 Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop. How's everybody doing out there? Of course, if I could hear you, you could tell me. But anyway, you can type in the comments and you can do that Absolutely our guests this week. We're gonna talk about dialects and a few other fun things too. Our guest is PJ Auckland PJ How you doing? Well, how are you Dan? We're doing great So, uh, if you got any questions for PJ about dialects and all this stuff It's really important to learn if you're a voice actor Put it in the chat room and maybe as we talk, you'll have a question based on something We're talking about and we will get to that in the next segment. So stay tuned. You ready, George? I'm ready as ever. It's time for voiceover body shop right now Voiceover body shop is brought to you by voiceover essentials calm the home of Harlan Hogan signature product Source elements the folks who bring you source connect Voheroes calm become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training Voice actor calm 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 I Was going out there. I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George with him and this is voiceover body shop or vo B Well, I keep forgetting that tomorrow night is Halloween depending on what time you're watching this It feels like the replay when Halloween's on a Tuesday. It's like it's been done already Right, I'm it's all the partying happened. It was tons of people in the streets Culver City I was riding through their own Sunday at five and it was full of kids Yeah, so they they already it's been done already. Yes, we've been told that we have one bag of candy Less than what we should so now we're gonna go buy another bag It means that how somebody said, oh, yeah, we usually go through this many bags of candy on Halloween Really, you know, how many do you have well, we got all you're gonna need more than that I mean, we've been doing it for you know, we've been here for eight years Halloween every year more kids or you have a more other breed here I know and people just decorate their places like crazy. My neighbor with the graveyard. Yeah You're never heard really goes goes off goes off. Yeah, all we do is take a lemon and write boo on it And it's certainly hanging and that's that's Halloween for us Anyway, I hope you're all enjoying your Halloween or had a great Halloween depending on when when you're watching this Tonight we have a great guest because we want to talk about dialects and The number one guy in town who can do that is a award-winning actor and producer and coach PJ Auckland He's been working in the entertainment industry for nearly 40 years PJ is best known behind the microphone as the widely acclaimed and record-setting audiobook narrator of more than five 100 titles and PJ is also one of the industry's leading dialect and performance coaches He's founder of Dr. dialect, which is WWW doctor dialect calm co-founder of the Diane Institute of voice Artistry in Los Angeles and teaches from coast to coast at conferences and universities and PJ is the official dialect coach For Universal Studios and the wizarding world of Harry Potter So he's one of the only people on the planet who actually teaches at Hogwarts. Let's welcome to voiceover body shop PJ Auckland Hello again. Hey, great to see you. I don't want those boo lemons. Oh Just come on over. I'll just okay. Great. Awesome. I want to make a note I've got to stop by because that's that's that's a treat. I want to get my hands on yeah, it's like Just write boo on it. It'll be fine. Someone will see it. Anyway Welcome to the show again, you know Acts accents are a really tough thing and we'll get into talking about that in a second But as the introduction said you wear a lot of hats doing a lot of different things. How do you handle all that? I assume you don't do it all at exactly the same time There's some crossover, you know, but but no generally speaking it's it it's sort of like divided into three things the The acting and I'll lump the voice acting in with that the producing and the coaching and no I just somehow make it work, you know, I'm not nowadays. I'm I'm doing a lot more of the producing and coaching You know with the the pandemic time and with the strike and everything else the on-camera stuff is quieter Than it's been in decades past So that's not taking up as much time as it has and then vo wise I'm doing at least 90% of my work is is in audiobooks and you can kind of write your own schedule with audiobooks The vast majority is self-recorded self-engineered self-directed in my home studio So you can kind of make that work and then the producing it's not passive, obviously You're still participating in every project you're producing, but it's not that direct one-to-one every minute of the project It's you in the booth the way it is with narrating so somehow it all works and it's good It keeps me keeps me on my toes. Yeah, what sort of voice-over projects you're working on right now that you can Tell us about I'm working on Today in fact I was in the booth doing the follow-up to a really popular Japanese detective mystery series that I do and This Roman These adventure stories fictional, but they incorporate a lot of Roman history into these stories of these Roman legionaries and Just a ton of things mostly again Mostly the audiobooks but across all different genres my wife series Which is my favorite thing that I do hands down and yes, obviously I'm biased, but they really are amazing That's a YA fantasy series that are just a blast to to record So there's always something keeping me keeping me on my toes in the booth So when you do something Roman, do you do it in a British accent the way every every Roman movie I ever watched? It's so funny you should say that as a matter of fact as we've often joked sometimes Especially as Americans, you know Brits don't do this Brits don't take on American accents when they're playing you know ancient Romans because it's different from But we do that for whatever reason it just sounds right and the audience buys in Accent choices don't always necessarily. They're not always informed by Reality and history, but we go with maybe what the audience expects and what makes for hopefully the best listening experience and for some reason British RP for ancient Rome just works It's Shakespearean. That's why Maybe that's what it is, but yeah I don't we strikes miss what they all speak with British accents in ancient Rome I and of course they were all speaking English too. Of course exactly, you know because nobody can speak Latin I mean, what would you do in a book lands only on your on your desk that you know is gonna be I Don't know how far have you gotten