 Okay, okay Fun with Stop it. We both have roadcasters with sound pads on them. It's just fear it's fear itself How do we The effects buttons. I never used those. Oh, never mind. Ah I Hope you don't feel like we're wasting your time today Tim Hardly ever any moment just any moment spent with Dan is is it is a treat absolute treat. Oh, yeah Okay, so I guess we're live is it working out there's there's grace we can talk to grace I hope to capture some good quotes today. Oh, and he recruited Terry. All right. Yeah There should be there should be two more Yeah, they'll they'll figure it out. There's Amy who has not turned on her camera yet Figure it out as we go along. Yeah I don't know if you can hear me Hi, we can't see you aim. I know my my My camera is not jiving with the Chrome yeah Welcome to Technology Gotta love it. What version windows are you on 22 h2? It's like Windows 11 or something There's chrome and Windows problems as of late I have noticed yeah, you know, you can try Try it. Just wonder where Billy is. All right. I mean I could try doing it from my phone It might work It can work. Okay. I'll do that. I'll leave and come back the Avengers are assembling. I love this Hey there how'd it go today? Hey, Bill, what's up? Everything in nothing man, you know Trying not to melt down here Yeah, man, I can dig it. All right. So here's how it's all gonna work folks Tim and George and I are gonna talk for the first 20 minutes or so We're gonna go to a break and then we're gonna start playing games So I'm relying on you Tim to know exactly how to run this in the second set like like a class Watch watch me work Nothing up the sleeve Strength Well, hey, hey, guys, I don't usually show my face live, but we're not officially live yet Dan and George. Do you want to be on or do you want me to keep you guys separate from when? No, no, well, they'll they will be in the green room until we go to them at the bottom of the Yeah, no, but do you want to also be part of that? Oh, absolutely. Okay. All right. We'll just Thank you my droppers for doing this. I am so grateful for you guys Best it's great. It's the best audience participation. We've had in a long time I know what we see we see Terry and grace all the time. They're they're regular viewers. No, I know I know Regular maybe it's not quite the word. I'm thinking And they are here I know I know your audience there. They're regular My first time here guys. Thanks for having me. Hey, Bill. Great to see you. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, Bill. Hi, Terry Bill's a very talented cat out of Atlanta Excellent My kid is out of Atlanta now. Yeah. Yeah, my daughter lives there with her family. Where are you? I'm in Venice, California Yeah, where now is she in Atlanta or somewhere else? No, she's out in the sticks She's in the winder with a grinder. There's the Lord. That's that's not even that's not even Atlanta, man That's like Athens. That's that's like saying it's kind of like saying that Irvine is Los Angeles. Yeah She's closer to UGA than she is to the city. Yeah, but they should they'll be she'll be moving further Further blue in a little while See Oh Which part of Atlanta are you and Bill? I'm in Kennesaw a little Northwest of the city Northwest. Nice fellas, how much time do you want to give these games? Let's see because I can do I can do this for like three hours straight, but ain't nobody Sue has a hook. Yeah, yeah Not the first hook I've gotten in my career either Yeah, well we we'll go to about about 755 when you hear this I mean stop 755 is two minutes from now Okay, well that 55 good night. Yeah, okay These time zone things is totally screw me. Yeah, seriously. We should all just be on the same time as everybody UTC Except in Arizona is out they can't I Heard my boom operator tonight and he keeps hitting me in the face with the Medicines for UTCs right there's that's not something else. I'm sorry It's a UTI It's just very juice man UTI was a fast Volkswagen. I never could spell Wait a minute, I thought Wait a minute, I thought a GTI was a guy who didn't claim a fraternity in college That's a GDI Like this new game It's great, how can you come on? Can you keep that going? Yeah, GDI was the people that made Viewmaster Gaf keep keep that rim shot Oh shit, sorry I should be I should be liquored up like Uncle Roy level liquor got it Uncle Roy's party level Always party. Yeah, yeah, you better classify that statement. I do Because it's usually not just liquor, but yeah, oh, I know everybody. Thank you for coming out tonight Life-changing Literally never made that voice before no, it's I was like that sound like Uncle Roy, but no, no it was absolutely nobody But that's when you go to his barbecue, that's what everybody sounds like exactly I've been there about an hour or so. You've been there too late If you're there after 20 minutes in man. Yeah, if you're there after they sing Fiddler's on the roof It starts to go That's only after sundown Sunrise Maybe I'll go this year, but who knows Okay, I'm gonna remove I'm gonna remove everyone. Just let you know you're not gonna disappear. You're still gonna be cool And we have five minutes on the clock to start. Okay, cool. So don't get don't worry guys Okay, even though you won't see yourselves my people. Yeah, I'm so grateful for all you guys But you'll be able to see the show in real time, which is something everybody else gets 30 seconds later This is the music to get everybody all excited So I figured I'd ask you a couple of questions about sure yourself. How you got into this, you know that sort of thing Well, I'm not gonna you know, I'm not gonna tell you what questions there are Okay, you're just gonna have to live with them. I'm a Pisces St. Louis Cardinals fan I've met all four monkeys. How many of them are still alive one. They're just no way. Really? Yeah Because Nessmith died last year. Yep And I remember so Mickey Dolan's is the only one so he's the last one standing man still on tour, too Really still singing in the same key Impressive see now. I remember the big the big story with him is he was in circus boy. Yep. Yeah, you can tell when I grew up You put out an album last year, it's very good cool What's the improv group? Yeah, you call what you call your group of improvers to improv to improv got it See if I can remember how to do this show Just got them updating the website Yeah, it's updated I know if we take an extra week off it takes an extra week to get back on schedule. I mean to get back in the groove again Yeah Okay Yeah, nothing to it. It's just it's just a conversation. You guys have been doing this for years. Come on Yeah, sort of We it's it's our it's our bimonthly poker game with with a guest essentially, yeah, it's and You know, that's why people listen because they love hanging out with you guys At least that's my experience. Well, that's that's why we started this. George and I were at a voice conference And this all this had to be that must have been 2010 And oh eight my friend. Oh wait. Well, we met it away. It was I think it was 2010 though We had the boots next to each other and some brought over a computer And we started, you know going well, it could be this I'm all of a sudden there was this crowd gathering around us Yeah, so we sort of got the idea that perhaps we were on to something Yeah, and you know, we did a couple of podcasts and then we said, hey, let's just do this as a webcast Only we had no idea how to do that I'll click and clack. Yeah, there you go. That's what it's all about and it works Yeah, you guys make it work Stranger things have happened. All right, we're gonna watch for two one minute Let's see I sent Jeff the uh Streamyard link. Okay, good He's gone George. Come back. What did he do? Playing the part of George today Pro tip. Okay. Okay. If you're using a trackpad and you're on Come on. Can you hear me? Oh, there you are If you're using a trackpad and you're in a stream yard session Do not swipe your two fingers to the left You know what it does it goes back to the previous website that you were on don't do that Streamyard And kicks you off the show Okay, where is Sue? Oh, she's over there. She's she's there. Hi, Sue. It is 459. We are almost at five o'clock Let's see the big hand is on the Five o'clock Ready Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop. See that with the the cool call letters and everything We are gonna have a riot tonight because we're gonna be doing some improv with our guest tim powers. Say hello tim Hello tim. All right See that right on cue He's a lot on the show because he answered the question correctly Right now you can ask some questions, but we're gonna be doing some Some massive improv in the second half of the show So stick around for that. We have a lot of guests coming in I want to see how you do this on stream yard with multiple screens as opposed to Just doing it live together and going zip zap zoom and all that kind of stuff Anyway, are you ready mr. Whittom? Yeah, let's do this thing. All right, tim. You all set there. I'll set. Let's go. Okay. It's time for voiceover body shop Right now Voice over body shop is brought to you by Voiceover essentials.com the home of harlan hogan signature products Source elements the folks who bring you source connect Vo heroes.com become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training Voice actor.com your voice over website ready in minutes voiceover extra your daily resource for voice over success And by world voices the industry association of freelance voice talent And now here's your hosts dan and george Well, hello there if you haven't figured it out yet I'm dan Leonard because it says so right there dan. I'm george the tech and this is yeah, and this is voiceover Body shop or a video Yes, yes All right Well, sorry, we were off last week, but you were probably all off Firing off fireworks blowing your hands off and stuff So if you want to see a video of that, let me know Yeah, well, I did have a cool video because because marsy and I were landing at lax at approximately 9 45 Tuesday night and it looked like la was under attack Yeah, you know with depending on your neighborhood. It was Yeah, it was freaking pandemonium Yeah, I mean from lake aro had all the way across the you know from sand Bernardino across the hills Down into the basin I think I posted that on facebook So if you want to see what that gets over in the northeast northeast though, mostly you're watching drone shows Maybe which I would be completely fine with actually Yeah, yeah sauce a lot of lightning too and fireworks under lightning. It was super cool. Yeah Anyway Tonight we are going to be talking about improv Which is really really important and we're going to live in the moment I guess is the best way to put it, but let me introduce our guest Voice actor and improv facilitator tim powers credits include voice work for disney netflix final fantasy Genshin impact and of course the award-winning audio drama podcast car cream car cerium I Not one I've listened to but apparently now I have to but he's also known as the friendly voice of that trusted neighbor across the street That gives you good advice. He also studied with the groundlings. Hey, that's that's nothing And upright citizens brigade in los angeles and his own troupe in hollywood. He ran it for 10 years called box office poison His timp rav interactive workshop of improvisational theater games are designed to help actors stay in the moment And release the need for perfectionism, which is perfect for this show. Let's welcome Sorry, it got stuck in my dashboard Welcome to the It's my demo guys. So if anybody needs it, just let me know I'll drop I have a pencil around here somewhere. Cool. Yeah Yeah, yeah, that's from long ago But that's what I keep telling people, you know, everybody's intimidated by computers It's like no, it's just like a cassette recorder stop play record But no, no, it's a computer. I gotta I gotta program it No, don't be intimidated by them. No, but another thing that's intimidating is in is improv to a lot of people Um, but we'll get into that in a second. You got a great resume there You've been a busy guy over the past few years. Thank you. Tell us how you got into voiceover and into improv It was uh, it a long and winding road. I was always the funny kid, right? I'm the I'm the youngest kid in a big family So can't win them all, huh? Yeah, I had to learn to either be funny or be completely ignored And so, you know, I was that kid who was, you know Not the wacky kid in class, but I was the funny kid There's a difference between what I call the class clown and the class comedian And the class clown was the guy who would run naked down the 50 yard line during the homecoming game Steal the football and a rainbow wig and do a wacky dance. Sure the class comedian Was the guy that talked him into doing it Class comedian had material That right right like I got out of I got out of so much trouble just by just by cleverly, you know Talking my way out of it and being funny and being uh in the moment And in my 20s, I went through uh, let's let's just call it some trauma and as part of my recovery from that trauma I started uh doing stand-up and I took an improv class. Uh, my first improv class was Uh, September 12th, 2001 Which was a very difficult day to be funny But because I had our but I had already submitted and I and people were There was an existential crisis within the comedy community. You know, can we still be funny at this point? And what we found was that staying in the moment Helped you helped heal that grief those of you who have seen the movie the um um What the aristocrats right it talked about how Gilbert godfried So it took my first improv class there moved to la worked at the worked at the comedy store worked at the hollywood improv worked at the um the ice house um and got in studying With uh with the groundlings over on melrose the groundlings is a legendary comedy theater that gave us the rain newman phil hartman p. Wee Herman will ferrell chris katan um And did my time there went on to work with the upright citizens brigade, which is a theater started in new york their hollywood location um Gave us all kinds of wonderfully talented people. It's a tree. It's basically a training ground for Learning the basics of improvisational comedy, which really started back post world war two with second city in chicago Long story, um, but it's you know, the improv tradition goes all the way back to people like nickles in may Alan arkand was a member of second city robert kline Joan rivers uh burns and shriver to dust off some names and The the whole concept of improvisation is creating theater in the moment completely unscripted It's not about being funny and that's the thing. I think that freaks everybody out They're like, I can't be funny just spontaneously. I can't do anything spontaneously bologna. Everybody does everything spontaneously You're not that big of a control freak, you