Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to secrets and lies.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: I am Carolyn.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: We have Vicky with us today and a very, very special guest.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Dan.
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Hi, Dan.
[00:00:12] Speaker C: Hi. How are you?
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Good.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Thank you for joining us today.
[00:00:16] Speaker C: It's good to be here. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: I met Dan. He helped me come up with some writing background for a story I was working on that took place in a recording studio. And Dan, I'm going to post the link to his website in the chat with our information. But he has written a couple of books on voiceover and voiceover from the point of view of a sound engineer. So he really knows what he's talking about, which was super helpful for me because I set a crime in a recording studio and I kind of needed to know some good nuggets of authenticity and what would likely happen, what I should call things and all of that. And he was very kind to sit with me for half an hour or so and answer all of my questions.
So he has two books. I'll put the links to those as well. One is called zen and the art of voiceover, and one is called sound advice. Voiceover from an audio engineer's point of view. I've actually read that book. I have the other book too, but I haven't gotten to it yet. It is in my kindle queue.
[00:01:30] Speaker C: I love it.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Yeah. I was hoping I have a closet in my new house that I intend to make some sort of mini, not a professional studio, but a little better than sitting out in my office where I hear planes and trucks and the cats.
[00:01:51] Speaker C: This is a very common thing. Most voice actors who, or aspiring voice actors, this is the first challenge that they really have, is where to put the space to record because it's so important. It's the most critical decision that you'll make because a microphone picks up two things. It picks up you and your performance, and it picks up the environment in which that takes place. So if the environment is a distraction, if the environment is overly echoey, reverberant, think of the difference between being in your bathroom and clapping your hands, where there's a lot of hard surfaces, tile, glass, mirrors, versus going into the closet and clapping your hands where you don't hear all that reflection.
I can add reflection as an audio engineer to the sound. It's much more difficult to take it away. So I would much rather have the quiet, non reverberant space where in the final product I can add as much as little, create whatever environment I would like to create with the sound.
Whereas if you've already pigeonholed me into an environment because it is so extreme to where it's not really just your voice, it's also everything else going on. Then a, there's a chance I can't use it because it's not appropriate for the final production, or b, I'm forced to make corrective decisions rather than creative decisions. And that's not nearly as fun.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: So we have a mutual friend, Paul, up in Baltimore, and poor, poor, poor, poor Paul had to suffer through helping me record an audio version of my collection of short stories, ten dysfunctions of our teams. And he was very patient. But I was in a room that was less ideal than this one. And I thought I had it all figured out. I had the door shut and he'd be like, hold on a second. And he'd be like, I'm hearing something. And it would be my dog clicking around with her nails on the floor, or just other things that I wasn't hearing at all.
[00:04:14] Speaker D: Right. The dog jumping around and stuff.
We tune out so many things around us.
[00:04:21] Speaker C: You're focused on what you're recording, the.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: Air conditioner, all of the things. And that I was oblivious to. And I have later done some audio recording for things like trainings and some things at work. And some of those I did in my upstairs walk in closet to be a little more insulated late at night.
And even that isn't great because at the time, I'm connected to the laptop and you hear the laptop.
[00:05:00] Speaker C: Yeah. Right. I usually encourage people to keep the computer outside of the booth and use a separate monitor and a wireless keyboard and mouse to control it from inside the booth.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Okay. That's amazing, because I'm like, I don't know how that would work. And I'm sure my little set up that I have going on right now would be super cringey.
[00:05:25] Speaker C: Well, here's the thing, right? One of the things we have to remember is that this is about sound first and foremost. So nobody is going to be looking at you when you're a voice actor. Nobody's looking at you when you're doing your job, when you're reading your narrative, whatever it might be, all we hear is your voice. And therefore, your responsibility is to sound the best that you can and connect the emotional dots and connect the dots to the copy so that the listener will absorb that and be emotionally connected to what you're saying.
That's the most important thing. And as long as there's no audio distractions. So in other words, as long as it sounds good to the listener, to where there isn't dog clicking. Dog nails clicking to where there isn't.