into a book where you realize I shouldn't have picked Like what do you do when that happens gotta happen once in a while unless unless it's some crazy like Like you're absolutely wrong casting for a variety of reasons, you know That could be like background or or even a gender, you know, there have been situations where I've said to a publisher This is written in like third-person limited perspective But it's they might have just glanced at it and you realize it's third-person limited limited to the POV of like the female lead of The book like this should totally be her book, you know I mean so you get situations like that occasionally and you'll go back and say this was a I don't know if you guys Notice this and they'll say oh, thanks for pointing it out You know and recast and bring it to their attention But when it comes to like accents or characters unless I feel like I'm wildly miscast It's a challenge, you know, you take it on and even if it's something you haven't done before I guess I've always been known a little bit for my versatility So that doesn't really happen too much and more often than not the casting directors and the producers Responsible for the books they have a clue, you know So they're they're looking at the book and unless something has slipped through the cracks They're picking you for a reason, you know And something that it falls within your range or something you've done before Or maybe you have a little bit of a fan base in that particular genre who knows But lots of different factors. Yeah If you've got a question for PJ Auckland about dialects, which I'm sure everybody is fascinated with put it in the chat room because I know that Jeff Holman is sitting back There's somewhere Typing out every word that we say here or at least he's taking your questions and we'll get to those questions in a little bit All you have to do is if whether you're on Facebook live or whether you're on our website In YouTube or even on LinkedIn. We're everywhere live Which means the entire world is watching just put it in the chat room where you are and Jeff will get that question to us in a Little bit so we we really like it if you if you ask some questions and get involved and interactive with our show So trying different dialects isn't for everyone But should everyone try Well sure, I mean we're talking about voice actors. Yes, of course sure. Yeah, I mean Trying it is I guess it depends it comes down to yes There's some innate talent, but you can learn things as I'm sure your audience is well aware of There's coaching available in every aspect of this industry as you both specialize in your areas Dialects no different, you know, and there are techniques you can use to take on these skills to acquire them over time It helps to have an ear obviously to come to the table with some innate talent That's factory installed But even if you don't you can learn techniques that will help you improve and then it what you have to ask yourself I believe then is what are the requirements of the job? Like take audiobooks audiobooks are a great example the listener I say this all the time the listener is in on the conceit, you know They sign up for the idea that it's one narrator Playing the entire cast right and you want them to become immersed in that But at no point do you have to convince the listener that you stepped out of the booth and some German Dude stepped in to read that dialogue. It's still that built-in understanding that it's you so a little bit of flavor goes a long way Right absolutely that gray area that you can live with it whereas if you've been cast as one role in animation or Multiple roles in interactive like in a video game and you're hired to play the Russian guy the German guy and the Israeli There is no conceit built in you have to be 100 convincing in those roles individually, right? So that's the distinction so it really we have to figure out What's the threshold you need to cross for the job requirements and with audiobooks? I often teach I developed a thing because an audiobook narrator can find themselves in a unique position where they've been cast in a job and It has some character and accent requirements and they accept the gig and then they realize Oh boy the the publisher the casting director didn't tell me there's like five different accents in here that I haven't done before Now in that situation It's not really practical to hire a dialect coach like me to do five one-hour sessions on these five different accents Right, you need to start recording four days from now So what I developed was this program on how to be your own dialect coach and that's really really useful I think for any VO discipline But more so when we talk about an audiobook situation like that where you're playing These five different accents that you need to acquire again that concept of a little bit of flavor goes a long way if you can pick out Three or five sound changes and the concept of the placement for those particular accents That's more than enough to sell the audience on those characters who have those accents So that's you know just to give you an example of like the different what the different Genres or different disciplines of VO might require I think audiobooks are a good example where you don't have to be a master of the accents to Do the job well and one last thought on that what I always tell people is Who the character is is always more important than what they sound like and I think that applies across the board with VO But especially in that example with audiobooks Understand who they are tap into their personality their motivations the acting one-on-one kind of stuff And then the accent or the character voice and aspects you bring to it to distinguish them from other characters That's gravy Once again, we're talking with PJ Auckland and we're talking about dialects your questions are welcome as well So make sure you throw them in the chat room Here this is a question. I've always wondered because especially in talking about dialects. What's the difference between? dialects and accents explain okay, so The the first easy answer is that they're pretty interchangeable in today's parlance because people talk about a dialect coach Is not technically teaching dialects. We're teaching accents So the term dialect coach has been used in the entertainment industry for a really long time But we're doing accent coaching the more technical answer is when we get into dialects. We're talking about linguistic differences an accent is the sound Someone has when they're speaking Another language let's say the accent that comes with it or even in their own native language The accent is the sound the dialect is the linguistic difference So