know that You can't live in the moment. Everybody has instinct you guys have been doing this show You told me since 2008. I've been following it for four or five years now You guys improvise all day long against each other. That's what you do you live in the moment You know, um like if you're driving home from work and the road is closed You don't just sit there wait for them to open the road you improvise you find another way Around it and so the the beauty of improvisation is staying present in the moment being flexible Being able to agree to what's around you will talk a little bit about yes and uh in a little bit But it allows you to take direction really well create characters out of absolutely nothing and it just allows you to be spontaneous You know, I work with a lot of new green voice actors and a lot of them are like, I gotta do it right I could have do it right. How do I how do I do this right and there is no right? There's just there's just the the way you do it Right, but we always hear the importance of improv for for voice talents. Everybody's like oh When you want to start everybody says take some improv classes. Yeah Why why is that? Why is why do you think it's so important for a number of reasons? First of all This is the um It improv is a crash course in acting So if you come into voiceover and you're not an actor It is a great way to become an actor real fast and you learn acting terminology You learn, you know, I learned how to be on stage on an improv theater. I wasn't a theater kid You know, uh, I learned industry terminology And I learned the importance of character. I learned the importance of choices I learned the importance of making bold choices because You have there's nothing there's there's no safety net between you and the audience You know, if I'm on stage and the guy says, all right, you guys are two demons in hell arguing over what to watch on television I don't have time to think about it. I've gotta become a demon in hell arguing or watching leave it to bever And that's the end of it, you know Um, and it just allows you to create quickly. Um, one of the Um, one of my old coaches used to say if you really want to learn improv make as many mistakes as fast as you can I can see that Yeah What why why is it that so many people think that they're bad at it? Like you and I have talked and I'm like, oh, I suck at this and uh, and then you showed up and did it I know which is Well, because you gave proper instruction and proper Proper lead to do it and the right What's the word I'm looking for? The I threatened to beat you up. That was what it was. Yeah, it was uh, you know, I'm you know, and I stayed in the room for some reason Well, if you think about the standard, right people think of improvisation And they think of improv comedy the first thing they think of is whose line is it anyway, right? And that's that's the the most accessible thing anybody, you know In the middle of nowhere when they think of improv, that's the first thing they see and that's a half hour show edited from three hours Of content creation and Wayne Brady is absolutely a genius the cast of that show They've been doing it for years and years and years and years Uh, and you look at that and you think there's no way I could do that It's like grabbing a guitar for the first time and then watching Hendricks and going how in the world. Can I do that? Well, you gotta learn You gotta start playing this old man You know, you gotta learn your chords. You gotta learn your cowboy chords eventually somewhere and People are just afraid of failure. People are afraid of looking dumb people are afraid of Of being silly and in theater Especially in voice acting you you have to make those bold choices. You have if You can't be afraid of failure You know, it's just you Kalal Bogdano likes to say make a bold choice even if it's a wrong choice And that's one of the things that improv teaches you right away is when when you're on stage you make a bold choice And the audience is with you the entire time. It's great um When you get a script You you've got to make choices on whatever your audition is stick to those choices And then the other thing that improv does is help you be more directable You know, there's a game that I play called new choice I invented none of these games. I just appropriated them Where an actor's in a scene and at some point I'll pull out the little bell and I'll go new choice And they're like, I went to the grocery store today. I bought peanut butter. I bought an elephant. I got robbed You know, they had to make a new choice every time there's a new New cling to the bell and pivot their reality of the scene Fascinating and it's it's wonderful to watch people's brains work Especially people who try to lock You know, they try to find the perfect thing and when you force them into just relying on their instinct It's wonderful. Dan. Dan. I watched it happen with you. It was fantastic You know, I have to think about it though. Did sometimes as I get older, I you know, it's like watching jeopardy I know the answer, but it's Yeah, I gotta force it out somehow and by and they're on to the three questions later, but uh So trying to think that fast is For me, I thought was difficult until you know, if you give someone time to warm up to it Oh, I know what I'm gonna do, but Just off the cuff like that As you were saying, it has to it has a lot to do with trust in the other people you're working with entirely That's the thing, right the people that I started with doing improv 25 years ago Our dear intimate close friends of mine. One was the efficient at my wedding. The other was the best man at my wedding we um None of them were the bride at my wedding. I met her later Um But the whole thing is really an exercise in trust It's no it's nobody's job in an improv troupe to be the star a good improv troupe does not have a star It's five six actors all supporting each other so that no matter what happens and no matter what weird choice Dan comes up with tim Scott is back to justify that choice and create a reality around it Hmm Once again, we're talking with tim powers and we're going to be doing some improv in a little while It's true. If you got if you got a question throw it the chat room I know jeff holman is trying to get the questions in there Uh, and uh, you can do it on facebook or on youtube live Or wherever else you're watching this, you know, send up, you know, send up a flare. We'll hopefully get the question Um Send send a cassette to george. There you go I and I know for a fact that he has a cassette player. So who does it? Yeah, I that's true. I probably have three or four around here Gotta listen to the old demo tape somehow. That's right Um, so how do you overcome this this fear that people have? You know about trying to do it And and and perhaps the the intimidation boom. I gotta say something funny But as you were saying that's not necessarily the case. It's not about being funny The the comedy that comes from improv is watching smart people figure out problems So the most basic improv the absolute basic improv game That I use to prove to people that they can improvise is called eight things and you just I'm like, okay, dan name eight James Bond movies Okay, dr. Know of rush of love A thunderball casino royale, right? Uh Die another day or something like that you only live sure What you're not playing yet george But that's six you got two more a quantum of solace and The spy will love me. Yeah, see there you go now all of those were resident in your brain It took a minute somewhere. Yeah, but you got them, right, you know george name eight breakfast cereals Fruit loops captain crunch Fruit loops captain crunch Rice krispies Shredded wheat frosted mini-weets Um grape nuts Give me two wow. We're going really deep now. Yeah, you are um puffed wheat. Yeah And last but not least silly rabbit Tricks for kids. There you go, right They were all there. They were all there you improvised all of that now the the the cool thing that happened was once you hit like Most people can name five of anything, right? All those were old cereals, right? Exactly. They were deep deep in that like long-term memory, right puffed wheat. Come on Who's butt butt that in the last 20 years? What's after that buckwheats, you know, it's a Farina, uh But um, but watching you figure out Those last three and reaching through the rolodex of your brain Was super fun. But guess what you accomplished the goal You hit it. Yeah That that wasn't hard though. I mean that's like you said it's all in that rolodex up there How do you how do you take it to the next step after something like that? Then you start playing other games and you keep playing and you keep playing and ultimately all you're doing Is encouraging whatever actor you're working with to rely on his or her instinct after proving That they have one. I just proved to both of you guys that you're smart enough to name eight things Your your gut reaction is oh crap. I can only name like three things You know, Dan there was a look on your eye after like the third james bond movie where you're like, oh crap but But you got there man You got there, right? And so all we and then Take the fact that you can trust your instinct. You can prove To yourself that you're smart enough to do whatever is required of you And then I put you in another scene and before you know it two hours later Your two demons in hell arguing about what to watch and tell it Once again, we're talking with tim powers. We're talking about improv Again, if you got any questions throw it in there We're gonna have we have a crowd coming in here in a little bit and we're gonna play all those games But what are some of the games? I mean that was not even a game You just threw something out there about names this or name that What is uh, what are some of the games you play? Maybe some people are familiar with them There are a couple of games that are that are super fun to play. There's one That I have come to I've named it after a regular at some of the timprop sessions I call it the Mike Gonzalez family album and Mike Gonzalez is a very sweet very talented New voice actor and he comes to timprop and he's got a great attitude So I just named this game after him and I go to the internet and I search for weird pictures of like An eight-year-old boy boxing a kangaroo or like world war two gas mask pictures and I'm like, okay Tell me what's going on in this picture. Just make up a story about what's going on And they'll tell me, you know Like it's a picture of like a 16 year old girl levitating on a man on a farm Like old black and weird old black and white pictures and I'm like, okay, tell me what's going on That's uh, that's uh, that's Mike's aunt Margaret and uh, apparently she She sleeps very soundly very very soundly and just levitates through you know And she she used to get all her chargers done while she was sleeping. He's just making stuff up and um, so that's one of the games that I play another one a little more advanced game that I play Uh, it's called an intervention and uh, I What what the way I play that Is I'll get a suggestion from The actors who are there about a personal problem that I have could be halitosis could be Cleptomania could be pyromania could be Whatever whatever it is and then all the other actors in the uh that are playing Play characters in my life and we actually have an intervention where they tell me about how this thing is Damn this is your father. Um, you know, your halitosis is uh, is horrible I've had to repaint your bedroom every year twice a year since you were eight years old because you peel the paint Kmart fresh look interior latex just bubbles right off the wall with your breath You know or whatever and they're just making character choices and building a world around me And what happens is if there are six people in that room They start building details about my life and my dad would say well, you know your dog's spunky, uh, you know Hates being in your room and then all of a sudden somebody comes back and is my dog spunky You know, they're just making stuff up and these are people who had never done improv ever in their lives But they're all actors and they all have these, you know Uh characters and stuff having fun. Yeah, so how do we apply this? to voice acting because I think one of the things that people think about is Uh auditions because we we've had a lot of guests on here who talk about improv and Going nuts, you know and just going with whatever you're feeling as opposed to necessarily might be on on the page You know, we've had john bailey is somebody who just can just blast. He's a he's a machine gun Sure, and uh, you know there But and he says it, you know, sometimes just do something a little bit different or something along those lines How would you how do you approach an audition from from an improvisational? What improv does is help you make those acting choices faster You are you are if you're if you're in an impromptu casting you're on stage and you are bestowed to be all right Tim you're captain crunch running for president I've got four seconds to commit to that character It almost looked like I got a I got to find somewhere in me a daas butler impression where I can do a passable Who's daas right? No, it was Jim back as No, I don't think Jessup's Jim back as trust me. Okay. I'm older than all of you guys. All right Okay, um I've got to find that impression Okay to be captain crunch running for running for president Um, or make that make a character choice and commit to what however I'm going to do that so when I look at a script and I'm like and I figure out who I am or or if I'm doing a video game and I've I've developed stock characters and I can pivot those stock characters a little bit It all it does is really help you analyze a script faster You know because you're just making it up and you can trust your instincts And then you don't and then you don't worry about it. That's the beauty of it You know if you're committed, you know what you do and and you you trust your instinct You can commit to the uh to the character Um without without that fear of failure Yeah, sometimes I get three or four good uh good ideas and just end up submitting the best too Now I remember doing some improv with somebody and if you if you couldn't come up with something or you said something It just fell flat you just go ah I failed That's the worst that happens. Yeah That's the worst that happens, you know It's not like you're breaking a dish or something like that It's no there are there are no improv cops who come and beat you with a rubber hose or anything like that you just And here's the thing I have I have taught students where their brain locks And they're like I I can't I can't think of more than four James Bond movies You stop for a minute And you just make eye contact and you breathe and you bring them back into the present moment because the only thing That's