Home Voice Over Studio . . . on the cheap!

when bill Dewey's here from voice - over - training org today talking about getting set up with a down dirty cheap recording studio in your home now I have to tell you up front I really have my hesitation and my reservations about talking to you about this because I don't want this to be your excuse not to invest as you should in yourself and in your voiceover business and I talked to so many voice talent on it on a regular basis that I realized that one of the first places that voice talent really skip out on investing is in their home studio and I mean I get it and I understand most of you are getting into the voice-over business are in a situation similar to what I was six years ago when I was downsized from my corporate job and I really needed to figure out how to make money not how to spend money but you know the old the old adage it takes money to make money there is a certain element of truth in that and if you want to treat your voice over business as a business as a profitable business then there are certain vest investments that you have to make however all of that being said I understand because I was there and I needed to get something together that was workable that was doable that was kind of a band-aid approach but not my long-term approach so let me talk to you about how you can get set up again with kind of a down dirty cheap studio that will be functional and that will work as you begin to build some cash flow so that you can invest in proper equipment professional professional grade gear now the and and I know of what I speak because the stuff I'm about to show you is the stuff that I actually have used myself it's a matter of fact and I'm always hesitant to say this because I'm afraid that somebody will take it make it their excuse not to invest properly in their own studio space but for the first almost two years of my business i operated with the equipment that i'm about to show you as a matter of fact I had built well into a six-figure voiceover career using the equipment I'm about to show you however I didn't realize that for the long term if I wanted to keep not only my current clients but cultivate better and higher paying clients I had to invest properly in my equipment as I did as my cash flow too loud so that's my disclaimer that's my caveat now let's get into the 10 to the nitty-gritty first and foremost is going to be your your recording space more than equipment more than anything else the room the space that you're recording in will determine the the outcome of your recording or at least it is as important as anything else now you may not start off with a whisper room like I'm sitting in here now and I didn't either and certainly whisper room is not the only vocal booths company out there vocal booth comm there's another one a lot of people build their own and a lot of people will go into a room and do you know double triple quadruple or more you know layers of drywall and create a very sound tight kind of space but until you can get there here's what you can do make sure that you find the quietest place in your home and then treat it properly by treating it I mean find ways to absorb the excess sound because what you're going to get is this kind of boxy hollow reverberating kind of sound which will not be acceptable for voice-over work so you've got to you by finding the quietest room that's you you won't probably be able to completely soundproof it but you can treat it so that it's not only quiet but it helps to eliminate all that bouncing of sound waves around in the room which will give you an undesirable end product and the way you can do that a couple things if you can't afford to invest in expensive acoustic foam which this stuff is very expensive what you can do what I did I started off with foam mattress toppers bought them at Kmart are actually in goes Walmart they're relatively inexpensive and you can pad the walls particularly behind your microphone to the sides of your microphone and as much space as you can but what you want to do is keep the sound waves from bouncing around the room and also if you're working off of a hard desk space which you probably will be for your microphone and such it's good to cover that you could use a towel or something along that line again to keep the sound waves from bouncing off of that hard surface so again foam mattress toppers are good to put up around you another thing I bought a bunch of these through eBay these are cheap easy quick down and dirty way to treat your recording space this is a moving blanket and again you can buy a bunch of these you know buy them on bulk on eBay relatively cheaply and they're very heavy they're very absorbent this potato salad several years ago but what I ended up using four was put aligning the bottom of my dog's crate because I bought a whisper room instead so I just pulled this out of Phoebe's crate to show you for an example but you can hang these around you and you can layer them again to create a super absorbent surface that will absorb all of the extra sound now this is not soundproofing and it may reduce the the out you know the sound coming into your studio space somewhat but don't expect it to be a soundproof barrier but what it will do is treat the space so that you won't have the echo and your voice won't be bouncing all over the place so that's where you start the next thing and this is equally important in making sure that your sound is high quality that is having a good microphone now this is the microphone that this is the very microphone that I started with this is an this is a Marshall MXL 2001 by no means the only microphone that you can use I'm just for our example here because this is the mic that I use you can buy this and we're talking about down dirty and cheap you can buy this for 60 bucks give or take a few dollars on ebay the key is to get a good quality large diaphragm studio microphone do not use a USB microphone that might be okay for recording auditions and for while you're on the road you know recording auditions that kind of thing but you want a large diaphragm Fram studio microphone like this in your studio now the thing about a microphone like this is that it has to be powered and so that brings us to the next thing here which this is what I have this and again this is their there are a number of companies that make these I just bought a small mixer because what I wanted from this more than anything else and this is just a small behringer mixer I wanted the preamp that's built into it and so by plugging my microphone into this and turning on the pre app button this actually powers my microphone so again relatively inexpensive you can buy these for well less than 100 bucks maybe 60 70 bucks on eBay or on Craigslist so you've got that to power the microphone and then what you need is a digital audio interface ie a sound card to transform the analog signal of your voice into your microphone into digital information that goes into your computer and the digital interface again there are a number of them out there the one this is actually the one that I use today and actually this is just a cut this is backup I'm the