for example, you've got classic Italian Versus the Neapolitan dialect, right? So When you see those they can be they're also written differently So sometimes you can have copy your script and we can say it's written in dialect You might even see this like with the Scottish accent for example If it's written in the dialect, you'll see things like the wi Apostrophe or the no apostrophe representing the glottalized t So you see things like that. That's another example of the definition of dialect So linguistic differences or a language written into Um your actual script written with the dialect written in dialect. Hope that answers your question Well, no that makes total sense, you know You know The thing I think a lot of people we sort of talked about this a little bit before but Some people just have an ear for this like, you know, I I know I can imitate certain things and it's mostly Every different nationality that lives in my neighborhood, you know, russians latin americans Yeah, everything every but of course when you're walking down the street and they're talking in some other language on their phone and you're like It's kind of weird. No, was that russian? Was that ukrainian? Was that you know from kazakhstan? Or you know, or were they talking chinese like my neighbors do? Um, you know, we hear yelling from across the street, but we can't under word stand a word. They're saying But they all the the dialects and and those are all so different I mean, I know I can I can do an accent someone speaking english in another accent Like, you know, my my old acupuncturist doctor who will talk real quiet like this No, you know or someone who's speaking with an indian accent Mixing a little bit of yiddish in there, but it's um Is that is that a remix or a mixer? It might be might be Uh, you know, I I'm always listening and I'm always listening to see what is different about that But then again, everything starts to get a little bit stereotyped when you're working with somebody How do you get them perhaps out of their preconceived notions of what it is they're supposed to be doing? That's such a good question. Um The preconceived notions when since I have the great Advantage of working primarily with actors. It's rare, you know Just in my career There have been a few situations where you work with a business professional Who's looking for like accent reduction things like that But by and large 99 plus percent of the people I work with are actors So their preconceived notions I think are largely an advantage. They're bringing something to the table where Okay, let me let me explain it this way. I break down accent work into two buckets Basically, I say there's the placement bucket and the sound change bucket or phonetics And I often demonstrate how you can't have one without the other I'll say each bucket is worth 50 So the only way the math works Is with some combination of the two if you want to get to a passing grade If this bucket's full you're at 50 that ain't a passing grade You need some combination of the two to get there and that's sort of how I demonstrate placement So an example I use all the time. I'm happy to share with you now Is let's say we're on set and we've learned a german accent together and they just added a line to the script And you're freaking out because we didn't work on that specific line And the line they added is um, do you have it? Now if we're only working on sound changes And I look at this line if the only thing we're doing is Respelling The line in the accent right only phonetic changes I look at this line There's not a whole lot that we can do there the long you sound and do and you doesn't change a whole lot the short I and it Germans can handle that doesn't change very much The one word that's going to change phonetically would be the word have and I could say well a german Generally speaking and we often work in these generalizations not stereotypes But generalizations in terms of most germans will do this when speaking english That's what gives us something to latch on to and what ultimately makes it recognizable for the audience member Which is our goal. They know you're doing a german accent So i'll say they generally will change a short a to a short e and a v to an f Yeah, so we take this h a v phonetically and turn it into h e f phonetically So the new spelling of the line if I haven't changed anything else is do you have it? With me so far Yeah But there in the problem lies because I just said that out loud and it didn't make me sound remotely german Right. Oh, but then we start to imagine I start to move the placement of my voice Yeah, we get to the front of the mouth the lips and the teeth and I say well, do you have it? Do you have it or now i'm sounding german? So this works this works for the character and that's good But let's go a step further save as this paycheck. I he doesn't know what he's talking about I am a diplomat. I speak on the world stage. I know what a v is. Thank you very much I've been using english by all and I say well, do you have it? Do you have it? Yeah Aren't I still some german? So now as I go back to standard american the thing I want you to notice is the placement shift In other words, even though the example makes it seem like placement trumps phonetics It doesn't but they have equal importance So bringing this back to what I was saying that working with actors Placement is a really tricky thing to teach and learn I help people with that obviously, but it's something that often gets jumped over or skipped Because dialect coaches especially in the private world as opposed to working on set with someone And you're there all day or what have you Or working for the duration of a project if you're doing a one-hour session with a dialect coach Placement is a hard thing to get into so I spent a good amount of my career realizing that's not acceptable And trying to make it more digestible Understandable comprehensible and so on and I think I've succeeded in that What what do you mean by place by by placement though? I'll get there. Okay. I'm sorry cool thing is actors are coming with this Automatic understanding if you will most of the time Like just through mimicry alone You're leapfrogging a lot of the more esoteric aspects of acquiring placement So what I what I mean by placement dan to answer your question is it's not about where we create sound It's more where we send it So when I was doing that example with the german I talked about the lips and the teeth As far forward as we can possibly imagine the same sort of placement we use for british rp Those are the two you could say most forward accents standard american This is a good tip for everybody If you want to acquire different