 All right, guess what? Monday night rolls around once again, and it's not so predictable. I know it comes every time this time a week It seems to be Monday night. Yeah, I you know that we make it should make it a five-day week, but you know make it a metric Anyway, anyway tonight on our show Adam Burner is going to be joining us from from Fort Collins, Colorado Yeah, and Colorado say the locals called Colorado Colorado Whatever, but he's gonna talk about you know He does a lot of audio book work and a lot of other stuff because he does so many things We're gonna talk about all of those things and he's got a new website Which can be very useful to voice actors and his booth experiences. That's right. You get to see his booths Anyway, what's and we got stuff in tech. We'll talk about what we've been dealing with lately in client studios God It's a pile of things anyway all that the news and much more coming up on voiceover body shop right now two men twin sons from different mothers with a passion for voiceover recording technology and The desire to make recording easy for voice actors everywhere together in one place George Whidham the home studio engineer to the stars a Virginia tech grad with an unmatched knowledge of all the latest gear and technology in voiceover today Dan Leonard the home studio master a voice actor with over 30 years experience in Broadcasting and recording and a no-holds-barred myth-busting attitude for teaching you how easy it is together To bring you all the latest technology today's voiceover superstars and Leading the discussion on how to make the most of your voiceover business This is voiceover body shop Voiceover body shop is brought to you by voice over essentials comm home of Harlan Hogan's signature products Source elements remote connections made even easier Vio to go go dot-com everything you need to be a successful voiceover artist J. Michael Collins demos award-winning demo production voice actor websites dot-com where your voiceover website won't be a pain in the butt and Voiceover extra your daily resource for Vio success And now live from their super secret multimedia studio in Sherman Oaks, California Here are George Wittem and Dan Leonard I'm Dan Leonard. I'm George Wittem. And this is voiceover body shop or Vio BS Well, what we're not exactly sure what this is. No, actually we do somebody sent us their booth But he was much more proud of the wall David Hugh if you're out there, yeah, we found it looking at his rack of equipment This we thought was more much more interesting when you look at the turnaround and take a look at the mace There's the mace is hanging behind That is cool. Yes, that's why we love it when you send in your pictures so you can see your crazy studios, right? But he'd sent it in landscape. He did a good job. Nice job. Anyway tonight on the show Adam Verder will be joining us and We'll talk about all the cool stuff in his career and a new interesting website that he's created for us voice actors that helps us with Our pronouncing of words Including the name of the website, which we'll talk about later Unpronounceable Anyway, and we've got some tech stuff if you've got a question for us Jack Daniel is Rapidly racing back to the his own studio to cut something but so lucky He's so close. Yeah, so if you do have a tech question about your home voiceover studio throw it in the chat room Right now and everything seems to be working. Well this week on YouTube and on our website and on Facebook and Everywhere else that voiceover body shop can be seen heard and digested Let's see what else is going on. Oh aside from Adam Verder after the show tonight We have it. We have a new cartoon from from Lens Star Productions and Jacob I got to star take do about four different voices in this thing. Yeah, it's called salt man And since George is laughing, you know, what's actually funny many puns if you like puns and I like a pun You're gonna like it. Yeah, that'll be right after the show tonight Well, it'll be part of the show next week on the show. We have to we have to This one in early hammer early and often. Yes, we're doing a live backyard concert here at the voiceover body shop Rosie and Brian Amador and their daughter Alyssa Salticonto Great traditional Latin folk music and some not so traditional and a few surprises Some people you wouldn't expect could actually sing but but they're gonna be doing a couple of cents for us live in our backyard If you'd like to be here live in the voiceover body shop backyard to see this live backyard concert We're sending the announcements over Facebook over our mailing list if you can't find it You're not looking it's on v obs dot TV right above with a video window is there's a button right there It says buy your tickets now right 20 bucks and the proceeds are going to a Puerto Rican hurricane relief. That's right Even a year later. They still need a lot of help there. Yeah aside from paper towels Anyway, let's get the show on the road here because right now it's time for Presents voice over extra All the information you need for a successful voiceover career And here is the voiceover extra news for October 29th already Should you incorporate your voiceover business? Well, here's the age-old question for voice actors Should you incorporate your voiceover business or just fold all your income and expense tabs into your personal finances? Well, if you ask an attorney or a tax advisor, they're likely to advise looking into forming a Corporation hmm, there are a number of benefits to this including protecting your personal assets in the event You're sued for something related to voiceovers for this type of advice We turn to an attorney who knows this biz because well, he's in it too. That's Rob Siglin Paglia You know him. He's been on the show. He's an at he's an attorney. He's a voice actor He's a on-camera actor and film producer who's written the book on entertainment law called voice over legal Which is published by a voiceover extra this week voiceover extra will publish an excerpt from that book on Vio business structure Which focuses on the benefits of incorporating and your options here are some highlights first? Rob notes that many who are in the early times of voiceover career think well until I start to earn some money at this What's the point of creating a formal business structure? Rob's response to the question is that it shouldn't be whether to incorporate but rather how to best Incorporate why well for one a corporation protects your personal assets in the event you're sued for your voiceover related activities as the voiceover legal book notes your Liabilities can include inadvertently violating copyrights for instance in your demos You might also be liable if you do product endorsements or celebrity impersonations Now then what if you are cited for slander or libel in these situations this corporation is sued But not you personally also in in most states having a corporation eliminates the need to file a trade name certificate or fictitious name certificate to use the DBA name doing business as such as ABC terrific voice and At tax time the IRS weighs its decision on whether to allow your deductions such as for home studio equipment training and Conferences on whether it sees you as a voiceover business or just a hobby Well, if you've incorporated you're looking more like a business Yet a decision needs to be made about what form the corporation will take for options To form a corporation one would be a limited liability company and LLC a C corporation C Corp or Escorp S corporation Most popular for voice actors though and the least expensive route is to form an LLC In fact an LLC is extremely simple to set up in almost all states Rob says and unless a voiceover artist has employees working for the LLC It doesn't even require a separate employer identification number in EIN like a corporation would need Overall though, which type of corporation is right for your you depends on your individual legal and tax circumstances Rob advises speaking to a qualified attorney and tax advisor to decide which one will serve you best Rob adds that he agrees in theory that voiceover is a relatively liability free industry But as an attorney he knows better than that. He sure does He says the sad fact in the United States these days is that whenever money changes hands or an injury occurs The potential for a lawsuit exists All right, you'll find more details in this lengthy article this week at voiceover extra.com your daily resource for voiceover success Yes, well, Mr. Sigglin Paglia Whose name we have practiced so many times we have he's right on when it comes to this stuff He is the legal expert when it comes to voiceover legal stuff, which is why his book is called Legal yeah, I mean probably because I've worked with So many voice actors who are incorporated. Yeah, it's something that I've been nagging my CPA about Pretty much every year for about ten years. Is this the year should I go and corporate? Should I go and corporate and? She did say in my case that next year is probably the year for me to incorporate and I'll probably be going escort for my purposes So yeah, it's a little bit of a cost to set it up You got to have you really want to have your stuff together You want to have your personal accounts completely separated from business. I've been getting to that point with the way I run things So hopefully it won't be that big a deal Yeah, she says the first year where it will it'll actually save me money Enough to be worth the cost and effort of doing it. So looking forward to that. All right. Well this week I Got a little notice as I was opening up my my my my apple computer this about two days ago And it said do you want to go to Mojave? I'm like and you clicked I What would George say Well George say If you've been paying attention for the last eight years when I told you this every damn year this time of year No, don't update yet Or up this in this case. We're talking about an upgrade and I'll talk real quick about what that means You got upgrades and updates Updates are just incremental changes to the software you already have the version you have So if you're on high Sierra The good news is if you're on high Sierra and you've got the last update, which I think is 10.13 point six You you never have to worry about another update coming out and Breaking something because you are now already at the end of life of that. There's no more updates to that software, right? Mojave now is an upgrade. So that is a bigger step when you change to Mojave You're now changing out the entire operating system and in doing so a Lot of times there's a bit of the throwing the baby out with the bathwater when you do this Because you're inheriting a new version of operating system, which hasn't really been in the wild for very long and Apple tries as they might to make a solid totally debugged software But we all know that it is not it is rarely totally debugged in version one and Sometimes not even in version two and three. That's why there is a point five and