like to move into some of the more juicy questions we had. So Sean, I know you want to start us off with a question you had for the guys.
Well, yeah, I mean, both of you have been working with recording and broadcast technology for decades. What are some of the biggest innovations you’ve seen that still kind of blow your mind?
Innovations that have blow our minds.
Well, I mean, the first…
Dan’s been around longer, so there’s more innovations that he has seen than I have.
There was the advent of magnetic tape.
And then DAT, and then…
Internet.
Yeah, well, yeah, the internet is clearly, that’s the most mind blowing thing.
Absolute game changer, right?
It is, and it’s really what makes the voice over business what it is today. And it’s, that more than anything else is really driving what goes on and how people communicate. And the fact that people are communicating using the internet is what’s driving the voice over business because everything has to be narrated or somebody has to physically talk about something.
It’s created more opportunities and more talent all at the same time.
Yeah, well, opportunities, talent is another question.
Talented parties.
Yeah, it’s a plural talent. Yeah, it’s an actual name of something.
But I don’t know, in terms of like, you’re probably thinking more of technology, I’m assuming, Paul. Is that what you mean?
Gear? That was actually Sean’s question, but…
Oh, yeah. Oh, Sean, sorry. And it could be like, but that was something that I hadn’t considered.
And it actually kind of moves on to my next question. How do you guys, because of the internet, people are allowed to do this from home, how do you feel about the fact that a home studio is pretty much a given necessity now?
We think it’s absolutely freaking fantastic.
From our perspective, it’s people that make a living designing, setting up, troubleshooting, you know, all that stuff, sooth saying.
Yeah, and teaching people how to use it. It’s fabulous for us.
It’s a good thing for us.
Because honestly, well, go ahead.
No, I mean, you can speak to it from a voice actor’s perspective. For me, my entire business is based on the fact that people have to have a home studio. I would not do what I do without it, from a voice actor’s perspective.
Well, from a voice actor’s perspective, it’s tremendously, you know, it gives you a tremendous amount of freedom. It allows you to be, you know, an entrepreneur, you know, that sort of thing. So, but you have to know, it’s one of those important pieces of your voice over business.
You know, you’ve got to be a good business person, understand marketing and bookkeeping. You have to have talent. You’ve got to be a good voice actor because there’s no room for not knowing what you’re doing because, you know, your auditions are going to get round filed when they listen to The Slate.
And it’s important to have a good sounding home studio that you have rapid access to. And not something it’s like, oh, I got to take it down. I got to set it up again, take it down.
You want some, you want a permanent recording space that’s dedicated in your place of residence. And whether it’s an apartment, you know, your home, you know, a motel out on Route 66 somewhere, you’ve got to have that. And you’ve got to know how to use it right.
There’s a few basic things that if you understand, you can succeed at it. But you’ve got to understand what’s behind those basics. And that’s generally what George and I like to teach.
I mean, we physically set things up, but we like teaching people how to use it. Although I don’t know, maybe you don’t teach them as much. So in case something goes wrong, you’re the one they have to call.
I know you guys are far more noble than that. But since we’re on the topic of education, what are some sort of misconceptions that you are always trying to steer, like a new talent away from?
You need a mic preamp. Yeah, you need a TLM 103.
You need a tube mic preamp.
Tubes, yeah, I want to use tubes. Why?
You need a mixer.
Yeah, you need a mixer. You need…
You need a compressor.
Yeah, front-end processing. I got an Apex 286. It’s like, why?
Just the other day, I told someone to unhook their Apex channel from their system.
I do it all the time. Yeah, it happens to me at least once a week. And the thing that we do, and as troubleshooters, and the way you troubleshoot, and I learned this from Mr. Soman, my eighth grade power mechanic shop teacher.
You gotta ask questions and you gotta go in the order of how things work. And maybe we don’t think about that, but troubleshooting is, why are you doing this? Why are you doing that?
So most of these questions are very cart before the horse mentality is what you’re saying.
Exactly. A lot of people are getting information off the internet and YouTube. And the factor I like to mention is that, somebody may be an expert in a home studio, their own.
And the fact of the matter is, every room is different, every voice is different. People talk louder, people talk softer, the materials, the room that you’re recording in is different. And there is no one set thing to make something, to make your audio up to a professional standard in that particular room.
And it really has to be done in a customized way.
Well, with that in mind, I know how you guys like to keep it simple. What would you say are the bare minimums somebody needs in order to start a home studio?
I mean, quiet.
What?
I mean, quiet is expensive.
Ultimately.
Yeah, it can be very expensive unless you live in the boonies and you just start it out somewhere really, really quiet. Yeah, if you happen to live in a very quiet area in a quiet home with no animals and children and a very quiet air conditioner, Or furnace, depending on where you are. Whatever it is, then you’re lucky.
You’re like way ahead of the game because noise is the enemy of recording. And it’s, yes, there is software that takes noise out pretty effectively, but still to this day, we really wanna have clean audio and noise is the problem. So if you start out with a place that’s quiet, the rest is gravy because you can get, and I’m gonna say it right now, a USB microphone that will sound really freaking good.
We’ve done USB microphone shootouts and I know that they can sound good. I’m not saying it’s the way to go, but for some people who are really technologically averse, which seems to be everybody. Like we know for a fact that Maurice LaMarche uses an Apogee mic in his walk-in closet, right?
He told us that on the show.
And his car, yes.
And holding in his hands.
Yes, yeah, this is happening.
But he’s Maurice LaMarche, he can get away with that.
Well, I mean, that’s something else to talk about, but I mean, a USB mic or a very affordable Audio-Technica mic, I don’t think there’s a mic from the Audio-Technica line that is bad. Like even the least expensive…
The 2020 can be a little noisy.
It’s okay, it’s not the…
You go up to the 2035, and I’ve been recommending that to people.
The non-USB ones. Right, yes. The USB stuff can be a little noisy.
Non-USB, you can start with a 20 or a 2035, I love. That’s one I really like to recommend. In fact, I made a custom package with B&H that has a 2035 and the interface is a Steinberg UR12, which is like 80 bucks.
And that’s a really clean starter setup that works beautifully well. And then a good, decent pair of headphones.
And like we were talking about before, a lot of people, they want to reach for the industry standards like the 103s and stuff like that, but that setup’s already past $1,000. You just listed off a $200 setup that sounds perfectly professional.
Right. In the right environment.
Right, in the right environment. Yes, yes, exactly. So that can be as inexpensive or as expensive as you make it.
Right, well, I’m of the belief, and I repeat this a trillion times a week, is that 95% of the quality of your audio is dependent on the acoustical signature of the room that you recorded. Absolutely. And it’s not the microphone.
And another 20%, we’re gonna have 130% when we’re done with this, but another 20% is the mic technique, placement and technique.
Right. And those are the factors that really affect audio. And when you say words like industry standard, my immediate reaction is, what industry are you talking about?
Yeah, and if you’re talking, I think people have a big misconception, especially if they are experienced talent but haven’t recorded on their own before, they think that they have to have a nice room with a couch and guitars hanging on the wall and windows and a couple of fabulous babes hanging out or whatever it is that goes on in a recording studio.
Yeah, those commercial studios are there to impress the client and really wow them and make them feel good about spending $300 an hour for studio time. And your home studio is designed to do one job really well and that is make you sound really clean, accurate, and well, as Dan says, like you, sound like you.
And I think people get, they have a misconception about what it is that they’re trying to do. And the fact of the matter is, is nobody needs to see how the sausage is made. They only hear it.
That’s right. I love the sausage making analogy. It’s one of my favorites.
It makes complete sense.
And is there a point guys where having what’s so called an industry standard is actually a bad idea? Because my personal situation, you may have heard the last episode, I got a TLM 103 in here with me and it was a mess because it was way too sensitive and did not work at all for my space.
Right.
Right.
When you’re using a mic like that, that was designed for being used in a studio environment, you know, really high end productions. It is extremely sensitive and it has a pretty wide pickup pattern. So you have to have a good room, very low noise to get a good sound out of that mic in most cases.
The other air quotes again in his true standard mic is the Sennheiser 416. But that became an industry standard because of the use of it in promo by Ernie Anderson in the 70s. And that mic just sort of stuck around because of his use of that mic in the 70s.
And it was just became the Hollywood promo mic and trailer mic.
It just has some interesting mic technique that’s involved to make it sound good. And you have to be extremely on mic. You can’t get sloppy with mic placement and get off to the side and it sounds really bad really quick.
So those are two mics that have arguably become industry standards, at least in the promo trailer commercial world. But it doesn’t require those kind of mics to get good voice over recordings.
It’s not in the least. And it’s not the mic. There’s no microphone out there that enhances your performance.
There’s nothing that’s going to… You’re going to turn on the mic and suddenly you sound like Jon Hamm. It’s just not that you can’t read like or sound like Jon Hamm, yet people believe that.
Because they watch YouTube and then it’s like, well, this is the best mic for voice… There’s no such thing as the best or… From my point of view and probably from George’s, there is the worst and then there’s everything else.
There’s a lot of bad mics, which we don’t need to get into the bad mics, but there are definitely a number of bad ones that just don’t work. I’m going to name one, because it’s been a punching bag for years. The Blue Snowball.
Oh, the Snowball.
