Voice Acting For Dummies

by David Ciccarelli

  Don’t worry about getting everything right the first time. Just try to get through the entire script.

  3.After you finish performing the script, click the stop button in the recording software.

  4.Immediately click “Save” to be sure you’ve saved your first take.

  Congratulations! You’ve just done your first take, which is a huge milestone.

  Doing multiple takes

  We understand if you didn’t perfectly read through the entire script the first time. That’s where the magic of multiple takes comes in. A multiple take is reading the script more than once in the same recording.

  You can do multiple takes in two different ways without erasing what you’ve previously recorded:

  In sequence: You record one take after another. If you’re new to recording software, this method is definitely easier.

  In parallel: You record multiple tracks. In other words, you can have a few different tracks for your voice-over recording in the session template and pick and choose from each what you want to include in the final mix.

  Listening back

  After you record your takes, you can have some fun and listen back to what you just recorded. Listening back, sometimes called the playback, is your first chance to hear your performance.

  Advancing your skills with multitrack recording

  Multitracking is the concept of a layered audio composition. Multitasking allows you to individually control and manipulate each sound within your voice-over recording. By recording with multitrack software, you can produce the foundation for music, sound effects, and other voices participating, which results in a fully produced sound.

  For example, a musician’s tracks can include individual tracks for percussion, guitar, keyboard, and vocals. Many multitrack software programs include at least eight tracks for you to work with and have a theoretical maximum of 256 tracks (although most computers usually don’t have enough power to allow that much capacity). These multitracks can be your theme music, announcer introduction, segments, and sound effects.

  To create a multitrack in your recording software program, do the following:

  1.Adjust the Gain control on your audio interface.

  Within the recording program, set the recording level of your voice.

  2.Test your distance from the microphone to determine where you sound the clearest.

  3.Do a short test recording.

  Be sure that the recording meter never goes into the red because doing so may cause unwanted noise or distortion.

  4.Plug in headphones to your computer or audio interface for the best quality recording.

  Otherwise the recording will pick up sound from your speakers.

  5.Begin recording.

  Remember to keep your original microphone position. If you make a mistake, you can always do a second take and fix it when editing.

  6.Listen to the results.

  7.When you finish and like your final recording, save your work.

  We encourage that you save as you go, so that you don’t lose anything if your program shuts down for whatever reason.

  To play back, you simply use the controls in the recording software to rewind the recording back to the beginning by hitting the << button. Make sure you listen to the whole recording from start to finish. If you’ve recorded multiple takes, listen to them all, one after another.

  When you listen to the playback, evaluate the recording and trust your ears. The human ear is an incredibly sensitive instrument, capable of picking up on even the most subtle nuances in a recording. Did you like the performance? Did it sound natural? If your performance was good, how was the recording quality? For example, did you hear any background noise, such as dogs barking or the furnace or air conditioner running? Do you notice any distortion or feedback? Were any plosives particularly startling? Are there any breaths, coughs, times you cleared your throat, or other mouth noises that you need to edit?

  If your ears are telling you that the recording needs to be improved, you have a couple of options:

  You can either record another take, hoping that you can nail the performance.

  You can edit the audio. For more about editing, check out Chapter 19.

  Chapter 19

  Editing and Mixing: Getting More Advanced

  In This Chapter

  Understanding editing tools

  Editing your voice-over audition

  Concentrating on sound editing

  Mixing your voice-over

  Getting acquainted with production techniques and tools

  Welcome to the world of audio post-production. It’s a land of technical tools, tips, and tricks where you can fix blunders that occurred during the recording (to a degree) and create a mix by blending the various sounds such as your vocal track, music track, and sound effects into an inspiring audio production.

  Editing generally involves correcting mistakes, removing breaths, clicks, and pops, but can also include speeding up or slowing down certain words. Mixing is the art of balancing all the sounds of your recording so the vocal track is the most prominent, and the other sounds complement the voice, instead of compete with it. A good mix is a pleasure to listen to, and everything can be heard clearly without any one sonic element taking over the show. You’ll know you have a good mix on your hands if the recording sounds equally good on your computer speakers, as it does in your car or home stereo system.

  In this chapter, you discover the ins and outs of editing and mixing. It’s really quite amazing what can be done with sound!

  Getting to Know Your Editing Tools

  Audio post-production is now more a process of elaboration and embellishment than a process of necessary correction and repair. Although independently produced voice-overs are sounding better, the production can be greatly enhanced to sound more like a polished broadcast. The objective is to make your voice-over flow seamlessly from one section to the next.