placement, it's essential to kind of know what your baseline placement is so if you want to just Talk I recommend you do this just talk at a normal level Say anything that and just keep keep talking. It doesn't matter. Don't pay attention to the words you're using Rather pay attention to what it feels like in your mouth while you're doing it So if you're a standard american speaker more often than not you're going to feel this ring of vibration in the middle of your mouth tongue jaw Cheek muscles really engaged vibration up to the roof of your mouth and like the highest part of the cavern in there Right in the middle that ring right here I feel that when i'm just talking normally standard american and I I bet you will too all of you listening in And that's really good once you've acquired that and you understand it Then you can start to play around with your placement and move it and you go all the way down Like the deepest guttural most throaty thing is where we would place russian And then all the way forward the other extreme end of the spectrum would be british rp and german So that's the concept of placement and you need that so in that example that I did it's not that You it's not that the placement is more important But you need both And you can really get away There's a lot more room for error when you have a good understanding of placement because as I demonstrated I could ignore the dialect coach's advice about those sound changes and still manage to sound german By holding that placement, right? Um, so there you go. Hopefully that answers it once again. We're talking with pj. Auckland. We're talking about dialects Which is a real important part of voiceover Especially if you're doing audio books or if you're doing audio drama, which is now becoming Really important since you know Podcasting has become the democratization of broadcasting everybody can do it So let's bring back, you know the uh the theater of the mind And and doing audio. Have you worked with anybody doing audio drama? Yeah, I just did this really really cool project I've done quite a few but just did a really great one with the folks from la theater works and also Allison larkin you might know Allison Who does some beautiful work and we put together this very very cool piece yet to be released but We did it was this amazing thing Civil war in their own words and it combined elements of uncle tom's cabin and the lincoln douglas debates And i played steven douglas and a few characters from uncle tom's cabin and others as well john brown It was really really cool But in in those circumstances that's where it's different from what we talked about with audio books where The listener is not in on some conceit that it's one narrator doing the whole thing Now you're back to the idea of like animation or A stage production or a film production you're cast in those roles So now the bar is higher now you need to be fully convincing in those accents or in those, you know character voice portrayals Right, right. Let's go. We're talking with pj. Auckland and if you're just joining us Well, you've missed a whole lot already, but you still get the chance to ask your questions in the chat room Where jeff holman is standing by and taking those down if this is something fascinating to you and as a voice actor It really should be uh, feel free to ask your questions How often do you get a chance to talk to somebody like pj and and ask the right questions? Now, you know, we talked a little bit about technique I mean I have my techniques for doing these sorts of things a lot of it is is mimicking more than anything else Uh, and and sometimes it's it's it's it's talking, you know gibberish in another language Like if I want to talk russian I love gibberish, you know, you know, well, you're talking in French. You're talking like that You know, I thought the funniest video that was a jet. I think it was a jet. No italian video like a song Prison calling in synan choose all Yeah, were they imitating american accent, but it's all gibberish. Yeah It's freezing calling in synan choose all I I encourage everybody to look it up and it's such a catchy song This goes back to like the 60s and 60s. Yeah amazing video too is so good. It's so good Yeah, I remember seeing an interview with riccardo mantelban once and he goes on a tonight show and he's like Why I grew up in mexico and we thought we heard american tv. It sounded like a dog barking Oh That doesn't sound like that to me but if you ever hear that song that george was just talking about It's great because like the only thing in there that's actually english is at the end of certain lines. They say all right So it's like this long string of gibberish and it ends in all right. Uh, it's it's brilliant. It's so brilliant Alrighty once again, we're talking with pb pj. Auckland. Um How do you think ai is going to affect All this stuff when it comes to the audio world Uh, can a computer do a dialect or what what have you seen what are you seeing coming and and how do you think it's going to affect the industry Wow, we go from fluffy questions about dialect work into like the big giant herd of elephants in the room Okay, um huge topic Huge dropping a bomb dan. Um, okay Can it do it? amazingly right now not yet But I think like anything else in vo we have to be completely prepared for the fact that it will That's just there's just no getting around that and I think with any the advent of any technology Especially on a show with a guy named george the tech We have to appreciate that you're not going to stop the technology. It is coming So when we get into like these deeper ai conversations my sort of baseline Is always we've got to focus on In terms of job security, we've got to focus on what we can do That by definition ai can't do And that's really the focus on the humanity the soul of the performance What makes art truly art? That as I say is the baseline for me The next layer to that While we can't stop the technology so I'm not I'm not much of a fan of just raging against it because I just don't think that'll do any good but Here's the deeper side in where my thoughts have been going lately I think that the collective power centers corporations Major producers this type of thing the industry at large decision makers I think there's a responsibility there To not fully embrace it And understand that key difference Maintaining artistic integrity is such such a big deal and There have been situations throughout history where These power centers will start doing something differently and The public is sort of forced to accept it And I was in a conversation with someone recently about this making this point And she hadn't thought of it in this way before