It’s a pretty bad USB mic. But let’s also have some context. It’s also one of the first.
Right.
I don’t know if it’s the first. I think the Samson…
The CO1U was the first….
is maybe the first. They’re both rather lousy, but they’re also over 10 years old, I think, now, in terms of when they were designed.
I had one in 2006.
Yeah.
And people are still buying them for some reason.
Because they’re sold at like Apple stores.
And Best Buy and… Yeah, for nothing. Yeah.
You know what’s fantastic, and you guys heard it, is that that Blue Raspberry, as far as the USB mic goes?
There’s an example of evolution of technology, right? The Snowball, old technology, noisy, no proper gain control. The Blue Raspberry is an evolution of an evolution of USB mics.
They’ve had many, many mics in between those two. Yeah. And the Raspberry is like…
Again, I haven’t tried them. We haven’t gotten one yet to try, but I know you have, Paul.
So Blue is listening, which please send this one.
Send this one over. We’ll give it the rundown.
I’ll take another.
It’s a great mic. It’s a really surprisingly good mic, if you know how to use it.
Yeah. In fact, last week, I had a directed session where I used it because I was messing around with my gear and wasn’t set up with the interface. So I used the Blue Raspberry that was sitting right there in the booth and the client loved it and it’s on the web right now.
There you go.
Go for it.
If the mic is low noise and it’s reasonably accurate, you’re good. Put it in a good booth or a good acoustical space, put it in the right spot and talk.
Yep.
You’re good. There we go. That’s it.
Good night, everybody. Can we sell that last sentence for $9.99?
Sean, you had some questions about industry events, didn’t you?
Oh, yeah. So I was just curious because I know you guys love going to NAMM and NAB and other conferences with lots of new innovative audio tech. Is there anything that’s coming out this year that you’re really excited about?
Well, it’s expensive stuff, and whether it’s relevant to Voice Over or not… I mean, to geeks like us, especially George, he loves going to that stuff because it’s cool and it’s fun and it’s at a very professional level. And if somebody’s at a professional level, that kind of gear is kind of cool.
Well, I’m going to name one thing that if it wasn’t so dang expensive, I would tell everybody to go out and buy this thing, and I’ll back that up with an actual review of the product when I get one because, again, I don’t like to cold, like just write out and out, say, buy this thing until I’ve really used it.
Can I guess what it is, George?
Go.
Ahead. Is it the MixPre, the sound devices?
We were very impressed by that.
That’s not what I was going to say, actually. It’s really awesome. The thing that was the most innovative to me and the most amazing was the Yellowtech, it’s called the PUC Mike Lea.
It’s a weird name. It’s made in Germany.
Is it like a mounting system, right?
No, no, not at all. The PUC is an acronym for something. I don’t know what it stands for, but it’s an audio interface.
But what makes it stand alone that I’m aware of is it has the most amazing automatic gain controlling system I’ve ever seen. Normally AGC or auto gain is horrible. It’s not good.
If you’ve ever used a cheesy… Well, actually almost any video camera where the audio goes up and down and the noise gets hissy and then it goes down, you know what I’m talking about about. But this thing intelligently adjusts the gain control on the fly without pumping up and down the background noise.
It’s absolutely amazing technology. Unfortunately it comes at a cost. It’s about, I think, 900 bucks.
There’s judgment after all.
It’s no joke. It’s the standard of college. If they ever decide to license the technology to somebody else, maybe someday in the future they’ll do that and it becomes a $200 unit, it would be just a killer device.
It is really amazing. It will de-stress the voice actor’s job of recording themselves tremendously. You literally set it to auto and that’s it.
You do not have to ever set gain after that. It’s really amazing.
So that’d be extremely useful if you’re doing very different energy reads or styles of reads, like an animation versus an audiobook.
Animation, video games, that sort of thing.
It would be awesome for video games.
Yeah, because usually what you have to do with video games, if you know you’re going to be doing a lot of loud stuff, and I have, the script calls for scream or you’ve got to do something very loud. You’re shouting to somebody across the street. Usually what you’ll do is once you learn good mic technique, you can back off the mic or you can hit like a 10 dB or 20 dB pad on your interface and some mics actually have a 20 dB or 10 dB pad on them.
But that’s something you have to do and you’ve got to plan ahead.
It’s engineering gymnastics. You have to constantly switch your brain from actor to engineer back and forth. It’s a lot to think about.
So you end up setting it… Yeah, well, you end up setting the game something, you end up having to set the game really low. So then it doesn’t clip when you’re yelling.
But then when you’re doing, so get over here, I’m going to rip your brains out. Lines something like that. It’s way down to like minus 30 or something.
And so it’s in the noise. So it’s difficult recording that stuff well. And this is going to make it, the technology like that’s going to make it easier.
But it’s just a little inaccessible. And it’s actually hard to get. It’s only carried by a couple of companies in the US.
It’s very, it’s hard to get. So I’m going to get one and test it out. But the Sound Devices Mix Pre-3, really cool in terms of its feature set, what it can do.
And again, another, you don’t want to test out in the real world, but that thing was really sweet.
Very cool. Well, since you, like, you really get the sense that you guys, you don’t want, like, you understand that everyone has a unique budget and you really kind of, like, you don’t encourage anyone to spend more money than necessary. I’m curious what sort of are your favorite recommendations at both like sort of a budget mind and an aspiration-minded equipment.
It can be mics or interfaces or both.
Well, you know, I mean, we already mentioned that, you know, we both like to tell people, look, you know, an Audio Technica 2035 and, you know, maybe, you know, the… Was it the…
Steinberg UR.
The Steinberg UR thing.
You have some others you like too, right?
Well, I like the Scarlett 2i2.
Still do to this day.
Still do to this day.
Version 2, I hear, is much improved too.
Much improved, I gotta go get one. A Yamaha, if, you know, for people who maybe be doing podcasting, a Yamaha AGO3 or AGO6, which George recommended to me, and I immediately ran over to Banjo Emporium and bought one.
Yeah, we both use those as well.
Yeah, and that’s my at-desk interface, because where I do webinars and stuff like that. It’s important to be able to play audio from your computer into the sound mix that you’re doing.
Back over to GoToMeeting or whatever it is you’re using.
Right, GoToMeeting or Zoom or whatever. And-
For what it does, I haven’t found anything as affordable or easy to use. It’s pretty incredible, actually.
Yeah, and for doing remote sessions, I mean, it’s great. If you’re doing it, you do it by Skype or Zoom or something.
I sent Rick Wasserman to Colorado with an AGO3 and some moving blankets and some PVC pipe. I mean, literally. He has a PVC pipe booth with some blankets, an AGO3 and his trusty Sennheiser 416, and he’s doing his Mad Men.
Well, that show’s not on the air, but whatever AMC thinks… He’s doing all of his AMC stuff from a house in Creed, Colorado, where he’s there for the summer doing Repertory Theater. Wow.
It works.
He was on the show a couple weeks ago when I wasn’t here, but I was on an airplane getting little tidbits of what’s going on on the show, and then he said… It’s my dog walked in and he goes, Tinky.
Even my wife laughed at that one.
He has an awesome voice.
He does. He really does.
Yeah. That’s the entry-level stuff. We mentioned to Mike that there’s the Harlan Hogan VO1A, which we’re using today.
We’re talking into that very, Mike, as we speak to you.
If you want to step up one level from the AT 2035, this is a little more expensive, but a beautiful sounding, really nice sounding microphone.
And Harlan designed it specifically for a voiceover. People don’t realize that most of the equipment that we use was never designed for voiceover. It was designed for recording music.
And it has a workflow. A lot of the software that people use has a workflow for recording music. Oh yeah.
Pro tools. Yeah, pro tools, which we could have an hour long discussion about. And I’ll just recuse myself from that discussion.
Well, I want to start another discussion because you do have some talent who, they start with pro tools and then they fight learning anything else. What do you think is the reasoning for that?
Because once you learn a system, and especially pro tools, which was exceedingly difficult to learn, I mean, there’s a learning curve on there.
It’s designed to be like an old school, multi-track-based studio with walk sends and everything else.
Right, with as many channels as you have. And I went to school to learn how to use a recording studio like that. And there are people who go to college to do it.
And it’s not a skill you learn overnight, and it’s not a skill you learn in a month. It’s a skill you learn over many, many years because there are so many little tidbits to Pro Tools and some of these other multi-channel DAWs.
It’s got a tremendous amount of tools that once you’ve learned to use them and you’ve kind of put them in your muscle memory, it’s very, very hard to abandon those skills or adapt those skills to something else.
Unless you really hate doing all the things that you have to do in Pro Tools.
I mean, if it’s all you know and it’s all you’ve ever used, and you’re good at it, and it’s reliable, and it gets the job done, why change it? But I have changed a lot of clients from Pro Tools. Pro Tools has gotten a lot more reliable over the years.
As of lately, it’s far less problematic than it used to be. Now every time I launch it, it just tends to work, and I have little issues now.
It tends to work?
Yeah, it does work. It does work very reliably now. Pro Tools 12 does.
But it was a real pain in the neck for a really long time. So we were all looking for stuff like Twisted Wave that demystified recording and editing tremendously.
Well, yeah, and I’m actually really grateful for when I decided to get involved with Voice Over because the equipment was far more accessible, and it’s easier to use than ever, and it was right around the time that Twisted Wave was released, and it’s my favorite DAW, easily. It’s just so easy to use.
