Hey guys, I'm gonna give this a try

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Alyx
Posts: 1
Joined: November 3rd, 2021, 12:22 pm

Post by Alyx »

Hey, my name is Alyx and I want to hone my skills at voice over and get feedback to improve my sound, acting, and whatever else I need to improve.
I have made a couple dozen youtube videos of voice over for an online comic I like but I think I'm ready to do more professional stuff and want to see what I need in order to get a job doing this sort of thing.
I'm honestly super nervous that I don't have what it takes or that I don't have the strength to follow through on my dreams but I'm gonna take it one day at a time and have fun with it. My voice is relatively high for a male so I can't sound deep and bass'y for car commercials or anything but my hope is that as I volunteer here I can sorta find my niche.
adrianstephens
Posts: 1747
Joined: August 27th, 2019, 5:06 am
Location: Cambridge UK
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Post by adrianstephens »

Alyx wrote: September 27th, 2022, 2:40 pm Hey, my name is Alyx and I want to hone my skills at voice over and get feedback to improve my sound, acting, and whatever else I need to improve.
I have made a couple dozen youtube videos of voice over for an online comic I like but I think I'm ready to do more professional stuff and want to see what I need in order to get a job doing this sort of thing.
I'm honestly super nervous that I don't have what it takes or that I don't have the strength to follow through on my dreams but I'm gonna take it one day at a time and have fun with it. My voice is relatively high for a male so I can't sound deep and bass'y for car commercials or anything but my hope is that as I volunteer here I can sorta find my niche.
Hello and welcome to librivox, Alyx.

I'm a retired engineer/scientist living in Cambridge UK.
I love librivox because participating has caused me to read works that I wouldn't normally touch (e.g. poetry).
And I've enjoyed playing character parts in dramatic readings.

By chance I also marked your 1-minute test, which is OK.
If you want feedback on performance, you need to ask for it. There's a general rule that we won't criticize readers - even when they need it.
The point of the project is to put public domain texts into audio format, and it doesn't have to be perfect. This annoys some listeners, but so be it.

Having said that, there is no reason why you should not strive for great performance and technical quality yourself, and get help along the way
from your proof listeners.

Please don't be nervous, we all started at the same point. Just choose something short and start recording.
My voice too is high, but so what. There's an over-use of bass in commercials, but we're not in that game. We are in the game of making
recordings intelligible. I have a 100Hz high-pass filter permanently switched on on my mic to deliberately remove any "boom", which you get when
the mic is really close to the speaker (the so-called proximity or near-field effect).

You might search for the weekly or fortnightly poems in "short works" and make that a starting point.

Regards & see you around!
Adrian
My Librivox-related YouTube series starts here: Part 0: Introduction. https://youtu.be/pMHYycgA5VU
...
Part 15: Case Study (Poem) https://youtu.be/41sr_VC1Qxo
Part 16: Case Study 2 (Dramatic Reading) https://youtu.be/GBIAd469vnM
brownrottger
LibriVox Admin Team
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Joined: May 11th, 2021, 5:00 pm
Location: Westford, Massachusetts USA

Post by brownrottger »

Alyx wrote: September 27th, 2022, 2:40 pm Hey, my name is Alyx and I want to hone my skills at voice over and get feedback to improve my sound, acting, and whatever else I need to improve.
I have made a couple dozen youtube videos of voice over for an online comic I like but I think I'm ready to do more professional stuff and want to see what I need in order to get a job doing this sort of thing.
I'm honestly super nervous that I don't have what it takes or that I don't have the strength to follow through on my dreams but I'm gonna take it one day at a time and have fun with it. My voice is relatively high for a male so I can't sound deep and bass'y for car commercials or anything but my hope is that as I volunteer here I can sorta find my niche.
Hi Alyx! Welcome to many people's favorite addiction! Check this thread out viewtopic.php?f=25&t=28949 if you have any doubts. I hope you will consider doing a chapter, or many, in one, or all, of the three books listed below which you can access by clicking on the links below!
Best,
Christine
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