Holiday Hats

I work in a fun office. That's not to say that all day long we do nothing but joke around - we work hard at what we do, and we do it damn well - but we all have a decent sense of humor and, no matter what else is happening, we can count on a few laughs each day. I work with a good bunch and I'm glad I know them.

One of our recent office traditions here at Marketing Messages is taking photos of the new hires in the official office holiday headgear (the stunning red number modeled above by Sarah.) It's always fun to drag these photos out around this time of year and have a laugh at them. That's what I'll invite you to do in just a moment. First, though, I have to tell you about the newest member of our team.

Diana Peters (she does voice-overs and production) is a hoot. We're all fast with a comeback around here, and she's as quick as they come. Most of us have at least one screw loose - some of us (*cough* DAN *cough*) have ALL of our screws loose - and she fits in that regard. When we told her she had to have her photo taken with the holiday hat, she not only agreed immediately, but the following day she brought in her own version of a holiday hat and had some of us pose for pictures wearing that. I hope she sticks around for a long run with us.

After we took photos with the new holiday hat, we came into possession of yet another one. One of us won it in some sort of raffle. And so we took photos of some us wearing that one, too. So, if you see the same person in three different hats, that's why.

Anyway, here are some employees of Marketing Messages, both past and present, wearing the various holiday hats.



Happy Holidays From All Of Us Here At Marketing Messages!

Some Old Words, Some New Music

[This is a partial repeat of a post from April. You'd think, since I haven't posted anything at all to this blog in quite a while, I'd have some original material for you. Well, the words are mostly taken from an earlier post - a few small edits, here and there - but where I'll point you to at the end will be all new and shiny! So, if you think you've read this before, either you did or you have a cognitive disorder and should see a doctor. Meanwhile, though, the important NEW stuff is at the end, so skim down there if you're that sort of a person.]


My apologies for leaving you without new material for a while. The reason for the long time between posts is that I've been working on making our company website better.

[Wow. I'm such a slacker, I've re-posted a piece wherein I told you I was a slacker back then!]

Now, I'm not a techie, even by the wildest stretch of anyone's imagination. At one time - and not too long ago, when you consider the entire history of mankind - I actually believed that "HTML" was pronounced "hittamill". So, I haven't been writing code or actually constructing anything. What I've been doing, with help from others concerning the technical end of things, is populating our latest version of the website with selections from our music library.

I'm going to send you there at the end of this, to listen to some of the new selections I've chosen to offer our clients, but first I want to explain exactly why we offer music on our website.

You see, we deal in both music and voices, for use in telephony applications. We offer these services individually or in combination. For instance, if your company needs to prompt callers through a menu of choices, making their interactions with you go quickly and smoothly, you can purchase stand-alone voice prompts from us. If, instead, you wish to enlighten your potential customers concerning what your company has to offer, by way of sales or specials or new goods, you might order a combination of voice and music, which we call Messages-On-Hold. You can choose to have that play on your phone system whenever customers are put on-hold for a minute or two. Or, you can order Music-On-Hold, which is simply nice music, chosen by you from our music library, that entertains your customers while they wait.

Music-On-Hold, to my way of thinking, is a much nicer option than having your customers wait on-hold with silence for their only companion. If all you offer your customers is silence, they're never quite sure if you're actually going to come back on the line at all. At least, if music is playing, they'll know they're still connected. In addition, most of your callers will probably find the music quite pleasant. Some may actually be disappointed when you come back on the line, bemoaning the fact that they didn't get to hear the end of the tune that was playing.

(OK, I'll grant you those people may be nutjobs. But, if you have to deal with nutjobs, why not make them happy nutjobs by giving them good music to listen to? It will certainly make your job easier than if you just leave them to stew in silence.)

I'll give you the link to the new music in a moment. Before I send you on your way, however, I'll answer a question that some of you may have been thinking: Why should I pay for your music when I can just play the radio over the phone, or perhaps some CDs, while my customers are on-hold?

The simple answer is that it's illegal to play the radio or CDs over the phone. ASCAP and BMI, music licensing agencies, vigorously pursue criminal copyright complaints, and if you play CDs or a radio over the phone, you are, in effect, stealing their product. You can be hit with a fairly hefty fine if you're caught and prosecuted. Meanwhile, our music is fully-licensed and legal for you to do with as you please, once you purchase it. And our prices are extremely reasonable, especially when compared to what you could be paying ASCAP and/or BMI should you be hit with fines.

Anyway, go HERE and you'll be able to listen to some of the new music I've chosen to highlight from our library. Of course, we offer 16 distinctly different categories of music for use in productions - that's 4 more than the last time I talked about our website! - so feel free to roam around amongst the various categories and listen to whatever strikes your fancy.

