Creating a Home Studio for the Start-up Voice Actor
Maybe you are just getting into voice acting and need a place to practice or get your demos done. Or, maybe you are tired of traveling into a home studio and want or need to work from your home or office. This article will help the budding or the professional voice actor get an idea of how to create a home studio recording space without breaking the bank and achieving the best acoustic treatment to make your demos sound as good as you.
My background is in performing, recording and mastering, but over the last 2 years I’ve been doing more live sound due to my mixer beta testing.
One issue that I have encountered as well as many other sound engineers and musicians is bad venue and stage acoustics. I have played gigs that moving one foot on stage resulted in not being able to hear oneself. I started thinking what could live performers do to alleviate these acoustical problems considering that one could not alter the physical structure of the venues or stages. After much research, I discovered VocalBoothToGo’s Producer’s Choice acoustic blankets.
I decided to purchase one blanket to test, I had no experience in acoustic blankets but I did have experience in studio acoustical foam usage. After a few test in my recording studio I decided to try the one blanket in a live situation. Hanging the 6′ x 8′ acoustic blanket behind my drummer in an extremely bad acoustical sounding venue produced good results. The early reflections from the drums, amps and monitors were reduced resulting in a cleaner stage and PA sound. Two sound engineers were attending my gig that was familiar with the venue and its acoustical problems also heard a noticeable improvement.
Perfect for acoustical issues — such as on-stage performances in bars and other in-door settings.
I decided to purchase a 2nd blanket and try it on a stage which had a back wall made of brick and glass. The side walls were also brick and the physical stage was made of plywood with no carpet and stood four feet tall. It was an acoustical nightmare. So, I hung the two blankets behind my drummer which resulted in a 12′ wide by 8′ tall section of the back wall being covered. The back wall was close to 18′ wide. The results were amazing — there were hardly any reflections on stage. This resulted in an improved PA sound, no feedback and a better performance for me and fellow musicians. I was running sound from the stage on that gig, the blankets made my job much easier which allowed me to focus more on playing then sound. The owner of the venue and routine customers heard the difference in my band’s sound quality which resulted in getting booked again.
Byron Santo’s Band utilized the Producer’s Choice Acoustic Blankets to help with reflection issues at a bar they played at often.
My goal is to continue to test the Producers Choice acoustic blankets in a variety of live performance scenarios. I would love to be able to wrap a stage one gig — the entire back wall and two side walls.
Considering the cost of a single blanket, one could easily create an entire mobile acoustic treatment system that could be used in numerous live performance scenarios and not break the bank.
Byron Santo, Bassist, Producer, Author & Beta Tester
Maybe you are thinking about getting into voiceover work but worried that you just don’t have the voice for it. But, in today’s world of voiceover, you don’t have to have a “golden voice.” In fact, most people with a decent speaking voice and with the right acoustics for recording a winning demo can get into this field —and be quite successful.
You don’t need a special voice to be successful in voice acting.
The people getting into voice acting work or currently in this line of work are not all full-time actors. Voiceover work can be an ideal opportunity for someone working pa rt-time, for example a homemaker who is not working a 9-5 job and wants to do something creative, or for a retired person with good performing skills, or for the self-employed individual who has a flexible schedule.
Most people usually think of voiceover for radio and television commercials and, perhaps, audio books. But there are actually about three dozen different genres, or niche areas of voiceover work ranging from documentary narration to on-line training to telephone messaging to movie trailers to cartoons to in-store announcements to feature animation to talking toys and even more. And, each of these genres could have a half-dozen specialized niche areas within it. For example, the area of voiceover for television includes promo, programming, news, imaging, commercials, and sales/marketing among others.
People who leap into voiceover without proper research often discover that there is a great deal they should have learned before taking that first workshop. The biggest mistake most beginning voice actors make is spending a lot of money on their demo before they are ready. Money on wrong type of home studio gear or too expensive than needed. Money not understanding acoustics or soundproofing.
Read. Read. Read. There are excellent books that will give you a lot of information about how the business works, performing techniques, “tricks of the trade,” and scripts to work on as you develop your skills. What you will get from reading books about the voice over and acoustic room treatment, is the critical information in order to make an educated decision as to whether voiceover is right for you.
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