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| Sometimes I wonder how my life might have been any different if a lot of things hadn't happened that led me down the path I've followed (or rather, made for myself, laying down the first fresh tracks in an uncharted forest).
In all honesty, I realize it probably wouldn't have affected much, as attention and curiosity will always lead to some sort of discovery, whether or not it's actually inspiring, impressive, or even just interesting. In that sense, is was likely just a matter of time before I would have come across something that truly gnawed at my mental synapses controlling desire and excitement. Would it have been voice acting still, though? Perhaps, perhaps not - that's not something I could ever know the answer to without going back in time.
However, in the interest of sparing length from an already overwhelming entry in terms of size, I think it's best if we just dive into the subject matter at hand. SO, here we go!
RAMBLINGS OF A VOICE ACTOR
SEASON 1, PART 2 of 3
Tips, Techniques, and Titillating Truths
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(MUSIC PLAYLIST SUGGESTION: Dress - bloody trinity mix)
You mentioned last week you record in your dorm room, not in a studio. How do you manage good quality?
One of the things that bothers me most about amateur recordings containing questionable sound quality, outside of the cases where an old soundcard or a crappy microphone is the source behind static or mechanical flaws (and of course, the owner doesn't have the money to replace them quite yet), is that so often it's merely a case of their recording environment not being prepped for recording - this can be either because of an inefficient setup OR because of sheer laziness, but the fact remains that nothing is more aggravating than knowing someone was mere minutes from changing their environment into one conducive to sound, but chose not to in the interest of sparing themselves the effort.
My current setup literally involves the use of little more than my own bed blankets and pillows, specific positioning of room furniture, and a miniature collection of cork boards and rugs, all of which could literally be gathered from around a common household for free, or purchased from a store for less than $15.00 total between all the items. Perhaps I might take some pictures sometime just to illustrate my point, but my current room setup involves a close-knit community of dressers and cabinets that allow me to drape blankets across and around their corners to cut of significant amounts of room "space" - one of those blankets is in fact held down on top of my television by the weight of my PLAYSTATION 2... but I promise that's not the only use it receives nowadays, although it is by far the most practical one at the moment.
Opening a window so sound has a way of escaping an otherwise enclosed space, holding a pillow in front of oneself while recording, and learning how to properly edit or remove noise from a recording - all of these are rather simplistic actions that can tremendously help recording quality. Consider it a case of "input determines output", in which the terms can literally define their technical jargon counterparts. It's about knowing what you have to work with, as well as being able to apply a little "Tetris physics" to make it work out most efficiently for you. And of course, you need to be willing to use a little imaginative creativity sometimes, and use things for purposes other than their intended use. As they say, experimentation can yield even greater rewards.
What types of things do you have to do to keep your voice working, or to preserve it??
Just as with any other form of physical activity, such as sports or exercise, it's important that you warm up the parts of the body to be used, and voiceover is no different in that regard. While it may not require as rigorous a regimen as more physically demanding activities, you may be surprised to learn that voice acting can and will involve the entire body at times, so at least some minor stretches and pulls are needed. For the vocals, a very common practice is to hum - NOT sing, but hum - whatever songs you fancy that have a reasonable note range and that you can do in a lower register. This allows the throat to ease up through simple vibrations rather than be "shocked" into action, allowing for a smoother, easier transition from rest to recreation.
In regards to preserving one's voice, I'm going to be honest and say I'm not the best person about this sort of thing, and there's a lot I could be doing to take better care of my throat and vocal chords overall. Of course, there's the obvious things - don't smoke, don't do drugs, etc., as those things will easily dehydrate the system and dry the throat. Now, don't take me to be an extremist saying "OMFG DON'T DO THIS IT WILL RUIN YOU FOREVER", as there are plenty of voiceover artists I know who smoke and work just fine, or in fact utilize an effect it gives to their tone in order to create a particular voice or character, but this is speaking from a general rule of thumb standpoint.
I can tell you right off the bat, however, that DEHYDRATION IS BAD, and it's most likely the single most pertinent piece of information that every VA is expected to have wedged deep into their cranium. If you'll pardon my language, there's a saying among the VA culture that, "Unless you're pissing what you're drinking, you're not drinking enough", and what it essentially boils down to is that you should be drinking enough water on a frequent enough basis that your urine has absolutely no color to it. Of course, going overboard with the water consumption can prove dangerous, but I think you know what I mean.