Imagine being engrossed in an audiobook and you are really like feeling something, right? And then something completely out of character for the scene occurs in the recording. Maybe birds are chirping outside when it is clearly a scene taking place at night in Alaska where we don't have the same kind where in Alaska they don't have the same kind of birds that we have in Asheville, North Carolina. You know what I mean? If you are tuned into that story and you're hearing it and you are tuned into that environment and all of that, as a book listener, you wouldn't want that to occur in your recording because it will take you out of the moment.
It will take you out of the moment. So that's why we need to be focused on our environment when we're recording the most.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: That's exactly right. And while you were explaining that, I could hear someone putting stuff in the microwaves.
That's my reality.
[00:07:39] Speaker C: It's a lot of people's reality. Remember people, first of all, this wasn't the way things were 1520 years ago. People were just starting to move into home studios. When I began 24 years ago, people came into the studio and came in to do their recordings. Most of the time, I was kind of on the forefront in a way of people working remotely because I did work with several talent at the time who had studios in their home.
I actually helped Susan Bennett, who was the very first voice of Siri. I helped her build home studio in Atlanta 27 years ago or something like that.
[00:08:30] Speaker D: That's cool.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: That's really cool.
[00:08:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Vicki has a pretty sweet set up at her house for writing.
She actually calls it her studio.
She has a nice space in her house to kind of separate her. We writers need we, if we're stuck, love distractions that take us away from having to produce things. But when we are trying to focus, it's often hard to do at home.
[00:09:01] Speaker C: I don't know. You might consider it fortunate or unfortunate.
What I say I'm a bird launcher this year. So in other words, not an empty nester, but a bird launcher kicked them out. No. Well, I'm thinking that would be more like a bird thrower or a bird hurler. No, I feel my kids are incredibly incredible. They're just awesome boys. They're very successful and have been all through their academic career, and now they're continuing that on. One's at Western Carolina University, the other moved to Brooklyn to become a history teacher in New York. I'm super proud of them. But this is the year that finally they are both basically, they don't live here anymore.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: The house is quiet.
[00:09:53] Speaker C: The house is quiet. But when I wrote my second book, because the first book, I was writing it while I was working at a production studio and writing it in between sessions and whenever at any time I had this last book, though, I've had a lot more opportunity to write it while I was spending time outdoors.
It's just sitting on my back deck where it was quieter. To be honest, they've just left the house, but for the last couple of years, they've been more or less on their own as far as being able to come and go. So I was beginning to get that change, and I had a lot more time to sit outside and not be in a dark, padded room writing this second book.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: That's really cool. Vicki. His studio is sweet. It's on the first floor there, and it's super quiet. It's almost disconcertingly quiet. I find recording studios, even my office in Columbia, has little phone booth things that you can go in and have a meeting or do a conference, and you're not supposed to really be able to hear it outside. You can, but it's a little disconcertingly quiet because I think as humans, we get accustomed to the background noises of our space, and that becomes sort of kind of a comfortable.
[00:11:22] Speaker C: Here's when you notice things about your environment, especially when you've been in it for a long time. So, for instance, I remember when we replaced the carpet in our living room with bamboo floors, and I went to bed that night and remember, and was hearing the refrigerator for the first time, echo throughout the living room.
And then, of course, now I don't even pay any attention to that. I totally tune it out. It's just part of the environment. But that's exactly why we need to be recording our spaces. And then, especially if you're narrating your own audiobook, which I assume a lot of your listeners are probably hoping to do at some point. So, first of all, that's a challenging task from a performance standpoint, but we can talk about that later. But as far as the environment goes, you have to remember, until you make a recording of yourself and listen to it in another place, you really don't recognize. I lost you for a second, really sounds like. And I definitely recommend doing it in the car. The car is usually everybody's best environment for listening to a.
It's their highest quality speakers that most people have, and it is also an incredibly quiet environment. In fact, I have recorded voiceover in my car.