  Most recording and editing programs have similar tools that allow you to edit the audio you have just recorded. We cover those tools in this section. In Chapter 18, we introduce some of the most popular audio recording and editing software packages, but regardless of which recording software you choose, the editing tools are pretty standard and work in more or less the same way.

  Undo

  Making mistakes is easy, so our favorite editing tool is undo. You can fix mistakes that you made during the editing process. Undo simply reverses or reverts back to a previous state. Knowing that you have an undo editing tool up your sleeve can give you the freedom to get a lot more creative and not worry so much about making your changes permanent. In the tech world, this process is referred to as nondestructive editing because your changes don’t compromise or destroy your original recording.

  You can always go back and undo your mistakes, usually up to 99 steps back. In most software programs, you can find the undo feature under the Edit menu or for a shortcut, just type control-z on your keyboard.

  Redo

  Okay, we’ve opened a can of worms here. We know. But if we’re going to mention undo (see the preceding section) and how amazing it is, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention redo. Sometimes you may hit the undo shortcut a few too many times, and you need to undo your undo — called a redo.

  Undo’s and redo’s are helpful tools to have at your disposal before getting into the heavy duty slicing and dicing (or chopping if you’re so inclined) with the tools in the next sections.

  The selector

  The selector is used to highlight the section you want to edit. Clicking and dragging the cursor across any audio waveform in a track selects that range for editing. After you select an area, you can cut, copy, paste, or apply special effects to only the selected area.

 
The grabber

  The grabber, often symbolized by a hand, is a very useful tool. With this tool, regions can be moved or rearranged along the timeline of a track. The timeline is the horizontal axis that has timestamps printed out in one-second increments. With the grabber, you can often double-click to select the region and move an entire section forward or backwards in the timeline. Remember to click-and-hold the selected region with your grabber tool to move it.

  The trimmer

  With this tool, regions can be quickly shortened or expanded to a desired length. If you’ve ever cropped a photo, you’ll get the hang of trimming audio quickly. To trim a region, simply click the cursor at the right or left of a region and drag toward the center. As you drag, the edge of the region is trimmed off until you release the mouse button. To extend a region or expand it beyond its current area, click the cursor on the appropriate edge of the region and drag outwards. The more you drag, the more audio is uncovered until the region is restored to its original length.

  The zoomer

  By clicking the zoomer tool, the cursor turns into a miniature magnifying glass. To use the zoomer, follow these steps:

  1.Click and drag the magnifying glass over a portion of a track that you want to view in greater detail.

  As you drag, a dashed box appears that indicates the range that you zoom in on.

  2.Zoom in closer than you may think you need to make the cut.

  Use zoom for editing, cutting, or other “surgical work.”

  3.Edit the waveform at what’s called the zero crossing, where the waveform line crossed from a positive amplitude (the crest) to a negative amplitude (the valley).

  The zero crossing is where you should make your edit to avoid awful clipping sounds. Now, if you’re done editing and somehow you’ve found yourself staring at a white screen, you’ve zoomed in way too far. Zoom out by double-clicking the magnifying glass. Alternatively, look for the 100% zoom setting that should get you back to a normal view.

  Editing is the process of removing sections of audio that you don’t want due to a mistake, laugh, cough, sneeze, or other element. Editing is very subjective and only you as the producer can discern whether something should be edited out of the recording or left in. Your finished recording should flow seamlessly from one sentence to the next.

  Editing a Voice-Over

  Editing audio is very important. Editing skills allow you to cover up small mistakes, clean up the recording from clicks and pops, odd background noises, and more. The end result is a much more polished and professional audio recording. In this section, you’re introduced to rudimentary editing techniques, some of which may be a review if you’re somewhat familiar with editing in general.

  The basic editing techniques are similar to those of a word processor:

  Recording

  Selecting

  Copying

  Cutting

  Pasting

  When editing audio, pay attention to these first steps:

  1.Identify the region of audio that you want to edit.

  2.Select the region of audio.

  3.Perform your edit to that specific region.

  4.Listen to your edited section to be sure you made clean edits.

  The beauty of digital audio recording is that you can start and stop the process at your leisure and combine the best parts of each recording into your final masterpiece.

  Editing dialogue

  Dialogue editing, the editing of your voice-over recording, is required when the tracks need to be cleaned up. Often editing is required if noises occur between lines of dialogue or to delete long pauses between the characters speaking.

  Your first attempt at cleaning up the situation is of course to edit the voice-over. Editing is often faster and sounds more consistent than setting up the microphone and recording the line of script again, especially if days have passed between the initial recording and the editing session, because you can actually sound a little different due to a variety of factors:

  Your vocal health

  Air humidity

  Barometric pressure

  Environmental differences

  Microphone placement

  You may consider editing the dialogue or rerecording the script in the following scenarios:

  If a single word is mispronounced: Check to see if you recorded the word elsewhere and try to copy the good version of the word and paste it over the bad version. This may not always work, but sometimes you can be amazed at how easy the edit was.

