Hiya! VO Coachess Goddess Karen-Eileen Gordon here, sharing some thoughts about Joyful (and not so joyful) noises: the stuff that winds up on our recorded tracks that we DO and DO
NOT want there—and what to do about it all!
In my experience, there are four main kinds of these noises:
- Breaths
- Clicks (human and non-human in origin)
- Pops
and what I like to call…
- UFOs: Unidentified Frustrating Outrageous noises – origin completely unknown – until we use our VO sleuthing powers to unlock the mystery!
The aim is to make our audio editing lives as simple as possible, which means seeing if we can get our original recording as close as possible to industry standard, leaving us MUCH less to do in the editing process. This goes all the way back to foundations: What’s going on in our awesome VO space? And what’s going on in our awesome VO bodies? I don’t mean in a general, broad-brushstroke kind of way (though that POV can be useful) – I mean, what is going on in a wildly-super-specific way, here? I’ll get into details in the video above.
So many voice-over artists struggle in the beginning with getting comfy with reducing recording noise on their tracks – and there’s a ton to be done! Hilariously, almost all of us feel like we’re breathing through a megaphone when we first start listening back to our own breath sounds…you are in REALLY good company there, and A LOT of the time, we’re experienci
ng hyper-sensitivity around breaths. Clicks are also very common, and can come from so many places: jaw, mouth, throat…or something in the studio that’s getting jostled (usually unknowingly) while we do our storytelling magic; I’ll offer some specific things to try on.
Pops (also called plosives) are a burst of air hitting the mic in an un-awesome way along with our spoken words; finding your unique sweet-spot with your mic can go a massive distance towards reducing the pesky air puffs.
UFOs can leave us cranky…but there’s a method for uncovering them. The bottom line? Being a voice-over artist has a LOT of joyful noise: joyful noise in using our unique expres
sion, joy in creativity, joy in the amazing village that supports us, joy in a never-ending learning journey, joy in getting paid to do this thing we love. When we’re in our zone, we DO make Joyful Noise! The Not So Joyful Noise? It’s small stuff in comparison—and I’m happy to offer ideas for “turning down the volume” on them in your editing process!
Questions? Reach out! EarBlissCreative@gmail.com
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