[00:12:49] Speaker D: Is that in your car?
[00:12:51] Speaker C: In your garage or outdoors?
One time I had a call in the middle of. We were on our way to take our kids to a Cub scout camp, and I got a call on the way, urgent call, that a client needed a revision to align. Now, as a voice actor and as somebody who needs to have the.
Is contractually, in some cases, required to have that kind of availability, I bring gear with me almost anywhere I go so that I can do an easy recording with a laptop and a small setup. But in that case, inside the car is really the best place to do that. And especially, you can drive to a quiet environment and it doesn't have to necessarily be inside a house.
I didn't do this, but I know people who have driven to cemeteries, okay.
[00:13:54] Speaker D: Because every time I see videos, of course, they're not recording specifically their Internet social media stuff. It just always seems like you can hear cars going by or you can hear sounds outside, but I don't know. But I mean, obviously you would have a different setup and you would attempt to find a quieter place, like a cemetery. That makes sense.
[00:14:17] Speaker C: Yeah. And you got to understand, too, it really depends on the circumstances. Not everybody who's posting things on social media has to have a quiet environment. That's not really the goal of the situation. In fact, in some cases, we used to add background. We still do, of course, to do sound design, and we add background noise to things. But in that case, that's just part of the environment that people are willing to capture. And again, in those cases, when they're out there kind of live on the spot kind of situation, it's not really about the quality of their voice. As long as we can hear it over whatever the background noise is, and we've got some clarity there. But it isn't about, first of all, it's not about, I need a pure voice only quality sound, or I don't want the outside sounds to be distracting from what the story is really about.
[00:15:20] Speaker D: So I'm sitting here right now in my studio, and she said, like, it's a great writing studio, which is true. And I do digitization in here, but trying to record in here, I don't know if you're hearing an echo right now.
[00:15:33] Speaker C: Totally.
[00:15:34] Speaker D: Okay, so here's what I'm going to do. Just for fun, I'm going to click on this echo cancellation, see if it changes anything.
[00:15:41] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:15:42] Speaker D: I don't, but.
And this is on me. All my surfaces are hard surfaces, vinyl floor, big, hard have.
I've been to a listening room in St. Pete where a music listening room, and I loved it, and it obviously had the walls set up for stuff to not bounce off and things like that. So just at a desk. I know you mentioned putting the computer outside, but just at a desk, what do you suggest? Like putting anything. Put the microphone on top of something or to buffer it.
[00:16:21] Speaker C: You actually mean putting something soft on your desk itself?
Most of the time, the desk, while you could certainly put a towel down or something along those lines. For instance, if I'm using a copy stand, I will usually have a towel over the copy stand because they're metal. When I worked at a production studio, we've had to have people remove tops and things in order to get that.
[00:16:48] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:16:48] Speaker C: Something too crunchy.
[00:16:50] Speaker D: Trying to figure out what would be crunchy for clothing.
[00:16:55] Speaker C: Well, think about the way even just the sound of jeans rubbing together. Right.
[00:17:03] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:17:04] Speaker C: If people are really kind of moving around and it's really shirts, not so much pants that are ever a problem, but tops. Because voice actors, we encourage them to be physical a lot, because emotion follows motion to where you are using your hands and emoting. Right. And sometimes if your clothes are crispy or crispy sounding. I don't even know why I said crispy, but you know what I mean. Some clothes make noise, right?
[00:17:34] Speaker D: Taffeta would be noisy.
[00:17:36] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:17:38] Speaker C: Because everybody comes to the studio wearing taffeta, but nonetheless, jewelry. Those types of things also make noise. Even earrings, because they're so close to the mic, they're jangly.
[00:17:52] Speaker D: That's amazing.