point six version They do keep debugging this software over time. So When do you update? When is it when does it make sense? I was just getting used to high Sierra, right? You're getting used to what you got When do you update? Well, first of all, don't update right away or don't upgrade right away Sorry to interchange the two do not upgrade to Mojave right away Give it at least a few versions for the software to have been debugged and go through some some Real-world testing and the community to figure out what it needs If you're Jones and really Jones like I gotta have it I gotta have it have a good reason to have it like you're missing a feature That's gonna improve your business, you know that kind of thing or if you've got a separate laptop That's sort of like you're sort of just daily browse the web personal use computer You know go ahead and throw it on that one That's fine, but you definitely want to wait to do any major software upgrades on your production computer That's your computer used to make a living with the one that you need to work every day all day It has to start up each day. That's the one you want to wait on it. Don't do that one right away Yeah, yeah, so that's yeah, I'm like, but I love I like updating one computer at a time Like I'll take the laptop which by the way you're charging your computer on my charger So a good thing of a good battery. I sort of left. Yeah, but it's like I'll try it on the laptop first Because everything is on my main Mac mini even though it's aging a little bit, but yeah, if it works there I Figure it works on the other one And I've rarely had a problem no matter what version it is Yeah, what what can happen is and I've had this happen is if you have a two different operating systems on your two machines Your laptop your desktop over time What happens is they they start updating their pages There all their other apps and then they become so integrated with the new operating system When you make a document on the new one you can't open it on the other computer and that's a pain in the neck So once you realize that the new OS is stable and you're happy with it And you want to put it on the on your production computer go ahead Just make sure you've backed up everything make sure you check to make sure your drivers for all of your hardware are compatible with it and Just just be ready to have some downtime in case something doesn't go quite as planned All right, but just do it smartly and you'll be fine No, what's this about don't buy an iPad today? Don't buy an iPad today Don't buy a MacBook Air today. You'd be insane. Well the day is almost over anyway, right? But tomorrow Apple has a big announcement in Brooklyn They're doing a big show. They're going to do big announcement a new hardware So we're gonna find out what that is the the predictions are new iPads iPad pros How could they possibly improve on that? They have to in order for them to be the most profitable company in the entire world They have to make new computers That's how they survive. We don't need them, but they'll make them So anyway, they're gonna have new iPads the things. I'm more excited about the things that I use more off I don't really use the iPad for very much. I use it to DJ parties or Train things like not much else, but for me the MacBook Air I'm excited to see what they're gonna do because they haven't really updated that a few years Even more so though the new Mac mini they're supposed to announce a new Mac mini is it gonna look completely different? Is it gonna have all different ports? Is it gonna what's it gonna be? I have no that's the one that to me is the most interesting because I love my Mac mini I've had Dan and I I think we have the same one actually 2011 quad core Bomb this these machines have been really great to us. It just keeps going and going very reliable Like it does everything I need to do. It's getting a little bit slow for doing video production But for everything else, it's been great. So what's the new one gonna be? I'm excited to find out if it's a real improvement or not So anyway, don't buy anything wait till tomorrow see what the announcements are about then Consider it and again, you may not be making sense to buy the new version of a piece of hardware to again It has to be Debugged a little while so get if you're gonna get something brand sprake and new shiny try it out Make sure it works. Well before you go full in and sell the old one. All right Well, good advice there. So you're all y'all of you are doing this trying to update it. Don't do it quite yet All right We got more tech stuff to deal with if you got a tech question throw it in the chat room George and I will be thrilled to answer it and we're gonna talk about some of the weird crap We've been dealing with in the last week for you guys that do the strangest things out there We'll be right back here on voiceover body shop. So do not go anyway Yep, this is VOBS proven anybody can have a show these days VOBS is still on Seriously, how do you think about your voiceover career? Are you frustrated with your lack of success wishing ahead more auditions and bookings and making more money? We all do and we all have thoughts like I'm not good enough to be doing this professionally. I'm just faking it I need to join the union as soon as I can. That's one of my favorites. I'm too old to get booked I can't get started until everything is perfect. We get that one a lot Sound familiar. Well, if you could only change your mindset and get rid of those ridiculous rules Well, that would help a lot. Well The auto go-go is David H. Lawrence the 17th has just what you need He completed a 21-day journey with nearly a hundred voiceover and on-camera talents Just like you it was called believe 2018 and he recorded every single session Meaning you can take this journey now to at the pace you want and change things for the better Get the success you deserve by destroying your limiting beliefs and replacing them with powerful productive enabling beliefs and Do so on your own schedule. Here's the length the length the link I do this professionally go get the 25 hours of video and audio the daily chat logs and more and Begin your own journey. The link is VO to go go dot-com forward slash believe that's VO the number to go go dot-com forward slash believe It's ridiculously cheap and it's ridiculously effective once again VO to go dot-com forward slash believe As a voice talent, you have to have a website But what a hassle getting someone to do it for you and when they finally do they break or don't look right on mobile devices They're not built for marketing and SEO. They're expensive You have limited or no control and it takes forever to get one built and go live So what's the best way to get you online in no time go to voice actor websites dot-com? Like our name implies voice actor websites dot-com just does websites for voice actors We believe in creating fast mobile friendly responsive highly functional designs that are easy to read and easy to use You have full control no need to hire someone every time you want to make a change And our upfront pricing means you know exactly what your costs are ahead of time You can get your voice over website going for as little as $700 So if you watch your voice actor website without the hassle of complexity and dealing with too many options Go to voice actor websites dot-com where your VO website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what? Vo BS proven anybody can have a show these days All righty, we're back in voice over body shop in our medieval set the dungeon Speak now. All right, um, you know Every week we get emails In our own private little emails from our own individual websites like George's website, which is that is the George the tech comm Right and my website, which is the home studio home voice over studio Dot-com rolls off the top it does God. I was lucky to get that URL But we get email from people saying help or Hey, I just bought a manly microphone and an Avalon preamp that goes into an Apollo and It's you know, I'm having trouble with it. Well, that's because You didn't listen to us in the first place gotta keep it simple It's not the equipment that gets you work and you don't buy great equipment to get work You work to get great equipment We say it all the time because it's true Yes, it's if you go out there and you buy something really expensive thinking that's gonna change things Well, it's not really gonna help now. You used to work with Don Lafontaine I did the Don now were his personal engineer in his studio and people always ask you What did Don use in his studio because I want to get that same stuff so that I'm as successful as Don Lafontaine And you would tell them what did you put in their studio in his studio? It didn't matter I mean, honestly, I would go into Don's studio after you know I wasn't there all the time But when I did come in to fix something or whatever He would have different mics put up in that room and I'd be like what Mike is that he's like Oh, these guys sent this thing to me. So I threw it up in my booth. He could put any mic It didn't matter because a radio shack electorate can't can answer Mike Don Lafontaine is what you put in that studio It's true. It was his talent and the room was to was tuned very nicely We you know and and people do ask and do buy the gear that I that I've put in there And you know if if you have the means and you want to have the fun toys, you know, I'm not gonna stop you It ain't gonna make the difference though. Trust me It's it's gonna take years before having some bling bling toys in your studio is gonna make that kind of a difference So don't blow the money there quite yet get the room dialed in get your acoustics and your sound noise levels down Right, that's when you that's where you should put your money, right? Well, and there's a way best way to put your money is to deal with us because we actually know what the things to do That are correct are a little bit of money here or here is gonna help save you and direct money in the right direction and Yeah, we could save you thousands of dollars thousands of dollars and hours and hours Bless you of mind-numbing frustration indeed, you know, I mean things are getting a little easier I mean some some software is a little bit more idiot-proof than it used to be We will make sure that that money goes in the right place, right, you know when you when you have us on board with you It's gonna be money. Well, yeah, because we're going to show you the three important things that you have to deal with one your acoustics Sound coming in that we don't want to come in sound bouncing around all over the place Which never happens in this booth, by the way, which is why it sounds so damn good and The other thing is Proper mic technique. Yeah, you know if you use proper mic technique and You don't need a pop screen if you use the mic, right? You can go Peter Piper pick the peck of pickle peppers all afternoon and all evening long and You're not going to get a blow and you can even