stopping them from doing that is their own anxiety And that's the beauty of improv is it helps overcome that anxiety Right, so it's it's not like thinking what's the fun next funny thing I can say it's reacting It's listening and reacting to what's happening and being able to create right away You know and it also like I said it makes you more directable So when you've delivered something and the director goes, okay, that was great now Let's try this you're not locked into that and you're flexible What greater gift does a team have than a directable voice actor? Right exactly Well, I think we're going to break format a little so we can have some time to have some fun in the next half hour So we're going to take a break with tim powers and we're going to get into Playing some improv games with some other guests who will be joining us. So don't go away We'll be right back here on voiceover body shop This is the latin lover narrator from jane the virgin anthony mendez and you're enjoying dan and george on the voiceover body shop It's vacation time just about everywhere For example, here's australian voiceover pro andrew peters on vacation in london recording a commercial with his port-a-booth pro Why is the port-a-booth pro gaining users worldwide? Well, just listen winter's tough the rain the wind the cold Performers can capture great audio even in acoustically untreated spaces with the port-a-booth pro Your microphone hears the sound of a human-sized sound booth at a fraction of the size and cost The pro accommodates large and long microphones lengthy scripts and e-reading devices The harlan hogan port-a-booth pro is lined with oralex studio foam It's a professional quality sound studio that assembles in less than a minute and its multi-pocketed carrying case makes it Super easy to take your gear and your voice wherever you go order your harlan hogan port-a-booth pro now Just 389 99 only at voiceover essentials dot com You know what? I'm not going to waste your time guys because this is a fun show and I want to get to the good stuff So Source connect you can get it at source dash elements dot com They have incredibly good training and support Sign up for the subscription right away if you're serious about this Don't just do the free thing sign up Because the cost to get started will cover all of your training to get started and learn how to use it and and understand it better and Support this tool set that connect studios all over the world It's worth it source dash elements dot com Tell them that we sent you let's get back to more commercials right after this Is ai coming for your voiceover career? Is it going to take all of your jobs? Man do we hear that question a lot and there's a lot of people That are fearful that the answer to that is yes well I've been working in performance and technology Simultaneously throughout my career beginning in the 70s and I've seen the incursion of Technology both good and bad And I want you to have the fact so what i'm going to do is i'm going to put together a course which i'm going to give away for free I'm aiming for mid august or so Talking about synthetic voices and what they mean to your future and your success So it'll be at voheroes.com Um, I'll give you details as soon as we're ready to go. I'm david h. Lawrence the 17th I thank you so much for watching and for listening to v obs And stand by we'll get that course to you very soon This is bill radner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george widham v obs dot tv And you didn't say a thing there george. It's amazing I was trying to react and do something on camera, but uh, I was too busy typing Okay, well, if you don't know you're about to be on cam sometimes During the headlights at least I still have my shirt on I usually take it off during the break, but Which is always interesting to watch. I was going forward to it. Yeah, anyway, our guest is tim powers And we're gonna we're talking about improv and now we're gonna do some improv Yeah, we have a bunch of guests that we are now inviting in so sue if you would bring all those people in and uh A couple of familiar faces and names. We've got terry brisco Here's a story Wait, there's one missing. Oh, who's come on sue get in there Come on Okay, sue is our director. We have grace newton terry brisco bill cellar I know Amy Bermude is how you doing everybody Very well Awesome. This is awesome. All right, so uh George is like i'm out of here I think he swiped to the left there Okay, he'll be back. There he is. I did that I keep thinking i'm on hot or not or what's it not hot or not? What's it called? What's the thing where you swipe left? Never mind? I'm just gonna mute my mic and listen Feel feel free to join in so anyway, so welcome everybody. It's great to see everybody So how do we get this going tim? You we're gonna we're gonna play we're gonna play a couple games What i'd like for the first game what i'd like sue if you could move Amy into your spot so that the middle middle row is terry grace and amy Okay Here's the thing terry terry grace and amy All very talented actors, but what you didn't know is they are the world's foremost expert in something What are the experts in guys? Clown shoes clown shoes you guys are the world's foremost experts in clown shoes and you have been chosen to uh address the world symposium On clown shoes you're the world's foremost experts and you're gonna lecture us and answer our questions about clown shoes however On your way to the symposium the three of you were involved in a horrible nuclear accident marvel comics level nuclear accident and the three of you were fused into one beam With one brain and you are only allowed to speak one word at a time in the order terry grace amy terry grace amy terry grace amy terry always starts You don't have to end on amy But you can only speak one word at a time are you guys clear on this? Got it Okay, so wait if grace says the last thing Then terry has to start the next one terry starts the next one. Okay. Yeah, okay So welcome everybody to the to the world symposium on on clown shoes Clown shoes are very important a very important part of the the clown costume Um, and we're here with the world's foremost expert on clown shoes So that we can address you by name world's foremost expert. Would you kindly? Greed us and introduce yourself by name, please little glob and my Doctor told us to find mysterious mosquitoes so that you all can Experience Clown Shoes Okay, beautiful. Well lemo globin. We are glad you're here and we're looking forward to learning all about Uh about clown shoes Um clowns have been a part of the theater tradition Since, you know, commedia dell arte the the early days of gregoroman theater um What what kind of footwear did clowns use before? the invention of Of clown shoes Lee wooden papyrus skis and tide tightly with horse hair I'll allow it see There there it is. All right, very cool. Um Tell me the story Of the origin of the clown shoe. Who was who was the clown? Why did they need shoes? What happened? the Horace galloped Roughly toward the feet and stumbled Clumsily sharded So it's shard protection for the for the clown, of course. All right, uh anyone anyone not playing Do you have any other questions for the world's foremost expert on clown shoes? Why do they have to be so big? Yeah, why do clown shoes have to be so big? well feet tend to ferreate wobbly flatly with oil See there you go. You guys are great. See give it up for yourselves. All you did was you created You created this entire thing and you trusted your instincts. You you guys were right there just answering the question Like I don't know what to say and boom there it was there was the word that you needed at the moment that you needed it Great work to play this again with some different folks. All right, dan or george. One of you guys volunteer Oh, I'll volunteer. All right, so I want it's fearful. I can just see it in his eye All right, can we get uh, can we get dan bill and sue in a line together sue? Can you do that? Oh, she's so good at this Dan bill and sue. All right, give it up for dan by the way give it up for grace and terry and amy That was pretty cool. You guys were brave. You didn't know what I was gonna do And you just you showed up and you just did it now you guys get to do exactly the same thing Dan bill and sue are experts in something for the rest of y'all. What are they experts in? Broccoli smoothies, I heard broccoli smoothies You are the world's foremost experts in broccoli smoothies You know the drill the three of you were involved in a horrible accident The three of you were fused into one single being you share a brain and you can speak one word at a time dan bill sue dan bill sue The words come trust me Welcome to the world. Uh, welcome to the world exposition on broccoli smoothies. We're glad to have you So that we can address you by name. Would you kindly greet us with a hearty? Hello or something like that and introduce yourself by name, please fred green span crowny Those hyphenated last names get me every time fred. Thank you very much. It's a it's a pleasure to have you here Uh broccoli smoothies, you know the the concept of adding Uh vegetables to smoothies is is really kind of I don't know. It's it's weird, right? But um because smoothies where I come from smoothies are largely based on on fruit And sherbet. Uh, there's a high sugar content What is the biggest benefit? Of putting broccoli in a smoothie Starting with you dan. You're you're always first. Sorry dan bill sue dan bill sue. All right So what's the what's the biggest? What's the biggest advantage to putting broccoli in a smoothie? broccoli can always Keep you that's two words keep you thank you regular and smells Fabulous So always use broccoli in Everything everything. All right Today's v.o.b.s brought to you by the broccoli council broccoli keeping america flagellates since 1954. Um, all right, cool. Um, broccoli The the the the texture of broccoli doesn't always lend itself to being uh blended Into a smoothie. What are some things that I can do to make broccoli a little more palatable and give it a better mouth feel try adding castor oil and flax seed flax flax seed is one word. Yeah, look at that flax seed. It's your word dan and flax it is always easy coming in easy coming out Super super easy. All right. Anybody else have any questions about about broccoli smoothies How long will it be? Let's see what uh Here's here's here's what I want to know. Here's what I want to know about broccoli smoothies Uh, tell me about the recent failed attempt to add a broccoli smoothie to the mcdonald's menu At McDonald's somebody put tube Much broccoli in shamrock shake Yeah, see. Yeah Yeah, they went from minty to whatever they are now to broccoli and somebody just That's why the ice cream machine is always broken. It's broccoli's fault. Damn it. All right. Great work, you guys Okay, so did you see what happened? You guys started throwing out words that were compounded or You were able to follow the concept and bring in a word right after knowing Instinctively what the word was going to be when bill said two and sue came with much That's relying on your instinct and justifying the reality of uh of what's there none of you tried to be funny You were just all present in there and dan figured out the hack of the game Which is when you don't know what to say throw in a conjunction And and then kick it to bill That's that's the hack to this game, right? Yeah That that only fit because it had had to create a Sure the progression, but it works works every single time and but or nor and all the conjunctions work beautifully There it is nice Nice work your function All right, um Let's see. Let's All right. Here's what we're going to do next is you guys are going to tell me uh, tell me a story. Okay Um Dan where's the cool plates that you went on vacation at some point other than buffalo new york Morocco Morocco beautiful. All right, you guys are going to tell me a story grace bill Terry amy. You guys are going to tell me a story about what happened in Morocco So do you want to play too? Sure. Okay. Cool. So one of you is going to start telling me the story and at some point I'm going to stop you and tell you that your internet sucks Okay, so um, can you um, actually see I don't want you to play. I want you to handle the mute button So at some point i'm going to put a message to you in the private chat window to mute whoever is speaking Can you do that? Yep. Okay, and at that point I'm going to say hey george your internet sucks bill pick it up from here And then bill will pick up the story From exactly where that uh from exactly that point Does that make sense? So this is a game you just you play It's if we were in stage I would just point at you and you would tell that part of the story until I stopped and pointed at somebody else But since we don't have that the game has been reconfigured for zoom and now I can say grace your internet sucks bill pick it up from here And then he does because bill's good like that. So uh, this is the story about what happened in uh in morocco grace Can you tell me about? Like what happened? What what what's the deal everybody's talking about morocco? Well, my understanding is well according to tmz that is uh, well Dan and marsy were on vacation just having a wonderful time And all of a sudden Matthew McConaughey comes out of nowhere Weirdest part about it is he had a shirt on And he was buying up all the moroccos because he had run out of them And I couldn't even believe what I was seeing I didn't even know he knew where morocco was I just didn't I was so surprised and it ruined dan and marsy's vacation And he was just going crazy and he took the moroccos right out of the moroccan's Hands and dan and marsy's hands and it was very upsetting. I think he needs to he needs jesus. That's what he needs Stop playing those moroccos Your internet is just fine grace keep going Well tmz, they just couldn't believe it that lawyer guy and the guy with the hair They were just going back and forth They didn't Grace great. Oh, oh grace. Oh your internet your internet sucks briscoe pick it up from here, buddy Uh, so they took it from his hands and then the authorities got control of the situation at hand So they said to him you cannot take these moroccos from these moroccos. You just can't do it Okay, which can you go down the street and you can buy yourself a face Dan let me tell you where to get the face now. I've seen the face Show you where to get it. Okay. Now everybody let me explain something to you something to tell you what tell you what else Well, tmz was there they saw merman They saw what they saw oh, oh, we'll never know because briscoe's internet sucks. They see what amy picking up from here A merman. I can't believe that somebody saw a merman in morocco um But i'm sure that merman must have been wearing a very sexy fez To go along with his very sexy scales But uh, it definitely was