Yeah, I mean, it has a reduced feature set, clearly. I mean, certainly a lot less features in Pro Tools and Adobe Audition.
But it has everything you need.
It really does have everything you need. I mean, Audition…
And I think it’s a lot more powerful than people realize. Like, you actually take the time to figure out all the features. I know Jack DiGoli has got a wonderful webinar on all the things you can do with it, as do you guys.
Yeah, we both teach it.
Yeah, I mean, I needed it yesterday. I did a very long narration that was about an hour long that had to be cut into 135 different slides.
Twisted wave is perfect.
It’s fabulous. You mark it, you can cut and paste the gaps.
Split by markers.
Split by markers. That’s process. What used to take three hours now takes, it took me an hour to record it, an hour and a half to edit it into that format and go split by markers.
Whoosh! Out the door, my client is thrilled as he can possibly be.
Massive, massive time saver.
Yeah.
We’re big on time saving stuff. I mean, to me, audio quality always is important, right? But next to that, it’s reliability and then how much time is it gonna save you?
You’re not getting paid by the hour, folks, to be voice, to be engineers. You have to be fast.
One of those things that I see a lot is people will send me audio and they’ll send me their chain and they’ll say, well, I record on this and then I transfer to that and then I transfer to this. So I’m like, and you’re doing this, why?
A lot of hoop jumping.
Because it’s efficient.
But if it is, I mean, there occasionally is an argument for using multiple programs and multiple systems that I’ve seen convincing, but most of the time, it’s an unnecessarily number of steps.
Right.
It slows you down.
Circling back to gear one more time, I don’t know if you’ve listened to the show, I think George has-
Paul, are you gear obsessed?
Yeah, that’s where we’re going.
With the questionable purchase of the wing?
Yeah. So have you guys had any questionable gear purchases of your own that you regretted either immediately or after using for a few weeks in your own studios?
That’s a hard question. I mean, George is an engineer and he buys gear, and he plays with it and stuff like that.
Well, I know you guys have to try a lot for your clients too, to test it out and stuff like that.
Things that I’ve, maybe the things that I’ve recommended and regretted later. I recommended WaveLab by Steinberg to one of my clients. And I recommended it to her.
She’s on Windows. And at the time, I thought it was the best simple recording solution. And I used White WaveLab extensively a long time ago.
But then when I have to now teach it to somebody and troubleshoot it, remotely years later, I realized bad choice. It’s great software, it really is, but it’s just in many ways mind-numbingly frustrating. It’s just, it’s very German.
And it’s very… And it’s just overly… It’s basically Twisted Wave took the WaveLab thing and made it Mac friendly and way less complicated to use, and then puts all the right tools in the right places.
WaveLab doesn’t, it’s a little harder to use. So that’s one thing I’m kind of regret recommending.
Yeah, of course, Ocean Audio came out, which is really cool, but that’s not something we would ever regret, because that’s a really cool little program. It’s free. It’s free, which is why we also like it.
It’s free.
Audacity has its back.
Gear wise, I do a lot of research, and I do a lot of testing. I don’t have a lot of regrets, but I used to recommend a DBX 286, which I know you have now, Paul, you’ve been playing with.
Actually, I tore it out, based on…
Oh, you tore it out again.
You finally sold me.
Didn’t it go in and out, then in, again and then out again?
Like the who? The old you now?
Yes, it did, actually.
It’s not a bad piece of… I mean, I used to recommend it pretty widely, but I’ve kind of moved away from that one. Man, I can tell you about video streaming equipment that I don’t recommend anymore.
And that’s a whole nother deal.
I won’t go down that route.
That’s been our current curse.
Well, it appears you guys are just efficient. You’re just too efficient and I’m clearly diseased. So we’ll just leave it at that.
We can’t help you with gas, Gear Acquisition Syndrome. We really can’t help you. If you won’t listen to us, what are we gonna do?
I always listen to you. It just takes several weeks.
I mean, gear is gear. And again, as George said, does it make you more efficient as opposed to, does it change who you are? Does it change you from voice actor A to John Krasinski?
John Krasinski. It’s not gonna do that. It’s got nothing to do with it.
And people are just lost on that. So there’s never been a piece that I’ve regretted having. There’s stupid stuff I bought because it was like cute, but I never intended to use it for Voice Over.
But I know you’ve, because I remember you had a lot of the Apogee stuff too, like the one in the, did you have the duet too?
I never had a duet. I’d like the Apogee mic. I still have mine.
I use it when I’m on the road, if I record on the road.
I know you have very firm opinions about doing it on vacation.
Yeah. And yeah, I’m on vacation. I don’t want to do Voice Over.
I mean, if you can do an audition on your iPhone in your car, who cares? But you’re not going to be able to produce, add to something that you did in your own home studio somewhere else. It can’t be done.
You’re not going to be able to match the ambiance. Even if you’re as good at it as I am, it’s really hard.
I call it the black diamond level of voiceover recording. Trying to do it from a hotel remotely or something. It’s much harder.
Yeah, you can’t do it.
I guess another piece of gear that comes to mind when you mention Apogee, I did use to recommend the Apogee One a lot.
Yeah, that got kind of quirky.
But I found it to be quirky and I didn’t like the little proprietary cable it has, the dongle thing. And then their drivers started to get unstable sometimes and that drove people crazy. It just got too flaky.
And I stopped recommending that thing because of it.
Interesting to note though, but one point about this is that when I was at Voice 2010, I think, and I met the president of Apogee and I had a One and I really liked it. I was running it through the Eureka without the compressor and he was just using that as an interface. And as a preamp.
And he’s like, you know, we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing the preamp inside the One, go naked. And I’m like, excuse me?
So he was one of the first guys that really said to you, plug your mic into this thing.
Right, just plug…
And listen.
Right, just plug the mic in.
I won’t argue with that. The Apogee preamps and converters are stellar. Like they really are a gold standard.
You know, no doubt about it.
And so my belief is that you don’t need any front-end processing, just a good preamp interface and your microphone. And that should be the extent of your chain. And every time we pull people away from front-end processing or a channel strip, like an Apex, it just makes such a dramatic difference in their audio.
And usually it’s like, God, it sounds better.
And there’s sanity.
Yeah.
It sounds different. But like you were saying, I know you’re always like, get the gear that makes you sound like you. Not that makes you sound better or your best self.
Like we want accuracy, not flattery.
Right. That’s who they’re hiring you for you. What is unique about you?
Not, you know, does your booth sound better than this guy’s booth? And the booths don’t sound good. Booths just exist to make you sound like you.
If that makes any sense.
No, it makes perfect sense to me anyway.
Drop the mic.
Yeah.
Don’t drop the mic.
Nevermind.
All right, so thanks again, George and Dan for being here with us today. Before you leave, how can people get ahold of you if they want to use your services?
Well, they can, you know, my website is homevoiceoverstudio.com and I’ve got a contact button there that you can, you know, email me directly. But I also have the Specimen Collection Cup. And it’s actually, you go to the page, it’s like, son of a gun, it’s the Specimen Collection Cup.
If you want to send me some raw audio, five seconds of open mic silence, read something and give me 10 seconds of silence, open mic, so I can hear how you’re addressing the mic, hear the acoustics in the room, hear how much background noise you have. And if I think it sounds great, I will tell you so, and I do on occasion.
Refrigerators running?
Oh, refrigerators?
It’s like, I now know the difference between what a refrigerator in the next room sounds like in a ceiling fan or an air conditioner. It’s amazing the noises that dribble into people’s homes. And if you look at it on a spectrograph, you can generally tell what it is, whether it’s electronic or whether it’s something mechanical.
But you can send me a specimen if I think you need some help. Then we can set up a consultation and we’ll get your booth sounding the way it should.
And I am available through my parent company, which is Edge Studio. There’s a website, edgestudiotechnology.com, and I provide services like Dan’s. I kind of go a little nuts with the options, so I have a lot of different flat rate services and different ways you can work with us.
One-on-ones, do the webinar thing as well. You can send in a sound check as well for me, a similar process, and you can have me make a processing template for Twisted Wave, which you should really only use for auditions, if at all, unless the client asks otherwise. And a whole bunch of different ways to work with me.
I also get to design studios from time to time, and right now I’m actually in the middle of seven different studio build-out projects in different stages. A couple here in LA, a couple elsewhere. And that’s actually where I’m going.
Immediately after we hang up the source connect is running over to Burbank to check out a studio that’s been under work since… Oh man, I think it’s been a year. Yeah, a year.
So, I mean, George and I are literally competitors.
Yeah, but we’re not.
I mean, we…
It doesn’t sound like it.
We are and we aren’t.
We are and we aren’t. I mean, we consult with each other. Nobody knows more about home studios on God’s green earth than the two of us.
And we don’t say that from an egotistical point of view. We just know this is… We’ve been doing this longer than anybody else and we understand the environment.
We have different styles. We have different personalities and we have different, you know, just backgrounds and people tend to gravitate to one or the other. Sometimes people bounce back and forth.
Yeah, that’s happened a few times.
Like both of us have.
Well, George said this. Well, Dan said that.
What the heck is he talking about?
You’re killing me, Smalls.
Dan said it was okay. Well, again, guys. Drop the mic.
