Hello!

[mikepaquetteVO]

I'm new to VO but am looking to make a career out of it. LibriVox seems like a fantastic way to get in some practice while actually contributing something to society, and I'm looking forward to helping out!

While I am new to VO and audiobook recording, it isn't much of a leap. In the past I've been an on-air DJ (volunteer position / college radio) and I often read the ads or announced songs in some goofy character voice. I've been playing with accents and voices longer than I can remember, but only ever for an audience while I was on-air or for the few years where my kids wanted stories read to them. I worked sound (and lighting) for theater in high school and college, giving me a lot of experience around mics and audio equipment generally. As a computer hobbyist (well, and CompSci degree-holder), I taught myself basic video and audio editing years ago, but haven't done any of either on a regular basis - still, helps make Audacity feel familiar.

I am very curious to get some feedback on my voice. Of course most people don't really like the sound of their own voice since in recordings it loses all that nice in-skull reverb, but beyond that I'm trying to figure out if my default speaking voice (which is basically what I used for my 1-minute test) sounds good generally, or perhaps seems like a good fit for a specific type of book. I can use a variety of different tones / voices, but my default voice is of course the easiest as it requires no extra effort. To my ear, it doesn't seem like a good voice for, say, a horror novel, but it would be fine for something non-fiction or light. A lot of male readers of fiction seem to have a somewhat lower narrative voice - would that be preferable (I can drop mine a bit) or does my current tone hit the ear well for such a purpose? I explicitly *do* want constructive feedback, preferably now rather than finding out after I record hours of content! :)