not matthew mccanae because he got ran out of town because he took Dan moroccos I didn't even know they had moroccos in morocco. I thought I All about fezzes. I thought it was all about jason born, you know getting away from The assets, you know hopping from roof to roof. That's what I thought it was all about but uh, you know merman Jason born matthew mccanae. I mean for me morocco is all about Oh Amy Seriously, I know where you live. I know you've got good internet But you're seriously you need to get off america online because your internet sucks bill pick it up from here so I I saw the same thing really it was uh Now first of all, I don't know I was doing a morocco. I I bought a train ticket for making I don't know what the frick happened, but I wanted to be morocco Next thing, you know, there is matthew mccanae, but he didn't get kicked out because of the moroccos Turns out he and woody allen were sharing a tent Not woody allen. Who's the other guy from cheers woody harrelson Here's the thing And and what happened was they were in that tent and they opened the tent and the smoke comes pouring out Next thing, you know, you got wacky camels everywhere people just floating around in the streets of morocco And the police finally said, you know what that's enough and and uh, you know, because there's harrelson naked and everything But a fez he's just wearing a fez and he's dancing around the streets of morocco and you know mccanae's banging on his maracas Well, not not harrelson's maracas because that'd be painful as hell You know what i'm saying, but but you know just naked guys running around the streets And that's pretty much how the two of them got got kicked out of morocco Yeah, see there you go and there's your story There's your story about morocco Beautiful nice work. See everybody was paying attention to the details little details that other people leave and and playing games Like that will help you find those little details in the script that give you an idea of what your character is You start looking for keywords You start looking for things that are out of the ordinary and help define your character every one of you guys Just rocked it nice work. Everybody. I love grace. I love grace's character when she tells me I need Jesus That's just one of my favorite grace character So, um, yes, we have a couple questions here Okay One from catherine j. Jarvie Do you have any tips for dealing with post decision regret? You know that feeling in the pit of your stomach where you go? What the heck did I say that of all things? You know, it's funny. Um, the one of my old coaches I don't know if you ever met lori tritell And she was the voice of playboy television and she passed a few years ago. She was a great coach She used to say the best audition you ever do Is the one you do in the car on the way home You know, yeah, so you're you're uh, you're regret After post post choice Send it and forget it man. You got no control over it once you hit the send button and Just just release it into the into the universe, you know, if you if you have a better choice Remember it for next time. That's really it. Yeah All right, let's bring everybody back in but we got to bring jeff jeff in too So jeff holman, who's also a professional actor. Hi jeff Unmute yourself Unmute jeff we got time for one more game. Oh, we got yeah, we sure do boom. Okay. All right cool Okay Let's play let's play one more game All of you actors every single one of you dan george sue everybody you have cool stuff Within arms reach of you grab Something whatever it is Grab grab something within uh Within arms reach Right, whatever whatever that may be. Okay Show me what it is. Okay now the item that you have in your hand may or may not be that specific item But what it what it actually is You're gonna tell me what it is because it's gonna solve a problem That I have okay and so The problem that I have is that my next door neighbor's dog keeps barking while I'm trying to audition Okay, and so for me the item that I have is this guy right here Who will actually walk up to the dog? We'll lift lift the top off his head and release a gas that will neutralize the vocal cords of the dog for 45 minutes so that I can get my Audition in it also smells like beef so that the dog will will approach it Right Uh, and it will neutralize the vocal cord for uh for the dogs And that's how we're gonna get silence in my neighborhood so that I can lay down All those auditions that I've got bill. What do you have? Well, um What I have here is something I'm very proud of I've been working on this for years to help with uh Animal control Okay, uh to avoid the noises when you're trying to do your thing. Sure So while your dog's vocal cords are neutralized by you What this is um, this is something that That he can chase around the yard that doesn't make any noise You see I put this down on the ground and this thing starts to go and it looks like one of them rabbits at the dog track Okay, so he's actually running away from you And can't talk So you've got your time to do what you need to do And I'm very proud of this because I have put years and years of research into this And I'm very happy with the way things have turned out brilliant invention. You can't argue a success bill. Nice work Amy, what do you have man? So I have um A bobble head from yeah, Donald's happy meal from yeah, and um This is not just any bobble head toy this this rocket Actually at night time after midnight. Yeah comes to life as rocket from the guardians of the galaxy and he can Go to your neighbor And he can just have a gab session with that dog Because you know he can communicate very persuasively with any form of life and he will um He's not gonna hurt the dog, but he's gonna make the dog think twice about barking during business hours and uh The dog may never bark during business hours again once rocket gets done talking to him There you go, right? It's very the art of persuasion I need you to stop barking and I need that guy's leg. All right. Cool. That's great. Amy. All right. Jeff. What do you have buddy? uh, I've got um What looks like a air pod case, but it's not air pods Actually, um, the way you get the uh barking dog to stop barking is You release this cap here and it emits a sonic frequency That um, the dog can hear but you can't and um, it drives the dog away And uh gets it to stop barking and um, just in case you uh, you Have a problem with another noise. This is a noise canceling bud to put in your ear to uh further help with that problem Very see the stuff you find on wish.com. It's amazing, right? Jeff. Great. Well great work. Thank you. What do you have? So I have a little ai prototype. So what this is is an example Of a dog that its head will come off and you can actually put it on its tail So in the future what's gonna happen is the dog is gonna be Approached by this little character um This automated ai bot and it's gonna confuse the dog because it's not gonna know whether it's smelling its ass or its head The dog's just gonna run away That's that Stay tuned nice Grace, what do you have dear? I have what appears to be just a regular stuffed animal, but it is anything But yeah It has bionic fibers on the inside of it and it also is filled with A powdery substance kind of like catnip, but for dogs. It's called dog nip um and But the dog is attracted to chew it up Therefore keeping keeping its mouth full and it won't need to bark if its mouth is full But it's so tiny you would think oh, he'll be done with it in five minutes and then go continue barking, but no It has the microbionic fibers and so It's very it's basically indestructible 1999 Grace newton vio.com Grace asks for the clothes nice work. All right. There it is microbionic. I love that. Terry. What do you got buddy? Well, what we have here is the world's first retractable clown shoe You know the problem with clown shoes is that they're so large that you find a very hard to pack So what we've done is we've contracted two very large clown shoes into this Tiny little figure and what else can help me with is if you have a dog that you need to get away from your You take it you separate it into the two clown shoes and you clap it at the dog and they run away There you go, right great work George, what do you have sir? Uh What I got here is a lump Of amber Okay, what I've got trapped in this lump of amber is everything from my past That I can't stand no more So What so what I do is I just get a little bit more amber right. I put that dog in the middle of that big ball of amber And I let that thing just Set up real good takes about 48 hours. So when it's all done I got the name is in a ball amp Damn dog you're gonna make another sound forever There it is there it is right crazy stuff Dan What do you have sir? I had so much time to think about this. This is a dk9 felineizer It will take any dog and turn it into a cat all you got to do is flick this And it'll just change it into a cat like that and then and then you don't have to worry about It barking it just may be perhaps slightly more loud meows Wow, there you go, right? That's that's a handy device to have see there you go. Nice work everybody now All of you made that up completely out of whole cloth made grace made up words microbiomic You know, but but and and it was hilarious that she did but it worked in the reality of The environment that we've created where anything literally can happen and that's the beauty of acting literally anything can happen I've been eaten by a dinosaur. I've been a penguin You know terry's flown spaceships. I've seen him do it You know I directed him through it and we and we commit to whatever reality is on the page So when grace says there's something called microbiomic fibers great We we know exactly what she means and then she believes to explain it. I've told you know, I believe it, man Yeah, so tim uh now you teach classes doing this I do how do how do people get a hold of you and can take your classes? Well, I am happy to announce that beginning in august there will be thursday night tim probs twice a month And if you would like to be a part of that they start at 9 p.m. Eastern Email me is the best way to do it tim at Voice of powers comm so if you could put that up or if somebody could clear on that Tim at voice of powers comm there will be a landing page In production very soon. Yeah tim at voice of powers comm shoot me a shoot me a note And you can play games just like this and bond with these folks and and have fun Did anybody not have fun playing these games tonight? That's always There you go. There you go Dan is uh, one of the few people who has actually done a tim probe in person And got to experience it for yourself. What did if you don't mind me asking you a question on your own show dan testimonial What no i'm not asking for testimonial, but what did you see in the room? What happened in that room when when you did when you took a tim probe workshop? If it was just it was just a free for all people could do whatever it was they wanted and and it was fun Of course, of course, we knew other people in the room and that always helps and then there were people We didn't know and it was there were people we didn't know right and you watched what I watched in there was watching people overcome Their initial inhibitions Everybody came in a little little reserved a little held back and by the time we were done People were literally bouncing off the walls. It was insane. Yeah, and they were all in each other's brains What like that looked that game where you complete each other's sentences you literally get inside each other's heads And you start thinking, you know along the line with the other folks and it's fascinating And that helps you work in an ensemble helps you work well with your director and your producer All that stuff is all right there. So great job everybody. Yes, there will be tim probbs starting thursday nights Tim at voice of powers dot com. Goodbye everybody. All right tim. Thanks for being with us tonight My pleasure guys looking forward to seeing you next time. Thanks, tim. That was fun All right, we're gonna take a quick break and we will be right back to wrap things up and re-racket for tech talk So don't go away You're still watching vlbs Your dynamic voice over career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead There's one place where you can explore everything the voice over industry has to offer That place is voiceover extra dot com Whether you're just exploring a voice over career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level Stay in touch with market trends coaching products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls Voice over extra has hundreds of articles free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed Learn from the most respected talents coaches and industry insiders when you join the online sessions Bringing you the most current information on topics like audio books Auditioning home studio setup and equipment marketing performance techniques and much more It's time to hit your one-stop daily resource for voice over success sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports It's all here at voice over extra dot com. That's voice over x t r a dot com All right, you know A lot of our viewers are brand new to voice over they're trying to learn All the tricks of the trade and making sure one that they sound good and learning proper performance techniques and all those sorts of things but one of the most important things you have to have as a voice actor is a website and You know something your website shouldn't be a pain in the ass So my good friend joe davis over at voice actor dot com Has templated websites. You can start for free. Go over to voice actor dot com Check it out. They've got templated things. You can change the colors change the pictures You can change all sorts of stuff to make it look the way you want and you can do it and get yourself online for free initially In about 10 to 15 minutes if you're good at following menus and stuff, but the instructions are really clear So go over to voice actor dot com And get your own website now As opposed to waiting six months while some webmaster says, uh, that's 25 bucks for a comma here Anyway, voice actor dot com go there now and get your website We are the world voices organization also known as wovo We're the not-for-profit industry association of freelance voice talent voiceover is a complex entrepreneurial business Wovo is there to promote the professional nature of voice work to the public to those already established in their voiceover practice And to those who want to pursue voiceover as a career membership benefits include a supportive and creative community A profile and demos on voiceover.biz our searchable directory of vetted professional voice talent Our exclusive demo player for your personal website our mentoring program Business resources and our video library our annual wovo