Yeah, really. Again.
And they’re out of mics.
It’s been so awesome to have you guys on. I can’t believe you agreed to it. Not sure what you were thinking, but we really appreciate it.
And hopefully we’ll get a chance to talk again soon.
Well, we know we will. We love you guys. You guys have been devoted fans of ours and it’s just been a lot of fun to see you guys put together a show and kind of follow in our footsteps in a little way.
It’s been a lot of fun to see it. I do listen to you guys pretty regularly in my podcast, Blair.
Yeah, George is a podcast addict.
I’m in the car a lot, so I do listen to a lot.
Well, PAS is a lot more affordable than GAS, so…
Podcast Acquisition Center, very nice, exactly.
It’s been our pleasure, guys.
Thank you guys so much. I know you have to get out of here for some other appointments, but I know Paul and I have benefited a great deal from your podcast, and…
Tell me everything I know. I’m fond of saying…
Except for trying out gear you don’t need. Well…
We can’t help you with that.
Yeah, if you’ve got the budget to do it, and you enjoy doing it, do it.
Is this your hobby? If it’s fun… Yes, it’s fun.
It’s for the…
It’s for the fans.
It’s for the fans.
It’s for the fans.
There you go, Paul. Is that what it says on your tax, on your schedule C?
I paced it to the window of the Whisperer.
For the fans. Again, yeah. It’s perspective.
If you’re buying the gear because it’s fun to you and it doesn’t stress you out, it’s actually fun trying to go for it, right? Have fun.
Go out and play. I mean, and that’s something that I tell people when I work with them and I teach them some of the initial things that they need to do with software. It’s like, here are the basics.
Go out and play.
Once you know the rules, then you’re allowed to break the rules.
Break the rules. Absolutely.
All right. Wow. Thanks again to Dan and George for that awesome interview.
Once again, you can check them out at vobs.tv or you can go to their Facebook page at VOBS and request to become a member.
Yes. Thanks once again to George and Dan. Like I said, it was a dream come true.
They are my VO idols and I’m so glad we were able to get them on the show.
Well that’s going to wrap us up for this episode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
We hope that you’ll stay tuned because we’ve got some great content coming up. We’ll be interviewing a very successful voice talent and coach, Paul Stracquerda.
And another future episode, we have Terry Daniel coming on. A voice over coach and voice over talent out of Minneapolis. That should be fun.
Excellent. I can’t wait for those guys. I’ve studied with both of them and they’re incredible talents and I’m sure they have a lot of great strategies and tips for our listeners.
So join us next time for episode 12.
That’s it for this episode. Have a great day everybody.
Bye everybody.
Thanks for listening to The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.

Episode 10 of The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hi everybody, and welcome to episode 10 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
So this is an interesting episode. We’re gonna actually revisit a topic that we’ve talked about before on the podcast, and that is acoustics. So we have our guest, Adil Aliev from Vocalboothtogo, coming up in about 20 minutes.
But I feel like acoustics is certainly deserving of another podcast. What about you, Paul?
Yeah, there’s never a reason to stop learning about acoustics in my mind, and I’m sure Adil will agree.
And it’s one of those things that you can easily make small adjustments to as you continue to improve your space and improve your sound.
And as we talked about, it’s probably the most important part of your audio recording chain, so it definitely is worth revisiting.
So, before we start talking about our topic for the day, why don’t you tell us what you’ve been up to, Paul? You’ve said you had some exciting announcements you wanted to share with our listeners.
So yeah, number one, I finished my longest audio book to date. It was just under nine hours, eight hours and like 55 minutes, and it was pretty exciting. I also did it under a pseudonym, so I won’t give away too many clues, but for any of our listeners that are Simpsons fans, if you remember the episode where Homer decided to get into corporate America and gave himself a new corporate executive nickname, you’ll be able to find me.
His slogan was, I found it on my hairdryer.
I’ll just give it away, why don’t you?
Well, you know, the Simpsons are a little bit…
It had a very entertaining guest spot by Bill Clinton or a Bill Clinton impersonator as well. I think that’s enough hints for that one.
So Easter egg for the audience, go out there and check that out. And then, let’s see, I had another audio book that I landed on freelancer.com of all places. And it was a paid per hour, paid per finished hour book and paid pretty well actually.
And I was surprised to get that. And then finally, so I signed on with a large e-learning company about a year ago. And they do all kinds of different e-learning projects and videos.
And I was on their roster, quote unquote. And we talked about what that could mean. And more importantly, what it doesn’t mean.
It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get work right away. So almost a year later, I finally got the call that they were giving me my first project. And that led to my first live directed session with a client.
So that was a lot of fun. I’ve done obviously remotes for the podcast and appearing on other shows like VOBS, but I’ve never actually done one with a client. And I’m happy to say it came off swimmingly and so much easier when you have somebody directing you that knows what they’re doing.
So yeah, that’s pretty much it for me. A couple of exciting things though and milestones for my career really.
Very cool. And so we’ve talked about remote recording on the podcast a little bit. And honestly, we could have a whole episode about it.
But just like the name indicates, you are talking with someone either through Skype or even a phone patch, and you’re being directed remotely while you record in your studio. So I know Paul has been trying to figure out an elegant solution for that for a very long time. So I’m curious, Paul, how did you get it to finally work?
Well, like you said, to explain a little bit more in detail to those listeners who may not be familiar, there’s a number of ways you can do it. What you basically want to do is be able to hear the person on the other end talking to you and giving you direction as if they were in the room with you. So you probably need headphones.
Well, you definitely need headphones unless you somehow have a magical way to hear through walls. And then you need a microphone that can do two-way communication. Ironically, because I was selling and purchasing a bunch of gear that we’ll talk about in a second in our Questionable Gear Purchases, I used my Blue Raspberry USB mic for this gig.
Because it was the easiest solution. I was a little nervous because it was the first time I was dialing into a client. I wanted to make sure I could get it down right.
And I knew that would be the easiest. It’s a USB mic that plugs into the computer. It has its own headphone jack.
So I said, you know what? I’m just going to go with the easiest solution so I don’t screw things up. The less switches and dials to mess with, the better.
And it worked like a charm. I used the Blue Raspberry. They said it sounded great.
They’re putting it together now, and it should be airing in a couple of days.
That’s great.
I mean, as we’ve said before… Sorry, I was going to say, as far as the technology, we just use Skype. I use Skype as a phone patch, and that’s a way you can have somebody talk to you.
So you could use your actual phone in here if you have an actual landline that can reach your booth. That will work. But I just had Skype playing through my headphones from the computer and then recording only my side of the conversation on my regular DAW, which is Twisted Wave.
Yeah, there’s a number of ways to do that. I have and I’ve seen other actors. I’ve actually had Skype up on my iPad, and then I used a little mic that plugged into that to improve the sound.
So the director could still get a very good idea of what I sounded like, and then I just had my headphones plugged into that, and that was sort of freeing up my computer from having to juggle recording and Skype at the same time. And depending on the director, usually they won’t mind if it’s not the exact same studio quality as your mic. Once you reach a certain level, you might have to get a more advanced setup where you can do playback without getting a feedback loop or maybe even using something like Source Connect or ISDN.
But that’s a topic for another day.
Yeah, and I will say, make sure that your sound is consistent. I happen to know this mic sounds nearly as good as my studio mic, which is why I have it in the first place, so I wasn’t hesitant to use it. But I wouldn’t recommend buying any old USB mic off the shelf just for this purpose and using it as your go-to live direction mic just because it’s a USB mic.
So I just want to be careful of what I said earlier.
I got to say, you’re very much a champion for the USB mic, Paul. You’ve had a lot of success with them, I’ve got to say.
Yeah, I mean, there’s ones out there that have really come a long way. I think the Blue Raspberry is one of them. We mentioned before I was on the VOBS episode with a sample, and I’ve used it for several auditions that have landed me gigs.
Well, I think, I mean, we’ve been at this point where I’ve heard people using AT2020s or Apogee mics or Blue Yetis for paid work for several years now. And the technology continues to get better, and those models are still considered professional enough to use for most projects.
Yeah, and I’ll throw this out there. I know he doesn’t mind because I asked him. Our audio coach, audio book coach, Sean Pratt, who has over 900 titles now recorded, they were all done on a Blue Yeti.
Yeah, you really don’t need to spend that much to get a good sound these days. But he also built a very good space to use it with. So keep in mind…
Hey, full circle. Back to the topic at hand.
And talking about consistency in recording, which acoustics play a big part in. So current events for me… As you know, last episode I talked about signing with an agency here in Washington.
And I had to do a number of signing contracts and filling out other acceptance materials. And I finally got all those mailed off today. And then last week, as part of signing with this agency, I had to get new headshots.
So, I mean, I had gotten headshots before to promote myself and to promote my business. And that was… I found a professional photographer, was in and out, had a pleasant experience in like an hour.
This one took like seven hours.
Oh my gosh.
It was a seven-hour shoot from like 1 to 8 p.m. And had to drive down to Seattle and back afterwards. I was just freaking exhausted. Tried on like maybe a dozen different outfits or ensembles, couple of suits and things that I would never actually wear in real life.
Did you get to do the George Costanza on the couch pose with just the boxers?
I am not in that kind of shape yet.