Are there special beverages to drink, or liquids you need to gargle?
The beverage of choice is ROOM TEMPERATURE water, NOT hot or cold - some say that using an extreme temperature helps to open or close the throat to make reaching certain ranges easier, but this is only a myth - it actually puts more pressure on the chords and throat because of the muscle stretching being done, and actually increases risk of injury. I recently started giving up soda and switched to only apple juice or water as my drinks of choice. You don't need to give up everything you love, or trust me, that would suck; you just need to watch the temperature of what you're drinking if you're about to do recording, and as always, be smart about the chemical contents of what you're putting into your mouth.
Gargling salt water is actually a common suggestion for treating a sore throat, as the combination of warm water with dissolved salt helps to gently rub the muscles and lining within the throat, but, like most other things in life, a healthy sense of moderation is always good to have. There's a fine line between gargling enough to assist in the healing process, and attempting it so vehemently that you end up swallowing the salt water - and that, my friends, doesn't taste or feel very good at all. As always, rest and refraining from working while ill remain the most effective ways to combat soreness.
Are you able to make yourself work even if you are sick, or does it depend on the illness and the contract?
It's generally highly suggested that if you're sick for whatever reason you halt ALL recording until you are better, because nothing is more potentially damaging to the throat than pushing it when it's already strained (imagine, if you will, running a marathon on a sprained ankle, and that's about the same as doing yelling lines on a sore throat). This is also why it's generally a good idea to pace yourself when taking on voice acting jobs, because even if you're taking great preparatory care of your throat, too much of a single activity always is draining. Yes, we do manage to increase our vocal stamina over time, but that's a process of consistency and practice, not overloading ourselves with performances in a short period of time.
But, yes, there are times when I've personally had to work through sickness in order to get a job done, and let me tell you, it is not fun. Your percentage of failed takes and recordings with mistakes, or that just "sound iffy", go way up, and it's very likely you could spend more than double the amount of time you usually would to record the same amount of content. And of course, all the while, your throat's not getting ANY better because of your pushing it to work. So, a little care in preventing sickness from happening goes a long way towards making work easier for you in the long run.
How important is breath control, in terms of working as a voice actor?
ABSOLUTELY IMPORTANT. Breath control is not only the defining factor behind how long you can drag out a delivery on a sentence before have to stop yourself (which can be a huge problem if you have employers who prefer to write long sentences without convenient places to stop...perhaps this blog comes to mind...), but is also a MAJOR factor in whether or not you can believably scream, yell, shout, or do anything else involving direct bursts of air, and maintain it for a good length of time. Without good breath control, we'd never have epic charge-up scenes in Dragonball Z or epic stanzas of singing in Broadway shows like Wicked, because our heroes and villains would be stopping every 5 seconds to gasp desperately for air.
Now, the importance can further very by genre, because some types of voiceover don't require nearly as much effort in breath control. A television or radio advertisement commercial, for example, is often comprised of PIECES of a recording spliced together in rapid succession, so errors in breath can usually easily be taken care of (going back to the DBZ charge-up reference, any individual with a keen ear can tell that Goku's VA isn't actually screaming the entire duration of the scene - it's a series of individual yells combined into a "super powerup", although each of these segments can be respectably long in its own right). An audiobook narrator may need to take it a bit further, preparing for longer sentences, or being able to make minor changes in their voice to replicate different characters in a novel without losing the pace or the impact behind their words. And of course, anime is infamous for those drawn out arguments and "I MUST SHOUT BECAUSE IT MAKES SOMETHING FUNNY" moments, so you can expect a great deal of opportunity to come to those who can effectively pull those deliveries off without running out of air.
Need an example? Any of Vic Mignogna's "I'm not short!" segments as Edward Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist; moments like these are the reason this man finds so much work in the anime industry today.
 Have you ever had the problem of where you can't stand your own voice, but have to deal with others telling you how much they love it?
Honey, this isn't something that I personally experience, at least in the realm of disliking the sound of my own voice - I think this is a situation so universal within the voice acting community, that not being bothered or somewhat annoyed at hearing yourself constantly would actually make you the exception. By the sheer fact that the average 'competent' VA will spend a great deal of time listening through their recordings and making redos as necessary, the novelty of hearing oneself VERY quickly wears off, and it's almost guaranteed that any VA watching a product they voiced for, if it contains performances from others as well, would even go so far as to entirely skip their section in favor of listening to everyone else.