(Of course, if you don't like having your fancy struck - it can be painful - then just go on your merry way and I'll see you next time around. You'll be missing some dandy tunes, though.)

(Those categories marked *NEW* or *UPDATED* are just that. They have been introduced or modified in the past couple of weeks, thus why I felt it would be good to re-print this piece and give you the opportunity to cruise our website once more. There are even two other categories that may be new to you, but weren't actually added so recently as to warrant calling them "new" by this time. I'd offer you prizes for guessing which ones they are, but I'm actually on my Thanksgiving vacation as you read this and won't be around to settle the fistfights that are likely to break out during a competition to be the first one to answer correctly. There are no prizes FOR YOUR OWN GOOD.)

(Hey, Dan, do you think they're buying that? I couldn't just come out and say I'm a cheap son of a b... This thing is still ON?!? Oh, heck...)

So Long, Sarah!

In a place with as much talent on the roster as Marketing Messages, there will inevitably be some turnover. This week, we lose Sarah Colvin.

(If I had said, "...there will inevitably be some turnovers", then we'd be discussing Sarah Lee. We aren't, though, and it's a shame, too, because then I could break out my collection of baking puns.

Oh, what the heck.

I used to be a pilot in a bakery. I'd take the bread from one corner and pilot in another. I quit that job, because I got sick of the dough. I decided to loaf for a few months. It was a half-baked idea. As cash became scarce, I became crusty. Donut always seem to go you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone? Ah, I've always been a gluten for punishment...

I went to a bar and got pie-eyed. Since I was short-stacked, how did I buy the rye? The money was stollen. I lifted a guy's roll. I know it was wrong, but I kneaded it.

I saw a tart at the end of the bar. Nice buns. I suggested we go back to my place and get frosted.

Her eyes glazed. She said, "You're the batarde who robbed my brother Pita! The yeast you could do is not cause us more pain! Anyway, I know you batter your wife!"

I was going to give her a pizza my mind, but she was right. I was a crumb. I decided I'd be leaven her alone. Maybe later, after she cooled off, I'd send her some flours.

And so on.)

Anyway, we're losing our Sarah. Not completely - she'll still be doing voice work for us - but her presence in the office will be sorely missed.

When she came to us, she had previously been a newswriter/reporter and morning anchor for Ocean 104.7 on Cape Cod. Now, she's leaving us to become News Director for all four stations that Cape Cod Broadcasting operates. It's something of a dream gig for her, and nobody here would begrudge her the opportunity to pursue such a plum.

(Oh, hell, we'd all sabotage it in a minute, if we knew she wouldn't find out and it meant she'd be staying with us.)

Her main on-air job will be morning drive news anchor on 99.9 WQRC, with live news on the half-hour from 5:30 until 9. The other stations involved, aside from the previously-mentioned Ocean 104.7, are:

Cape Country 104 (actually, 103.9, but that's the way they are in radio - slimy liars! Are you sure you don't want to stay here, Sarah? We'll always tell you the truth...)

WFCC Classical 107.5 (What's Beethoven got that we don't? Dan and Rich will take on Beethoven and Brahms, in a tag-team match, any day of the week! And I guarantee they would never Bach down! We know how to conduct ourselves. We would hardly quaver at the thought of the entire staff waltzing down there and kicking bass! Well, okay, that last one doesn't really work, but I was going for baroque.)

Sarah is intelligent, good-looking, a hard worker, and - most important - utterly unembarrassable. I think Hutch and I will miss her the most. This is because we could be filthy old men in her presence and she wouldn't bat an eye. As a matter of fact, she joined in, more often than not. Got to love that in a woman. Got to love that in anybody.



Friday is her last day with us. I don't know if I can Handel it. I'll probably go get blintzed.

Asparagus = Cigarettes

My job at Marketing Messages calls for a vast number of differing skills. I do voice-overs, of course, but I also produce and engineer recording sessions involving other voice-over professionals; I edit recordings; I mix recorded voice with music for our Messages-On-Hold; I put together music-only (Music-On-Hold) productions; and a few other more peripheral duties (shipping, drinking coffee, swearing.)

I mentioned editing and mixing. Those are the two jobs that occupy the greatest amount of time on our schedule, and everybody on the production team performs these tasks at one time or another. We use more than one editing platform (for instance, ProTools, Adobe Audition and Sound Forge, to name a few of those most often used) and, of course, it pays for us to know as much as possible about what can be done within each editing platform. So, we sometimes play around with different functions in order to familiarize ourselves with them, in case we should need that knowledge for a future job.