be really close to the mic Peter Piper picked a pet the pickle peppers and not pop the mic if you know it actually work the mic That's right. So we see these pictures of people wearing headphones like you and And and you know or going like this right up to the mic with a pop screen there Some people may argue with me about this, but that's got very little to do with voice over It has a lot to do with pictures and Facebook and people's websites This is what a voice actor is supposed to look like they're all supposed to look like Gary Owen, I guess But that's not the case and we want to sit down with you in Over over zoom or Skype or FaceTime or Actually in your very studio if you happen to be here in the greater Los Angeles area and help you out with this stuff and go through Your studio and ask you the right questions. How do you do what you do? What type of work are you doing? What's your workflow? You know, why are you doing this in your bathroom? You know things like that? Yeah, I mean a lot of people are concerned about the fact that I can't be in their studio Face-to-face, you know, I'm not in your city or I missed you when when you were in my city Which by the way, let me thank everybody who were able to bring me into their studio while I was visiting New York That was really great But I we both have gotten so good at working remotely You know we can hear a room and very quickly determine that there's something hard a hard object near the mic Table right below it a bell shaped lamp. I got this ringing in my studio Get a lamp. Oh, yeah It's god. It's a miracle. Exactly. Exactly. You know, but I do occasionally see people go a little bit bonkers With the acoustic treatment Where to the point where they wrap everything in the studio with something like blankets foam towels, right? You generally don't need to worry about small round things like a lamp pole a post You know a stand Those things aren't such a big deal. Unless they have some kind of a ringing property like a bell shaped lamp It's rare that those things are those really are never a problem. The sound hits that Cylindrical surface and just scatters, you know, it doesn't bounce off of it. So you generally don't need to worry about Coating literally everything and towels and foam That's not as important. It's really those hard surfaces that are At the very least that you can reach from your mic Like if you're at the mic and you can reach out and touch something that's hard That should probably not be hard anymore. It should probably be soft and absorbing Right that seems to work pretty well for a lot of your dog there or your cat and a lot of people do How many times we walked into a place and there's cat fur all over there Doesn't doesn't help the sound. Yeah. Yeah, it certainly doesn't help the equipment Anyway, once again, if you want help from mr. Whitom here, where do you go? You go to George the tech dot com is my home on the web where you can book services by the minute Bar by the 15 minute increment or by the job by the project, you know, I do the stacks and the racks I do all that kind of stuff and dan. Where do they find you sir? They find me over at home voiceover studio dot com And uh, you can submit your audio in my specimen collection cup. It's easy to do. It's 25 dollars We will See what your studio sounds like most of the time. It's like hey, it's okay Or you get one with a manly and an avalan and you know a shower curtain and it just sounds pretty weird Well, since we haven't got any questions in is there something that's come up with one of your clients recently that Was kind of interesting. Well, we we had I did get a good question And I actually had I'll help somebody with this week somebody was wondering about How to edit videos a client was sending her video And she wanted to be able to edit it. It was like No timings or anything but had to sync up with an existing voice track in another language Oh, wow, and how do you do that? Was she dubbing a language? She was dubbing a language and it's like How do you sync it perfectly depending on the language? It can be a little bit more difficult Yeah, adobe audition is real simple all you do is take the video and the audio that they send you Throw it into a multi-track in there through the video in one track and the audio will be in another You just literally drag the video into a track and you know, it goes Oh, that's a video video and and the little window opens in the lower left hand corner And there's the video and you can scroll along and you can sync up You know what you're saying to fit what's going on the screen and it's actually pretty cool. That's that's cool Yeah, they've made they've made it so much easier. I mean that used to be really the domain of Pro tools and some of those kinds of softwares, but they'd be able to do that so easily in adobe audition I mean it really was software designed to do audio for picture that really what it was designed to be It was designed for voiceover really. Yeah, it's a companion for premiere You know and when and when the going gets tough and premiere and you need to do more audio production work That's when adobe audition comes into play. Right. Um, I just saw something pop up in the chat room from fred Hey fred fred by the way fred let us know about the audio mix not being so great between live and playback Hopefully tonight. We got it right. Let us know Um, do you do computer monitors count as hard surfaces? Yeah, I guess if they're pretty big I mean solid glass you tell them on displays like yeah computer displays Uh, yes, they absolutely do like if you have Uh, he's got two in his booth. If you've got two monitors sitting right in front of you splayed in a way that the sound bounces off that surface and comes right back at the mic Yes, but if you have them Angled a bit You want to angle in such a way that the sound bounces and goes away from your mic Right, that could be angled up down in out whatever it is. You want to avoid the bank shot? So that's not usually too difficult of a problem to solve. I find just a small adjustment of the monitor's angle That usually gets rid of those reflections, right, but we have to hear Yeah, you know, it's because we know what it's supposed to sound like All right. Yeah, I'm just saying if there's anything else to follow up on that Um, no one from one from gerard before we'll do this one from gerard and then we'll get to our guest has been very patient um Regarding the ag03 does a preamp bypass The ag03 preamp. So I guess what he's saying is if you plug an external preamp, right into the input on the ag03 Does it bypass the internal preamp? I don't know the answer to that Generally that that's a no you almost always on these products. You're still going through The preamp you just turn the gain way way way down or pad and which is why you're using that preamp in the first place When the preamp in the ag03 is just dandy I guess you could go into line two of the ag03 which is a line input Right, that doesn't have and then you then you can run the thing in mixer mode and That way skype will hear your input, you know that kind of stuff if you really want to be a purist But you know it getting if you can't hear the difference who cares right listen to the sound and go by the judgment of that the sound All right Enough of this You know, this is what people tune in for because when dan and george taught voiceover technology you all listen Intent apparently even I do Okay, adam verder is standing by we'll be right there with him to talk about all the cool stuff that he's up to and uh, but we'll be right back after this message from Source elements and various other people This is the latin lover narrator from jane the virgin and turnie mendez and you're enjoying dan and george on voice over body shop Well, it's my turn to talk about source elements. You guys know you've been listening to the show for a while How great their tools for broadcast recording remote and remote sound recording and streaming are The tool to get these days even more now than ever as isd and fades to black Is definitely source connect it is the one that Overall is most commonly found in professional studios around globes So you should probably be familiar with it and at least have a demo and you can get a 14 day Free trial working demo of source connect these right from source dash elements.com It's absolutely a no-brainer to get this it runs on windows and mac um, it's become very stable and Nice thing about it is you don't have to have a little iLock plug-in usb thing All you have to do is have a free iLock account to use it So go set it up go get it working get familiar with it if you have trouble They do have support if you have a special case in your studio dan or i can help you as well get it dialed into your studio's needs And uh get to get to work you'll be able to access the best studios in the world with source connect Thanks a lot for your sponsorship. We really appreciate it. We'll be right back with dan and adam verner right after this Are you confused about how to set up and maintain a professional quality voiceover studio? No wonder the information out there is mostly Mythology This is the best microphone to use. You'll have to have a preamp. You need a soundproof booth This software is the best your audio must be broadcast quality Consult with someone who knows the truth someone who's been there in the trenches doing voiceover for over 30 years Someone with unparalleled experience with voiceover studios Who's worked with hundreds of voice actors and designed hundreds of personal studios? He knows how to teach and cares about your success In one of the harshest environments known to voiceover your home dan lenard the home studio master Separate myth from fact and get a handle on your personal voiceover studio Contact the home studio master at home voiceover studio dot com All right, let's talk about our guest before we actually put him on camera here Adam verner is an accomplished full-time voice talent an audiobook narrator with almost 400 titles to his name. He's been working professionally in the voiceover world in all genres since 2003 Just like me voicing thousands of tv and radio commercials e-learning courses and industrials He holds an a master of fine arts for those of you wondering what an mfa is In acting from the chicago college of performing arts at roosevelt university and he has a new site Called pronounce ology a dictionary tool for the audiobook and e-learning industry We'll talk about his career and tips for a long-term voiceover success And this new website and all sorts of cool stuff and let's welcome to voiceover body shop Joining us from fort collins colorado adam verner adam Welcome to the show. Hello. Hello. Thank you for having me guys. All right. Now. That's a great sounding booth You know sometimes these people like they're out in their living room their voice actors Come on get in your booth and talk to us for over your mic. Let's see what your sound chain sounds like It should be good and simple. What is your sound