[00:17:53] Speaker C: People don't often think of them, but they definitely get in the way. Recording is almost more of a technical thing than it is a creative thing for the engineer, because when you're thinking with your engineer hat on, for those of you who are not really engineers but have to record themselves. Right. You have to be thinking from, okay, what's the overall sound quality here, then? That's a creative side, and it's kind of fun. But with having launched my birds, as we talked about earlier, I'm getting to do that again, which is why I got into sound engineering in the first place, really, was to create music with musicians. Now, at the time, I wasn't a musician, but now I've been learning to play guitar for the last three years, and now I'm creating music of my own, which is just amazing to me.
[00:18:47] Speaker D: Oh, that's cool.
[00:18:48] Speaker C: I'm going to talk mostly to what I believe your listeners would be interested in. Is the audiobook side of things. You do have to remember that if you are looking to narrate your own audiobook in any way, that it's actually more like a five to one ratio. So, in other words, if the book takes an hour to listen to the final product, it took 5 hours to create that hour.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:15] Speaker C: Because you had to read it and record it, which involved probably some prep time in addition to just the recording process, which takes more than an hour. Because you know you're going to make mistakes and you're going to have to reread some things for meaning and that sort of thing. Then you have to go and edit it and clean it all up, and you're probably going to do. The way I kind of approach it is I do very broad stroke edits first things that I clearly know are not going to be in there. I know I can go away.
And then I do some more fine tune editing.
And that certainly takes more than the amount of time than it does to actually listen to the book. Right. So then on top of that, then you've got to listen to the final and proof it.
So you're looking at like a five to one ratio, which is very important for people.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: It took a good amount of time when Paul and I worked on my book for him to clean up all of my errors. I learned a ton of things during that.
Yeah. And I'll share some of those with.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: You guys in just a sec.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: Before we jump too far ahead, I wanted to take a sec and ask Vicki. Hey, what you got going on, girl?
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Well.
[00:20:41] Speaker D: I have a new project that is research related.
A friend of mine has a story about her dad where he kind of disappeared for a period of time. So it's a family secret.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: I love a good family secret story.
[00:20:59] Speaker D: Jumped on that.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: That's really cool.
[00:21:03] Speaker D: That's what I'm doing right now. In fact, I got to call that project, where's your daddy?
[00:21:08] Speaker B: All right. I am, as you know, putting together and installing a little free library in my neighborhood.
[00:21:18] Speaker D: I'm super excited.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: I got confirmation that it shipped last night. I should have it on Tuesday. And then I get know, decorate it and get it all together and then figure out how to install it and then fill it with books. So I'm super excited about that.
[00:21:36] Speaker D: Do you have books, Karen?
[00:21:38] Speaker B: I have so many books.
[00:21:39] Speaker D: Yep. This is going to be a whole new thing for you now.
[00:21:42] Speaker C: I'm all with you on the coffee. You know, it's actually bad for your voice, but nonetheless, that's correct.
Room temperature water. But what's actually more important is your breathing when you're reading, because here's what I want you to think about when you're narrating your book and actually really in life is you're breathing first. Hydration is also critically important. So hydrate the day before you actually have to do a performance.
That way you begin with your body hydrated, and then any water you have that day will sit on top of that and it will help. But breathing is most important because if you breathe properly, which is through your nose, you will moisturize your vocal cords and warm them as the air is passing back out when you're speaking versus taking a breath in through your mouth, which dries out your vocal cords and makes them work less efficiently. Breathing is critical.
[00:22:49] Speaker B: I hadn't thought of the breathe in through your nose as a way of keeping your vocal cords warmed up.
[00:22:59] Speaker C: What other important. And you should be thinking about it all the time because even in what you were just telling me, you were breathing through your mouth.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: I guess I'm really not thinking about it. But now I'm going to be all super self conscious. Like I'm breathing wrong, I'm doing it wrong.
[00:23:22] Speaker C: Well, it's good to be conscious of it.
Don't let it rule your life. But it's good to be conscious of it because it does really help, especially when you're presenting anything.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: Vicki, Dan is teaching a class to help people not screw up like this.
Later this month on the 21st. Right. Dan, you want to tell us a little bit about the class you have coming up?