One of the cooler - or, at least, odder - functions available is the ability to reverse a recording.

Some of you are old enough to remember the furor over reversed recordings during the 1960's. Rumors of Paul McCartney's death came about because of "evidence" heard in some Beatles recordings. Supposedly, such things as "Paul is a dead man" and "Turn me on, dead man" could be heard when certain song segments were played backwards. More recently, performers as diverse as Pink Floyd, Judas Priest, Queen, and Slayer have been accused of using "backmasking" as a way of promoting unseemly and anti-social behaviors on the part of their fans.

(For more on backmasking in popular music, please see the excellent Wikipedia article on same.)

However, for our purposes here, let's put aside conjecture about the passing of quite-obviously-alive British musicians and other such nonsense. We experimented with backwards recordings because it was a way to familiarize ourselves with our recording tools, and because it presented us with interesting vocal exercises that might increase our proficiency as script readers.

Also, it was great fun.

Let me give you some examples. To begin, I've written a short pithy play about the eternal struggle of feline and canine in regards to man, entitled "Cat Dog".

CAT DOG

Setting: The South Of France During The Time Of Napoleon

Cast (in order of appearance)

Cat ................................ Sarah Colvin
Man ................................ Jim Sullivan
Dog ................................ John Hutchinson

[forward recording - Cat Dog]

Now, I'll reverse the recording.

[reverse of previous recording]

What we would then do was practice saying the reversed versions of the words until we felt we had them as close as possible to what we had been hearing on the reversed playback. Then, we would record ourselves saying those reversed words, such as we've done here...

[forwardly-recorded reverse of Cat Dog]

... and, finally, we would reverse that recording to see how close we got to the originals.

[reversed recording of forwardly-recorded reverse Cat Dog]

As you might imagine, it was not only a learning experience, but also involved us cracking up quite a bit. There's just always something comically askew with the final product, no matter how good a job is done in mimicking the backwards speech.

Now that you know the process involved, I'll play you a longer example, entitled "I Like Chinese Food". Along with my co-workers, Sarah and Hutch, I've voiced some words and whole sentences, reversed those, practiced saying them backwards, then recorded the backwards pronunciations, reversed those... well, here's an example of the entire process strung together in one continuous piece.

[I Like Chinese Food!]

We indulged in this sort of silliness quite often for a short while. As I say, it really helped us to learn more about the recording processes and it also trained us, as speakers, to verbalize odd constructions, which in turn made us less likely to stumble on unusual words or local pronunciations that appeared in actual scripts.

The weirdest thing we ever encountered while doing this was finding out that asparagus equals cigarettes. That is, when you record someone saying "asparagus", and then reverse it, the person is then saying "cigarettes". And if you record someone saying "cigarettes", then reverse that, the person says "asparagus".

Don't believe me? Take a listen.

[Asparagus? Cigarettes! Cigarettes? Asparagus!]

We all found it incredibly odd that something so healthy for you, when spoken and then reversed, could become something so hideously bad for you. It literally was an example of the reverse of a word being an actual reverse of it, healthwise.

When we discovered this, we all thought it would be incredibly funny if we found out that a whole bunch of other words, when reversed, would also be the reverse of the original word in a moral or health sense, but, alas, we've never come up with another that is so startlingly clear (although the fact that "spare ribs" is the same backwards and forwards is pretty interesting.)

If you have the ability to do reverse recordings, and you come up with a funny one, please send it my way. I'd love to hear it.

And that's all I've got for you today. Having completed this, I'm now going to do what I usually do after I finish writing. I'm going to go outside and smoke asparagus.

See you soon.

Locked In

I've got to tell you a short funny story. Since it happened at work, I figure it's fodder for this blog. First, though...

Marketing Messages!

Music-On-Hold!

Excellent Digital Announcers!

(That should keep our marketing guru satisfied. He told me, when I started this thing, that having links to our website was important. Usually, the links I include are legit, in that they're pertinent to the story I'm telling, but I can't figure out any other way to jam them into this, so there you go, Anthony.)

OK, the story.

I'm usually the first person into the office each morning. And the first thing I do each morning is disarm our alarm system. It's controlled by a keypad, and there are motion detectors throughout the office. As soon as anybody enters the office, it starts beeping - if it's armed. You then have about 15 seconds to enter the correct code. If you fail to do so, the alarm will go off in earnest, the alarm company will be notified of an intruder, police will come screeching up to our door, and all hell will generally break loose (but you won't, if you're a burglar.)