So did your agent pay for the shoot, or did you have to pay for that out of pocket?
That was out of pocket, but as you kind of transition into this on-camera world, you begin to realize that so much of this is tax deductible. I mean, since if you’re doing on-camera work, your body is sort of your calling card. All sorts of things that you might not have considered, like gym memberships or personal training, those can be written off as well, because it’s all about improving your instrument.
Always consult with your tax attorney or CPA.
Yes, we are not tax professionals, but we have played a few.
Is there anything else going on in your world?
Anything else? I’m currently working on a couple of very large corporate narration tours for a returned German client. They’re a very nice production company, and I love working with them, and I appreciate the work.
Other stuff, I’ve just gotten a lot of large projects in this week, mainly corporate narration or audio tours, so I’m really happy about that. Some of the language is a little difficult, kind of like verbal acrobatics, but other than that, it’s good work, and I’m really happy to do it.
Awesome. So as we mentioned, we will be getting back to our revisiting of acoustics and our guest Adil Aliev from vocalboothtogo.com. But first, we are going to have a VO Meter stick this week from Juan Esteves.
Hey, everybody, it’s time for the VO Meter shtick.
What did he say?
It’s time for the VO… Oh, never mind.
The VO Meter shtick?
Oh, got it.
Hello, VO friends. My name is Juan Esteves. I’m a bilingual voice actor from Puerto Rico, currently living in the suburbs of New York City.
I want to thank Paul and Sean for inviting me to be part of their podcast. Today, I want to share an interesting story about agents. Interesting because I don’t have an agent, or at least I don’t have a contract with one.
I do, however, work with an agent who sends me on auditions in Manhattan. Because of that, I’ve booked some nice jobs, so it has worked well so far. For the purposes of this story, we’ll call him Original Agent.
Recently, I got an email from the person who produced my commercial demo. Hey, I know an agent who’s looking for a bilingual actor. Are you interested?
Well, yeah, of course I’m interested. So I send them my demo. Their response is perfect.
I really like your demo, and I want to send you on an audition. Great! Then it gets better.
Do you have an agent? I say no, I don’t have an agent. Okay, then let’s see how the audition goes, and then maybe we can talk about representation.
The audition is the day after tomorrow. Everything feels good, very excited. So let’s call this one new agent.
The next morning, I get an email from old agent, which always puts a bounce in my step. He tells me he has an audition for me tomorrow. Tomorrow?
Wait a minute. Tell me it’s not the same one. Yes, it is the same one.
Ay, coño. I start getting a funny feeling in my stomach. When I write back and explain how I’m already going to this audition, well, let’s just say he doesn’t seem pleased.
We work so well together. And I always arrange your audition times so that they work around your full-time job, all of which is true. He wants me to go to the audition and sign in under his agency’s name.
Now I’m starting to feel even more uncomfortable. I don’t want to burn any bridges, so I explain as nicely as I can that I’ve already agreed with this other agent to sign in under his agency’s name. Of course, I do not reveal his name.
After some back and forth, old agent says, do what you think is right. I know Obi-Wan Kenobi said that to Luke Skywalker in the first Star Wars movie, but right now, I don’t feel the force is with me. But I’ve made my decision and I’m going to stick with the original plan.
It’s settled, right? Maybe not so much. Later in the day, I get another email from old agent.
The casting director for the audition says I need to sign in under old agent’s name, not new agent’s. It’s the casting director saying this, so it’s not open for discussion. Now, I don’t really know what’s going on here.
I have my suspicions, but what I think doesn’t matter at this point. It’s a mess and I need to clean it up. I see no alternative but to contact new agent about this situation.
His response doesn’t surprise me. All the people on their roster are exclusive and he doesn’t want to deal with all this territorial BS. Sorry, but it’s not going to work out.
I tell him I’m disappointed, but I understand and hope we can try again in the future under different circumstances. Now, I reach out to old agent and try to put things back the way they were. I tell him how much I value our relationship and that I hope we can keep working together as we have.
His next email is not about our relationship. It’s about the audition. It has been cancelled.
Of course it has. PS. After all that, things are back to normal with old agent.
The audition was rescheduled and I did go and signed in under his agency’s name. I didn’t get it. Ay caramba.
I just want to do VO that sounds so bonito. Doh.
So once again, that was Juan Esteves. Thanks so much, Juan. That was a great story.
And a cautionary tale that makes sure you have all your ducks in a row before trying to look for a new representation.
So I was actually really, really happy to hear this. Paul was telling me the fact, we had a really large information-packed episode last time with the wonderful Julie Williams. So we actually cut out our questionable gear purchase segment to make more time for her.
And people actually wrote us saying, what happened? Where did it go? So apparently a lot of people are enjoying our sort of foibles.
And I’m wondering if we’re sort of helping prevent, or people are sort of living through us so they don’t spend any money themselves.
Yeah, I’m gonna go with that as the reason that I keep buying stuff.
But I mean, we’ve joked about it before, but now we totally can. We could totally rationalize any purchases we make from now on. Okay, we are just about ready to delve into our topic of acoustics revisited for this episode.
But before that, we have our…
Questionable Gear Purchase.
I can start. And it’s bad. It’s really bad.
I went interface shopping and that sent me down a rabbit hole where I bought a whole bunch of interfaces, once again, trying to look for ways to make the podcast easier. So I bought a Scarlett 6i6 on Amazon, I think it was. Tried that out, it was okay.
It didn’t sound the best and I was having trouble getting enough gain for the dynamic mic I was using. So I sent that back, got a RME Babyface that I found used at Guitar Center for a great deal. And that has this Total Control software, I think it’s called, is it the brand name?
Total Control, I believe, is the… Total Mix. Total Mix, yes.
And it was just dizzying with all the inputs and all the different ways you can route stuff. It was so paralyzing to me that I couldn’t even figure out how to monitor the headphones on a single input. So having several jobs going on at the same time, which by the way, when you have jobs going on, it’s the worst time to switch gear.
And I just seem to never learn. So in order to simplify things…
Or if you would at least hold on to some gear to record with.
That may help too. So in order to, because I don’t do that, and I just jump into things with two feet all the time, I needed something that I could actually record with. So I had the RME Fireface and I went and bought another 6i6 locally on Craigslist.
So all within like the same week because I knew how to use it. So I went through the job I was doing. I think it was an e-learning gig.
Finished that and then got rid of both of those interfaces and bought an Apigee Duet 2 because I had been looking for one of those because I had heard that it had this loopback feature that made it easy to apply virtual inputs to, again, playback over the internet that we could use for the podcast or for a live direction. So I got that and figured out it really doesn’t do that, at least not to my knowledge and with me digging into the software. Now I will say the Apigee Duet does sound great.
It did everything I wanted to do sonically. It has enough gain to power dynamic any condenser and it sounds great, but ultimately it wasn’t solving my software problem. So I went as far off the deep end as I could find, at least without getting into the over $1,000 range and bought an Apollo Twin Solo, which a lot of people use and look to as a really good upgrade once they’ve established themselves and they’re ready to take that next step.
And that’s what I’m using right now.
Can I just gush about the Apollo for a second? So for people who don’t know, like there’s almost like this accepted tier of interfaces for people who are sort of looking to move away from the Focus Rides or the Steinberg units. And you may never actually come to that point, but these three units seem to be the most popular.
The three I just bought, you mean?
Yeah, the Apogee is definitely one of them. Or the Apogee, the Babyface. Those are great sort of more portable units, and they’re a little bit older tech, but they were still certainly very high quality.
And, but nowadays you’ve got ones like the Audion ID22, the Apollo Twin Solo, which like the Audion is supposed to have super clean preamps, but it’s sort of its own beast because it actually is, it’s got this integrated DSP system or digital signal processing. So basically you’re able to sort of emulate all sorts of preamps and other analog gear like compressors or limiters or equalizers within the box.
And that’s the reason I also wanted it because we’ve talked about this rumble problem I have, and I tried a channel strip that ultimately got kind of noisy. Oh, I should mention that, the DBX I talked about in the last episode, gone.
I mean, that thing that you loved more than any other piece of gear you’ve tried.
I did love it for a while, but I found when I was messing around with all these other interfaces, probably because they’re better quality, that it was introducing a hum into the recording that I did not think was there when I was using it with some of the more entry-level interfaces like the Focusrite and the Yamaha AGL3. But I found out that…
Oh, so you’re saying that the higher-level interfaces might have been quieter so that you could actually hear the inherent noise of that.
Exactly. Which I have to give credit to is what George Widom and Dan Linder were telling me was happening all along, and I just didn’t believe them. So I found out it was there.
So like you said, this internal DSP processing has been a godsend because all these classic preamps have been used in the industry for years are now available in this sort of virtual way. Like I’m using a Neve UA610B tube preamp right now, which is…
And that’s one of the free ones that comes with it, right?
It is, and it’s doing a great job. But then there also are some built-in channel strips or virtual channel strips that I plan on using. I have a call in with George.
He’s gonna help me set it up so I can get it right the first time without screwing things up too badly. And I think that will help me a lot with my processing out the rumble.
And that’s probably the main reason why I didn’t get the Apollo. As cool as it looks, I mean, it’s a shiny little silver box with a very bright or volume meter on it. It’s like got shining lights and everything.