one that I'm using today I'm actually using as I record this this is a lexicon alpha and this will run you I believe 50 or 60 bucks you know on eBay and when they first came out it was around around a hundred but you know there's always newer newer versions that come out driving down the cost of the older technology but this is a really solid piece of equipment I use it every day and again I record everything from national to regional to local work on these things and this thing is it's a beautiful piece of equipment but again there are a number of companies that make good digital audio interfaces but again we're talking about doing this relatively on the cheap and this only runs about 50 or 60 bucks so what do we have so far we've got maybe what's less 200 ish dollars so far with the equipment we've talked about and really all that remains is your computer and if you own a computer that probably will work fine I you know I for most of my voiceover career I've used not cutting-edge technology as far as the computer goes I've normally used Adel optiplex now I work off of a Mac but that was up until just a few months ago and I still have my old dell optiplex it's probably four years old that's sitting around my studio as a backup that I use Adobe Audition on so the computer you own is probably just fine for your purposes the main thing is you want to make sure it's far enough away from your recording space so that you can't hear the fan noise because that becomes a distraction that's that's problematic when you're recording voiceovers however you will need recording software recording and editing software and we're going to do this really cheap and this is a program that I've worked before with before so I know it works and I know it's a fine piece of software it's called audacity and if you google audacity download you can easily find the free download online doesn't cost anything and again the quality of the audio you record will be as good as anything that you record in any other recording software program it's normally just a matter of functions and features and that's what you pay for these kind of programs so when you're starting off get audacity it's free it's a free download again just google audacity download so that gives you really aside from you want a pair of headphones now for most of my radio career and my voiceover career I've used really cheap headphones because I found that paying 100 200 bucks for headphones didn't make me sound any better now if you prefer more expensive headphones you know you got to work within your own budget now I use I came across these headphones in a studio that I did some work for it I liked them so well I bought my own pair this is the ultra sone s Logic HF I 15 G yeah and these are great these run you know about 80 bucks but like I said you can use a $5 pair of headphones make sure you get a great microphone don't worry so much about the headphones so really everything we've talked about we're talking hundreds not thousands of dollars that will get you set up don't look at that as your long term solution look is that look at that is your again quick dirty cheap setup to get going and I can think of no better way to get going than with recording audio books because that is the fastest-growing section right now of the voice over market and I just got that I want to show you this because you know the things that I talk about I don't just make this stuff up this is stuff that I've done that I experienced not only 10 years ago 20 years ago you know I experienced and I do this on an ongoing basis and today I just received my first check it's a royalty check from audible if you can see that here this is actually audible made out to Bill Dewey's media for the total of nine hundred and twenty dollars ninety five cents this is a royalty check again a royalty not a per hour check this is based on sales of some audiobooks I recorded for the month of January so this is actually my first monthly royalty check from audible and this reflects the sales of I believe it's six books that I've that I've recently recorded so the plan here and this is what I love about audiobooks now this is in addition to what I was paid for my hourly work so normally with audiobooks you're paid per finished hour so again not the hours that you work but the finished hours of audio that are in the book that you finished so not only did I receive that pay but the royalty on top and that's why I like working with audiobooks because I can build income that I'll continue our do work that I'll continue to be paid on for years to come these checks will continue to come in even if I quit recording audiobooks because the deal is seven years of royalty payments off any book that I've recorded so this is something that you can do as well and it's a great way to begin to build your voiceover business and I wanted to make mention that I have an upcoming audiobook seminar that's will be I'll be conducting here in my own studios here in the Chicago area it's coming up May the 21st and 22nd May the 21st and 22nd and it's seven seat events and for those of you who are there I will be recording your audiobook demo which is your number one your lead marketing tool in getting audio book work and if you want more information go to audio book seminar com and if you're in the position of struggling of trying to fill that gap between your talent and actually making money okay you know I record voiceovers I've got a studio now how do I make money well that's my voiceover playbook is a is a four-hour tutorial program that's been become very popular and based on the popularity of that I have created and by the way more information on that is available at voiceover playbook com but I've created the voiceover workshop voiceover playbook workshop which will be happening again here in my studios in my you know my conference area and my home here in the Chicago area it's a one-day event on April the 19th I think I got that right Saturday April the 19th I have a couple of seats left for that and if you want more information drop me an email at voiceover expert at gmail.com so again the point is you can get started on virtually a shoestring as I did now a long term you want to treat this like a business you want invest in the proper gear and proper equipment but you can get up and going you know down dirty and cheap and got started getting some cash flow so that you can invest properly in your business hey I wish you all the best as you build your voiceover business and I look forward to talking to you soon

Channel: Bill DeWees

Views: 252,797

Keywords: VoiceOverExpert, recording, studio, voiceover, cheap voice over studio, voice over booth diy, Homemade voice over booth, Build voice over booth Voice over recording booth, Voice over studio, Voice over studio setup, Voice over artist studio Soundproof voice over booth, Voice over cheap, Voice over technique, Voice over lessons, Voice over teaching, Voice over school, Voice over questions, Voice over artist, Voice over training, Voice over tips for beginners, Voice over tutorial

Id: _hBVkpHaDQU

Length: 12min 55sec (775 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 15 2012