Now, as the first person into the office each morning, I'm generally among the first to leave, too. On occasion, however, I'll have a dinner date with MY WIFE later in the evening, or perhaps I'll be going to a Sox game with my cousin, or maybe even a concert with my good buddy and softball teammate, Fast Freddy Goodman (our faves are AC/DC, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple, just in case you have any extras.) On those nights, I might hang around the office after 5pm and do some extra work or (more likely) write a blog post, such as I'm doing now.

My boss, Rich Snider, tends to arrive to the office a half-hour or so following me, and will usually still be working hard when I say my good-byes.

Once, perhaps four or five years ago, I was in my studio around 6pm, an hour after my usual quitting time - actually doing some work, too, I might add - and the only other person remaining in the office was Rich. Unfortunately, he was unaware of my presence. He left for the evening. Thinking he was the last one out the door, he shut out the lights, locked the door behind him, and armed the alarm.

Now, my memory is a bit fuzzy as to how that situation resolved itself, but I seem to remember that what happened was that Rich got down the stairs and outside, but then saw my car in the parking lot. He returned upstairs, unlocked the door, disarmed the alarm, and we both had a good laugh. In any case, during the intervening years, every so often he's joked around about locking me in - pretending I've already gone home and then saying out loud, "I guess Jim isn't here! I'll lock up now!", at which point my part in the play is to give out with mock indignation and sputtering, and tell him "Hey! Don't do that again! I'm still here!" (or, perhaps, say, "I'm not dead!" like the guy in Monty Python's Holy Grail.)


Good clean office fun; we both laugh and then go about our business. Except...

This past Tuesday, I'm meeting MY WIFE in Coolidge Corner, Brookline, to attend a book reading by an author. The reading won't start until 7pm, so I'm hanging out at the office until 6:15 or so. By 5:30, Rich and I are the only two left in the office. I'm sitting in my studio, at the computer, and I hear the unmistakable sound of our front door lock clicking. I turn around and see that all of the office lights are out. He did it again, for real.

The thought came to mind, though, that perhaps he was just playing the joke again, this time adding the sound effects and lighting to really get me. So, I waited a few seconds, then said, "Hello?"

No answer. No giggle at my expense.

So, now I know it's not a joke. The next thing I think is, "Rich will see my car in the parking lot and come back up, unlock the door, disarm the alarm, and we'll both have a good laugh."

I waited a minute, then two. Nope. He's gone. Now what do I do?

Well, as I said, there's about a fifteen second delay between the motion detector sensing your presence and the alarm actually signaling the authorities, so I know I have that amount of time to go from my office, to the keypad, and then enter the security code to deactivate the alarm. My office is maybe 25 or 30 feet from the keypad, so I think I can cover that distance within 15 seconds! Just to be on the safe side, I run as quickly as my old catcher's knees will carry me. No problem. The alarm started beeping, but I entered the code, it was then no longer armed, and I returned to my office.

The next morning, I told Rich what had happened. He was shocked that he had done it again, but we had a decent laugh about it. And he thought that was that.

However, our office manager, Kim, had other ideas. She made the following poster and plastered it on our front door so that Rich would be sure to see it next time he went outside.



Rich saw it, he laughed, everybody else had a good laugh when they saw it, and that was the end of the ribbing we gave to Rich about the incident.

Except, of course, for broadcasting it to the world via this blog.

See you soon.

Why My Job Is Never Boring

Much of what I do - recording voice-over artists, mixing Messages-On-Hold and putting together Music-On-Hold productions, or editing Auto-Attendant Messages, for example - is somewhat repetitious work. What I mean to say is that the general tasks are the same from job to job. And, if I constantly worked with the same client or talent or music, the routine could easily become mind-numbing.

However, one of the really good things about my work here at Marketing Messages is that we have a great variety of clients, a large roster of voice talents, and an interesting library of production music. The particulars of each job are rarely the same. They change often enough to keep my mind engaged and also give me some fulfillment in an artistic sense.

Artistic? Yes. When I put together a Messages-On-Hold production, for instance, clients often leave it up to me to choose suitable background music, matching it to the product being offered, the voice talent used, the pacing of the script, and so on. I usually decide how much time will be given to the music between speech segments, as well as the mixed level of the voice vis-a-vis the music. Does that fade-in sound right, or could it use some tweaking? Is that bit of instrumentation - a cymbal crash, perhaps - interfering with the speech? This is a longer production, and it requires three separate songs, so what three will mesh well together? All of these things are artistic choices, and I really dig it when I have a small puzzle to solve.

Of course, the voice talents are numerous and their sound varies greatly. We have some superb sets of pipes on our roster. All of our talents, aside from bringing their individual styles to the table, present differing levels of challenge during the recording and editing processes. As engineer during some of their recording sessions, I again get to make artistic choices, asking for a re-take to emphasize certain words or to get a pronunciation just right. And, during editing, I remove breaths, tighten spaces, boost or decrease volume levels, and perform many other small tasks that engage me creatively.