But basically, if it was something that I need assistance to figure out, I was like, I probably don’t need it. So, but I’m happy for you. I mean, you deserve good gear.
And I’m glad that you’re having George help you out with it. What’s that?
Right, so there is one other selling point, and it’s Thunderbolt. So, it doesn’t go through the USB bus on the computer. So, if you have a lot of other things plugged into the USB bus in your computer, like a lot of us do, you know, webcams and maybe hubs or microphones.
Like sometimes I plug in my USB microphone. If you can get your interface not on that same bus in the computer, it helps a lot. And my Mac…
Oh, I had to get a new Mac, by the way, in order to make this work. So, more questionable gear. So, I have a new shiny iMac as well with a Thunderbolt connection.
So, now that’s how the Apollo is connected.
Very cool. And like in most modern Macs these days really don’t have very many USB ports, maybe like two or three at most. But they do have at least two Thunderbolt ports.
So, like you said, it’s a great way to free up those other ones.
Yeah, that helps. So, there’s a whole rabbit hole of microphones this past couple of months too. Do you want me to go through that or do you want to take a turn?
Well, I’ll start with the microphones.
Maybe you can tell the story that involves me as well.
Oh yeah, yeah, we can sort of bounce it back and forth. So, you guys know how I feel about the American-made CAD E100S. A lot of voice talent find this to be an amazing, popular microphone.
It got really popularized when VO blogger Paul Struquerda wrote a very stellar review of it. And since then, there’s been a couple of waves of voice talent who have bought it, who’ve been very happy with it. And unfortunately, when I ordered mine, I was in Japan and I finally got it after waiting like six weeks.
And then it was noisy. And this mic is supposed to be dead silent. It’s literally like they actually, in their marketing materials, they say lowest noise rating in its class.
And so basically any noise would have been unacceptable. But no, it was noisy. And after troubleshooting it for a couple of days, I decided to send it back.
And so they told me they sent me a second one and then a month goes by and they just tell me like, oh, we don’t know what happened to it. So it’s probably somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. And then my third one…
Wasn’t that around the same time as Fukushima?
Oh, no, that was a few years after Fukushima. You’re terrible. That’s awful.
Sorry.
Awful, awful, awful. Yeah. When is it?
Not too soon. But anyways, so that one got lost. And then they put in another order, but it never went in stock again.
So they just canceled it and gave me my money back. And then so I was very bitter for a couple of years. And then somebody was selling theirs, like a gently used one.
They had it for about a year without any problems. And they were selling it for $200, which is more than half off. And the lowest I’ve seen it for Mike in that condition.
So almost on impulse, I said I’d buy it and I did. And it was almost, I just wanted to know what it sounded like when it worked basically. And so I put it up with all my other mics.
At the time, I had like a big four mic shootout. It was that one. It was my Jay-Z J1, which I got as an alternative to the CAD.
And then my 416 and my Blue Mouse. And it actually scored pretty high. It was pretty much the second place next to the 416.
And then…
Yeah, I actually listened to that. And I think I thought it was the 416 before you told us.
Yeah, that’s right. Because even though I had said in my email… It was sort of a blind test, but Paul just assumed that I was listing them in order.
Right.
But yeah. And no, it sounded quite good. And I see why it’s often compared to the 416.
But it is a little bit darker. And it’s a little bit less aggressive. So it would be good for like long form stuff or like longer narration.
But anyways, so I had two good mics and then two okay mics. And I finally accepted that I was never going to get the amazing sound out of the mouse that I had always dreamed of. And Paul, I remember that you were interested in it.
So we decided to do a trade.
Yeah, because Paul’s a psycho. And I had just made a trade with a fellow voice talent to trade away my Sennheiser MKH 415 for a Neumann TLM 102. It was a Facebook post, and this talent said, hey, I had this 102.
I’m looking to trade for a 416. And basically my salesmanship skills talked him into taking the 415, which I think sounds pretty similar and maybe even a little better.
Well, to your credit, I feel like from everyone who’s recommended it or used it, they’ve said it sounds as good or better than the 416. So I don’t feel like you really, like, you didn’t jip him or anything.
No, I don’t think so. So we made that trade, and TLM 102 was a disaster in my space. It sounded, it picked up way too much of the boominess that I had trouble with, more of that rumble.
It was way too sensitive. So that’s when I called you up and said, let’s try and make a trade ourselves.
Yeah, and so, like, the costs are about the same what we paid for it, and so I was like, and the 102 was a mic that I always wanted to try. I mean, it’s so tiny and cute, and it’s an ointment. Like, I had never tried an ointment in my space before.
So I was like, why the hell not? And then a couple of days go by, and then it arrives, and I’m like, oh, wow, it’s a little bit bigger and a little bit heavier than I thought it would be.
And why was that?
And then I put it away, and then I’m like, now, wait a minute, it doesn’t… If you look at the 102, it’s got this very distinctive sort of like chrome metal ring just underneath the headbasket. And then, and that sort of sets it apart from other models like the TLM 103 or the TLM 49 and all the other stuff in the 1000 plus range.
But I was like, wait a minute, that didn’t look right. And then so I got the mic out of the case again, and then I looked at the side, and it says TLM 103. So not only did Paul not realize he had an industry standard in his booth that he hates, but the person who sold it to him didn’t realize they had a 103 instead of a 102.
And I mean, he hasn’t contacted you, right? He seems like he’s happy with his trade.
No, he told me he loved the 415 and was super happy with it.
I’m not sure if it was a typo, because we didn’t actually talk on the phone. We just emailed back and forth. So maybe there was a typo.
Maybe he always knew it was a 103. Maybe I’m an idiot and just didn’t read. I don’t even know.
No, I saw his post, and he didn’t even have pictures of the mic itself. At least if he did, I think I actually told him. I said, that’s a 103.
But I mean, I’m happy with it because I had been looking for a decent condenser for a long time. And I think the 103 does sound nicer on my voice than the Blue Mouse did. But it brings with it its own set of sensitivity issues because it’s a very sensitive mic.
And while I can use it occasionally in the space I have now, it is far more sensitive to ambient noise. And honestly, I don’t feel like I could use it consistently until I get an isolated booth.
Yeah, that was a problem I had too. Even though I thought it was 102, it was way too sensitive for my booth, where it was sucking up every possible low-end frequency. And it sounded maybe the muddiest mic I’ve ever had in here, which is saying something.
So that brings us to what I’m using now. We went ahead and made that trade actually a two-for-one deal with a little bit of bartering on some work going on, where you sent me both the Blue Mouse and the CAD E100S.
Well, yeah, because now I had two industry standards and a mic that I don’t really need. And I will say the CAD was pretty close. Basically, I just kept the 103 because I thought it would look better on paper.
And I wanted the CAD to go to someone who could actually use it and benefit from it.
Yeah, and I’m using it right now. And it sounds great. I actually really like the way it eliminates mouth noise for me.
I’m not sure why, but it’s the best condenser I’ve used to help eliminate some of the mouth clicks without having to do a whole lot of post-processing. Maybe it’s the way I positioned it.
I think both the mouse and the CAD sound really good on you. And I think something that they offer that I haven’t heard so much in other mics is that it’s very clear, but it’s gentle. It’s a little bit softer.
It’s not like right in your face. And that might be whatever levels you’re using right now. But I think it sounds like you, and it sounds nice.
Yeah, I agree.
Please hold on to these for a little bit, at least a little while.
Yeah, so we’ll see what happens. But at least we can say that there weren’t really many questionable gear purchases. It was more questionable gear bartering.
Maybe we’ve learned something.
Maybe we’ve. So you got me to relax and sell some things and get rid of some things. And hopefully.
And I saved you. I don’t know.
Well, fans, I hope you’re happy that we brought the segment back just for you.
Yeah, I think we’ve just opened up like a whole new tier of expensive things to try. Like, we’re going to get like an Antelope Zen desk or whatever. It’s like a $5,000 interface.
Yeah, I will say it was kind of ridiculous when I was thinking to myself, from where I started with the Vocalboothtogo Blanket Booth and the AT2020, to now being in a Whisper Room holding a TLM 103 in my hand, it just kind of blows my mind.
Well, yeah, I mean, I was about to say, it sounds like you’re doing pretty well. I mean, like, I’m able to reinvest in all of these crazy purchases. I’m not going broke yet.
So that wraps up Questionable Gear Purchases. Talking a little bit about our topic for today of acoustics, Paul and I have actually been doing some experimentation in our booths, because we’re constantly trying to make it either more ergonomic or have a more logical workflow or a more efficient workflow.
In my case, it’s always different equipment.
It’s always different equipment. But there’s different ways to change or improve the sound without actually changing the equipment. You can actually get just the positioning of items within your booth.
So for example, and this is relating to acoustics, I swear. So right now, I have my mic and my iPad screen, which I’m reading off of, sort of buried in very close to this wall of clothing. And so right now you’ve got about seven inches of absorbing material that’s sucking up those waves and anything that does bounce off the back wall has to go back through that and then it has to go through clothing on the other wall.
And so it sounds quite dead in here. But I wanted to kind of move everything out into the center more so I could have the mic a little bit closer to me and then I could have the iPad be level with my eyes. And so just like better for my neck and my body when I read.