[00:23:50] Speaker C: Yes. So here in Asheville at the Screen Artist co op, Screen Artists talent agency, I will be teaching an introduction to voiceover class. So that's we're going to talk about the equipment that you need, what you can expect from the business. We're going to do some performance stuff, for sure. We'll do some voice transformations, which is what I like to call them.
So basically, we'll read a little bit and we will transform that delivery into something that is connected and sounds professional and all that good stuff. We'll do some of that.
And mostly we'll just have some fun and introduce people to the business because it's a great business to be in.
It's not an easy business by any stretch of the imagination, but it is certainly something that if you love it, it can really be rewarding. And it can be something that if you love it, it can really be a fun gig.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: Any option, you have to do things that are enjoyable like this, where you don't have to dress up. You don't have to necessarily leave your house or go someplace in uncomfortable shoes.
I'm all down for that. One of the questions I have gotten from people before, is it even a realistic expectation to be able to do some voice work, like as sort of on the side for people who have regular day jobs and things?
[00:25:24] Speaker C: Sure. People do it all the time, especially people who are into audiobooks, because if you're not looking to make a living from it and you can work on your own time frame, then usually an author, for instance, might give you, well, can you get it done in six weeks or whatever? And then you can decide how you want to go about that.
[00:25:47] Speaker B: So do you find as an audio engineer, that, do you have clients who do their own recording in their own home studios, but then they send that work to you to edit and take care of the technical pieces?
Because that is a completely different skill set. That's a different kind of thing. And people who may be set up to do recording may not be set up either with experience or with the proper equipment to do a good recording pass. That's one of the services you offer.
[00:26:20] Speaker C: Well, and it's another side of it. Right. The recording side is a different skill than the listening side. Encourage my students to do a lot of listening, because you have to listen to gain the experience of, like, okay, what really sounds good and why does this sound better than that?
[00:26:39] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:41] Speaker C: And you shouldn't be expected to know how to do that because nobody's asked you to do that, that critically in your life. Most people are very self conscious about the sound of their own voice.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Bajillions of years ago, when I worked at Disney, in order to learn the very long scripts, I would record myself doing them and then listen back. And then you learn the script in the same way that we learn, like, song lyrics. So that was how I did it. So I think I'm maybe more comfortable than listening to my own voice.
[00:27:17] Speaker C: Love questions.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: All right, here we go. Because I have some questions from some of our listeners. Fun.
What tips can you provide to help people with voice recovery if their voice is tired?
[00:27:31] Speaker C: Hydration, rest.
Vocal exercises that I can teach you. That's good.
And making sure that you're eating foods that, for instance, that don't affect acid reflux, types of things like that.
That's a hard one because that goes back to our coffee conversation. Yeah, coffee, dark, everything you like causes.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Isn't that the truth? It's all bad for me. It's all bad.
[00:28:07] Speaker C: I know and if it doesn't cause acid reflux, it probably causes cancer.
[00:28:12] Speaker B: Well, get the planet.
[00:28:14] Speaker C: I know it's hard.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: Okay. From a member of our audience, if you have been told by many that you have a voice and you should do voice work, what would you suggest as a first step?
[00:28:29] Speaker C: Seek out coaching.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: Coaching.
[00:28:32] Speaker C: So coaching is a very important element while you're doing your research, but you also don't want to form bad habits. So a lot of people are learning from YouTube or they're listening to commercials and sort of thing, and they're just trying to parrot that. That connection, it didn't connect.
The words are just words.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: As writers are accustomed to understanding that a great amount of what it is that we produce and put on the page is actually not what we have done, but what is happening in our reader's mind and how they are filtering all of that through their own experience and through their own understanding of the world and their own bias and all of those things, and then they fill in their own version of our story, which may or may not be how we pictured or how we thought that it was going to be when we put it down, when we put it out there. So there's that connection, and I imagine it's just a whole other level when.
