One of the challenges that any person working with audio faces is recording in a noise-free environment. Ambient noise, especially with a really sensitive microphone (like mine), can really have a negative effect on the quality of your final recording.

Whether white, pink, brown or rainbow, noise is your enemy

The trick is to do your recording in an environment that is as “sound-dead” as possible. You want two things:

1. No external noise sources. Any noise coming in from the outside must be dampened or preferably eliminated entirely. I’ve found that even sounds I can’t normally hear come through as clear as crystal when I turn on the monitor headphones. Someone watching TV or chatting in the next room? I can’t normally hear them at all, but when I have my headphones on monitoring the mic, I can hear everything. The best ways to get rid of noise from outside sources? Don’t have any! Turn off the TV, etc. I put a quilt on my door to dampen ambient noise from the rest of the house or outside- like my neighbor, who’s a professional trumpet player (and very good, too!).
2. No internal noise sources. This one is often a lot trickier, and it’s one that I’m still wrestling with. The problem that many of us who are trying to do quality voice recordings face is that we use computers to do the actual recording; preamps and microphones are silent but a computer is anything but. Computers have fans- usually many of them- and are a major noise source. Even a “quiet” one makes enough noise to make getting a quality recording a major challenge.

In my case, I have a basement room in my home that I’m using as my office and studio. It’s very nearly perfect, as it has cement walls on two sides backed by dirt. One of the other walls faces into the rest of the basement and has a set of cabinets full of both dead space and junk that does a great job absorbing noise. The fourth wall has a closet, once again full of junk and dead space.

The biggest sources of external noise in my studio, in order: 1) The door. Thin lauan doors don’t do a great job of stopping noise. 2) The ceiling. The floor above is not very thick and noise from that direction is a challenge. I combat it by recording when people are asleep or not in the area of the house above me. Since it’s a bedroom, that’s usually not a big problem.

Yes, it has six fans. Actually seven if you include the big one on top.

The biggest source of internal noise in my studio: The computer. It’s a pretty big beast, with a high-end graphics card and a 1600mm(!) fan on top- it’s a little smaller than a dinner plate. Also multiple fans in front and back to keep the drives and graphics cool. Not a quiet machine by any stretch.

(as an aside, the Antec 900 case is great if you want a great case that keeps your system cool)

I’ve had plans for a while to build a sound booth, so I can isolate my recording environment from the computer. That’s still on the agenda, but I realized something that would be 1) a lot easier, 2) a lot faster, and 3) a TON cheaper.

That wall I mentioned that faces onto the rest of the basement with the cabinets on the other side? Well, the cabinets are big enough for a computer. I had considered moving the computer into the cabinet and punching a hole in the wall for cabling, but that seemed excessive and damaging.

I had forgotten that there was already a hole in the wall facing the cabinets. See, when this house was built, an in-wall heater assembly was installed. I shudder to think about what a fire hazard that thing was. See the pics below for what I mean. Since this heater was installed in the wall facing the cabinets, removing it would mean all I’d need to do is cut a very small hole in the back of the cabinet and voila! No computer noise in the studio!

The wall heater was installed in an inset box and removing it would mean shutting off the power to the entire house (or at least the downstairs, which is pretty much 2/3 of the place anyway) while I worked on it. I was trying to figure out when I could do this and not disrupt my family’s life…

When the power failed.

I was working from home and the power goes out for no reason I can figure- nice sunny day, no wind… hm. Call the electric company and they tell me it’s because of “equipment failure”, which I guess means all those Washingtonians who melt in heat above 70 degrees F turned on their AC and blew up a transformer.

So, opportunity knocks! I can’t do any work without the PC, and I wanted to yank the thing, and do that I needed the power off. So I turned off the main breaker as a precaution to the power coming back on before I was done and yanked the deathtrap heater out of the wall.

What I can’t believe is that anyone would install that in a wall. I never used the thing and took the knob off right after we moved in so no one else could either. Just looking at the thing scares me; it’s like looking at a dead animal that you know can’t hurt you any more but still freaks you out.

The wires in the back are the original power and ground wires. They still run to the rest of the room so I had to put (new) wire nuts on them after disconnecting the heater (I know what I’m doing, please don’t do stuff like this if you don’t).