con conference a fun and educational weekend with other members With the chance to learn and network webinars and great speakers and weekly social chats with other members around the world If your world is voiceover make wovo part of it world voices organization. We speak for those who speak for a living Yeah, hi, this is Carlos Ellis Rocky the voice of Rocco and you're watching voiceover body shop And we're back and our thanks again to tim powers for a very entertaining hour Indeed it was improv is you know, it's not as hard as it looks and if you if you got the right the prompts That's the word I was looking for a proper prompts. That'll get you there Anyway, uh, we're gonna we're gonna be signing off here in just a minute and rewracking it for tech talk Which we ad lib every other week. There's no script Somehow we come up with the show all improved all Made up information no without a net and uh, so stay tuned for that Uh, who are our donors of the week? Well, why don't we take a look? We got greg cooper Grace newton. Hey grace. He was just with this christopher epperson robert ledum Stephen chandler kasey clack jonathan grant thomas pinto greg thomas a doctor voice ant land productions martha kahn 949 designs sarah borges phillips appear brian page rob rider shawanna pennington baird don griffith tray moseley diana birdsall maria mechis And sandra man-willer Thank you all you can donate to the show by going to our webs our web page vbs.tv And click donate now. You can give us a dollar a month. You can give us $10 a month You can give us $100 a month or you can give us $100 a year or You know and by the way little known fact those names that you just heard are all the most successful voice actors in the business Right Because we read their names every week every week and people know who they are I thanks to our sponsors harlan hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra source elements vio heroes dot com voice actor dot com and world voices dot org the industry association of freelance voice talent All right running a little long in this hour, but what are you gonna do it was worth it Yeah, you know as one frog said to another, you know time sure is fun when you're having flies Uh anyways Stay tuned for tech talk Get your questions in now, uh, but look We're trying to bring you everything you could possibly Have to make sure that your voiceover career is doing right, you know, whether it's performance or tech or whatever but It comes down to one thing as far as george and i are concerned if it sounds good It is good I'm dan Leonard and i'm george widdum and this is voiceover body shop or vio b s Stay tuned for tech talk. Don't go nowhere's I heard jeff say s at the end of the very end of that So it wasn't on that one. Okay. Well, she'll be ready for the next one for tech talk here. Okay All right, what kind of so that we can I recorded a whole bunch of clips from that show There was some gold in there. All right Okay, we got lots of stuff to talk about tonight and Yeah, baby, let's do it All right So if you've got a question throw it in the chat room right now for us george or I on vio techniques or technology or equipment or any of that stuff But we got lots of stuff to get to right here. So Let's rack it up and let's roll it Here we go five four three Hi, it's time for v o b s voiceover body shop tech talk tech talk Tech talk tech talk tech talk. Where's jeff jeff. You're in there. Check. Oh Tech talk Okay, whatever uh If you have a question for us if you're watching us live right now, which you should all be doing Look at the opportunity you have to ask george and I questions about your home voiceover studio technology What do you got a problem or a piece of gear you want to buy or you want to get rid of something? Put it in the chat room right now and jeff holman who you just heard saying tech talk tech talk We'll throw it into our document that we know There's a question there and we will ask that question or we will be asked that question in the next segment But are you ready george? I'm ready. You got a pile of stuff there and I've got something cool too about You know, is that a noisy mic? Well, we'll find out time for voiceover body shop tech talk right now voiceover body shop tech talk is brought to you by voiceover essentials.com the home of harlan hogan signature products Source elements the folks who bring you source connect Vo heroes.com become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training Voice actor.com your voice over website ready in minutes voiceover extra your daily resource for voiceover success And by world voices the industry association of freelance voice talent And now here's your hosts dan and george Well, hello there. How you doing? I'm dan lennard and i'm george widdum and this is voiceover body shop or vio BS This is number 106 It's unbelievable how many shows we've done And time just keeps marching on but voiceover continues to march on despite what people are saying about it AI and things like that, but we're not going to worry about that I'm so glad they keep making more crap to talk about I know and and you've got plenty But here's the thing and the reason you've joined us this particular hour and hopefully you will stay with us This entire hour because you're gonna miss all sorts of stuff if you leave George and I are experts in home voiceover studios if you haven't figured that one out yet And one of the things we do is we fix stuff and another thing we do is we set it up So it doesn't break and we make it so it's easy for you Because apparently the more people I talk to the more I realize that nobody out there In the coaching world or any of this stuff knows what on earth they're talking about when it comes to home voiceover studios But the thing is is every voice is different and every room is different And george and I understand that and that's what we work with Finding out what's going to work with you in your lifestyle in your place of residence Is it going to interfere with other things going on? Is it going to be quiet enough? There's all these things But you have to know what they are And fortunately george and I do and you can work with us Personally we'll talk to you one on one You know sometimes we can actually come to your house if you're here in southern california george You you go all over the place and you're always asking people. Hey, I'm going to be in town Can I drop it on your house and people let you do that? And if they want to do that or if they just want to talk to you any place Where would they go? Yeah, you'd have a head over to george the tech That's where you'll find me and really actually a bunch of people Because george the tech is performer friendly techs So we have numerous folks to help you with different styles of software and types of technical issues and We're available almost around the clock because we've got people in different countries. We have people in different time zones We have folks available that made themselves available by phone Which uh, you know is getting more increasingly rare to reach somebody on the phone when you call Um, so there's a lot of ways we can help you. So head over there to george The dot tech and don't forget to use the coupon code that I that I announced at the end Of every vo vs to get your discount. You got to stay to the end to get that That's right. Unless you're watching the replay and just go fast forward to it Exactly and then dand is on the internet doing tech stuff and other things over at home voice over studio dot com Yes, I was so lucky to grab that particular url and no one's ever going to have it again Uh You know, I what I do is I like working with beginners And people who I think have a lot of potential and just perhaps don't know how to record And so if you go over to my website and you can contact me there one of the things that I have is And the more I think about it the more I bad taste this is which to me means who cares Uh is my specimen collection cup Where you can drop your mp3 of your audio follow the instructions thoroughly and for $25 I will analyze your audio Ask anybody that has sent their audio to me if I have not been incredibly thorough in explaining what their audio sounds like And uh, so that's that's what you should do right after the show is send me your audio No, you don't have to do it right after the show I mean they tend to pile up after a while and then I have to work Run it over eventually it does it does So what do we got in your tech update this week? It looks like a pile of stuff Yeah, everybody had a no not everybody a lot of people flipped out When they found out that twisted wave Was going to a subscription So Yes, a lot of people were upset. Well, okay. Let's let's just be straight Twisted wave has been absolutely completely 100% A buyout license one time And you know you buy it once you own it for life, right? And it's been that way For a really really long time Incredibly generous We've gotten upgrades and updates, of course But upgrades to new versions new features on and on for the last 15 years and he's never Thomas I should say he's never asked for any more money Finally he decided after I think people literally were sitting telling him when they when he told them What he does for a living is how do you expect to keep doing that for a living if you're going to do That business model it ain't gonna work. It's time for you to offer subscriptions and he does now So the quick thing here is to to demystify the this whole thing a little bit And if I can do that without creating a complete Total and utter train wreck on the webs. Oh, here we go. Not too bad. All right, so Let's start over here on the left-hand side. Let's get this part 12 months of uninterrupted subscription payments qualify you for receiving a Perpetual fallback license. What is that another way to interpret that is if you pay for a year Which is a hundred bucks, which is exactly the same price as it is. It's a hundred bucks You own you own a license forever. You're good. You're good to go That is the maximum of your obligation is to pay a hundred dollars. You own twisted wave What do you not get it means that you don't get the next upgrade of twisted wave when it comes out? So Is that a problem? Maybe not a lot of people never upgrade twisted wave because it works fine year after year When do they have to upgrade typically when they get a new mac when they get a brand new os and they realize Oh that version from 11 years ago is starting to be a little unstable Then they're forced to upgrade and at that time you would probably at that time Decide to renew your subscription, which you can do basically on a monthly basis as well So whether you do it by the month or by the year it's by the month You're going to be paying every month 10 bucks by the year 100 bucks So by the year you're saving two months worth right of the prescription subscription Another thing is if you've already been using the product He's going to give you a little discount as a thanks for For getting started. So if you've had that had an existing License already you're going to get some discounts, right? So if you've had it for a long time, you're going to get 40 off On your third year and onward subscription, right? So basically the first year is 100 bucks second year is 80 bucks third year and onward Is 60 bucks but again, you don't have to stay In subscription you can cancel and continue to use twisted wave Until you have to upgrade because of a software Choice and when you buy a new mac when you buy new and you get a new os version You know you made a choice and at that point you have to pay some more So I hope that kind of demystifies a little bit about this whole thing Don't freak out. I mean some of you were like I've still used adobe edition 1.5 Well, this is no different than that, you know, it's like you bought it once in 1998 and you still use it Well, if you have a computer that's compatible with that version You can use it for the rest of your life and never pay another dime. Heck, we know people are still using cool edit pro There are people out there. Yeah, it's true. So anyway twisted wave. That's the story Um, I think it's very I think whatever your ethics are about subscriptions I think he I think he's doing it in the most fair and ethical way That one can so that's my two cents. I mean, we've gotten a free ride on that for like 15 years and so Yeah, I I think the developer who has served us so well Deserves to make a living doing this. I think so. I know if you just bought it a month or two ago Okay, I could see but if you bought it a month or two ago, you're fine You don't need to buy a new version for a really long time. You may not need to start a subscription for another two to five years you know, so Anyway, moving on, um, I was going to mention very briefly, uh, this is a whole long discussion But just through fruit for thought Maybe the way you monitor while editing isn't the right way to monitor and maybe not for the reasons you're thinking I deal with voice actors all day who over analyze the audio that they're hearing in their headphones to The point of almost being crippled Especially the people doing long form stuff where they just simply do not have the time To agonize over every little mouth noise Every little sibilant thing they hear or any other little flaw nasal glottal stop whatever it is Some of you don't have time for doing this those that do have time for doing this are doing probably very large budget productions And in those cases, there's usually somebody else's job is to agonize over that, right? So, um, my point is is sometimes the headphones you might be using are too good too detailed And too revealing of certain flaws in your mouth and you might want to try different headphones or You might want to not use headphones at all and use speakers while editing And what that's going to do is speakers, of course At least if you have good monitor speakers, they're they are quite detailed But they're still going to be less Intensively detailed than having a speaker driver. That's a quarter of an in a half an inch from your ear, right? So it may help you move along a little more quickly to downgrade or at least have monitoring that is less Insanely detailed sounding than headphones Just just for thought something to try and see how it works on your next big long project That you know, I'm hearing people spending six eight ten to one hour ratios on audiobooks from time to time because they're editing out every flaw And that's because they hear them all and you get obsessed with them Yeah, you can't hear that stuff on laptop speakers. That's the interesting. Yeah, or you often can't hear that stuff However, it's been obliterated by Audible and the codec that they use for audio. I mean they really they really destroy The sanctity of your clean audio when it goes on the website. So really don't over don't obsess about it um I'll just leave this for