[00:29:40] Speaker C: You'Re adding, well, I think Dave Grohl said it best, and I think that this applies to all art. And he says, when I'm up on stage and I'm singing a song to 70,000 people, I know that when those 70,000 people are singing it back to me, they're singing it back for 70,000 different reasons.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: Yes. That's actually amazing.
[00:30:05] Speaker C: I know.
[00:30:05] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:30:06] Speaker C: He's amazing. He's amazing.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: All right, who's ready for some truth or fiction?
[00:30:15] Speaker D: I'm ready.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: All right.
[00:30:17] Speaker D: I do have one question, though. I have one question for Dan. What does your shirt say? I can't see your whole t shirt there.
[00:30:23] Speaker C: Oh, it says, I sit in a dark padded room hearing voices and talking to myself.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:30:30] Speaker C: It's the worst way of describing my job.
[00:30:35] Speaker B: I have such website jealousy because he's got a merch button on his website, and you can actually buy a coffee mug that says that Vicki. And that's a problem because both she and are have more coffee mugs than we need.
[00:30:52] Speaker C: Well, I get that.
[00:30:54] Speaker A: If that's possible.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: We find cool ones and we have to buy them.
[00:30:57] Speaker C: All right, well, theoretically, you only need one.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: That's a lie.
[00:31:02] Speaker D: And sadly, I mostly use one and the rest are in a shelf or is from Blue Ridge Thread company. So it's a local company that makes clothes? What?
[00:31:19] Speaker B: Thread.
[00:31:19] Speaker D: You know what? I don't think so. I think it's a marketing company. I'm going to have to look into it.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:31:26] Speaker D: The mug was cool.
[00:31:27] Speaker C: I'm going with my Van Halen stripes.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:31:30] Speaker D: There you go.
[00:31:31] Speaker B: Old school.
There is a small town, and in this small town, the local railway really no longer came through town. The local sawmill wasn't getting business much anymore, and it eventually shut down. And this town, this would be in the facing some serious financial hardship.
And the members of this town started a new revenue stream for themselves that seemed to catch on around town by cashing in insurance policies if they were to have some sort of accident and lose a hand or lose a foot or something.
Until eventually 70 or more of those residents had made successful insurance claims for accidental dismemberment. And the insurance company had to go in and investigate.
Truth or fiction?
[00:32:59] Speaker D: Like a lot of people, I can see how cutting off a couple fingers for some money might bring something in. But 70 sounds like whole town. I say fiction.
[00:33:13] Speaker C: I say truth.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: It is, in fact, true.
It is a story. Guess where. Guess where this town is, Vicki.
[00:33:23] Speaker C: It's in North Carolina.
[00:33:24] Speaker D: It's got to be western North Carolina.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: It's in Florida. It's in Florida, where all of the ridiculous stories that sound like they couldn't possibly be real are, in fact, real.
It's in the panhandle. It's called Vernon, Florida, and its nickname is Nub City.
[00:33:48] Speaker C: Perfect.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: Yeah, it's real. Real place.
[00:33:50] Speaker C: I've written two nonfiction books. I wonder if I need to write a fiction book.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: Hey, we can help you with the writing of fiction for sure.
And we can most definitely use some help with the recording of everything and understanding our stuff. So I will definitely be looking at that class coming up later this month. But before we leave you, I want to share a tip.
Don't be afraid to step a little outside of not just your genre, but your medium a little bit when you are doing new, looking for inspiration, or trying to get good creative energy, good creative flow going, do something different. Do a paint night. I'm building a library.
We are dabbling in voice work, which is clearly not our first strength here. Writing in other genres or doing other things will get you fired up and enthusiastic again about being a creator.
[00:35:06] Speaker C: Artists, right? I say this a lot to my students. First of all, art, in order to be done well, needs to be experienced over and over again. You need to experience the failures. You need to experience the successes and what those feel like emotionally, what do those feel like? Because that's where you're going to make the most gains in creating. So, for instance, I am writing my own music. I only learned to play. I know I look like Van Halen, all that stuff. I look like I've played guitar since I was twelve, but that's not true. I only picked it up three years ago. But I'm already writing my own music.