chain by the way? Um, I've had pretty much the same thing since I went to full-time voiceover back in 2009 or so, which is uh An at 40 50 microphone up here, which actually bought used at the time. It's almost 10 years old now And it's been rocks solid ever since. Yeah. Yeah Um, I have a symmetric 528e Uh little vocal processor strip Um, but the only thing it has a bunch of bells and whistles, but the only thing I really use on that is the downward expansion Um, and then the interface is an rme Fireface 400 Right, which again has a lot of bells and whistles, but it's just converting the signal basically for me But if you needed it you have it. It's a rock solid reliable piece of gear Right, that's the most important part. So where are you from originally? Um, originally I grew up in Illinois A small town called Dixon Illinois about Two and a half hours west of home of dave quavasi. I believe I don't think he's from Dixon, Illinois. No Yeah We were as is ronald reagan. I believe ronald reagan. Yeah, well, so is dave quavasi Dave is more famous than ronald reagan. So absolute At least in las vegas So you're from Dixon, Illinois Cool, this man remembers things like that. I I don't remember what I had to wreck. I just believe him Oh my gosh, I need to talk to dave about that. Anyway, small town grew up there. Um, Most of my life Bounced around a little bit and then ended up shortly after undergrad in chicago. So I spent a good 15 years in chicago Yeah, and that's that's That which is also a great a great town and you you took theater there and uh, that's sort of stuff Yeah, I was pursuing stage theater mostly That's kind of what my undergraduate training was in and Doing plays non-stop because the theater scene there is is awesome Um started doing voiceover though pretty quickly because as an actor in chicago, you know, you do everything and I was like, oh commercials, um, you know film indie film TV commercials and voiceover i'm going to try everything and The voiceover it runs in my family a little bit my parents Well, my grandparents met on the stage doing theater. My parents met doing theater Uh, and then my dad was a disc jockey and voice actor Um, he's no longer with us, but he did that for many many many years So that's kind of in my background. So so when someone introduced you to voiceover, you know exactly what it was Mm-hmm. I did but he used to send me this is why I ended up in audiobooks so much I grew up without tv mainly and he would send me because at the time My parents were separated. So he lived in california while we were in illinois And he would send me uh recordings of himself on his circa, you know, 1983 home studio Um, he would send me cassette tapes of him reading kids books and those like golden books that they had back in the day Oh, cool. Yeah, things like that. So I grew up listening to his audiobooks really that was one of my main sources of entertainment Wow, yeah Good good thing to have So what brought you out to colorada? Oh, everyone always asks that. All right, then I'll let's skip over that No, it's a it's a simple question. Um, yeah, I mean I I started in voiceover full-time in chicago and Put theater in the back burner a little bit and really loved it And then I met my wife and you know living in the city of chicago in any urban center is hard with little kids And we knew we wanted to have more than one And then my wife's parents retired and they lived in florida tampa And they decided they were gonna buy a house in the middle of the mountains in colorado So we kind of like dared each other to move out here I don't think I don't think we would have moved out here. It was zero family out here, but they moved out here We moved out here We love fort collins We didn't want to live in denver right away because again, it's a big urban center and we're kind of done with that for now Um, but fort collins is a good mix. It's got a couple good theaters. I've done a few plays out here with a great local groups of people I have an agent voice over agent in denver. That's great. So I've actually my work and income has increased since moving out here strangely Because I've had way more time and I have no commute, you know in chicago We can talk about my studio here, but in chicago, there's no quiet place to record. I had a rent A tiny little office a 45 minute commute from my apartment in chicago The just to find a place it was quiet enough to record in and had the extra overhead of having a whole separate office and separate stuff there So, um, yeah, it's been an interesting transition. I mean, you could have been right along milwaki there with the l going by How can someone live there with a train rolling by their bathroom like that? That was me my apartment in chicago that we still own our condo was right off the red line thorndale stop I could you know open my front window and it was literally No, baby Right there So it was a great location city wise, but recording wise it was impossible So you've been doing this since 2003 and we've seen The business change immensely in that period of time, but when you and I got into the business You know, we weren't the only ones, but we were the only ones There weren't these thousands and thousands of people doing it. What were some of the first jobs you did? Oh Yeah, well, this will sound familiar to anyone before the kind of internet digital Transformation, but you know in chicago, I got a couple voiceover agents in chicago and I was Pretty much always going into there either the agents office to audition Uh, so training around the city on these trains for hours a day for a five minute audition um Or going to a casting director's office or the actual client's office if they had a little voiceover setup of their own for some of the bigger like media companies But just traveling which is great to some degree you get to see a lot more people traveling over the city and audition And then every job I got was in an actual big studio in chicago Um, some of the big ones that if you know the area are still there. There's a lot of the big ones um, so my very first paid voiceover job Was for a harley davidson dealership All right, um, which I still had a copy of yep, um Um, the first job I got through an agent It was great because it was one of those beginner's luck thing because it was a national non-union But national what was it clr that cleaning liquid, you know, oh, yeah calcium Like yeah scum removal. Yeah, yep scale It was for that and it was for two, you know, 30 second national spots It was like three or four grand, you know, and it was like a 30 minute session And I was like this was like the month after I made my demo and got my first agent and I was like, great This is easy. I just You got a taste Yeah, that's never happened again, but uh Uh, so yeah the first couple of years because especially because that's pursuing theater didn't have my own home setup Not a lot of us did at the time um It was all for agents and all through local studios and it wasn't till I went to grad school in downtown chicago They're from 2006 to 2009 Again very theater focused. We had some on-camera stuff Um, but I was able to still do voiceover in the cracks and stuff like that during grad school Uh graduated in 2009, you know in may or so and that summer was like I gotta jump in and do this full time Because I don't want to go looking for some day job now. You know that I have no interest in right So well, so what kind of work are you doing now since you know the last 10 years? um For the last 10 years since I've been full-time or so It's it's slowly growing more and more for the audiobook industry Which I'm pretty happy with because that's like I said, I grew up reading books non-stop and I've Since since I was a little kid. I was like, how can I make a living reading books? Is this possible? and um I'm doing it, you know, and so you know this this year for example Audio books are probably 70 percent of my income but 90 percent of my 95 percent of my time because they're time consuming um, I still do a lot of TV and radio commercials, you know, not quite as many especially because I'm not in chicago anymore I'm not in quite as large a market But I still do a lot of um e-learning a lot of web videos Like so if like audiobooks are 70 percent of my business. It's probably 10 percent commercials and 10 percent E-learning and 10 percent various web things and industrials and stuff like that um Not as much the through agents anymore. I've kind of stepped back from The kind of all out pursuing of the top shelf agent, you know national commercial stuff Just because again auditioning for that world can be so time consuming um And playing that game and playing that lottery and you have to I think you have to really love it to some extent To really spend the time on it And for the stage of my life with we have three little kids two four and six which are Amazing and super cute. It gets better trust me. They're also very loud And you know my my emotional energy to pour into the audition game Um at this stage of my life as a little less. I have a feeling when the kids are older You know, I'll be like, I'm gonna redo my demos, you know Take some more training out in LA and you enter that world a little more down the line Right. Um, but at this stage I'm content to really grow the audiobook side of my business because that's more of my true passion All right, wise if you're just joining us you've missed a whole lot already But we have plenty of time here with adam verner is joining us from uh for collins colorado And he is a very successful voice actor and has been doing it consistently At least since 2009 which is 10 years that's right If you've got a question for adam About uh, you know, obviously, he knows an awful lot about audiobooks and uh, those sorts of things Throw it in the chat room. I know jack daniel is out there somewhere He's in there now. I see him in the chat. Yeah, and he will relay those questions to us So just go in there and and ask those questions. Um How how have you been able to maintain it over 10 years? I mean, you were just just just saying that you know, you're you're kind of tiring of the auditions How have you been able to keep it going? Obviously having a lot of different clients and people who rely on you Yeah, I've I've heard people talk about that. I mean For me And I think this comes in handy being any of us that are full-time freelance type people Um, and my wife my wife says I'm very disciplined. I you know, I Uh, so it's very important for me to work on nine to five And when I was before I was married to him little kids I would work more than that because I because I love the work and it didn't feel like work But um, you know, now that we're married and have three little kids. I'm very I stick to a nine to five I don't work on the nights or weekends unless there's you know, some crazy time zone client thing where they need to record Um at 7 p.m. Or something. Uh, but I really stick to that eight hour work week I work every minute I'm in here. I don't spend a lot of time