Part of this may be from nervousness about potentially hearing a mistake you didn't fix beforehand, another piece may be from a desire to hear what others have to say before judging your performance for yourself. However, it actually remains very important to be able to put up with hearing and correcting yourself, because it helps to develop a particular skill that can very easily move any voiceover artist's reputability, as well as his social status, increase greatly - self-direction. Any VA who can effectively direct themselves without requiring input from a second party every single time they record will find not only a plethora of new opportunities opened up to them in the time they save as a result, but will also be able to improve their technique on their OWN time, and turn what is usually a social response mechanism into a chance to explore and discover the self, to point out your highlights while improving upon your weaknesses.
How do you keep a character voice fresh when you don't have to use it that often?
This is actually a really good question, as well as an important one due to the stress the professional voiceover industry places on being able to 'access' your range of voices with ease and efficiency - employers are practically 75% more likely to consider you for a job if it's apparent that they won't have to waste time waiting for you to 'get into character', so being able to tap into those vocal resources on the fly is an absolute must.
One technique I failed to mention earlier, a practice that a lot of professional producers and voice actors alike will suggest to budding talent, is to take approximately 10 minutes out of each day to read something. Literally, you simply need to take a script, a text, some sort of material that has sentences and paragraphs (even this blog, if you cared to!), and read it aloud to yourself. This serves to help with both your breath control as well as your enunciation (especially for those foreign voice actors seeking to acquire an American accent), and can also even assist you in projecting your voice out to make it more impacting. You can also combine this with a character voice in order to get some specific practice in, but make sure to devote at least some time to reading it normally. In the end, a lot of it just ends up in memory, but it doesn't hurt to just turn to the side of ridiculousness every once in a while and bring back a familiar voice just to remind yourself of what it's like once again.
My personal solution is to keep a solid amount of work on the table at all times that requires a variety of different vocal personas, but I personally wouldn't recommend this unless you're prepared for the resulting responsibility...
So with all this preparation needed to be kept in mind, how do you keep yourself motivated to record?
I get my days of lethargy just like anyone else, to be honest, perhaps even more than the average kind of person in this business (then again, I doubt there's anyone in this industry you could really consider 'average'). There are days when it feels like voicing is the only thing I want to do ever (Sleep? Eat? Poop? Who needs that?!), and likewise there are times when I have to literally force myself to trudge through work before I can allow myself to do anything else, including the 3 aforementioned pastimes.
What I always try to keep in mind, however, is precisely what I'm intending to do through this craft. I seek not only to allow myself to enter the life and adventures of something completely separate from my own body, but to also bring entertainment to others, to use my voice to give back to the community that I've fed off of for so many years of my life. It is my inspiration, my guide, and my muse, as well as one of the very few things in my life that I hold a deep connection and love for beyond anything else - and if there's one thing that you should know about a person who used to have ADHD, it's that when something actually does manage to capture their interest, it is VERY, VERY hard to make them lose it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- As you may have noticed, a lot of these questions were rather simplistic in nature, dealing with more common pieces of advice surrounding how to "accentuate" a performance rather than focusing on the performance itself. However, there is an important reason for this - even an amazing performance can fall flat if the preparation beforehand is rushed or inexperienced enough that it begins to affect the process. An amazing soccer player can have a terrible game if he doesn't prepare accordingly beforehand, and so can a voice actor have a bad experience if they go into it just 'expecting' everything to work out in their favor.
This is merely Season 1, however, intended be a 'dip' into the waters of this wonderful craft. In Season 2, I'll be sure to revisit this type of section, this time with more in-depth questions that purvey the techniques behind the actual performance rather than just the set-up.
In the meantime, that closes this Section in terms of blog content, but that doesn't mean the entry is over! If there's any questions you wish to have addressed or might have come up with after reading this, feel completely free to leave a comment or send a message, and I'll do what I can to answer it for you!
That said, be sure to tune in next week, when we discuss the 3rd and final segment of this season of RoaVA - a starter's look at the professional industry, where to audition for what, and a look into the answer for the question so frequently asked, "just how do I break into the professional voiceover business, anyway?"