And so I got a mic stand and then I got some accessories so I could put everything on one mic stand and have the mic sitting down and I moved it to the center of the room. And it sounded terrible because one thing that you actually can’t hear right now is there’s actually a full wall mirror behind me that doesn’t… yeah, you would never guess.
But when you move about five or six inches back into the center of the room, you hear that flat surface. And it was even worse when I was using a large diaphragm condenser like the Blue Mouse or the CAD or what have you. So it just did not sound as dead.
And all I changed was the position of the mic in the room by less than half of a foot. So that was a big wake up call. And I know you’ve been experimenting with sort of acoustics in your booth as well, Paul.
What have you been up to?
Well, I had a very similar situation actually. I wanted to try and get to a point where I was using one mic in one position because I had these two sort of mic stations, one standing up in the corner and one sitting down the other corner in a very small space. I have a four by four whisper room.
So there wasn’t a whole lot of room for gesturing or moving and acting when I was reading. So I thought it would be easier to have the mic in one place. So I took everything out, including the chair and the stand I was using for the mic, and put the boom arm that I have drilled to the wall right in the middle of the whisper room.
And then I had the chair, the little tiny bar stool I use right next to that, and I thought this would give me more space, and I do everything sitting. And like you, it sounded awful. It sounded like I was in an echo chamber, and all I did was move the mic maybe three feet from the corner to the middle of the room.
And I tried it in all different positions, but what I discovered is that there really are only two sweet spots in this room. There’s the top right-hand corner and the bottom left-hand corner. And if I don’t have the mic right there, it sounds awful.
So I had to go back to where I was before, and that’s where the cat is now. It’s on the boom arm in the far corner with a blanket, one of the vocalboothtogo.com blankets, and a corner bass trap and two bottom bass chunks. And that’s the only way I can get a good sound.
So it goes to show that once you find that sweet spot, just sort of stick with it, and it may be the only place you can actually record that’s going to sound that good.
Yeah, definitely. When you’re trying to find the best sound when placing equipment in your booth, you definitely want to take notes or take pictures so you can easily replace it if you accidentally move it to a place where it doesn’t sound as good. But like we were saying, you really have to experiment and fine tune, whether it be adding more treatment or adding a bass trap or even putting a little mat or a towel on your desk.
But there are all kinds of things that you can do to improve the sound. For example, downstairs, I have, like you guys know, my famous blanket booth from Vocalboothtogo. And that one sounds great in there, but since I just had his portable version, the Carry On Vocalbooth available too, I decided why not put that in there too.
I’m not sure if it really needed it, but I can tell you it is super dead in there now. But an interesting thing about that space is it works great with a mic, like a shotgun mic, like the 416 or a large diaphragm condenser, like the Jay-Z J1, which has a slightly narrower pattern than similar mics. But I would never use the 103 down there, because it’s in the center of the house.
And so you’ve got plumbing above it and underneath it. So if anyone takes a shower or goes to the bathroom or turns on the dishwasher or the washing machine downstairs, you’ll hear this rumbling in the walls. And it’s summer right now, and we’re kind of out in the woods.
And so we’ve got all sorts of animal sounds, like dogs and birds, and you’ve even got a donkey next door who honks every now and then.
Really?
No, it’s really bad. It’s really, really bad. It’s like the same time every day at like 8 p.m. But the point I’m trying to say is if you have a directional mic, like a shotgun, then those might not be an issue for you.
And you can be a lot more… You have a lot more options when it comes to finding an ideal space in your home to record. But when you’ve got something with a wider pattern, like the 103 or another large diaphragm, then you have to be much more selective about finding a space because acoustics and ambient noise is that much more of an issue.
Right. So there are a number of ways you can treat your space from very simple to full-blown soundproof booths. And our next guest can cover your bases, whatever you need.
So without further ado, let’s take it to the Zoom room, and we’ll get to our interview segment with Adil Aliev from vocalboothtogo.com. We are now so excited to welcome Adil Aliev, and we’re really excited to have you on. So thanks for being here.
Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me. And I’m also excited that, you know, you’re the customer, and you came in this, that you got the booth, and you gave me that positive feedback that makes everything going.
And Sean also, you know, is the carry-on.
Adil, for people who may not be familiar with you and your company, could you just tell us a little bit about the history and how you got started?
Sure. Well, I used to have a moving company, and then I started selling moving blankets. And at one point, one of the customers actually, I kind of noticed that I have musicians and producers buying the blankets for the purpose of acoustics.
And some of them said, listen, can you design the blanket that would give, kind of beef it up? So it would give more acoustic properties and special. I said, sure.
And we did that. We actually beef it up, put more padding in, change things. And then I started to look into that, how they use it.
So over the time, we changed the… So it’s not a moving, it’s maybe looking like moving blankets, it’s not the moving blankets anymore. We changed the inside filler to make it pure cotton, because at one point we had issues with the smell.
People would say, oh, it’s smelling. And we realized that that was because of certain impurities that come with the stuff that they use for moving blankets, a lot of synthetic fiber. So we made it all pure, and we tested and tested it at 80% sound absorption, which is great.
And that’s how it is. And the guy said, don’t do anything, just it’s perfect. And then at some point, and at that time, I wasn’t really kind of into that much, but James Alberger in Santiago, he runs the Voice Acting Academy, they invited me for the Voice Over Conference.
And that’s when I went over there, and at that time, I already made up the first kind of prototype of the Caryln Boost. I showed it up over there, and I received very, very good, very nice positive feedback. And more and more I started to improve on the products and add different ones.
And that’s how, over the time, the Vocalboothtogo actually kind of taking more and more time. Basically, it’s now 70% of what I do, I think maybe even 90%, and always designing new products. The idea behind it is Vocalboothtogo, because I realize that the voice actors, they want to be mobile.
Then musicians, practicing singers and everybody else, they also want to be not really mobile, but they need the solution that would be effective and still easy to use. So they can put it in the apartment, take it down if necessary. If you have to go to the client, you can take it with you.
So these two things, the mobility and efficiency, is kind of like a cornerstone of all the designs that you make. And yeah, so that’s how it develops. So now we have more and more products coming out.
Very good.
Are you using the Carry On Vocalbootht right now?
Yeah, it’s a Carry On Vocalbootht.
The Carry On Vocalbootht. And we actually use that to do episode 3 of the podcast in the middle of the trade show floor for the Mid-Atlantic Voice Conference. And it works fantastically, where some of the interviews sound better than some of the ones we’ve done over Zoom.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I can’t believe how well it sounded like in the middle of a lecture hall. I mean, obviously, you’re going to hear the noise of the people and the other attendees, but the audio quality itself was quite good.
And it works very well for on-the-site news gathering or kind of podcast or live recording like that. So it worked out very, very well. Actually, what I wanted to go on, because you talked about your history and like about continuously making new products, do you have any new things that you’re excited to talk about with us now?
Like any new products or modifications of current products that you have?
Well, one product that I’m working on now, the product I’m working on right now is a soundproof sound booth. The very first… Well, one of the very first, not the very, very first.
The very first of this sound booth, what we call SPB33, had Velcro on it. So actually when people would get inside, the hair would get caught on that. And it was not pretty.
But people liked it anyway because it worked well. It was very comparable with other solid shell sound booths. But there was a problem.
So the current that we have right now was with a zipper. So we did away with the Velcro and put the zipper in there. So it’s better.
It’s better. But it’s still not good because, let’s say the audiometry people, people who do the test hearing tests, they’re using the product. And for them, they say, open it up for 30 people a day, it’s not convenient.
And Paul requested that I do the swing open door.
I did.
Yes, he did. So if Paul requested that, I had to do it. And this is what I’m currently working on.
So the new modification of the soundproof booth will come with the open door. So I made it. I made the frame for that.
I designed the opening. Also, that new product will be a little bit different. It’s going to be different because you can actually use the same parts and modify it in different sizes.
For example, right now we have it in 3×3, 6×3, and 6×6. But with that new modification, you can extend it, make it 6×12, 6×18.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, you can kind of… For voice actors, that’s probably not important. But if you have a recording band, like drummers and a couple of more instruments over there, so if they want to jump together, then…
Fill out the whole garage.
Yeah, that would be something to use. So, yeah.
That’s very exciting. We talked about that in Atlanta. I did bring that up to you in Atlanta.
I said, you know, I had the booth and I liked it. It sounded great with almost no modification. My one concern was the door.
And the reason because I have my computer outside the booth, so I can minimize the noise as much as possible. So every time I need to go edit or look at a file, I have to go out the door. So sometimes when I’m doing an audio book, I’m out the door, you know, 10 times during a session and like you said, the zippers can be cumbersome, it works, but it’s not for someone who moves around a lot.
If all your stuff is in the booth, then it’s probably okay. But I really appreciate you taking that to heart and actually trying to innovate.
I try all these comments to heart.
I take all the time. Once the prototype is done, I’m going to go out there and do some video maybe, try it out. Sure.
That’s a question I want to ask you, because I talked about how you’re a local company to me basically. I’m just outside Baltimore in a town called Lutherville, and you’re in Frederick, Maryland. How is the market in this area, the DC and Baltimore metro region, is that a big market for you, or is most of your products shipped outside of this area?
Well, we mostly do it online. We mostly do it online. We actually did not approach the local market, so to speak.
And if I look at the sales, I think about 60% of the sales go to California. Yeah, 60% go to California. Maybe the other 30 go to New York, and the rest is the rest of the country.
