Voiceover Scripts Made Easy

Hi. I didn't write what you're reading right now.
It's all a transcription of me talking into my
microphone in my recording booth.  I want to make
some points about writing scripts for voiceovers.
You'll notice, first of all, that  even though I'm
speaking very quickly for just one minute there
really aren't that many words. This goes to show
that there's only so much information a person can
say in a minute, never mind understand. The sentences
are very short, allowing for natural breathing.
Also, the verbs are largely active.

I want to drive the point home that while some say
that voiceovers are just "voice talking" or reading,
that it's somehow simple, that view is dead wrong.
It's trying to take a script, breathe life into it,
be a character even if it's the spokesman of a product,
and make a connection with just one person. That's a
difficult thing to do.

I'll leave you with this thought raised by my Professor
of English, Stephen Boyd, from the University of
St. Andrews from years back. He asked us why George Orwell
was the best selling author on the Penguin Classics
roster. Lots of people brought up his politics,
but I got the answer right. I said it's because
he's the easiest to read. 

ART MPA Gold Microphone Preamp

The first preamp I ever bought was an ART Tube MP. It was noisy and picked up WBOS, but when I could get it to settle I could get an okay sound out of it for $30. Lately, I've seen a few threads about people putting good tubes into low end microphone preamps with pleasant results. One preamp with which people had varied but interesting results was the ART MPA Gold. Unlike many of ART's other products, the MPA isn't a starved-plate low voltage device. Well, let's just say that it has a high plate voltage setting which is noticeable in its effect on the sound. This reminds me of the recent Joemeeks: they're okay as is, but when you employ the "Iron" button, you've got yourself a pretty good piece of gear for not a lot of money.

The tubes with which the ART MPA comes with are terrible. They only say "China 12AX7B" on them. 'Nuff said. You can do better with almost any old $8 replacement tube. I went with a $19 JJ/Tesla 12AX7 (or "ECC83S") for one channel of the MPA, and with a $29 Tung Sol 12AX7 for the other (each with gold tips). Both are newly made tubes and sound decent: they certainly make the MPA a workable preamp with some good tone. The Tung Sol really works well with my Heil PR40 microphone, but I will probably upgrade the JJ to a GE NOS tube in the near future.

What I really like about the MPA is that for $300 you get two channels with plenty of clean gain and each has their own sweepable high pass filter and their own sweepable input impedance (up to 3k). The Heil PR40 is a really bright mic, and sometimes it needs to be slowed down a touch to a 2k impedance even though that's against the recommended ratios. With condensers, the sweepable impedance isn't as important as it is with dynamic microphones that I like to use.

My True Systems P-Solo has been replaced. While that unit is fantastic for guitars (both as a DI and for micing acoustic guitar) the ART MPA Gold is working for me, and I'm getting comments on my sound and more importantly my voice that I wasn't ever getting with the P-Solo. It feels funny going back to a brand that I started out with, but it's kind of fun having a piece of gear and tricking it out - customizing it for your own needs, and making it your own.

Next I guess I should get some cheesy stickers and rhinestones to put on it. Someone might mistake it for an Avalon then.

Echo AudioFire Soundcard

In another nice upgrade for the voiceover studio, I now have an Echo Audio AudioFire soundcard/interface in the signal path. This is a substantial improvement over the Presonus interface I was previously using and was never happy with. It took some time to research and choose the right replacement soundcard for my studio. I wanted something simple, since I usually only record two channels at a time at most. I also wanted something reliable that was rock-solid for recording and provided quality audio and would work with my computers. E-MU was a contender as they make very good products, but they are going out of business. The Apogee Duet was also intriguing. Echo Audio's AudioFire was the winner, as they have a great reputation and will be around to provide support and driver upgrades (they upgrade their drivers very frequently). I also like that my AudioFire is small and runs without generating much heat (the Presonus was like a toaster). Thanks to technical gear maven and voiceover pro Gregory Houser for his opinions on the Echo.

The Presonus was rock-solid for playback, very flexible for routing, but was not rock-solid for recording and did not provide the level of quality audio that I wanted to provide to my clients. The Presonus, in the end, was a fradulent device incapable of providing the 96kHz recordings it claimed that it could. A long-delayed replacement driver from Presonus may have solved the issue (some people claim that it's still not a 96kHz device even after the upgrade), but it introduced an unreasonable amount of noise. I'm glad that the Presonus experiment is over and that I can move on to a much better device with Echo Audio. The improvement in sound is obvious: the Echo is much more present, detailed, and rich while the Presonus relied on the crutch of smeared hyped frequencies at the low and high ends to mask the fact that it lacks midrange detail.

If you're more concerned about playback and signal routing, by all means buy a Presonus product, they're great in that regard. If you want better recordings for the same money go with Echo Audio.

Recent Work & Going Tubular

I've had some nice work recently for some excellent people. I just finished up a piece about Cellular Biology for Genzyme with Blue Wave and also a website voiceover for Nortel with Mars Productions. Both production companies are Boston-based: I suppose you can take the lad out of Boston but you can't take the Boston out of the lad. I do quite a bit of work with Boston clients still, which is one of the joys of phone patch voiceover sessions.

The Nortel piece was interesting because I did it with my transatlantic pan-British accent which was my main speaking voice for a long time. I developed it while living in Scotland for five years and didn't let it go for ages; only in the past four years have I made a concerted effort to re-Americanize my voice. Being a voice talent, i can pretty much turn it on and off like a spigot (or spicket...see?). The fine folks at Mars and Nortel didn't realiz(s)e that they were choosing a Yank. I'm rather pleased about this because they were trying to find a voice to match spots done with born and bred English talent.

The Genzyme voiceover "Cell and Organelle" was a hoot because of the oral acrobatics which the copy required. "MPS, glycoproteinoses, glycogen storage lysosomal diseases (i.e Pompe), and other LSD's" was my favourite list in the copy.

Today I ordered a twin-channel tube mic preamp with sweepable input impedance and HPF. I also made sure to order two nice tubes to go with the unit: one for the Violet Designs condenser channel, and one for the Heil PR40 channel. Yet another weapon in the arsenal.