I do sincerely hope to see you there. ;)
Sincerely,
~sonicmega
Oxygen! I need MORE OXYGEN!
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| MAIN ENTRY OFFICIALLY WRITTEN
Now applying pictures/captions + any additional tidbits I can think of before submitting the entire piece publicly, inbetween attending class.
Please expect a posting time of the full, finished entry at 1:00 pm EST today.
Thank you!
~Management
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| Getting used to the solitary life while spending my days back on campus has been proving to be quite a mixture of both enjoyable yet rather stressful, to say the least - being able to switch on the good old iTunes playlist and fall asleep in the lower half of my self-bunked bed, which is shrouded in darkness even with the room light on because of my soundproofing setup, has made many a late night easy to retire from. However, maintaining a decent eating schedule, one that doesn't require spending money each evening on some form of last-minute last-night food, is an ideal that has not been going too smoothly.
Maybe it's merely because of an innate love for food - ever since the days of my Ritalin/Concerta-filled youth were finally gone and done with, I've always been both cursed and blessed with an amazing metabolism and a hunger drive to match. Quite literally, the consumption escapades I've embarked on have ranged from the desperate, to the eccentric, to even the sheer mesmerizing, in terms of just how much I can shovel down my throat at once. Anyone who's ever watched me take on a plate of seafood can attest to just how much crap I can force down my gullet in a single sitting, and with my deepest condolences to the ladies, my overactive metabolism promises that repercussions for such are few and far between.
Of course, I blame myself entirely for some of those circumstances, as I realize my tendency to take luxuries in how long I sleep for (even when I go to bed earlier than usual for my personality), and truth be told I have enough saved up to be able to help myself to such expenditures every once in a while, but my frugality remains an ever present twist to the nipple of easy-living.
....please pardon that personification, it's around 3:00 AM at the time I'm writing this, and my creative side gets a little loopy when I'm in the midst of battling sleep deprivation.
It's a little interesting, though, being given the opportunity to spend entire days, or even weeks, with all of your decisions made on your own. By this, I mean isolation - you wake up by yourself, you go to class by yourself, and while you may interact with friends and others during said class(es), the remainder of your day is pretty much left as a 1-person party while everyone else divides back up into their separate lives and agendas. You end up with a lot of time to think, and I mean a lot of time to think, to the point where you may even find yourself with time to think about what you were just thinking about. For me, this has often culminated in the often-loved afternoon nap (something high school students never seem to discover or appreciate until they come to college, which I've never been able to explain), which is also when most of my most memorable or 'awesome' dreams occur.
Above all else, though, it forces you to actually look at what your day comprises of - what are you actually doing with your time? Is it productive? Worthwhile? Wasteful? And most importantly, are you truly happy with how you're spending it? Believe it or not, my answer to this right now would be no, because I realize there are a lot of things I've meant to get done that haven't, either because of my own procrastination, or simply due to a lack of motivation. Of course, this isn't to say that I'm depressed, but merely that I lack the drive at the moment to separate myself from my current vices. What is usually fun is currently a chore, and I guess I just need to understand that just because my activities don't have deadlines anymore doesn't mean I can make them not have deadlines... does that make any sense? I hope it makes SOME sense.
In any case, the Ramblings of a Voice Actor Lesson 2 entry is very nearly finished with regarding being written, and I can quite easily assure any and everyone interested that it's just as long, if not longer, than the first installment. In fact, it turned out to be a fair amount longer than even I MYSELF intended, which is why it got pushed back to Wednesday so I could fit everything in that I wanted to (as well as find the accompanying pictures).
Perhaps by then I can manage to get enough of my schedule in working order, and some decent amounts of food into my stomach, to actually be able to focus on what's important that needs to be finished. I can only guarantee one thing right now, however, and that's that I pray my upcoming dreams are anywhere near as awesome as yesterday's.
Then again, riding dragons hang-glider style isn't exactly an easy topic to surpass.
Sincerely,
~sonicmega
Turn right, I said! Do you not see how close that branch is?!
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| So, to spare the masses from an update entry that would otherwise be approximately 150% larger than it is right now, I'll just state that the reason why I haven't posted in a couple days is because my summer has basically gone from great to PHENOMINAL.
AX Live, The webcast I mentioned earlier in the week was actually a live broadcast provided by Anime Expo staff, which encompasses both general news about the anime industry and japanese culture as well as con-specific details and updates. From time to time, they also host special guests and events, to which it goes without saying that I served as the former for this week's episode.