  If entire sections are done incorrectly: What if you mispronounced the name of a city or person throughout the entire script? It’s best to go back and rerecord the script. Hopefully the script isn’t too long.

  If there are simply too many mistakes: Consider rerecording the script if, despite your best efforts, the edits make the recording sound choppy with a lot of starts. And. Stops. You don’t want that. Your client will likely ask you to rerecord it anyway, so save yourself the embarrassment and get it right the first time.

  If you hear a lot of moisture in your mouth during the playback: The mouth makes all kinds of strange noises and not all of them are flattering. Lip smacks or mouth pops sound unprofessional to say the least. And for a listener, they will be extremely distracting. This usually occurs because you have too much saliva in your mouth.

  Fear not! There are some remedies to reduce the amount of saliva in your mouth, especially right before jumping into a recording session.

  The simplest solution is to drink some water and wash down the excess saliva.

  Green apples soak up saliva. Eat an apple before recording.

  Editing out breaths

  During recording sessions, you can sometimes be heard breathing through your nose. Many different opinions and creative processes exist when it comes to interpretation and performance, but the trend is to remove the breaths from the recording.

  Editing breaths out of auditions may be a reasonable thing to do, especially if you’re having some respiratory issues or have a cold. You can remove the breaths to make the audio sound cleaner, but the end result could be that the voice-over loses an aspect of its humanity and may sound unnatural.

  If the breath “sounds” right or feels like it should be there given the context of the copy and character, you could leave it in. This is a matter of preference and discernment. Some extra work may be involved with removing breaths that don’t align well with the read or character, but the process may be what makes the difference between a polished presentation and one that didn’t fall in line with the context of the script.

  Replacing automatic dialogue

  Automatic Dialog Replacement (ADR) is simply rerecording specific lines that couldn’t be salvaged in the edit. The sound and performance of the lines must be matched to the original performance. For a successful retake, attempt to re-create the original take by recording in the same tone of voice, through the same microphone, positioned in the same way.

  Is audible inhalation a no-no?

  One morning we received a question from a voice actor who asked, “I’ve run into voice-over artists locally who tell me that all auditions should be ‘de-breathed,’ not just lowering the volume of breath noises, but cutting them out completely. What do you recommend?”

  Professional voice actor Jodi Krangle, responded to this question in this manner: “What an interesting question! For narrations, I don’t suggest ever leaving breaths in at all. And when I remove breaths, I also remove the space, but not too much, so it still sounds natural. You can imagine a breath might be there, but you don’t need to hear it. The breaths don’t take away from the content that way.

  “When it comes to commercials, breaths can sometimes be left in, but I find that they’re mostly removed then too. Time is at a
premium with most commercials, and breaths take up space. If I’m recording a commercial in a different studio though, I’ve noticed that sometimes (the producers) leave them in for a truly “conversational” read. So it’s really a subjective kind of decision on the part of the producers.

  “As for character voices? Breaths are a whole other ballgame from what I understand. It’s all about the acting. If the character breathes in a certain way or in a certain place, it’s part of the acting. If it’s not part of the acting, it probably shouldn’t be there.”

  Focusing on Sound Editing

  Sound design puts an auditory stamp on your voice-over and shapes the overall consistency of the recording’s theme. This section helps you identify what elements of your recording need to be fixed or embellished before the editing stage.

  Including sound design

  Just as a set designer would design the backdrop and props for a theatrical set, a sound designer does the same thing but with sound. A sound designer’s objective is to create a realistic sonic landscape that builds a believable world for the listener to take in.

  Capturing room tone

  Room tone is the sound a room makes. Yes, rooms make sounds! Right now, as silently as you can, close your eyes and focus on listening to the sound of the room you’re in. Can you hear a distant hum or buzz? Maybe it’s a windy day and you can hear leaves rustling in the trees outside. Or, perhaps you’re in a basement and you can hear plumbing or the mechanical elements in your house creaking.

  A neat experiment may be to capture the room tone in an audio recording that you let run while you aren’t in the room. When you come back in the room, stop the recording and then listen back to get an idea of what sounds are being produced and captured in the room.

  One tip is to record a bit, say 30 to 60 seconds, of the room tone on a separate track in your recording software. Why would you want to do this? Good question. Well, if you’ve done a lot of editing of the vocals, you can reduce some of the choppiness of the edits by placing some of the room tone under the edited vocals.