but then she brought up a brilliant example Which I'll use with you today and she said oh you mean like architecture And I said yeah exactly in other words You have this period in history where so much So much effort Was put into architecture because in this belief that we want to be surrounded by beauty And in time that beauty becomes impractical And there's a shift And we start accepting something less than beauty And this is what I mean where it gets certainly more philosophical But I think it's a really important point If for example the industry accepts ai In its entirety in other words That's the only thing out there that's available unless you're seeking out the underground independent sort of stuff Your plumber Your mortgage broker your real estate agent They don't suddenly go out and start producing their own movies because they're unhappy with what's being shown to them in the theaters They will Start to consume what is delivered That's the part where it's not as clear cut as The free market the simple well it'll work itself out If you're force fed something And it's something you still want to be part of your life i.e. entertainment And this is all you're given this is the only option you're given If a city is built up out of prefab sheet metal structures That's all you're given Unless you go out there and build your own cathedral unless you go out there and produce your own film You get what you get So this is where I look for some balance and where I'll certainly advocate for some balance the ai is coming It's already here. We're already seeing the impact on jobs. Yes, that's scary. I understand all that The best way we can resist it is to focus on our art remember what the a stands for and as creators Don't be that Understand that by definition. We are not what the a stands for so focus on the opposite of that That humanity that soul and at the same time advocate For the responsibility of the power centers to not embrace Ai as a whole because it's an economic replacement because just like with architecture We will find ourselves at some point in the future Surrounded not by beauty and not by artistic creation but by What came easiest? And that would be sad Alrighty once again, we're talking with pj. Auckland. We're talking about dialects and accents and any question you have on that Like how do you do that? Throw it in the chat room right now. We'll get to it in just a minute But right now we're going to take a break and we'll be right back with pj. Auckland right here on voiceover body shop So don't go away This is bill radner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george widham v obs dot tv Oh, hi You know if you live in a house and your voiceover studio is in that house You don't want to disturb everybody else who's living in there So what you need are good headphones that are made specifically for voiceover And that's why we have harlan hogan's signature series voice optimized headphones 2.0. What's so great about these? Well, one they have a very flat response So you only hear exactly what it is you sound like second Incredibly comfortable leather leather pads on the outside filled with memory foam A really comfortable headband that really It really works with your head the most important thing you can wear them for long periods of time That's really important. Where do you get them? Only at voiceover essentials dot com. That's voiceover essentials dot com Just go there. Look at the headphones and get them now. Tell them we sent you. Thanks harlan Well, it's my chance to talk about source elements and actually I think it's I've got something different to talk about further a change right they finally announced a new version of source nexus And why that's interesting to a voice actor It just gives a sessions a new way to run and a new way that you can be brought into a session But not only that if you ever wanted to host your own show if you ever want to do podcasts things like this There are features built into nexus now that make running your own show or podcast Better than ever as well because it not only gives great quality audio connections between you and your guests But it also locally captures the audio For the show and uploads the files to you afterwards So you've got the raw audio in the best possible quality and that all works through what's called the source nexus gateway So it's a very interesting new take on source connect There is going to be a roadmap going where source nexus And the gateway and the portal and all these different features all start to have a giant mind meld And create a very cohesive system But for now source connect 3.9 is still the one that voice actors need to have access to Learn how to use and just be familiar. So head over to source dash elements dot com And get source connect Going on your system today. So you are ready for the big gigs when they come along because they are the ones That tend to use Source connect standard in your home studio. Thanks for listening We got a lot more to talk about with pj oakling just coming up right after this Well, hey there, it's david h laurance with vo heroes and wouldn't it be cool If there was a very simple tool drag and drop tool that would guarantee That the audio you need to upload to acx or any other audiobook platform is perfectly set up in terms Of the tech standards the root mean square normalization the peak normalization the noise floor Guess what there is and I want you to have it absolutely free It's called audio cupcake and you can find it at audio cupcake dot com I helped create this software It was built to my specs and my standards for when I do audiobooks And I know it's going to work for you now It's only available for macintosh Because you windows users you have the ability to use other tools that work for you But in this case you edit your final raw what way file for a chapter You drop it onto audio cupcake and outcomes the 192k mono mp3 file. You can upload immediately That's audio cupcake dot com audio cupcake dot com. I hope you love it You're still watching v obs We're talking with pj oakling. We're talking about We're talking about dialects, which is what he teaches over at it is www.doctordialect.com And you can go over there and see all the stuff that he does and if you want to take some Coaching on how to do that. He's the guy to talk to now. George. You had a question of in the last half hour about The quality of audiobook publishing. What was what was that? It seems that there's the the quality of audio that's released in audiobook publishing has stagnated and not really changed or improved Well, since I've known about the industry really to be honest, maybe 15 years Do you Do you see a roadmap to where that's