The Sound Of Silence [PODCAST] [VIDEO] [BLOG]

I screwed up.

I know, it’s going to be a theme here.

I mentioned before: when I get excited about something, I throw myself into it full bore. I did the same thing when I launched Saint Brian’s BBQ Sauce in 2014. I tore off at starting that business with only a bare minimum of knowledge, learning as I went. I figured that whatever challenge or problem I encountered, I would just deal with it when it happened.  And that worked...kind of. I decided to shutter that business at the end of 2017, and I can’t help but wonder if maybe, had I been a little more patient, would that business have grown and still be running? Who knows.

With voice over, it resulted in an unforgivable sin in this business: bad sound.

I thought I was on the right track, and I just felt this need to move quickly, to just get myself up and running as fast as possible, and I’d learn and make mistakes and fix them as I went. The urgency probably stemmed from being out of work, from a thus-so-far unfruitful job search, and the need to pay the bills. Desperation is never a good place from which to make a decision.

I just felt the need to hurry, like I’ve only got a limited amount of time to do this thing, whatever this thing happens to be, like there was a limited window of opportunity and that if I didn’t get myself up and running and making a living at voice over right now that the window would close. 

This is obviously wrong, and is probably wrong with most things.  

With the barbecue sauce business, this resulted in me making a lot of mistakes along the way, ones that, had I moved a little slower, may have resulted in the business still being in operation. But, c’est la vie.

So it should come as no surprise to anyone that I did the exact same thing I always do when I decided to go into voice acting.  I’m pretty sure there is a Brian-shaped hole in a wall somewhere.

And everyone makes mistakes.  Except the ones I was making, specifically around bad sound, could potentially derail my career before it even starts.

One of my VO coaches said, “You can never be heard too late, but you can be heard too early.”

So, what did I do?

I started with YouTube and Google University.  I was reading as much as I could about how to get started in this voice over thing.  

I needed a microphone: check, I had that from the D&D games that I run live on Twitch. (You can see that Sundays at 4 pm Eastern, see the link below. You should give us 10 minutes. It’ll be worth it.)

I needed a quiet space to record. Check, I had a home office, and I pressed an unused closet into service as a recording booth. (If you look at videos I post on social, you will see this is a very tight space.)

I needed sound treatment to get the best quality sound.

[record scratch]

This is where I screwed up.

I should have done more research on this. I got cheap, open-celled foam panels that looked like something I had seen in studios before from Amazon that were listed as acoustic tile. For about $60 and a can of spray adhesive, I got the closet completely sound treated. Or, so I thought.

I live in Philadelphia near a major intersection in the Northeast, and there is an elementary school across the street. Between 8 am and 3 pm, there are cars, cars with bad exhaust, cars with custom exhaust, diesel trucks all driving by, and even with my “sound treatment” you could still hear them in my recordings.

So I did more research online.  I started using noise reduction filters to clean up the sound.  And I thought it sounded...pretty good. Not great, not perfect, but passable.

I was wrong.  You’re not supposed to use any processing for commercial voice over work. It leads to problems for the audio engineers and the producers who are making the final product. Which means that they definitely weren’t considering me when I was sending in auditions.  My audio sucked.

Also, the “sound treatment” I had wasn’t the right stuff.  I didn’t hear it at first, but there was still a slight reverb in the room.  Not to mention that it wasn’t doing much of anything to keep all of those sounds I mentioned out, which led to my putting processing on, which led to...

There were other sins. Oh yes, there was more than just the one.

I also made the cardinal sins of thinking I didn’t need coaching and to have a professionally-produced demo reel. After all, I had worked in media production before...I could do this, right? Besides, these were expensive, and I didn’t have the money, nor the patience.

Ultimately, this cost me jobs.  Not a lot, I’m sure that I wasn’t really in line for many of the jobs I auditioned for, but I can say with absolute certainty that there were jobs that I was automatically eliminated from.  And, possibly more importantly, in an industry where everyone seems to know each other, I wasn’t doing anything positive to build my reputation and brand.

In fact, I likely hurt it.  Irrevocably? I don’t know. I don’t think so. But there are folks out there who heard my self-produced demos or one of my shitty auditions, and may remember my name.  And when I eventually get these demos produced, they may decide not to give me the time of day. And I wouldn’t blame them.

It also means that I will work my ass off to get back in their good graces, whoever they may be.

Here’s the thing: I admitted that I was wrong.  I made a mistake. Did I have egg on my face? Maybe.  But if we aren’t afraid to admit when we make a mistake, it opens up a world of possibilities. It means that we won’t get stuck in a stubborn line of thinking and continue down a bad path. It means that we won’t be afraid to course correct.  It means we won’t be afraid to learn and get better.

So I tapped the brakes.  I’m taking the time to get coaching. I’m driving more hours with Uber to generate the money I need for it and to get my demos produced.  I opened up the Patreon for the same reason (hint hint). I tore down all of the old, useless foam panels and installed proper sound treatment.  (Again, shout out to Dan Friedman who showed me the light.) The sound in the room dramatically improved. I don’t use processing anymore when I record, and it sounds better than before.

The takeaway: there’s two. 1) Be patient, and 2) don’t be afraid to admit when you’re wrong.  And if you’re working for someone who will punish you for that, then what can I say? That person sucks. Even if that person is you.

One problem, though: what the hell do I do with all of this foam?

I need to give a quick shout out to Dr. Jamie Longo, a friend from college and my first Patron on Patreon. Thank you so much!

If you like this content, or you just like the sound of my voice, please give it a high rating on whatever platform you’re consuming this on, and please tell your friends. Or your enemies. I’m not picky.