- Grand Canyon photo taken by my friend, Michelle
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately refreshing and improving my knowledge on the technical aspects of voiceover recording. Here are two links that I found to be most helpful.
Dynamics Processing Explained, A Tutorial
and
Click Removal in Sound Forge 5.0 Even though this is an old edition of sound Forge, the technique is probably still valid.
Here according to one of Pat Fraley’s (one of my fave VO tutors) voices.com podcast lecture are the
9 Critical Skills to Voiceover :
Acting
Reading & Voice
Relaxation
Character and Accents
Energy
Microphone Technique
Business
Sense of scene and Text analysis
Improvision
Ok, got that? Now here’s Susan Berkeley’s interpretation, which I found in Susan’s e-book -
The 7 core voiceover-competencies:
Voice Quality
Diction
Reading skills
Acting Skills
Relationship/Networking skills
Technical skills
Marketing skills
One of my favourite tools for keeping my faith and energy in a positive place are ‘Oracle Cards.’ I discovered them on a couple of my trips to Glastonbury [England].
To me they are quite good for inspiration or guidance, and for focus.
I usually shuffle them while thinking of my question or a statement about some aspect of my voiceover career. Then I pick three — turn them over, and have a read and a think.
The artwork on them is quite beautiful – so that’s a creative, uplifting blast right there.
I’m drawn to the card sets that express the ideas in practical, easy-to-understand language. These cards are brilliant, easy to understand and quick to use, as I often don’t have time to go through a whole drawn out ritual. I like to pick out three at the start of a day — sometimes plucking a few cards from one deck and a few from another deck — and then get on with the business of the day.
The cards that I currently use are “Magical Mermaids and Dolphins” by Doreen Virtue [because I've been very fond of dolphins for years], and “Cosmic Ordering Oracle Cards” by Barbel Mohr.
The “Angelic Abundance” cards by Angela McGerr are really cool as well. They’re divided into various categories for different aspects of the user’s [the person using the cards] life.
Of course Oracle Cards don’t replace the marketing, learning, networking, etc. that one needs to do to keep any type of career on track, but the cards are darn good little helpers and good friends.
How do you keep yourself focused and moving in the right direction?
Cheers!