on social media For me when I first got started, it was the marketing. I mean I had my previous day job A.k. What I fell into and did to make money while I was pursuing theater in Chicago was working for Search search engine optimization firms and website design firms doing internet marketing Um, so I kind of learned that and I don't have a you know I didn't have a degree in that or anything But I did that for a lot of online websites and I learned a lot of those techniques early on back when they still worked back in the day When seo was first getting started So when I first put on my website and started getting active You know, I was very successful online Uh at first maybe because of that Um, so I put a lot of time, you know when I first went full time and I didn't have so many clients I'd spend six hours a day on the phone just calling up new clients calling up new e-learning companies calling up Media companies and ad agencies and you name it. Um Now because I'm so busy the audiobooks. I don't have that time So I've got a part-time marketing assistant. That's all she does Is cold call for me. She works through lists of companies. She's cold calling She's also following up the emails. Um Tying into my crm And doing monthly email campaigns through mail chimp Then I'm able to outsource all that stuff right now. Which is great because I just don't have time for it No, and and that's stuff that you know To do that when you're starting out you really had to do it yourself But if you've got to maintain a business And it's stuff that's not making you know that's taking you away from making money Better to have somebody else do it who's going to be totally dedicated to that And not have to worry about I got to get this audition out or I've got to get this project out Yeah, yeah, and that's been a great. I mean that's been a couple years now and It's really paid off. It's it's been a more of a slow build but My email campaigns every month now are sending out to three to four thousand different potential clients current clients, you know leads Things like that. Um So what are you using for your emailing system? Uh right now it's just mail chimp, which a lot of us use but I like it because it's simple It's you know, they they have great products. It hooks into my crm, which is called capsule Which is it's not a super well known one, but I spent a lot of time looking at different crm solutions years ago when I chose one and I like capsule because it's cheap right now. I'm paying 12 bucks a month. I think and it's um It's very lean and simple. It's not like sales force or some of these crazy ones I have so many bells and whistles that you get lost Um, it's really just just what I need it and it will sync up with mail chimp You know record all my email activity in the crm with the client stuff like that and there's other ones that do that too I looked it up. It's capsule cap s u l e c r m dot com Yep, cool. I'll look at that that finding a crm system. It can become I have spent I spent so much time looking for the right system That the time that the system was designed to save was eaten up by the time it took me to find the system It took I mean I settled on one myself Last fall and you know, once you settle in with something you start finding little things that are wrong with it But you realize that you know what is I still have something that works for most things and you just kind of sold her forward Yeah, it's one once you get so invested in something You know, it'd be hard It'd be hard for me to change now because the amount of time it would take me or for me to pay someone to do to Reformat labels and tags to have everyone labeled and tagged and organized the way I like Which it's all transferable because it's just raw data But it's it would take a lot of time to massage all that data. So I really would not want to do it Just I won't get too down the rat hole with this rabbit hole But yeah, what is one feature that it's really missing that you're like, I'll work I'll have to work, you know, work around that is or does it have everything you really need? Oh, let me see. I'm just gonna bring it up here just so I can remind myself. Um For my needs right now it has everything I need cool because Yeah, I'm you know, it does pipelines if you know what those are Um, a lot of these, you know, we're at tracks tracks potential clients through a sales process But like I don't use any of that stuff. I know Matt does it do the billing as well. Is it doing a billing side of things? It's it's not and that's one thing that Um, but that's that's on me because right now. I'm still I'm still using this Incredibly complex yet customized excel spreadsheet full of macros and formulas that I created to be very specific to my workflow Um, which I love because it's so customizable and it's free Um, unlike some of the online, you know options But it's a spreadsheet. It doesn't it's not going to interact with a crm Uh, so I did I do wish I I had the ability that I had the ability to like automatically send invoice reminders Some of them have that. Um In and capsule will sync up with uh quick books, I believe and zero and uh, let's see other poppy one fresh books I believe it will sync up with those two. Um, so down the line It's it's always on my list. That's another project for another time. It's what that is Yeah, you know, once again, we're talking with adam verner About all the stuff that he does to maintain his career Again, if you've got a question throw it in the chat room right now Whether it be in facebook or in our main chat room, which is a lot of weekly party every week Uh, get it in there and we'll get to it in the next segment. We're going to talk about His new website right after these important messages. So we'll be right back in just a couple minutes Skittles taste the rainbow. She has fought for those who don't have a voice the national zoo Because sometimes you just need to stroke a llama instagram Download it and start embarrassing your teenagers today resolve spot and stain Because the dog's gonna drag his butt on the carpet. He just is 400 million dollars That's what the mayor wants you to pay for a new basketball stadium Chickens were made to be fried Sorry, buddy kfc engage the droid army with this lego star wars republic fighter tank What you've never seen a girl kill a troll game stop Hey, i'm the cat meme guy. Come on. You know, you love cat memes Instagram, what's your thing? Hi, it's j michael collins and these are just a few examples of the first class demos My team and I are producing if you'd like to have something similar Visit jmc voiceover dot com and click on the demo production tab to find out more Hi Harlan hogan and now we are unboxing our 2.0 version of the voice optimized headphones brought these out the original a couple years ago This is the latest edition. We've made a few evolutionary changes nothing revolutionary because frankly it's one of our most successful products Inside the box It's like a pop-ups automatic Um, we have a couple of things. There's the brochure gives the specifications on the back Basic layout of the various features and the best way to use the headphones There is a very nice very tough vinyl bag and that's lined with fleece So it's good for traveling or just to keep your headphones handy at home Keep them away from dust or accident spills or whatever happens around your house like mine Inside are the headphones themselves. One of the things if you are familiar with the first product you might notice is Where's the cable? That is located inside And two things one we have stayed with a very popular feature we introduced which is A combination straight and coily cord I like the coily cord because it stretches out less chance of pulling the wires out of the headphones But I never liked it hanging next to my face. So here you have just a straight cord combined with that The change to the cord is you have this Your standard quarter inch for professional gear Inside of that is a mini if you're working with say an iphone or a mixer face For example, you would use a mini and then there's a mini on this end and that goes into this jack Much more efficient and much less likely that you could pull that out It does happen pretty frequently with headphones you step on a cord boom and now you've got a soldering job So that really works well Two things that we did to improve the product based on feedback was to increase the thickness of the headband It's still covered in napa leather same thing with the the ear cups Those are leather as well and we did make a minor adjustment to the audio very very minor removed a little bit of the bass and improved the mid-range frequency and The sound is terrific. What you need in headphones for voice work is truth You want to hear exactly what the room sounds like and what you sound like and that's what these do very well And that's why they're optimized for voice work. So that's it the vohp headphones 2.0 You can find these on voiceover essentials.com or amazon.com and Thanks for stopping by All right, we're back with adam verner and uh, you know One of the things that happens when you do a lot of voiceover work is you're like I gotta find something else to do too or you find it you have an interest to help other voice actors You know, I just helped start an entire international organization It was that was just in my part-time stuff. What were you thinking? I god, I'm still wondering about that one Uh, but you've got a new a new web tool that you've put together called pronounce ology To help all us voice actors What's involved in that and how can it help people? Very good question dad. I'm glad you asked um Well, it's um, it came out of my own frustration and it came out of my own need basically, um It's intended right now at least for the audiobook world But also has a lot of application in the e-learning world if you post a voice a lot of e-learning um The basic problem that I wanted to solve was if you get an audiobook that has a lot of Search terms you need to look up Those of you that do a lot of audiobooks know that not all publishers and not and not in all instances Are you paid for your research time? If you're lucky the publisher will do the research for you, but you're not always lucky a lot of times you have to do it yourself And you're not paid for that research time sometimes unless it's excessive So you'd get an audiobook and it's like, you know the history of medical technology of ancient sanskrit people in the indus valley or whatever and there's like Just tons and hundreds of terms to look up in your and I would spend because I'm very tried to be very thorough with it I would spend hours and hours and sometimes like three full work days researching things before I could even start recording um Things like that and in the e-learning realm you get a word document or an e-learning script from a client And there's all sorts of medical jargon or technical jargon Again, if you're lucky they've put in phonetic spellings for you on how to pronounce it Um, but a lot