you. There's an ai for that dot com You're welcome next thing Cinco d2 Microphone, this is a shotgun mic a budget shotgun mic is not A great substitute for the mkh 416 Yes, they look very similar Yes, they're made with the same kind of materials Clearly it was designed to act like a 416 But trust me i've heard it many times and it's not a bad sounding mic It just does not sound like a sennheiser mkh 416. It is not a stand-in for that mic It doesn't sound anything like that mic. The d2 is a very dull Flat sounding mic in comparison doesn't have a hypercardioid pattern like a like a 416 It's designed to have one, you know, it has that same line array Whatever they call that not a line array in for interference tube Whatever whatever it's called when a shotgun mic size holds down the side thing on the side there Yeah, yeah, it's got that and so and by design it's hypercardioid But in terms of its eq the tonal character of the mic It's extremely flat sounding and dull sounding where a 416 is a very Bright and forward hyped dare I say sounding microphone Okay, so I I have had to try to make a d2 sound like a 416 with eq and I was kind of successful But they do not sound the same So don't don't I've seen this coming up on facebook today. It is just ain't true folks. They're very different mics On another subject I finally got around to reviewing some acoustical panels that were Well, let's see if I can stop that and actually share it so you can see I've finally got around to reviewing some acoustical panels By a company I met at nam show And they're called the pros acoustic wave pro series acoustic panels And I am definitely not going to show you that 10 minute video But I'll show you enough to wet your appetite so you understand what it's about the inside of the panel Isn't just acoustical absorption. There's also a diffuser the diffuser core George the tech Hey, everybody, George the tech I'm inside my booth here because I want to test out some acoustical panels that were sent to me And the best way to do it needs to really put them in your booth What I've got here are acoustical panels from the company pros acoustic I met them at nam show this year in anaheim california And they were nice enough to get me a couple of their unique panels to try out So right now my booth is pretty well treated. It's got the stock acoustical foam that comes with the studio bricks booth This is a studio bricks one, so it's a rather small booth But right now it's got some enhancements in it including some base traps like these Here's the tech and you can watch the full review. It's only about eight minutes long And I get to really test those things out and that's why I'm so lucky and glad to finally have a A ISO booth where I can test stuff out So I'll as time moves on I will try to do more microphone tests in there more acoustics tests Since I have that controlled environment But if you want to hear about these panels and actually hear what they do and see how they work check that out On my youtube channel. Um, lastly, I think this is the last thing Zoom 5.15.3 is out And what they've done now is it has what they call persistent audio settings I think I've talked about this already on the show But now now it actually does work So if you set an audio channel in your twisted wave audio preferences Let's say you want to have channel one because that's your desk mic And channel 11 because when you play back something, that's where the audio comes in Now you can do that and you can get that to work set and not only that but it will remember those settings You don't have to keep resetting them over and over and over which was super annoying. So Progress has been made by the team at zoom and I'm really glad to see that so um A little new thing from zoom to try out And that's it for the tech update for the week Alrighty Well, I got an interesting video this morning. Well, we got an interesting video this morning from uh from somebody Who is complaining that he you know a lot of people like this the the synco not the synco d2 the stellar x2 Stellar x2. Yes the stellar x2, which is a fine fine studio condenser microphone and uh, and chris was uh He was saying that it was noisy Then his other mics, which is a tlm 102 and a 416 and I'm like, well, it really shouldn't be it's a very quiet mic. We know people like the uh the the stellar x2 but Then he showed me why he thought that and then if you watch this I won't play all of it, but let's see if you can figure out why he was hearing some some noise here I don't hear it yet. Okay. Hold on one second here This is the microphone here. I'm just gonna switch around so Here it is the x2. I'm running it through a Audient id 4 And the gain we're running it through the cable that they suggest we run it through which is the Amazon basic table. I've used it from the website and this is for the Audient id 14 The gain on this channel working out is going to run around about a seven out of ten so What we're going to do is we're just going to switch over to the audio from the actual microphone And I'm going to get some tests coming up Shortly, this is said to have a noise floor of minus 13 dba I also have a Neumann TLM 102 which has a noise floor of 12 dba apparently according to them And then a Sennheiser 416 which is meant to have between I think 12 and 16 dba So you can be the judge, but I'm going to just hit record. We're going to have some ambient room noise And we're going to listen from there Okay, so you're here in the x2 now What is he doing wrong you be the judge? We now have the Neumann TLM 102 They have not touched that so I'm just going to Turn on the phantom power and you know here in the audio from the Neumann 102 okay, so What was he doing wrong there? And why do you think that his his x2 was noisy? Well for starters He broke the number one rule of how to submit audio. He was doing it in two track And he was only recording in his left channel So when you amplify that when you normalize it or anything like that the blank channel still gets into the audio And you're going to get white noise from there And I think that his his uh stellar x2 is probably just fine And he's getting white noise from The extra channel, but one other thing his levels are way too low And you know when every people record with these little tiny waveforms And then they try and boost it normalize it or amplify it It creates noise. It creates white noise So if you've got a low track to start with and you've got a A blank track and you're trying to raise the volume on that You're going to get white noise and you're going to think well this mic isn't as quiet as it sounds Or indeed he just has a a bad mic which happens Well, it does happen, especially when they're produced um In massive quantities in massive quantities in a factory where not every microphone gets Individually tested by a technician And you know signed off and quality controlled Before it ships out. I mean if they do that That is first of all that'd be incredibly impressive at a $200 price point very Because that's that's the big thing you might have one stellar x2 that's clean And you might have another one that just isn't the same doesn't sound exactly the same And there's just because the likelihood of them doing that level of testing from mic to mic Very unlikely, right another thing that stood out to me too dan He had literally no meters and twisted wave. He literally had the meters Hidden so he couldn't even look to verify what the levels actually were So that was a bit of an issue too. And then didn't he tell you that the way he He makes it mono again as he literally mixes channel one and two into a mono file Yeah, so whatever noise his ambient noises on channel one gets mixed into the other tracks and how you've got Two layers of noise mixed and so there there were a couple things I had flaws with with that test. I mean Also, what gain setting did he use were they both were they both at the exact same gain because Some mics have different sensitivity, right? So One might record louder than the other at the same gain So there's a lot of things that make that a little bit challenging to get a true Impression of the noise. Yeah, it's really really important to understand Proper input levels and you know and we do we talk about this all the time Always in the green always in the yellow You know depending on what interface you're using and what meter you're using into the orange and with a flash of red every now and again Uh, if you record too low and you bring it back up it uh It's gonna especially if it's 16 bit if you record in 16 bit and you do a large normalization to bring up level You're gonna have an increase in noise due to something called aliasing Um, so if you're going to record those lower levels then then do 24 bit recording and you can get away with a lot Right, you can be a lot more conservative on the levels, right? And which is one of the reasons we really like the the new The new road uh nt1 fifth gen because you can record a 32 bit with that and you can be too quiet Or you could be too noisy or you're too loud and just normalize it back into where it's supposed to be and It doesn't break up or and it doesn't add noise because there's not distortion None of that and plus the the nt1 has always been an incredibly quiet mic But they've just done some amazing things with that. So but back to the the the stellar x2 You know, maybe it is a noisy mic, but he was not giving it the test To really determine that and if he would send us a good mono file properly Uh modulated perhaps we can see oh, yeah, it's noisy or now you just did it wrong Yeah, it's also tough to to to judge over youtube because youtube audio of course isn't raw. It's not wave or anything It's it's its own It's processed in some way to go on youtube So it's if you really want us to get analytical Send us a wave file with each file in the same. I like to have them in the same wave file with a marker But you can send them to separate files But do due diligence to get good levels and match them to begin with And then we'll and then take a listen. I also have a thing called mic check You can send me several different mic samples from different microphones with your voice And i'll listen to them closely and compare them and kind of rank them for you Give you my opinion at least on what when sounds best on your voice. So there's that option as well Yeah, so uh, but I was talking about the 32 bit thing. Let's talk about that for a second We gotta have a couple minutes here Recording a 32 bit Everybody's been probably doing a 16 or 24 if you do it at 32 It gives you that advantage where you can if you happen to record too low You can make it work or if you record too loud So say if you're you're doing video games or something and you're yelling into that mic You're not going to over modulate. So it's a really cool feature Well, it has to be implemented by the the mic itself In terms of this particular mic you're talking about It has a very very unique Internal circuitry that enable this 32 bit float recording To give you that to give you the benefit Like if you just take any old mic and any old interface and just record in 32 bit You won't get the advantage of it. You do have to have the gear that's capturing it that That that expanded bit rate And there's some other voodoo in the box actually wrote out some really good videos on youtube Explaining exactly how that thing works and why it actually works And um, it's fascinating. It's really interesting I haven't seen too many other pieces of gear that can do 32 bit float or at least do it properly Yeah, um, and this one seems to do it from what I can tell does it the right way? So, um, yeah It's really interesting. It's always about the levels. You remember what I'm always saying It's the acoustics how you use your microphone using proper technique And setting proper levels and no one seems to understand that Well, anyway, we've got a few questions and if you've got a question for us Throw it in the chat room right now whether you're on facebook Or in youtube or perhaps watching us on linkedin now Throw it in the chat room if you've got a question about home voiceover studio technology Gear a problem all sorts of stuff throw it in there right now. Jeff Holman will get that question to us Too sweet. Alrighty, we're gonna take a break right here. We'll be right back with all your questions and more stuff right after this Hi, this is bill farmer and you are watching voiceover body shop. It's great It's vacation time just about everywhere For example, here's australian voiceover pro andrew peters on vacation in london recording a commercial with his port-a-booth pro Why is the port-a-booth pro gaining users worldwide? Well, just listen Winter's tough The rain the wind The cold performers can capture great audio even in acoustically untreated spaces with the port-a-booth pro Your microphone hears the sound of a human size sound booth at a fraction of the size and cost The pro accommodates large and long microphones lengthy scripts and e-reading devices The harlan hogan port-a-booth pro is lined with oralex studio foam It's a professional quality sound studio that assembles in less than a minute and its multi-pocketed carrying case makes it Super easy to take your gear and your voice wherever you go order your harlan hogan port-a-booth pro now Just 389 99 only at voiceover essentials dot com What else is that guy angel peters from that last commercial use when he travels source connect? That's right for sure I know i've known him quite a long time source connect is part of his arsenal And it's because the majority of the clients that that he's working with Are using it too and it's a preferred weapon of choice for so many productions because of that workflow Your audio comes from your studio through the internet straight into the timeline of their DAW Most of time pro tools but any whatever they're using new endo Whatever pro level multi-track DAW they're using even reaper It's going to capture the audio and if if there's even a single dropout or glitch or anything Using the magic of q-manager it will automatically replace the dropout or the glitch in the audio And even more so you can even have it replace the entire file with a completely unprocessed uncompressed audio file To go into the timeline and it does it all magically in the background. It's amazing tech and Really, it's what pros prefer for a lot of the voiceover type work out there So you should know what it is go over to source dash elements source dash elements dot com Get yourself set up with an account start learning I recommend getting the subscription so you can be Held your hand can be held by their amazing support team Through the entire process if you don't get that support you may end up paying me or us for that support So you might as well get that support directly from them and it's worth it So anyway, thanks source elements. We appreciate your support Go check