About 10 minutes after I was done, the power came back on! Serendipity, thy name is Puget Sound Energy.

In the back of the hole in the wall you can see a beige panel- that’s the backing panel for the cabinets on the other side of the wall, and about 1/8″ thick. So the next step will be to cut a hole in that and put in a conduit/box of some type that will leave it looking nice.

For the interior, I’m simply going to rip the face off the old heater cover and use that. It’s already got a nice round face that will be perfect for running cables through, with nicely smoothed edges so it won’t cut anything and it fits on the hole already!

So that’s this evening’s project- shouldn’t take more than 20-30 minutes tops and then I’ll have a MUCH quieter studio for recording in. I’m really looking forward to hearing the difference and not having to mutilate my recordings via aggressive noise removal.

I’ll post some sample recordings before and after the changes to give people an idea of how much I eliminated noise-wise.

P.S. Look, people- if you’re going to do any work on your house, office, whatever, that involves working with electrical systems or components, then you damn sure better know what you’re doing or hire someone who does. Don’t take chances!

I’ve got a chest cold or something going on, and spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon in bed with a fever, chills and a cough. This afternoon I was feeling a bit better, with just some tightness in the chest. I planned to spend some time just answering a few emails and relaxing doing stuff- no voice work.

 But several really good shots for projects came in via my account on Voice123.com.  I’ve discovered that with these sites the auditions either don’t come in for days at a time or you get a bunch at once. I’ve been pretty discriminating with projects I audition for- I only try for about 25% of the ones that come in. But today there were 3 that were right up my alley and one was not only right in my wheelhouse but paid really well, too.

These auditions are time-sensitive; if you don’t send in an audition within a certain timeframe you’ll lose your “spot”. Which is usually not a big deal, as there’s always something else.

However, I felt I had what it takes for these projects- I mean, really solidly matched me- so I decided to go ahead and record them.

The challenge was: How do I ensure I’m not hurting my voice by doing this, especially when I’m a little under the weather?

Firstly, your voice in this business is your tool. It’s your life blood, so take care of it. That said, it is still a tool and you can do a lot with it if you know how to take care of your tools. In my case, what I did was:

• Took even more frequent breaks– like every few minutes, I took a couple of minutes and just kept quiet.
• Used technology to my advantage– speaking slightly more quietly, upping the gain and dealing with the noise later in the process.
• Water and lemon juice. This one is the best advice I’ve ever heard or read. Some people suggest straight lemon juice but that’s not something I’m willing to try; way to harsh. Room-temperature water with a teaspoon or two of lemon juice in it has been the best thing I’ve ever found for my throat and voice.
• Between each recording session I took an extra-long break and stayed in a warm environment. For some reason, keeping warm helps my voice; I’m sure there’s a medical reason for it, but the basic thing I’ve found is that a warm studio helps my voice stay “supple”.

It’s important- critical- to keep your vocal cords moisturized. That means drink water, people. The lemon juice helps also, and makes the water taste good too. Avoid sugary stuff or anything that’s not clear like the plague. For me the jury’s still out on coffee; I love the stuff but haven’t determined if it has much of an effect on my voice.

So, I was able to cut the 3 auditions, my voice feels and sounds fine, and I’m in good shape for the next round. If you push it too hard you’ll break your tool, maybe for a while, and maybe do it permanent damage. Always err on the side of caution.

One of the things I’ve heard repeatedly as I explore the voice business is that a professionally produced demo is a requirement. I tend to agree; very few people (myself included) have the chops to produce a truly professional voice demo, and everyone can benefit from having another person providing direction and an independent ear to help improve their delivery.

The problem is that there’s a million and one places out there that will help you out- for money. Sometimes lots of it. A good demo can cost thousands of dollars to produce and unless you know exactly what you want out of it, you’re not going to get your money’s worth. Also, you have to be sure that you’re comfortable working with the producer and that they’re not just there to get your money and let you stand in front of a mic for a few minutes and send you a badly-edited CD.