going to change? You know, I'm a little concerned because ai voices are so clinically perfect and absolutely What you know that I'm a little bit afraid that people will get so used to hearing these like absolutely sterile clear perfectly recorded audio samples of ai voice that you know the Real recordings will become kind of outmoded. Do you do you see any end of evolution happening in that area? I do see evolution. However One aspect you said that I don't know that i'm entirely on board with is has to do with that that perfection of ai I don't see as a positive. No, I don't I don't mean it as a positive. Yeah, I'm just afraid that people will get used to This overly sterile Thing and then yeah, I've actually heard somebody say that I that I listened to a lot He was another a journalist essentially who says that I like ai books on certain topics because I can listen to them at 2x And hear everything they are saying right and that's a totally different. That's a different thing From performing that is that's just pumping data into someone's brain Exactly as quickly as possible and that's what some people looking for but I mean I not to distract with the ai comment, but I just feel like uh, there's some room talking production value Just those sound like the fidelity. Yeah of the audiobook production itself like a uh on hd version Or a reds version. Sure. I mean one thing I think you've seen one of the Advents in the audiobook industry that changed things a lot and of course this is across the board with vo not just audiobooks But especially with audiobooks is the prevalence of the home studio narrator and the prevalence of acx the audiobook creation exchange Which is a subsidiary of amazon See if you got the amazon acx audible triumvirate if you will and that brought about the more I hate to use the word amateur because a lot of pros including me We produce on acx because often that's the platform we're using to release books We're doing for independent authors and so on so it's not across the board amateur, but When I started Teaching, you know, like when I co-founded the deon institute with deb deon, which was right after bob deon had passed and I do all All of our classes We do like the audiobook introductory intensive for example And when I first started teaching that intro class I would bring up we were doing it in person at the deon studios now almost everything's virtual But I would bring up on the screen acx and we'd see and there was there were so few producers And the producers on acx are the narrators But you have a producer account because on acx you're responsible for delivering retail ready audio As opposed to you're just narrating for a publisher or or another production company You are the producer on acx And that number was tiny and now it's gigantic I mean hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people are signed up with acx producer accounts and With that in mind obviously a huge percentage of those are not professionals And in terms of passing the audio quality standards to get an independent book released through the acx platform You just have to hit mastering marks And it's going to get released. That's it. So there's no additional vetting That floods the market with a lot of things that are subpar in terms of production value And also again the advent of home studio is you've got a lot of situations where Most of these home studios it's not like everyone's going in and recording on an omen u87 and a beautiful, you know Booth set up in a professional environment. So that obviously is quite different but There's also the practicality Of the audiobook market There's only so much a publisher can feasibly invest in the production of an audiobook and i mean even the big five You know when they're doing several thousand books a year each Many of those books they're producing but they know they're not going to be money makers even remotely So there is a consideration for budget that they want to get them in under a certain bar to Make it even viable to produce and many they choose not to produce an audio because they don't think it'll even reach that bar Even on a bare bones type of budget. So those practicalities have to be brought in as well in terms of evolution I think we're seeing a lot more in terms of multicast production full Soundscape fully produced audio dramas the ones that merit that and the publisher the production company believe This is going to be a worthwhile endeavor you see more of that now and the quality of those are really really fantastic So I guess it's ultimately the drama is now starting to be Audio dramas are starting to be released under the umbrella Of the audiobook publisher world all of the publishers now have their Audio originals, you know audible was I think the first one to say audible originals But now all the publishers have their originals arm and they're doing things that aren't necessarily traditional books And they're doing a lot of things that are being written specifically for audio This is a an audio play if you will perhaps from traditional authors But totally brought into existence for the sole purpose of of audio production And not to be released in a text form. So you're seeing more and more of this even from the traditional publishers I just did one of those with simon and shuster prh penguin random house is doing a bunch of those So it's it's happening more and more obviously audible has been in that game for a while And that's bridging the gap between the podcasting the fictional podcasting world and the traditional audiobook world And I guess it ultimately comes down to the difference between what we might think of as A very small film festival in the entry and a summer blockbuster That's going to exist in in every craft it exists in movies And I think that's going to exist with the audiobook world as well in all the different iterations That's because you know, I want I want to check out some of those finished products of that that you've worked on and maybe They're impressive Some links to some of those in the end of the show we can check them out because I'd like to listen to them just for out of Fascination As being more of a tech than a book reader myself. That's most of my own library, right? Oh, but I'm definitely very interested in hearing how those Productions sound and how they're produced and stuff and because I you know My job as a technologist like Dan's is to is to really raise the quality of everybody's home studio Right, and if they're getting confused all the time with well, all I have to do is hit these Marks on the the rms and the noise floor, and I'm good, right? Exactly. I'm always pushing people to move beyond those basics As you shouldn't