(with my Dad's help here are some things I learned from today's session)
We asked Mrs. Olsen about how to reduce the "s" sounds that hiss. She said it was called "sibilance" and she would find some exercises that could help reduce the hissing sound. Instead of making the "s" sound, you can make more of "z" sound.
She talked about acoustic foam so that sound doesn't bounce off the walls. I tested our walk-in closet by clapping and I noticed that there was a reverberation in the middle of the room. When I tested near the wall where there are clothes, I noticed there wasn't that much reverberation.
Sound deadening is where you don't want sound bouncing off the walls.
Sound proofing is where you don't any background sounds like dogs barking.
Mrs. Olsen recommended you get headphones to hear the recording better so you can hear the popping sounds and be able to delete them.
She recommended exercising and doing push-ups before doing voice acting so you get warmed up and feel ready. I can walk down the street and back to warm up. I could go biking. I could talk like a pirate or like a cowboy doing "yeehaw"
It doesn't matter if you are a kid and you don't like your voice because you sound so young because they are already grown-ups doing kid voices and they are getting paid a lot to sound like a kid.
Mrs. Olsen gets lots of auditions every day. It's where you do a voice and send it to people who want to do ads. The customer asks for an audition and there might be twenty people who say they want to do it and they will send the customer a simple audio file. The customer only wants one person to do voice acting for them. He really wants his ad to go out so that other people will notice it. He can narrow the voice actors down to see who is the best. So when that person gets chosen then he has a job.
Normalizing is when you don't want your recording to be too high or too low. You use software. Our software that can do that is called "Adobe Audition CC 2014". I don't know how to use it yet. I learned today how to press record, stop, pause, and play and delete.
Sometimes a cheaper microphone for some people will make them sound better. So you keep on testing microphones and see which one suits you that you really like and it may be expensive or it may be cheap. You have to test it with your own voice. You can test microphones with http://sweetwater.com/, or go to a local guitar center to test microphones.
Sometimes Mrs. Olsen will record the ads on the radio when she is driving and she will practice copying those.
A thought for today came from my brother Caleb: "You go overboard practicing someone else's voice, but work more on your own voice"