And thankfully, because of my background, I have a general understanding of how it all works. I just have never done it as a musician before. But now that I'm creating as a musician that plays a guitar player, especially because I'm new at that, I'm getting creative gains and sparks all the time. When I'm achieving something that I couldn't do just a month before, I make some sort of creative connection with it that it was like, oh, wow, that's how that's done.
And it's super fun and it definitely has inspired me to.
I just finished my second song. I just put it out, actually, on TikTok today.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: Cool. Wow.
[00:36:30] Speaker D: What's the title?
[00:36:33] Speaker C: Well, I still generally call it project 21, my 21st project in total, but the second one that actually has made it to fruition so far. But the kind of working title is back to you, I believe.
Awesome. Okay, so we'll see. But yes, love that idea. Creative sparks. I've always loved to paint, draw, be a part of music in some way, shape, creation some way shape or form.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: Different ways of interpreting the world around us and expressing it.
[00:37:11] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:37:12] Speaker D: I also think it fires up a different part of your brain, too. So you're producing when you're writing, it can be exhausting in one part of your brain, but when you turn around and start filling in the paint and the numbers or go to a museum, and then suddenly the other side is sparked up. So I think that helps a lot.
[00:37:33] Speaker C: As it should be.
[00:37:34] Speaker B: Anything you want to add, Vicky?
[00:37:38] Speaker D: No, that was it. So I did see this a little bit different, but I saw in one of the writing groups online this week a new author who has finished his book, and he had a really bad case of impostor syndrome.
[00:37:52] Speaker B: Very common.
[00:37:53] Speaker D: He was at this stage where he'd had his friends look at the manuscript, he's had his beta readers, a couple of beta readers, and his writing group look at it, and he still had like, I don't know if this is crap or not. So it was just at that point where sometimes the only way to get rid of impostor syndrome may be to have a professional look at it, but who knows? I mean, I always love when people have already taken it to their friends.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: And all that before they send it to you.
[00:38:26] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. As an editor, before they send it to me, yes.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: I think all of us writers have had people send us work. And you're like, okay, voice actors.
[00:38:36] Speaker C: No, I love it. Voice actors do the same thing. They come to me and they say, especially when it comes to their studio sound, because they're working isolated, they don't really compare their sound to other people. So they need somebody to say, yes, this sounds competitive with all the other people that might be auditioning for this job, whatever. I always encourage people to share their work so that they can make the comparisons that they need to make. And if not, then certainly come to me and I will help you decide whether it's at a quality that's competitive when it comes to your studio, your delivery, your performance, all those things.
[00:39:17] Speaker D: So you're the professional also that I'm talking about. So even recording, audiobook recording, people are starting out can also have impostor syndrome.
[00:39:27] Speaker C: Sure.
And so can voice actors, especially, again, people just starting out. And often when you're talking about an acting or any type of, again, creative endeavor, I think it comes in waves. I think there are times feel great about something you've done and don't feel like an imposter. And then you maybe go through a lull or feast or famine kind of situation where you're a little bit in a famine situation, and then suddenly it happens to everybody in creative field. So just keep that in mind. You're never alone. You're never alone in this situation.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: Thank you so much for joining us today. You gave us a lot of really great information to think about, and I know that our listeners are going to be super curious. Definitely check out Dan's website. I will put that link up there for you. And we'll also include, if you have a direct link for that class that's coming up so you can learn a little bit more on site.
[00:40:33] Speaker C: Yeah, I'll look in that, the website, just to say it's sound, the number four, vo.com.
The books are there. And also reach out to the screen artist co op, talk to Joy about getting in the class.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: All right, thanks to you again.
[00:40:52] Speaker D: Great.
[00:40:53] Speaker B: Thanks again for the opportunity.
[00:40:54] Speaker C: I enjoyed it so much.
[00:40:56] Speaker B: All right, everybody, have a great day. Until next time.
[00:41:00] Speaker D: All right, bye.