I think you're providing a huge service by doing that because that was exactly my point When the threshold is simply oh it hits the mastering specs Well, that doesn't mean the quality of the production is high, you know, right? Yeah, it all depends on what it sounds like. There you go And doesn't sound what it's supposed to sound like We got a question here from fiber jazz He says for pj if I wanted to work say on a french accent Would you want me to already know french? I mean speaking english with a french accent? No not not necessary at all sometimes it can come in handy because if you if you speak the other language The source language of the accent we're working on that can help in terms of like for french If you already speak the language Je l'ai étudié à l'université depuis deux années seulement I already have an understanding of where that Placement is so I I'm comfortable there or I might understand the french are And I understand where that comes from that can help But not only is it not necessary Because we don't need any of the french words for doing the accent on english. That's number one and number two I've actually had situations where I work with someone who does speak the language They're coming to me to learn how to apply the language to english because they don't have experience keeping the accent from the language on english And uh, sometimes it's really hard for them because they can't separate the accent from the language So it's not always a benefit even That's a good point if you grew up learning and speaking french Then you learned english from an american teacher or whatever you're gonna speak english with an american accent You're not gonna speak it with a french accent at least more than likely depending on the age you learned it at True the age. Yeah, the age is everything We're a weird glitch of the brain or one of the aspects Um this by the way fun fact for anybody like when you're deciding should this character have an accent or not It's right around puberty If you move to the new location and you acquire that language prior to puberty There's a hard wiring in the brain that happens right around 12 13 ish And we've probably all had that experience where you might meet a couple of siblings And the older sibling has an accent that sound like they just moved here yesterday Really heavy accent and their younger siblings sounds like they were born and raised down the street And you can do a little bit of like accent sleuthing there and say I'm thinking when your family moved here. You were like 15 and you were about seven How did you know that and it's like it's that giveaway because there's that cutoff point And we see that all the time that person who moved here at 15 They could be in america for 25 years and sound like they did the day they stepped off the plane That makes so much sense because I listened to my my girlfriend's got five siblings all not in the us She's lived here 15 years But she's got one of the strongest accents out of all of her siblings and um, you know, I'm thinking it's in a lot of them don't None of them live in the u.s. Right. They're all overseas So, um, that is really fascinating actually and think about that. Yeah, it's incredible. It really is amazing at works It's really like flipping a switch, you know, yeah, you've got the next question george from ron m ron m Uh pj, where do you uh, where do we find your training? What is your training site again? That's Oh, yeah, uh, well, I mean for any private coaching dr dialect.com. You can reach out to me my information's on there I'm very easy to get ahold of busy, but I'll certainly get back to you So my email is on there and there's contact form as well if you prefer that but that's dr D i a l e c t dot com doctor dr dialect since you mentioned the busy part I mean all those fine ways to make time for different aspects How do you determine how much of your time you dedicate to coaching versus working on book projects? You know, it's a great question and I just don't know that I have a decent answer It just always works out, you know, I mean you start to book out, you know Sometimes you book out farther and sometimes you have more immediate availability. It depends I've been taking on less recording work um I guess just in the last year or two and some of that is just I'm happy with the current sort of balance um, and some of it is just the demand for the producing time and the coaching time um, the other I'll parlay this into a second answer to the other question Which is the other side is d on institute d on spell d e y a n Institute.com and we have a wildly popular the master class series that we do has nothing to do with dialects this is where the performance coaching side of things comes in and um, every every Week it's an every other week thing we do a series a season of six guests And I'm your lead coach and host and I have with me a special guest who's a casting director or publisher or producer from the industry decision makers Who all bring, you know different aspects some of them work as directors some of them work only in casting some of the work Only in producing some of them work as engineers, but they're all decision makers on casting as well And the insights they bring I let them take the lead on directing pieces. Everybody reads a piece And it's just it's it's so meaningful And that's what really excites me it really is incredibly meaningful everybody who does it the letters I get you guys wouldn't believe It's just it's made such an impact and it's so rewarding It's so gratifying that things like that start to make up a big part of my schedule because we do two seasons per year now And each one is 18 classes because i'm doing three nights with each guest Just to fulfill the demand and that's as much as we can go because I can't ask them to do a fourth night It's already crazy and they sell out in like two hours. No joke. It's like 360 slots or something But they're so good and it means so much to me that it's having such a positive impact that You know that that changes things like I want to put effort into that because it's making a difference And if that takes away a little bit of time from my narrating, I'm okay with that at this point in my career So somehow I just juggle it and it and it works, you know Yeah, and then there's if anybody wants there's the uh, the the character voice toolbox, which is my seven p's um The tools that I use again the who's more important than the what but nonetheless I've had books. I've had series Where each book has upwards of 150 200 characters and i'm trying to keep them all unique from each other and in the series You're exceeding a thousand characters in five or seven books And these