And do you have a lot of international sales?
We do have international sales. We pretty much send all over the world. We send to Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, all over Europe, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, everywhere.
In Mexico, we have this Jehovah’s Witness company in Mexico. I think they bought by now 30 carry-on booths.
You say Jehovah’s Witness?
Jehovah’s Witness, yes.
What were they using it for?
That’s a good question. That’s a good question. I meant to ask them, so once they get it…
Because they ordered once five, then they ordered another five or six, and then they ordered one. And I said, listen, the shipping to Mexico with all the customs and duties, they’re really expensive. If you want to order something, order two.
So she took a week to think about it, then she ordered 15.
I don’t know, maybe they’re using it for missionary work or, I don’t know, recording sermons.
Well, yeah, recording sermons, the recording, I don’t know, they also do the podcasts. Yeah, they do a lot of different podcasts on the radio, and it works well. It works well for podcasts.
So, yeah, Canada, Canada is a big market. We send a lot of Canada. And I think we did send to Russia, we did send to Norway and Sweden, and yeah, I think each and every country we sent to Turkey.
We even sent to Afghanistan.
We sent to Afghanistan, we sent to Dubai. Yeah, I can’t really think. India, India got a couple of booths.
By the way, the other aspect, I think it will be interesting for us to talk about is the rental opportunity. Because our booths are so compact that you can pack them in a bag and it’s small enough, we can ship it anywhere. And for example, we have voice actors who come from United Kingdom.
For example, they come for a week to LA. We ship them the booths, they go over there, they record there, they send it back, they go back to UK. Netflix, Netflix got two booths for rental for like six to 12 weeks.
Whatever they do with that, I don’t know, but it’s good. Microsoft recently bought one soundproof booth to take on the tour. So yeah.
I did one and I came to the warehouse and picked it up in the back of a Nissan Versa. So it’s really compact. For those of you who don’t know, the Nissan Versa is like the smallest car in Nissan’s lineup.
It’s basically the size of the SB33 when it’s stretched out. I was able to take the whole booth in the back of there and drive it back home.
And I love that kind of flexibility because for people, especially voice actors who are starting out, getting a booth of any kind can be a very large investment. So people want to be sure that they either get the right one or they can get a good return on it. And you just letting people rent it out for a temporary amount of time just takes so much pressure off them if it doesn’t work out.
So thank you very much for offering that unique service.
That’s true. That’s kind of… It’s kind of rent before you buy.
So people would rent it first and then you usually keep it. Unless it’s a business. Business, I think, they go on the project.
So let’s say if they go to the trade show, they take the booth to the trade show and then they return it. But people who want to test it, they rent it for a week. And actually, I understand that all the voice actors, they, you know, one army, one person army, their own business.
So we do have some financing options, too. We work with a financing company. And they right now actually offer 90 days no pay deal.
So basically, you get the product. For 90 days, you pay nothing.
So 90 days is cash type of deal. That’s great.
Yeah. And after that, you can pay in installments to them.
Is that for both size booths, the 6×3 and the 3×3?
It’s for any product. It’s for anything over $1,000. I think they have a threshold of $1,000.
Anything over $1,000, they offer that financing. Well, we together offer that financing. You know, there’s a button over there, Financing.
If your cart, overall, gets more than $1,000, the button will appear. And you just click there, fill out the form. And it is convenient.
They go through the approval process, of course. It’s very convenient.
Very cool. So do you have any other exciting products or other developments going on right now that you’d want to talk about?
I do. But that product would be a smaller version. It’s even a smaller version than the carry-on.
And what it’s designed for right now, the working name for that is YouTube or Vocalbootht. So it’s designed for something small, like a smartphone or video camera. And one of the kind of stimulus for me to make that product, some photographers call in and say, you know, can you have that booth that would open on the back?
Because, you know, when you take a video, you need to look at the viewfinder, and you look at something, so you have to have a see-through, so to speak. And then you cover from all sides, so it protects from the wind and noise and everything else. So that’s the product comes in.
That comes, when it’s folded, it’s actually the size of the laptop. It’s that flat, it’s about an inch thick, maybe, I mean, maybe an inch and a half thick. And it’s going to be about 14 inches by 16 inches, by one inch, that small.
Wow, very cool. So that’s similar to sort of your carry-on tracking booth that you used, I think it’s a discontinued product, but you used to have it a few years ago. So it’s going to be even smaller than that?
It’s going to be even smaller than that. It’s going to be, the design is totally different. Yeah, but it’s going to be kind of like that, yeah.
Very cool. I’m excited to see it. And maybe send me a test unit when you get it.
Yeah, I have a working product, but I just need… It’s marinating, as I call it, marinating, because I usually make a design, and then it has to sit for a while, so I can think of some improvements to make.
Until somebody complains to you at a trade show, and you decide to go with that idea.
Well, something that I was… Speaking of that, Adil, one modification that I was very happy to see is… I mean, I’m actually currently using your carry-on vocal booth inside of your hanging acoustic vocal booth right now, and I love this booth.
It’s probably my favorite portable recording solution, but one thing I did notice is that occasionally, if you’re in a very reflective space, all of these portable acoustic solutions, whether it’s yours or someone else, didn’t really have an effective dampening thing behind you. And then I saw it via Atlanta. You would actually fix that problem.
What did you do?
Oh, yes, that’s right. Thanks for reminding me. You see how it is.
Once the product is finished, it goes back in my mind, and I concentrate on something that is new. Yeah, that’s right. It’s already been sent to production.
What we did, we created the hood, and I call it surround sound hood, because it kind of goes over your back and over your shoulders. You might have seen on other booths that they have a little black piece of fabric that you pull over and throw behind yourself and kind of sits on your head. No, we have the whole blanket, the same sound absorption blanket, and there is a support structure designed so it doesn’t sit on your head.
Your head is kind of free to move, and the booth is just being supported in the support structure. And yeah, that surrounds completely. And if you go on the website, actually Rachel Naylor, she’s running a voiceover network in the United Kingdom.
Yeah, we both…
Yeah, we met her at VU Atlanta, yes.
Yes, yes, yes. She did to VU Atlanta, and she needed to do the urgent voiceover for Virgin Atlantic, because she is the voice of Virgin Atlantic.
Oh, wow.
And yeah, so I gave her that booth with surround sound, and she did the work for Virgin Atlantic. They were very happy with that.
Excellent.
So, Adil, one question I had that everybody asked me actually, some fans of the podcast. So you see where I am right now, I have your blankets behind me.
Yes.
Should I have them the right way? Should they be white side out or black side out?
The white side in. The black side out, yes.
I have them backwards, huh?
Well, from an acoustic point of view, it doesn’t matter. Okay. Either way, it’s going to do the same job.
But from claustrophobic… It’s better when you have white around you. It’s kind of…
It looks more spacious.
Well, it reflects light very well. So if you like to do…
It makes it lighter too. That’s right.
Yeah. Like you said, it helps with claustrophobia. I occasionally make videos in here either for like on-camera auditions or just product review videos for fun.
And it definitely looks more professional than having an actual studio, you know?
A good friend, Juan Esteves, who’s actually doing the VO Meter stick this episode, asked me that very question. He said, I think I have mine backwards because you and Sean have the white side out, but I’m glad to hear it. It doesn’t really matter.
I think it’s all personal preference, you know?
That’s totally fine. He wants to use the black side. I’m glad that it’s reversible.
Never heard of that. But you’ll learn.
All right. That pretty much wraps up our questions for Adil. I just want to say thank you so much.
You’ve certainly helped Paul and I create a much better sounding space in our own respective spaces. And we hope to have you on again, because I know you’re constantly developing new products and modifying existing products. So if you have any new announcements, we’d love to have you back, Adil.
Yeah, basically it was our start in getting a great sound.
Yeah, thank you, thank you. And I’m really happy to be on the show. And the more I know, especially Paul and Sean, always coming in positive, always coming in these constructive comments.
And that’s exactly what I need. And you were saying before how the idea that I treated your comment about the door seriously, I treat all the comments seriously. All of them, because they all kind of give me what people need, and I like to solve those problems.
Well, it’s really funny that you mentioned it, because I’ve been watching your products for about four or five years now, and you see an actual evolution in the quality and the effectiveness of the product, even little things, like the cool little travel bag that the Carry On Vocalbootht is a part of. And you are constantly making things better and better at a pretty affordable price. So thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you.
We look forward to seeing what’s new and upcoming soon.
All right. Maybe next month. Thank you.
So once again, that was Adil Aliev from vocalboothtogo.com. Thanks again, Adil, so much. I’m so glad that you were able to join us today.
Paul and I have both benefited from a number of his products.
We’ve talked about them so much.
Almost every episode. But I highly recommend them, especially for beginning or aspiring talent because it’s a reasonably affordable and highly customizable solution for a variety of spaces.
They’re a great company and he’s a great guy. So thanks so much, Adil.
So that about wraps up episode 10 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
If you guys have any questions or if you have any ideas for topics you’d like us to talk about, just hit us up on Facebook at either Sean Daeley or Paul Stefano. Or you can post right here at vometer.com in the comments section. Thanks a lot, you guys.
Have a great day.
Bye, everybody.
Thanks for listening to The VO Meter. Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.