of the time they don't even know how to pronounce it They're just cut and pasting from a subject matter expert who they don't even know where they went anymore Or they've just always ever typed them. They don't know how to pronounce it so um There's all this research we have to do for pronunciation uh and marionwebster.com dictionary.com Oxford English dictionary all these dictionaries have an online website. You just go type in the word You boom you got it, but I just got tired of doing that, you know Cut and pasting 300 times and then cut and pasting the phonetic spelling back into my script or back into wherever And I'm like all of these dictionaries have apis Which for those of you don't know stands for application program interface Which is just a way to Access all that database access the content of a dictionary straight from the back end for a programmer And i'm not a programmer by any means, but I know just enough about it to know that it's possible To do this automatically in bulk And I searched and I searched and I searched and strangely no tool and so as I know still No tool out there exists to allow you to do a bulk lookup of a dictionary. It doesn't exist I'm like that's silly and I for a couple years I thought about it and I even brainstormed some things. I'm like somebody really needs to build this And eventually I'm like, well, nobody's building it. I guess that someone will be me And what does what kind of stuff does that involve creating a website like that? Well on my end, it's just the brainstorming part. I had to go find, you know A programmer or two who have the knowledge to actually do this Um, that is not uh, that is not trivial It is not and I you know, I've been through Two programmers now both were great, but you know, the first guy had his fourth or fifth kid and got busy and was like I'm too busy, you know, and he has a full-time cyber security job. This was just a side gig for him Because programming is expensive and it's been an expensive project But the basic idea is for to take the audiobook realm as an as an example If you're a member it's a subscription base right now for pre-oncology Uh, if you're highlighting your pdf and ianitate or acrobat or whatever program of choice you want to highlight a pdf in or whatever device you want Most of us generally highlight the terms as we go. So we end up with a pdf with like 300 terms say highlighted You just sign into preoncology. You upload the pdf. It sucks out all your highlighted terms runs them through a sequence of Six databases finds the most authoritative result Spits you back out a report with the word the phonetic spelling and you can play the audio Or delete that and record your own audio add your notes Search other sites. It's like a home base for research and it does it all automatically instantaneously because it's code. It's programming And then at the end of all your research, you can share that report with the publisher You can create a shareable, you know, a viewable shareable version of it You can print it out. You can export it to a spreadsheet Or you can export export just the phonetic spellings back to your pdf, which is a narrator They're right there on the page. They came from spell phonetically Word documents too. We just enabled that feature if you got e-learning most of that most of that tends to come in word documents You can highlight words upload it sucks out the terms searches all the stuff gives you full report of all the words So my days of cut and pasting 300 times back and forth and back and forth to a dictionary Thank the lord are over Yeah, and I think for for an audiobook narrator, that's gonna be pretty important But what about something like medical narration when you've got to say things like ankylosing spondylitis and get that right? Yeah, one of the databases we use is um, marym webster medical um database So yeah, I had an audiobook Recently that was um about mental health and so there was just full of drug names You know try my left-handing doxeline for various mental health illness um All stuff all stuff like that and it just found the vast majority of it automatically if it exists in the dictionary, it'll grab it um It also searches things like uglish, which if you don't know that is a great way to search youtube by searching the Closed caption texts part of youtube so you can it'll bring you right to the place in youtube Where somebody says that obscure river in kansas, you know the nomenose how to pronounce because it's not in a dictionary But oftentimes are on youtube Wow Yeah, things like that. Yeah So and that's just the tip of the iceberg I have a lot of plans of dictionaries to add things like that Um, and I think it has a lot of potential for the esl world, which is a whole other Industry to look at but anyone that needs to learn english. It's a good bulk way to get you know assignments things like that Absolutely once again, we're talking with adam verner still time to get a question and if you want Uh, and we've been talking about the new website So just pronounce ology dot com Yep, the word pronounce pronounce and then ology. So like this ology is greek for you know, this the study of so the study of pronunciation pronounce ology I'll pronounce the ology though. Not yet And if you stick around I believe toward the end of this, um Right now we're running on a subscription model for you know, roughly 14 bucks a month you get access to what you need Um, we may add different tiers to that later, but that's probably all you need Uh, and if you stick around we'll throw up a coupon code and give you at least a free month for anybody that is listening He wants to try it out You know, we're still we just launched in july, I believe. Yeah We launched in july so we're still gaining users and gaining traction And it's just me running it. So if people want to try things out, you know, we're not we don't it's not like we have You know tens of thousands of users that I can't let people try things for free or I'm really interested in feedback and And adding features that will make it work for your your workflow. Excellent. All right You're ready for a few questions from everybody else watching this thing live Yes, please mr. Whittom All right, let's go find the first one from team and team and one of our regulars in our chat room Um, do you absorb or remember the books you work on as if you were reading them for the for pleasure? So like how much do you think you retain after finishing a book? That's just that's a very interesting question. I don't think anyone has ever asked me that it is actually yeah, yeah Um, I think I retain pretty well because again, I grew up I was just one of those kids that you know, I'd read a 500 page book every two days growing up Or you know, I just read read read read so I read very very fast Which means I have to especially when I was first getting started having to remind myself to slow down while narrating Because my brain is always ahead of my the words on the page Um, but I have to read every book at least twice that I record For work. So reading fast is an asset that it is that's true. It is an asset in that way But I have to prep a book. I have to read through a book You know highlight all the words like I was just talking about If it's fiction, I have to I I do various annotations with characters and think about character voices So I have to read through it once before I record it And then I sit down and record it at like real speed and read narration speed In books I read for pleasure. I only read once. Um, so I think I actually retain them better My wife makes fun of me because she calls me she says I know a lot about I know a little bit a little bit about a lot of stuff. Yeah, I know what that means Yeah, because you know, I'm there I I'm just now starting to narrate a book about the history of monasticism and ancient buddhism Um, which is just very specific So when are you going to go on jeopardy? I just have these glaring gaps like pop culture And uh in sports like I've narrated a few Football books, but um, yeah, you know, I have some glaring gaps, but like In certain categories I could probably do well at yeah But that's a good question. I'd say I retain them better Um, yeah, I had another part to that. What setup do you have for clients that want to direct you or using like a skype or a zoom? What do you use if when that happens? well Many many years ago in Chicago when I was there uh The amazing george wittem helped me set up a virtual skype phone patch Which I still to this day do not understand In terms of how In terms of how the cabling works, I don't get it I just have my original notes from gosh eight years ago And every time I boot my studio I plug in the cables in the exact way all I have to say I use skype as a virtual phone patch Um, and I have a skype phone number. So oftentimes I just give them a phone number They never even know that it's on skype Um, or they'll want to use skype, but people can conference call in they can direct me and hear playback Which what's which is kind of what makes it a true phone patch that they can hear playback True, um adobe audition which I use. Um, I use that a lot. I also have source connect. I use that now and then I've I never ended up getting istn I even had bought a box at one point tello suffer Um, and had it sitting ready to go but in chicago at least and this was years ago Now it's even worse, you know, it's like five six hundred dollars a month now Is that true? Yeah, but it's more hundreds hundreds of dollars a month for an istn line And when you're not really pursuing the commercial world like I'm not at this point It doesn't make a lot of sense. It's cheaper out here in colorado, but it's so Yeah, I just doesn't make a lot of sense for me right now to get a true istn line I've done bridges with source connect now with ip dtl Um, I don't I don't have a current like full active ip dtl account Um, I'll I'll get one of the drop of a hat if I ever need to again because I love the the product. Yeah Um, but for now source connect and kind of a virtual phone patch have been Totally good for my needs. Cool. All right. Well, it's time for this week's jack attack attack attack Uh jack daniel asks adam I'm thinking about a studio bricks as pretty as yours Maybe it's just because you're in it. Uh, do you feel it's been a good investment for you? I would think that as an audiobook narrator sustained environmental quality is critical to you in a way That is not for people like me who work in shorter forms Um, good question. You're right Uh us audiobook narrators who spend, you know Eight hours a day in our booth. It is it's a difference It's a needs. I was going to say skill set but a need set is that a word? I'm making up the word need set network put it in pronunciation. Make sure you get it. Yeah, there we go Um, it is different. So my first booth in chicago was a four by four or four by six It was a four by six with single walled whisper room And that was okay It was a little claustrophobic. This is a five by five studio bricks