are the tools I use to try and make sure that The nine different bartenders and the eight different posseys and the eight different Bandit gangs in the western all kind of sound unique And uh, that is the first half the second half is the how to be your own dialect coach thing I do that live once a year, but it's available as a video So that's on the uh, the website on the doctor dialect website too. So I think that's really useful It's like three and a half hours of instruction. Uh, so I highly recommend that if anybody is looking to acquire those skills And as used for them in their vo career All right, we got time for a question maybe to uh, larry oblander the seconds asks I missed a lot already, but do you recommend for learning or practicing dialects on your own? What do I recommend for practicing on your own? Is that the question? Yes Um, the thing I just mentioned, I mean totally self promotion, but the how to be your own dialect coach I think is is huge because um, it's so hard To know what to look for if you don't have experience or have worked with the dialect coach You need to first figure out. What am I listening for? What am I looking for? So I break down the key aspects of the phonetics the concept of placement how to acquire placement where to look for it How to execute, you know, um That's where I think it comes in really handy Understanding even basics like not just the phonetics, but also how significant understanding of a schwa is If you guys remember from school the upside down backwards e symbol It's all over the place in english and sometimes understanding whether your speaker your accented speaker Knows what that is and understands it is going to affect their accent on the english So I go through all that kind of stuff When you have that kind of a handle Then hopefully it equips you to go out Listen to resources through places like youtube through places like paul mires dialects archive Through places like george mason university the um, uh accents, uh, dot gmu. Uh, is that the one? Yeah, close to that. I might be mistating it, but that's the george mason university one. These are wonderful, uh resources But you got to know what to do with them just having a database of the accents mimicry will get you pretty far But not typically far enough if you don't know what you're listening for So that's where like really Capitalizing on the um the most significant sound changes that separate that accent from another. I think that's a big deal All right, george you had one last question there. Yeah, what What are the what do you feel like the strongest conference? There's so many conferences now But for people that are really focused on audiobook narrating What do you think is the best resource for them on the conference level on the conference level if you're if it's about Audio book narrating specifically apac the audio publishers association conference hands down That's the one because it's not just about the learning that comes from the panels and so on but it's also When you do a conference Let's be honest part of your reason for attending and participating Is your networking and you're looking to meet the people who are in a position to hire you you want to get jobs You don't just want to learn about the craft. You want to get gigs apac I think delivers more than any other in that regard because it is entirely audiobook focused and Because it gets the most participation From the publishers and the production companies who can cast you so if that's your goal That's an easy answer. Alrighty. Well pj. Thanks so much for being with us. This was a very Informative hour and once again, where can people find you? What's your website? It's uh for coaching purposes dr dialect.com or my name pj oakland.com is my personal site But I think I'm I'm pretty easy to find on all the social. It's just at pj oakland reach out I really am always happy to hear from people and if I can help I promise i'm glad to Alrighty thanks for being with us. This has been great Thank you guys. It's great to see you too. Thanks for having me. All right We'll run into each other probably in gelsons or something All right, we'll be right back to wrap things up and re-rack it for tech talk right after this So do not go away. Yeah. Hi. This is carlos ellis rocky the voice of rocko and you're watching 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. 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All you do is you go in there you sign up create an account and Set up is free Yes, it's absolutely free to set up your Initial website with a template templates make it super easy. There are different layouts and different different color schemes You can change the colors. You can change the background pictures You can do anything you want and it's all very simple menu driven not code driven So go over to voice actor.com and get your voice actor Website up in no time. I mean really quick Not only that you can use it for other types of websites as well And then for 20 dollars a month you get your own url And it will be it'll be on a server and that will be your voice actor website Go over to voice actor.com right now and get your website up and running asap 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.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 voice over make wovo part of it world voices organization We speak for those who speak for a living This is ariana rattner and you're enjoying voice over body shop with dan lennard and george widdum v obs dot tv All righty, we're back here at voice over body shop We're gonna re-racket for tech talk here in a second and we're glad that you're joined us tonight And our thanks again to pj. Auckland teaching us about Doing dialects go on over to his website and check him out And maybe if you want to learn how to do it better. He's the guy to talk to Alrighty next week on this very show if you happen to be in this same place next week You come on the face back or our facebook or our website or linkedin or wherever our podcast that's on pod bean Uh, you will hear and watch tech talk number 113 Which we are about to record if you happen to be watching live Don't go anywhere because we got another hour of great stuff that you do not want to miss And in two weeks we've got a great Coach who teaches promo and we'll we'll talk about that a little bit more In a couple of weeks. So make sure you join us for that one Uh, you've got discounts for your your people that go over to uh, george d dot tech It's amazing. How many of my clients know i know they know about this show I know they've seen this show, but they don't use the coupon code. What are they thinking? 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