them out and let's get to all those questions right after this Is ai coming for your voiceover career is it going to take all of your jobs? Man, do we hear that question a lot and there's a lot of people That are fearful that the answer to that is yes well I've been working in performance and technology simultaneously throughout my career beginning in the 70s and I've seen the incursion of technology both good and bad And I want you to have the fact so what I'm going to do is I'm going to put together a course which I'm going to give away for free I'm aiming for mid august or so Talking about synthetic voices and what they mean to your future and your success So it'll be at voheroes.com Um, I'll give you details as soon as we're ready to go. I'm david h. Lawrence the 17th I thank you so much for watching and for listening to v obs and stand by we'll get that course to you very soon This is ariana rattner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lenard and george widdum v obs dot tv All right Got a few questions here and a few more coming in if you got them throw them in the chat room now because This is what george and I love to do is answer your questions I mean he and I could just talk for you know hours and hours. I mean look 256 episodes of voiceover body shop. This is episode What is it one if 156 of of no 106 106 of tech talk 106 tech talks We never have a problem coming up with stuff to talk about sharp. They're super good and um We love hearing from you. Um, I think that's probably the best part of our jobs Is talking to you guys unless There's some people like oh, not this place and again but We always try to help we won't throw you off Anyway, so let's get to some of these questions and some of them are very good questions They're all good questions any questions. There's no stupid questions. Just questions So from john conlan Regarding the new roadcaster duo for vo and radio work pros cons would love your opinion Is the roadcaster duo compatible with twisted wave? Well, let's start with the first one This thing is designed for exactly what you're talking about which is live production Uh, mostly it was designed specifically for podcasting And uh, you know, there's a lot of people doing podcasts Who don't necessarily know how to do a podcast and road came up with this the original Roadcaster pro and now the two which has some really nice improvements to it It's got four, you know mic inputs. It's got all the stuff so you can mix things And add things like you know And the only thing you can have all sorts of fun stuff, which if you're doing radio In no we used to have in radio. We used to have a have a cart machine Yeah, and it was a continuous loop cart and you shove it in there and you can have sound effects on there And that's what it was for. It's all self contained In this unique package, which is the the the roadcaster pro and the and the and the roadcaster pro too Yeah, I just have random buttons with random samples on there And they're all nameable and I you know, it's a lot of fun You know, yeah when things get really dull, I always go to Okay, there's yeah It's it's a lot of fun if you came from radio and you miss those days of being on the radio and you want to have those functionalities For a voice actor, it's still probably overkill the duo even though it's simpler and has Two mic inputs instead of four. It's a little bit smaller It's a little bit cheaper You know, it's still going to have the same Preamps and the same functionality for them for the most part I would say I would say for sure the roadcaster pro 2 which is what I'm absolutely I have on my desk Is absolutely overkill for someone. It just produces themselves at home. Right. It don't need All that functionality the duo would probably be a much some more simpler or sensible solution For $200 less I would like it if they made one that's even less expensive than that because you don't even need Sound effects buttons most of the time. You could have really something much more simplified than that but Yeah, and and the question is a work with twist a wave. Yes, absolutely work with twist a wave. Sure It's just another usb audio interface That your computer is going to see in fact It's multiple usb audio interfaces in the case of the one I have it shows up as two usb Audio interfaces. There's the multi channel and there's the chat channel For having two separate mixes and that's what allows us to do things like play back YouTube while you guys all hear it on the show because of that ability to play things back Um, this one has another hidden another trick up its sleeve Which I have to look at the duo has it has another usb port so you can plug it into another Port on the same computer giving you even more channels Or you can plug it into another phone or another pc or a gaming console blah blah blah blah Right, and it has bluetooth too. So you can actually Pull in something off of off your phone on bluetooth or another bluetooth compatible Input so that yeah, it's got a lot of stuff shoved into it Which is why we like it and again and like george said, it's just an interface with a lot of cool electronics bells and whistles Which they've also shoved into the the new The new The nt1 fifth gen. Oh, yeah, because what they've yeah what they've done now with these new usb devices that fit nt1 fifth gen Specifically is when you use the app that they have called road central Is it road central? Yeah road central now you have access to not only all the functions of the inside of the mic Actually, it's called road connect when you use road connect Now you get to the mic starts to become sort of like a mini roadcaster so it gives you like playback loops and Built-in recording has like a backup recording functionality And you get a lot more features and you haven't even bought the whole mixer. You just have that usb mic So, right? Yeah, it's it's pretty it's pretty amazing stuff. It's a little overkill It's certainly got more features than most people would need But if you find those features are Going to make your life better or if you really are serious about producing a podcast slash livestream, especially Um, you're going to probably like it a lot all right Question from jeff seart on youtube as an improv, which we were talking about last week Uh, is it too over the top to throw a character voice into a vo submission? Even if it doesn't ask for that Uh, I think that's sort of a self A question that you've already answered. Um, no, you don't throw a character voice into an audition Uh, or or a vo submission if it doesn't ask for it Um, I mean, yeah, there's there's improv and there's like maybe riffing on some copy or something like that But if it's not asking for a specific character, I mean usually the spec is going to give you, you know somebody 25 to 45 Or a senior citizen or whatever It's asking you not necessarily to do a character, but to do What is they're asking for if it asks for a character? Yeah, you do a character, but if it's just for something else Uh, just an audition for a commercial or for some e-learning thing. No, you don't throw a character in there And it doesn't it doesn't help if you're really going off the uh of the reservation with that So no, no, I would not do that This one's from uh, mike cunningham and he says any experience with the lewitt 940 if so, what are your thoughts on using it as a single source mike instead of getting something like a 416 along with the 103 Or my current tube mike, which uh, I guess we're supposed to know what that is Yeah The lewitt 940, um, which i'm googling right now because nobody I know is using one Um is a tube microphone. It's 1800 dollars and um You know if you're making a good living in voiceover and it's time to treat yourself And you had a hell of a good year go ahead and buy yourself something really fun and expensive and fancy like that I would never ever recommend it to any voice actor um Because of its overwhelming complexity. It's multiple Many switchable patterns. It's a blend of tube and fat It's a bells and whistles microphone, right? It's just it does all kinds of things And no, I don't I don't know if it would be a one mike solution to replace A tilum 103 and a 416. I I don't know that like I I would have to hear that mike I would much more likely recommend if you're getting into this realm of cost I would much more likely recommend the the sphere from universal audio Because that truly does model all of the microphones that you've mentioned Um, it's a lot less than this thing. It doesn't have any tube to worry about burning out or fading out um And uh, so that's the direction I would go if I if I really I'm gonna looking at spend that kind of money Like if you don't have an apollo by by the apollo solo and the town's in for 1500 bucks roughly And you it runs circles around this mic in terms of flexibility whatever so you know I don't but I'm again. I'm coming at this for someone that has not used This microphone and I don't believe I have heard it on anybody's voice tracks yet So well, we tested a lewitt a couple years ago when we did uh, yeah It was at the pure 240 or something like that something that's not familiar Yeah, and I I know it was very flat and it had very low output I'm assuming that the folks at lewitt have probably improved on that but I think that was a I don't know if that was a bum mic. It did have a bizarrely low output or I remember that Yeah, but I've heard that mic since and I've heard good things The 440 pure actually is the one I'm thinking of and that one has been nothing but really good sounding audio um That I've heard from people that have sent me samples So, you know Lewitt's a weird little company I think the engineers are spun off from the akg team You know, some of them were were over at akg um Yeah, you know, I don't I don't have a warm and fuzzy feeling. I know some people that love their lewitts I just it doesn't have a track record for me yet in terms of something I'm gonna like absolutely say without without a doubt. I recommend so especially at that high end price point Yeah, somebody sent me something with the lewitt this week and yeah But that was the thing I noticed is the output was low And meaning it probably can handle a lot of spl sound pressure levels So if you're like singing or you're yelling into the mic A quiet mic like that there doesn't have a lot of output is probably able to handle it Especially at that price point for crying out loud. There's no reason you should be spending 1800 bucks on on a new mic Uh, unless as george said, you know, you want to treat yourself to something But this again, there's no microphone out there That's going to change the way you interpret copy, which is what they're really looking for Um, or how you tune your acoustics or where you put the mic Exactly all that stuff is so much more important Right, you know, I mean you can you can get away with I mean, what are some of the mics we talk about? We know that we've been talking about the road nt1 200 $249 for the for the nt one fifth gen. What a bargain and a half That is And it gives you so much functionality, which is really cool. And you know the audio technica Mics, you know above the 2020 you get to the 2035 at the 2050 or the 4040 These are not expensive microphones. No, and they sound fine. Now. This is the mv 50 for mojave 499 right 499. Yeah, I mean it's that's the most I would spend Unless you are literally making a living And really making a profit in voiceover. I would not spend more than 500 dollars. Yeah, so at all when you're getting started Yeah, get get that out of your head. So it's not the microphone Uh question from max goldberg go for it Um, let me get the one from jeff first before I forget Jeff holman. Yes. Um, he says I'm thinking Yeah poor jeff. Yeah, you are suffering like many others The problem I mentioned about headphones being too detailed. I hear every tiny noise every little epiglottis Flump Whatever everything, you know, and it's because you're listening to your audio under a scanning electron microscope Right, um, and you know see the germs in his voice, you know, well, I mean for years I mean years ago. I remember dan and I we really were debating that whole speaker thing dan said I'd like to use monitors. I would always tell people to use headphones But in the end of the day, the headphones are so detailed and so clear That they do overly boost certain frequencies and some of them tend to be the ones that you have the biggest issues with Right, and I don't think it's really healthy for the actor to have to be the the, um The extremely picky producer on everything that they do And again, you do have to make that judgment call This is something you are going to struggle with as you get more and more experiences to how How much should I obsess about this audio? How much you obsess about the audio is very much proportional to the Or maybe disproportionate to the length The shorter of the the shorter the script The higher the rate you're getting paid The more you should obsess over the sound If it's if it's a long form job an e-learning project or audiobook or anything long and it's uh, it's a low rate Don't do not get to that analytical level But really to answer your question more you're using the audio technique mx m40x headphones probably me because I mentioned them I I know I like them They are still a little bit more on the detail side now. I'm using the harlin hogan headphones or any other gen twos They're a little flatter sounding. They are not bright edgy crisp and hyped so They may be a little bit better choice possibly However, you might want to just try ahead speakers for a while and don't overspend on speakers, right because you don't need super Incredibly detailed speakers or you'll have the same problem again So you might just choose to just use whatever bluetooth speaker you have as just an experiment Right you use the one you've already probably got that you throw in your Bike your bag when you go to the beach or the one that you take to your friends Whatever if you're like me you've got more than one bluetooth speaker But if you've got a bluetooth Just play back your audio through that Um for a while as as a test don't use it though in bluetooth mode Look for a little flap on the back It should should be an aux input not all of them have this now But it should have an aux input for an eighth inch cable plug that in because then when you hit play it has no latency So when you're stopping and starting editing it won't drive you quite as crazy And then give that a try Don't go crazy with speakers at this point at this point Yeah, but he also mentions that you know What kind of problems might he encounter using monitors in a small booth and we talk about the fact that if you're using studio monitors the place where you are Listening to it also has to be acoustically treated So you're not getting reflections off the back wall and you're getting a false impression