I don’t necessarily recommend this as a course of action, but what I’ve been doing is working on incrementally producing my own demos. At some point in the relatively near future I’ll be paying someone some money to help me make a truly quality demo reel. But I need experience before I get there.

Aside: It’s funny how you need a demo to get experience, but you should have experience before you make the demo. Just like most other industries. It’d be funny if it weren’t absolutely true.

I started off with recording some simple demos using scripts I found on various web sites. I then asked for people to provide feedback on them, listened to it, scrapped the previous demos and cut a new set taking the feedback (and the skills I’d learned before) into a new set.

I’m still in this process. The demos I have now up on this site and on various voice forums are not professionally produced; I made them myself. They will probably end up being tossed in the trash within a few days and replaced by newer, hopefully improved, versions that more effectively showcase my voice. Each step I’ve taken so far has shown a significant improvement in both technical and artistic quality, and I intend to make sure that trend continues.

This iterative process is not for the faint of heart; firstly you have to be ready to hear- a LOT- that your demos are terrible. It’d be disheartening, but like anyone else starting out in a creative field you have to be ready to do a lot of work and make a lot of subpar efforts in order to simply learn how to do it right.

I know for a fact I have an excellent voice. The question remains, however- am I persistent enough to take that native ability and develop a real talent out of it? I believe so.

I know so.

As part of establishing this blog, I wanted to run WordPress for it. I’d used WP in some other situations and really enjoyed the ease of use and flexibility it provided. However, WordPress has never put out a version that will run on Microsoft SQL Server, or any database system other than MySQL.

My website host doesn’t support MySQL any longer, as they are a primarily Microsoft-oriented hosting provider. Given that I’m a developer specializing in Microsoft-based technologies, it seemed a good fit- and still is. As an aside, I recommend checking out DiscountASP.net if you’re in the market for a good hosting provider that supports Microsoft tools and technologies really well.

Unfortunately, this left me in a bit of a quandry. No MySQL=No WordPress. Or so I thought. Knowing what I know about SQL databases, I figured there must be someone who has found a way to make WordPress work on SQL Server. Lo and behold, it was true- and it wasn’t just some guy who whipped up a patch, it was Microsoft itself! I give you the WordPress on Microsoft site. The install took literally about 3 minutes. The platform supports SQL Server, SQL Server Express and even SQL Azure. The project looks to still be pretty new but I expect good great things.

There’s been a few minor bugs; I can’t use the Twitter integration plugin as it causes a ton of SQL errors, and some of the URL rewriting for permalinks is not working correctly. Also, support for WordPress 3.x is not available yet, which isn’t surprising given that WP 3.0 was only released a few days ago.

All that said, I’m incredibly pleased that this initiative exists and is supported by Microsoft. Bringing one of the best blogging packages and one of the best database servers in the world together? Can’t go wrong there, and it means that I don’t have to switch hosting providers, use a blogging package I don’t like or have to roll my own DB patch to make WordPress work on SQL Server.

Ah, what a weekend. I spent most of it flattening my site- the one you’re visiting right now- and rebuilding it with the goal of documenting my journey into the world of professional voice work.

My name is Corey Snow and I’m a software developer by trade, a geek by choice, and have wanted to be a voice actor since I was about 20 years old. Like many others, I’ve heard the “you have such a wonderful voice” or the “you should be on the radio” comment from friends and acquaintances many, many times over the years.

I finally decided to put up or shut up, to really make a push into the world of commercial voice work. The purpose of this blog is to document my steps- even the ones that falter- into this new vocation.

I’m not going to be quitting my day job or anything, but I will be working diligently to accomplish my goal of becoming a serious voice actor and artist. To that end, I’ve spent a lot of time setting up demos and working on my skills as a sound editor. I’ve also created a “60 characters in 60 seconds” demo, which I hope you’ll give a listen to.

What can you expect from this blog? Well, I’m not totally certain yet. I have some ideas in mind, such as writing about what I’ve found really works for me for recording, editing, and so forth. I have a home studio recording booth I’m building in another week or two and I plan to document that process. Also I’ll be talking about the ins and outs of the voice acting “world”, for lack of a better term.

It’s an interesting one so far, and I hope you find my insights, such as they are, useful and entertaining.