It was near the very end of my time on-air, however, that the true miracle of this entire process I've gone through of speaking to staff members and higher-ups came to fruition....
Because the CEO of Anime Expo is having the company pay for my round-trip flight to California this July so that I can attend the convention.
Words cannot express just how joyous the remainder of my week has been, after all the stress that had culminated prior to Thursday. Between purchasing a webcam, planning for the webcast, and now making the necessary arrangements to allow this "award" of sorts to happen, I've simply been so swamped with a combination of extreme joy and rushing to finish paid projects I've put off to take care of said events that entering a post on Xanga took a backseat for the meantime. I apologize greatly for the lack of an update to keep others "in the know", but I hope by now some can understand that my voice acting career will always take precedence over a great number of other things in life.
With that said, I will do my best to have Part 2 of the Ramblings from a Voice Actor series up on Monday (since it was technically meant to be posted yesterday). The normal entry for today is located directly below.
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Have you ever wondered why exactly it is that we will sometimes listen to a particular song over and over again, or play a game much more often than we should?
Actually, what I mean to ask is - have you ever wondered why we will sometimes feel so nostalgic over an object or form of entertainment from our past, that we're actually moved to tears when we're reminded of it, perhaps to the point of an earnest desire to go back and spend ample amounts of time on it once again?
I was recently brought into that state of mind when a series of Youtube video "Related To" clicks brought me to the Megaman Legends 2 intro, which reminded me almost instantly of the opening scenes from its predecessor, a game I can honestly say I've thrown away many evenings to, both as a young teen and even today. But it was a series of thoughts that passed after I had already experienced my moment of blissful remembrance that really piqued my interest, because it forced me to rethink precisely what gives me that sense of gleeful satisfaction each time.
WHY do I continue to get such satisfaction from these games, and this music, long after I've already played them to the point of monotony, and heard them far past the point of boredom? Why is it that even if they're very easy for me to go back to (and trust me, with my packrat mentality, there is VERY LITTLE that I feel nostalgic about that isn't 5 minutes away from being able to be played on the spot), I am just as content, if not moreso, merely thinking about them?
This question has puzzled me for a good deal of time since it came up, particularly because it continued to dance around in my subconscious even while I enjoyed the very kind of material it applied to. And in the time that has passed, the strongest theory I've been able to come up with has been this:
We hold such fond memories of things we are nostalgic about because we are happy that they were a part of our lifetime, and a piece of the history that we were around to be in.
There are a lot of things many of us won't be around long enough for. The election of the first female President, an invention of an online multiplayer RPG with devices that allow us to PHYSICALLY CONTROL our game avatars, essentially "becoming" our characters and interacting with our own mechanical motion (.Hack// fans are probably already squealing at the very thought), and many other examples come to mind... but at the same time there are so many things we have come to enjoy and be fans of that did come around while we were here, perhaps even during the perfect age intended to be attracted to those kinds of entertainment; as a 90's child, Pokemon is by far the largest culprit. And in becoming a part of the audience that played companion to those events, we also became part of what made it into something to be remembered, and are one of the few who can say with complete certainty, "I was there when this was new. I got to experience this back when it was unheard of, exciting, and fresh", even if those adjectives can still apply to it today.
To those who may claim that people who spend all their time enjoying old things are "stuck in the past", perhaps it may be true that they should also be grateful for the new things coming out today. However, I think it's necessary to realize that above all else, they are going back to enjoy what few others today can say they knew about long ago - and taking advantage of their privilege to immerse themselves in that memory one more time.
Sincerely,
~sonicmega
And the dim glow of the Power light reflected off his captured eyes.
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| WEBCAST OVER. EPICNESS ENSUED. DETAILS IN THE MORNING.FULL ENTRY COMING HERE LATER TONIGHT
Sorry for the delay once again, but there's an actual legitimate excuse this time - I am currently in the midst of prepping for a LIVE GUEST STAR ROLE in a webcast for the nation's largest anime convention, Anime Expo!
If you've ever wanted to learn about voice acting and anime, wondered what it's like to attend a convention, or simply want to meet the face behind the blog, please drop by http://www.anime-expo.org/axlive tonight @ 7 PST/ 10 EST and enjoy the show!
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