pro So it's kind of kind of triple wall-ish two and a half triple wall Um, it was, you know stupid expensive like they are But when we were moving out here to colorado, we didn't know what situation we were going to be in We didn't know exactly what house we were going to be in That's when I bought this. So that was three years ago now because I just wanted The biggest thickest beast I could get to kind of and also because studio bricks pieces Are a little more modular I knew that there was more there's going to be better capability to like carry them upstairs or down Crazy basement stairs or something. Some of the other ones out there have bigger wall pieces and I've I've heard in the past her horror stories of people buying one and not being able to get it into the space that they need So for all those reasons, I got the studio bricks And it's been great, uh, the air unit like I couldn't I in the past I was not able to run the ventilation unit on that old whisper room while recording For audiobooks, I should say for audiobooks because the audiobook publishers, especially are very picky They don't want they don't want it. They don't want a gate. They don't a lot They don't let you quote unquote. They don't want you they tell you not to use a gate or anything They want raw audio You know, I know people who do short form primarily they can run something in the background and just gate it out or find ways to reduce it but the little Eric's changer unit In this studio bricks I have it on a kind of a low setting and it brings in a fresh air Silently enough I I can barely hear it with my ear, but it doesn't really pick up on the mic Um, and I hear in more and more recent even newer versions of the studio bricks that they've gotten even better um, this one's great so This might be a good place unless there's other questions George to talk about the studio build do you think? Yeah, we we can do that. We got a we got a couple more, but this is the topic. We're on right now I mean, so yeah, we you you you were prepared for whatever comes when you got that booth But you wanted to put in the garage and you have a three bay garage Yeah, so when we bought our for the first two years were in colorado We were renting and I had to put the studio bricks in the basement room regular basement room Which was under the kitchen of our house And my wife at the time Stayed at home mom with two and then three little kids And you can imagine It was a nightmare. She said she still has yeah, she still has PTSD from me, you know texting her wife She could not go in the kitchen all day long while I was recording which is a nightmare as you can imagine um So when we bought our house we looked for a specific kind of setup and we found a house that has a three car garage And the third bay sticks out from the house a little bit. So there's no There's a little attic space over but there's no rooms above this third bay Of the garage and I thought perfect. We'll turn this garage space into my studio um, and I toyed with just kind of walling it off myself quickly and easily first but then Ended up not doing that. So I hired george here to design this studio enclosure for me. So we built a full, you know double drywall on the outside and insulation and double drywall on the inside Tor at the existing drywall and made this roughly 10 by 20 garage bay space. So it's kind of long and narrow into a office soundproof-ish office And then I put my studio bricks pro inside of that So in theory I'm behind like eight walls you and not just a regular eight soundproof walls You think it'd be perfect um, but as george was hinting at the Man stopping any stopping any kind of above room foot traffic It's just impossible. It's just impossible The only thing that gets through from the outside or is if we have a really low-frying chopper for some reason that flies overhead Um, if the garbage truck stops out right outside my You know fake garage door here, but that's once a week early morning, and I know exactly when it is and I can plan around it Um, that's about it. But my kids god bless them um If they're in their bedroom, which is not even above me It's in the middle of the house. So 30 feet away and not above me if they're up there Walking is okay, but if they're at all running or not even just jumping just running Or like they like to do jumping off the top bunk bed Then yeah, that vibration that structural vibration is just transmitted and comes right through and you can see it on the waveform just boom boom boom That being said it's way better than the old house Um, and they're you know, it's their bedroom So they're not really playing in there a lot and if I have one of these live sessions like via source connector phone patch I just tell my wife, hey keep the kids out of that bedroom just that bedroom from three to four and we're fine We just communicate about it and it's been it's been awesome overall If you get the harlin hogan led sign and say make the yellow So For that and hang it downstairs I'm sure there's all sorts of incentives you could come up with if you had to yeah Yeah, yeah, and it's it's only gonna get better because they're young now our oldest just started kindergarten But they're all gonna be in school eventually, you know, it's only gonna get better This is the worst time in terms of toddler hood. Sure, but their feet get bigger That's true Jenna asks what's your favorite genre to record? I'm good question. Yeah, I mean I love Fiction because of my acting background. That's the most acting like for me Um, I grew up being a total sci-fi nerd So when I get the chance to narrate sci-fi or fantasy good sci-fi or fantasy, that's like, you know, that's my dream come true um Also on the other realm, I love reading kind of geeky non-fiction Natural history or scientific stuff for the layperson not super technical Um, for example a book I recorded last year was called the ends of the world a history of earth's mass extinctions And it was very relatable written for the layperson but about You know prehistory and the different mass extinctions and that kind of geeky non-fiction stuff I don't get to do it that often but again when I do I'm like, oh, this is amazing um these days in the last two years for whatever reason I'm getting cast and recording a lot of thrillers a lot of spy International thriller assassin type stuff, which is fun. It's a lot of fun because that genre is it's very fast action very You know sometimes over the top, but it's it's a lot of fun Well, it's good. Yeah All right, we got another one coming in this one's from uh, fred How do you deal with the low humidity in colorado? Does it cause you vocal problems and um Oh, there's the second part that's not related. So yeah, I mean it it is very low I know I've spent a lot of time out there. You adjust. Um, do you just stay hydrated? Do you need any technique? um I I haven't I've done a lot when we first moved out here I feel like my body has got acclimatized to it Some doesn't agree because when we first moved out here, I had to sleep with the humidifier in our bedroom every night Um, and I've kind of gotten out of that practice, but I haven't noticed a great Difference I I use way more chapstick than I ever used to use And yeah hydration, I mean I feel like I was helped Because even in Chicago, I was having to hydrate again doing audiobooks. You talk all day long So I was having to hydrate already a lot So I already drink a lot of water and I've kept that up. Um, I haven't I I bought, you know, I bought a little mini Humidifier for this office room Um, I haven't plugged it in and started it yet because I'm wondering this is a question for you, george I was going to ask somebody about Having a humidifier in your office does that again, I'm assuming you don't want to near the equipment but You know, you know, you don't want your humidity level too high with all this sensitive electronic equipment either, right? Well, I mean, it's all yeah, well, I mean, you don't want a hundred percent humidity, but I mean like 50 percent humidity is pretty nice Okay, because I have a little thermometer slash Humid or whatever human sensor in here and I think it's it's usually hovers around 40 percent humidity in here It's probably because you're in a somewhat sealed off room, right? So your own You're creating your own humidity You know the room traps it in there from your own body It does trap some interesting smells in here We got one time for one more question here from sunny james. What editing software do you use for your e-learning projects? Good question. I you know, I got started Uh back in early 2000s when I first got started was on adobe audition 1.5 Somebody just gave me a copy that they weren't using anymore And mainly because of familiarity. I've stuck with audition. Uh, I'm I own cs6. I just hardly ever use it Um, I haven't gone the cc route because I don't want to um, you know, pay monthly for Something that uh, who's bells and whistles. I rarely use Um, so my main stay right now is a adobe audition 3.0 and I spend that for years Because it does everything I need for e-learning specifically Because i'm a geek I set up a whole bunch of keystroke macros to automate some some of the editing process It's not a full word to wave replacement for those of you that know what that is Um, but I can record in I I never record in multi-track mode. I just didn't learn that way and it's weird for me I just record in editing mode and I drop regions marker regions Um where I have a file in e-learning and it will name them automatically from my script based on a macro That's what's slightly similar to word to wave. So when you have these long e-learning scripts with like a thousand files and they're all A word dot mp3 or wave or you know sequence of random numbers Um, I can just name each of those marker regions in one file in audition. I save that one raw file When i'm all done I can batch process out All of those files and then convert them at the same time if I want into mp3s or whatever the client wants um I I usually run A modified version if the client wants mastered audio Uh again years ago 10 years ago now I pay george to set up my audition stack so that I can uh master audiobook files When I produce my own books through acx um So I modified that stack a little bit to to kind of give a nice even level and volume and everything for e-learning files So I I run that often um on the but again, I that's just one batch process I just click a button and it zips through all the files. Um, I don't do a lot of crazy technical stuff on the e-learning um Don't do a lot of breath reduction if at all because I think partly through the audiobook work. I've just learned to be a really silent breather um because Most audiobook publishers don't do a lot of breath reduction. They just like you to be a silent breather Um as much as possible which can be done folks believe it or not It also helps to be in good physical condition to be able to do that Yeah Uh, there was one last question that bread had here is I've also done some world war