of what the actual ambiance Of your studio is yeah, so I mean I I'm using a parayamaha h2s, which I happen to like a whole lot Uh, very flat, you know plenty of loudness also remember that speakers or monitors are what we call near field monitors and The opt the optimal place is about three feet away at about a what is a 30 degree angle? So they converge That way And they give you a lot of detail, but they don't overemphasize it again when you're listening on headphones It's going to drive you nuts, but can you use them in a small booth? Not recommended it's yeah because the acoustics in there are going to be really weird And yeah, what's going to happen is when when so a speaker is a cabinet, right? There's the speed there's speakers and they're inside a cabinet When you put the cabinet inside your small booth Your booth is now another cabinet that the cabinet is inside up So it also resonates and has so it will always tend to build up low end You're going to get a lot more boominess or bottom heaviness out of here So if you're going to put something in your booth, it should be pretty damn tiny It should be small and not have a ton of bass because it will Even five inch monitors Maybe even three inch monitors will be quite boomy In a in a small booth So again small and don't run them very loud keep the levels kind of low Well, it brings up the question, you know a lot of people edit in their booth Usually with headphones probably and usually with headphones Yeah, I mean I stopped doing that a long time ago because you know I've always separated my engineering of space from my recording space Yeah, you know, I have my mic. It's in my booth That's all that's in there You know in an iPad where I can read copy and a music stand to see my copy, you know if it's printed And I do most of my work out here in the voiceover body shop Where I do my editing and all that stuff because that's where my comfortable chair is And but I have the speaker set up here and I you know, and I'm listening to people's audio and I want to hear the detail that I need to hear Not every little mouth click and all those other things. So, you know, they're there for they're for outside your booth So if that makes any sense Which brings us to the next question because it sort of answers the question that we were just talking about for max goldberg He says I picked up a pair of i-loud monitors for reference while editing They're pretty affordable and to me sound great in the booth. Have you guys ever checked them out? Those are those little those multimedia speakers from uh What's the company iK multimedia iK multimedia exactly they make a they make a whole line of speakers That's their generic that their their name for their monitors is i-loud loud So they've got a whole bunch of different ones So I don't know which ones that He's referring to they have the micro monitors Which look kind of like little baby speakers, you know little tiny ones with this woofer and a tweeter But they sound great and they sound amazingly good They have quite a lot of quite a bit of low end, but I do believe they let you adjust the low end So if if you if you do get speakers that um have a bass control or any kind of a tone control Set it so the bass is reduced Like this particular speaker. This is the uh, let me Show on screen because this is you know, a visual thing Boop boop boop boop Okay This speaker has Come on we can bring it up. Come on This speaker has a uh some switches on the back for eq one of them says Flat or lf minus 3db If you're going to use these in a small room or near a wall Definitely engage that Minus 3db lf and what that's going to do is make the speaker output less low end So they're not as full and rich sounding and boomy Sort of a high pass filter It is exactly that it's just a high pass filter. It's a very minimal one. It's only 3db But you know, it's enough to make a difference and it will really help the clarity of the speaker Um in a small booth. It also has a high frequency boost switch Which depending on where the speaker is and if how close it is to you you might want to turn that on or off Um, so you just have to kind of compare it to different things. It also has a flat versus desk position I would put it in desk position. That also will probably reduce The low end of the speaker because when it's sitting right on a desk It needs to output less low end. Otherwise it will sound Hyped in the low end All right, uh, nancy bober asks so i'm replacing my old akg k2 40s Which are headphones with a wonky with a wonky cable meaning it's not working with the new dt 770 pro k Those are which manufacturer of the dt So the bar by dynamics, right? Are the akgs worth holding on to or replacing the cable? Do they have every a cable that is replaceable replacing cables is a pain in the ass You've got to know how to solder. You've got to it's all sorts of stuff. So It's old enough and it must be a pretty old akg because they did not have replaceable cables Right back in the day and um, it's probably not worth it worth it unless you're a headphone hoarder Like i am and then you keep everything But no probably not. I mean once you get used to the dt 770s, which sound pretty different from the 240s now you're going to be relearning those headphones and then going back to the akgs are going to sound totally different Yeah, so you won't you won't even you'll forget what they sounded like. I would just let them go um, yeah So you go and just in ramos on youtube asks What to look out for when buying used mics besides a good return policy? It's an important thing. Yeah any simple test you would do to verify if any part of it's broken. Thank you You know plug it in and record with it and do the do the rattle test If you shake it and you hear anything There's something broken Honestly though, that's a pretty good test if you get a mic and there's anything rattling in that mic It's got something going on If it sounds good, it is good as always If like the other gentleman that was doing a mic noise test In his case, he felt it wasn't too noisy If you're not sure again, we have dan's got specimen collection club. I've got mic check I will listen to it compared to your other microphones because I like the context. That's why I have mic check It's it's more money because I want you to send me more files I'm going to spend more time listening to the different files comparing them and You know so because I want to get an idea where at the context, right? So I might decide that the new mic sounds worse than the mic you already had And then you can decide what to do from there But uh at the end of the day if you don't trust your ears get a second petter ears to listen But there's not that many things you can do other than plug it in and listen to it The good thing about a used mic is if it sounds good the day you buy it It's probably going to sound good for the next 10 years. Yeah, it's yeah They're solid state. They really don't break unless you're like hammering nails with it. Yeah, they last some mics you can This one I think in particular Was sold by showing that mic that mic specifically The 635 a it's so tough But um, yeah, there's uh, there's little that you can do to test other than just literally plug it in Give it a close listen record some audio play it back Compare it to the other microphone you already were using Um and see how it compares and that's how you're gonna really know I think And save yourself a few bucks in the process. Yes, it needs to have a good return policy What kind of places sell used mics have a good return policy? Some ebay sellers do just you know be true to be choosy when you're buying you stuff. Yes All right. Well another amazing hour has rolled by believe it or not and we've answered all your questions this week But we want more questions if you want to write to us and get your question first in the queue on tech talk Where do you go? Where do you write you write to? The guys at v obs.tv Uh and ask your question and I guarantee you'll be at the front of the queue When we answer questions, it's nice to have people live listening to the show and you know You have a certain advantage of being able to participate We know most of you watch this and replay on facebook and on on linkedin and on youtube and at our website v obs dot tv Um But it's you really should make a point to be here when we do the show and when you see a promo for the show coming up on On facebook watch live and and be interactive with us. We really like hearing that You know, what is what is it that you are? What what is it you're doing right now? Uh and and not you know guessing and listening a little bit later on Anyway, we're gonna take a quick break and we are going to wrap things up for this week right after these important messages on voiceover body shop So don't go away. This is the latin lover narrator from jane the virgin anthony mendez and you're enjoying dan and george on the voiceover body shop Your dynamic voiceover career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead There's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer That place is voiceover extra.com Whether you're just exploring a voiceover career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level Stay in touch with market trends coaching products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls Voiceover extra has hundreds of articles free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed Learn from the most respected talents coaches and industry insiders when you join the online sessions Bringing you the most current information on topics like audio blows auditioning home studio setup and equipment Marketing performance techniques and much more. It's time to hit your one-stop daily resource for voiceover success Sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports. It's all here at voiceover extra.com. That's voiceover Xtra.com Alrighty, you know, I've told the story before Uh, but now you get to hear it again My good friend show davis once asked me What can I do for the voiceover business because you know, he's a web master and he was designing websites and You know for law firms in midtown Manhattan. So he was doing okay, but he wanted to start a web web Mastering system for people in the voiceover business and I said it shouldn't be a pain in the ass He says we can't use that. I'm like I just did um, anyway I said templated Websites, you know, someone goes in they pick a template. They can customize it the way they want And get it out there as soon as possible Well, he started voice actor dot Voice actor websites dot com about eight nine years ago and is very successful at it And the technology came along to where it was easy for them to create a website That allows you to get your website up really fast And that is voice actor dot com go over to voice actor dot com And get your website up and running in 20 minutes And you can do it for free And then if you want more and more features, of course, it could be 20 a month But that's cheaper than a lot of other webmasters are going to charge you and you have complete Control over your website being able to update your demos and change the colors or change your head shot If you want to have your head shot on there So go over to voice actor dot com and get your website up and running right now We are the world voices organization Also known as wovo. We're the not-for-profit industry association of freelance voice talent Voice over is a complex entrepreneurial business. Wovo is there to promote the professional nature of voice work to the public To those already established in their voice over practice And to those who want to pursue voice over as a career Membership benefits include a supportive and creative community a profile and demos on voiceover dot biz Our searchable directory of vetted professional voice talent our exclusive demo player for your personal website our mentoring program Business resources and our video library our annual wovo con conference a fun and Educational weekend with other members with the chance to learn at network webinars and great speakers And weekly social chats with other members around the world if your world is voice over make wovo part of it World voices organization. We speak for those who speak for a living This is bill radner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george widham v obs dot tv And we're back Well two hours just goes by like that. It's amazing Yeah, um Next week on this show another great guest And I think we're pretty much set up to you know, maybe not taking a couple of weeks off for the next couple of months. So Fresh content for you every week. Uh, let's see here. Who are our donors of the week? Oh, I see a lot of familiar names. Let's start with greg cooper grace newton christopher eprison robert ledham steven chandler kasey clack jonathan grant thomas pinto greg thomas a doctor voice antlion productions martha con nine four nine designs sarah borges phillips appear brian page rob rider Shawna pentington baird don griffith tray moseley diana birdsall maria makas and and it's saundra manwheeler or sandra is the way she prefers it Yes, so, you know, and of course you can leave us, you know An endowment from your will if you really like what we do and want to keep doing it, but Anyway, uh, remember if you want help with your home voiceover studio, you can talk to me over at homevoiceoverstudio.com and george is over at his mega complex george d dot tech mega complex Yeah, and you still get your v obs fan 10 10 off All right, funny how few of you use that coupon, but it's still active It's right there for crying out. It's good for webinars. It's good for any content. It's good for any services All right, uh, we need to thank our sponsors, of course like harlin hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra source elements vio heroes dot com voice actor dot com and world voices dot org Yes, i'm the president and that should make any difference whether you want to join or not Uh, but we're we're we're coming alive over at woe woe lots of cool stuff webinars and our conference next year and There's a lot of fun stuff that goes on with woe woe so make sure you get in there Uh, let's see here jeff holman doing a kick-ass job in the chat room tonight Because getting us all those questions to us and participating himself Sumer lino who is our wonderful director? She gets it done every time we Every time we key up the live broadcast She's there and makes it happen and of course lee penny just for being lee penny You out there lee come visit us for crying out loud Uh, that's gonna do it for us this week. We're here to help you with your home voiceover studio audio But the bottom line is If it sounds good It is good. I'm dan lennard and i'm george woodham and this is voiceover body shop or vo b s tech talk Tech talk tech talk tech tech tech tech tech tech tech Thanks, jeff. All right, we'll see you next week. Have a good one