As a freelance professional VO artist, I would say that I spend about 35% of my time in front of the mic and the rest of the time in front of my computer. Of that 65% of the time I spend staring blankly at my computer screen, about 45% of that time is editing audio. It’s not the most fun thing in the world, but it can separate and elevate you above the rest of the VO people out there.

So if you’re spending a lot of time editing like me, it ought to sound good when you’re finished. Here’s some tips to help your editing.

1) Make everything the same volume, a.k.a. NORMALIZE!! No one wants to hear the end of a sentence fading off into nothingness. This is not 80′s rock music here, folks, it’s voice over. Make sure the beginning of your phrases are the same volume as the end of your phrases. This is especially important on re-dos: when you say something again (possibly starting in the middle of the sentence).

2) Watch your levels. On the audio scale called decibels, the audio should hover around -6 or so, no more, no less. This will vary in some situations (car ads, meditation tapes, you know what I mean), but as a rule of thumb, after you normalize (from step one) make sure the audio lands at -6.

3) Try not to splice sentences together. Clients, believe it or not, can hear this. It may not be as evident to you, but it’s going to stick out like a sore thumb to whoever is listening. I have a bad habit of doing this. I am breaking it by starting the sentence COMPLETELY OVER AGAIN if I mess something up. This actually will make for a little more time in front of the mic and less time editing.

4) Get rid of mouth noise! No matter how much water you drink sometimes, there is still going to be a little bit of popping and slurping of the mouth. Make sure you find those itsy bitsy little pops and get them out of there, once again, they may not be super obvious to you, but do you ever hear mouth noise on commercials?

5) Keep the mic in the same spot!! This is not so much an editing tip as it is saving you time when you go to edit. In a multi-part project (like in the two audio books I am recording as I speak) I have my microphone stand held to the floor with some stage weights (and the same with my stool and music stand). This way, I can be sure to have the same consistent sound throughout the entirety of both books.

All of these tips will make you sound better and will keep your clients coming back for more of your stuff. Repeat work is awesome. Try to do what you can to make your client so happy, they won’t consider anyone else. Put your client first, and they will put you at the top of their list.

More in part two coming soon!!

Related posts:

1. Your Home Studio If you want to call yourself a true voice over...

15 years ago, no one knew what the internet was. Now, if you don’t have a website and you want to do VO, you’d better get one. Your best investment for your VO career is practice/preparation. Your second best investment is good equipment. Your third best investment is a killer website.

Like we talked about last post, don’t ASPIRE to be a pro, BE a pro. To be a pro these days you MUST have a website and it must be excellent. It has to look clean, easy to navigate, content rich, and has to leave its mark on the viewer.

So how does one go about obtaining an awesome sight? I am blessed enough to be able to run 3 of my own websites (not including blogs or social stuff). What if you don’t know HTML, CSS, Flash, or Java or any of that fancy stuff? You have two options: do it yourself or have someone do it for you. I have suggestions for both.

1) Do it yourself.

By now, everyone in the known universe has heard of MySpace. What better place to start? If an 11 year old kid can change his MySpace layout, I think you can learn how. Create a MySpace page for you and your VO stuff. Add each of them as friends of the other and invite ALL of your friends (they’re all on MySpace, you just don’t know it yet). When you’re ready to make it look sweet all it takes is a simple Google search and there are THOUSANDS of profile editors that you can edit it what’s called WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). The best one is pimpmyprofile.com, it’s what I use. While you’re developing your image, studio, and website MySpace can get you by.

Not so keen on MySpace. Me either. Check out this site: Uber.com, it’s definitely one of the best free website creators in existence. It’s very… not… out there. Meaning, not a lot of people know about it, but, it’s really great. Customize that page, put your demos on there (only if they sound incredible) and slap the site on your business card.

2) Have someone do it

None of you know this, but I make websites for people. I just said that I made these, that’s a no-brainer, but I just started a website business as well. Check it out. Check out the rates. :-0 An affordable site? Absolutely. I can arrange you a site just like mine, www.yourname.com (domain) and all for around $100 a year. Good luck finding that anywhere else. Want your demos posted on the site? Not a problem! Want a blog like this one? Not a problem! One of my callings is to help other developing VO people get their feet wet and dive right in. I’d love to help you out too. Let me know if I can help.

If you enjoyed the post, leave me a comment and invite other VO people to the blog. We as VO artists go nowhere without each other! Spread the love!!

Until next time!

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