I’ve recently started a new audio editing training course. Refining my skills and learning new ones, making sure that I’m not making basic mistakes. As someone who has learned my craft by listening to other voicereels and wondering ‘How did they achieve that?’ and fiddling around with various audio editing software. Doing courses has been really helpful. I’ve been really lucky in that the course I went one was part of an initiative that my local borough (Southwark) are really keen to promote and encourage artists and The Arts in the area.
This week I will have started a new client’s commercial demo voicereel. Her session was really fun and relaxed – that’s what I can offer as I record from my home studio and we were able to expand on the sides that she found, chop them up creatively to give her a wider range of commercial styles. We’d also found some for using her ‘small boy voice’ which was really fun to record. We’d discovered this as she was mucking about over the mic and that got me excitedly thinking of another category that she could record for. I’m quite jealous of anyone who can voice young boys – there’s market for them out there and not many women can. Louise was one that could! Look out for her reel in a few weeks time when it’s up and running.
I’m glad I undertook the relatively short course. One day a week for four weeks is sometimes a little tricky to commit to when you’re freelance but training is important to me. What is nice is the fact that I’ve been able to learn about aspects of editing that I didn’t think I’d need. Effects, for example – how many times in a corporate VO have I needed to use any reverb or presets? With Louise’s demo reel I needed two very different types of voices for the same segment, two different atmospheres, her using two different character voices wasn’t enough. Having just learnt how to manipulate the sound digitally, I came up with three different variations of the same take. And using the multi-track option on Adobe Audition, I was able to easily come up with the same effect on the three different takes that she gave of the same read, without the fiddly editing of each segment. It came at the right time.
Jamie Zubairi VoiceOver Artist 