two and world war Uh one documentaries would it help with the french location names pronounce ology? um, it would possibly um, this is the Kind of the caveat or the tricky thing about pronounce ology. It's um, it's designed to get bulk things from a dictionary So if it's in a dictionary, we're gold um So your foreign word, how many foreign words are in a dictionary? If it's a world war two famous place or a famous person general, maybe most likely um But for the book I just mentioned that I just started prepping on monasticism There's about 300 search terms most of which are ancient sanskrit vatic You know and gine and greek things that are not in any dictionary anywhere You have to i'm gonna have to track down an ancient Greek expert, you know um those kind of things Are not in a dictionary so One of our databases that is in pronounce ology is forvo f or v o Which is a great place for pronunciations and that has a lot of foreign stuff in it and it has a lot of just random french words um place names things like that So when you have a script that's heavy with place names and foreign words a lot of the results will come from forvo Um, you have to be a little careful with forvo because it's not a dictionary. It's not people are not paid to Put these entries in there. It is a crowdsourced endeavor. So Um oftentimes it's the only place you can find a term in which case great use it It's the it's better than nothing or just making it up or winging it Um, but it is crowdsourced now one feature. I didn't mention a pronounce ology that may end up being the most valuable Is our we have our own internal dictionary So let's say you're doing a world war two book you prep the book and you have 500 crazy terms 300 of which are found for you automatically great Um 200 of which you go research on your own Every time a term is added or search in pronounce ology and then a custom source is added It's added to our own pronounce ology dictionary Wow crowdsourced dictionary. It's like a wiki of pronunciation pronunciation It is like forvo in that is crowdsourced But unlike forvo it is quality controlled because me or we're down the line someone I will hire goes and checks your source and says, oh I I agree with you this youtube pronunciation of this random german forest I agree with you that's authoritative enough to include. I will standardize your phonetic spelling record the audio if we need it You know things like that so that there is a quality check. Yeah And over time we've already got close to 500 words in that dictionary Internally and though and that it's valuable because those are words that don't exist anywhere else That's what that's the very reason they got flagged to be put in there They don't exist anywhere else right so over time as your game or users that's going to get Thousands and thousands of entries and may end up being the most valuable part of the the website is our own internal database Alrighty well adam. Thanks so much for joining us tonight here on voiceover by shop and telling us about Pronounce ology and all the cool stuff that you're doing and Again, where can they find pronounce ology pretty simple? You can find pronounce ology at pronounce ology.com You can get a free month coupon code if we don't if we don't get it up on screen here email me at adam at adam verner.com You can check out the narration audiobook work at adam verner narrator.com. That's an audiobook specific website Um, and I'd love to see all of you out in la for the selvas awards next month for those of you that are going I'll see you guys there, right? Maybe yep. All right, great. All right. Thanks for being with this adam All right. Thank you guys and thanks for all the questions everybody. All right. We'll talk to you soon when you're here in la All right, right george and i'll be right back to wrap things up More stuff like salt man coming up Your dynamic voiceover career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead Now there's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer that place is voiceover extra dot 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 audiobooks auditioning casting 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 and get 14 bonus reports on how to ace the voiceover audition It's all here at voiceover extra dot com. That's voiceover x t r a dot com And we're back here on voiceover body shop. We got the coupon code for uh getting pronunciology We do and for especially for those listening on the podcast who wouldn't see this on the screen Uh, the coupon code is and the case apparently counts here. So lowercase q uppercase case six an uppercase six Checking to make sure you're listening You're listening. Okay. Good. Uh lowercase q six What I think is an uppercase i but that's a tough one, right when you have an i and a And then at seven Could be an a one um and an uppercase h a lowercase n uppercase q and a four So that's eight digits all told that's the coupon code Code to get a free trial to get started up with pronunciology. Alrighty. Well next week We got a big event coming up. Thanks mike. Mike put it on the lower third. All right. Good job. Keep it there. Um Next week on this show Rosie and brian and their daughter Alyssa amador will be in my backyard here at the voiceover body shop Doing a great concert. It's a live backyard concert if you're here in la We really want you to come down 20 bucks. You can get tickets. Uh, you know, if you go to our website There's a url to get tickets just 20 bucks proceeds to help, uh Puerto rican hurricane relief And uh, it's gonna be a lot of fun You know any technological marvel, of course another technological miracle We're going to manage right here in the backyard right in my backyard And as we actually have a fair amount of room for this so that's gonna be great So please join us next monday night if you can't be here like if you're in demoyne or uh moline or Buffalo or pittsburgh or one of those places. Um, you can watch the show live And it'll be in perfect sound and if and what we could do we could hang out loud dan I'm thinking out loud go we could anybody that donates During the show right during the concert. Yes, we could as well Contribute absolutely. We will we will have just ran that by i'm right now live on the air No, we were gonna do that any way it's a girl I'll take that be a fun way to contribute as well if you can't be here, right? So we'll we'll have a line open Again, you need an anaheist. There it is. Alrighty. Uh, that's next week And I know jonathan tilley will be coming up in a couple of weeks. Uh talking about, uh marketing And he's got some great stuff about instagram Who are our donors of the week? Well, let me take another cough and i'll let you know all right Uh Yeah, there's something in there, um Well, we just got one from a new name that I hadn't seen before a nice contribution from donald dean. Thanks don't yeah. Thank you, sir Moving on we got our weekly contribution from tracy reynolds. Thanks tracy Um, andrew kaufman as well donates regularly eric aragoni another one of those regulars Um, shana pennington baird as well sustaining uh donor Donates every week or month ant land productions good old uncle roy uh joseph ballin tenetti uh monthly donor Stephanie sutherland And diana birdsaw. Thank you diana. Yeah, it was a big help with the getting, uh Um, uh jonathan tillian. Oh great great patty gibbons And let's see if I've looped. I have looped. So that's the end of the queue since last week We appreciate it. It helps us make the show technologically perfect if you've noticed It looks like a tv show now not like a webcast. It's come a long way. It has it has and that's thanks to you Uh, let's see here, uh, of course, you know if you need help with your home studio You can find george at george the tech george the dot tech works as well for those like the short URLs and dan's right over at another website called Home voiceover studio dot com see the technological stuff that we can do now. It's so cool Uh, let's see here. Uh the show logs Automatically with youtube now. Yeah, they're being generated by youtube. Um I've got my instagram account dan. Are you on instagram or you've been playing with Yeah, it's what they take pictures of microphones and cables people will love you for that's about all I do Let's see here. We're here live every monday night 6 p.m Next week. We want you all here if you're in la But normally if you want to be in the live studio audience is right to us at the guys at v obs dot tv And uh put in the subject line audience And we'll uh, we'll let you in here speaking of pronomsology. How do you pronounce the name of our Contributor of the picture for our show us your booth. I'm gonna go with david hue. Okay. It's h o u x So you figure it out. This must be the family crest and apparently arsenal Um, thanks for the picture. Send in your pictures. Yeah, show us your booths. Yeah, show us your booths Uh, let's see here. Well, we need to thank our sponsors, of course harlin hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra source elements v o to go go uh dot com uh voice actor websites dot com and Michael collins demos. Uh, we also like to acknowledge the uh Dan and marcie lennard foundation for the betterment of live webcasting our producer kathryn curidan Jack daniel on chat room duty and tonight Mike was running things. Yeah, mike marlino was pinch hitting for a mom And did it do the quick learner? Yeah, hire a z generation folks. They're smart and they learn quick They do and lee pinney of course for being lee pinney. Well, that's gonna do it for us this week Stay tuned for a really funny cartoon That uh, jacob and I worked on uh this week called salt man That's coming right up. Uh, we know this is not an easy business. It's a lot to it And uh, you need all the right information and george and i are here to get it to you Each and every week here on voiceover body shop, uh, and that's gonna do for us this week I'm dan lennard and i'm george widdum and this is voiceover body shop or vio BS Stay tuned for salt man. We'll see you next week with our live concert And remember if it sounds good, it is good One day while attorney seymour saltman was eating an order of dull french fries at a round and about burger He felt the fries needed salt These fries are so dull. They could use some salt Little did he know he accidentally grabbed a radioactive salt shaker Boring the contaminated salt on his fries Eating the fries mutated him and turned him into salt man The man with the powers of a salt shaker stopping the world's crime one grain at a time Simony he's all mine. You won't catch me. He's getting away I know just the person to call Hello And warrants cargo has robbed the bank and is getting away Suffering sodium. I'll be there in a pinch Salt I mean halt it warrants cargo Oh no salt man now to end your reign of crime and slime And the salt it burns. You haven't seen the last of me I guess I'll have to take that with a grain of salt Salt man saves the day again. Tune in next season for the adventures of salt man