Another interesting thing is that I'm not always working with a talent whose first language is English. We do many recordings in foreign languages, and those present their own unique challenges for me.

(The foreign-language talents are interesting enough to be a post of their own. They will be, someday soon. Keep an eye out for it.)

Since our client's products vary greatly, there's often something interesting, fun, or quirky to latch onto within the actual script. Check out this listing of some of our clients:

A.A.R.P.
A. D. P.
AIG Insurance
Air Products Healthcare
Atlantic Bank of New York
Au Bon Pain Restaurants
Avaya Business Communications
Avery Denison
Bank of America
Bed, Bath & Beyond
The Boston Herald
Burt’s Bees
Children's Hospital Boston
Coldwell Banker
Congoleum Corporation
Corning Bioran
Cox Communications
Dairy Farmers of America
Decision One Mortgage
Del Monte Foods
Dick's Sporting Goods
Direct Marketing Association
DHL
Direct Tire
Electronic Data Systems (EDS)
E. M. C. Corp.
Ford Motor Company
Freightliner/DaimlerChrysler
Fuji Film
G.E. Global eXchange Services
Hilton International Hotels
The Hartford Insurance
H.S.B.C. Credit
Hong Kong Electric Co. Ltd.
John Hancock Insurance
John Deere
Kaiser Aluminum/Tennalum
Lexmark International
Liberty Mutual Insurance
Lucent Technologies
Marriott International
MBNA America
McKesson Pharmaceuticals
The NASDAQ
Parker Hannifin Corp.
Partners HealthCare Systems
Pepsi-Cola Bottling Group
Philips Lighting
Publix Supermarkets
Raytheon Corporation
Remington Arms Company
Rockwell Collins
RSA Security
Sears Auto Stores
Smithkline Beecham
Sony Electronics
Swissôtel
Texaco, Inc.
Timberland Footwear
U. S. Tennis Association
Toys-R-Us
Travelocity.com
Viacom
WebMD.com
Western Union

That's quite a varied clientele, wouldn't you say? And we have thousands of other companies for whom we do work (over 3,500 total.) I'd have to be brain-dead to not find at least something interesting from day-to-day.

And, on top of all that, the people who work with me here in the office are, without a doubt, the most versatile and entertaining group of humans with whom I've ever had the pleasure of sharing space. But, I told you that not too long ago.

OK, I've got to stop now. If I keep on writing like this, about how great my job is, my boss might get the idea that I'd be willing to do it for a lot less than he's currently paying me. That's an artistic choice I'd rather he not make.

See you soon.

Fighting Out Of The Blue Corner, At 187 Pounds...

One of the things I've had to do on occasion, as a voice artist, is audition for a client. This is a relatively painless procedure - until they tell me that I'm not right for the part, at which point I break down in tears and contemplate suicide.

Just kidding. If there's one thing you need, as a performer of any sort, it's thick skin. If you can't take rejection - and sometimes for no apparent objective reason - you'll wind up as a basket case. I'm not saying that I'm utterly immune to criticism, but I've certainly had to become more so since entering this business.

Recently, a Marketing Messages client, RINGSIDE, placed an order for some new voice prompts.

(I think that may be a personal best for links in one sentence.)

RINGSIDE sells equipment for boxing and other combat sports. When they placed the order, they were leaning toward another talent on our roster. He wasn't a bad choice, but I've been a fight fan for many years, and my Dad was a boxer while in the navy and had a handful of professional fights afterward, so my doing some work for this boxing-related firm was something I really desired. And, aside from any personal considerations, I felt that my voice was perfect for the gig - a strong male voice, low baritone/upper bass register. Thus, I asked if I might be considered for the work rather than the other fellow.

(I feel I should point out that this wasn't a case of my undercutting another talent for personal gain. My getting the job would not affect my monetary situation. I'm on-staff at MM, and there would be no extra income accruing to me. I wanted the job for personal reasons only.)

So, in order to give the client an idea of how well I could perform for them, I sent them a demo of myself reading one of their telephone greetings. Two demos, actually. I gave them a read in what would be considered my normal delivery and then one in a bit more of an upbeat style. Here are the two now, if you'd like to listen to them yourself.

Sample #1 - Normal

Sample #2 - Upbeat

And I'm happy to report that I was not reduced to tears and made to contemplate suicide in this instance. After listening to my demos, they chose me to do their work!

(Which read did you like? They preferred the upbeat read, so I did all of their prompts in that style.)

See you soon.

Multi-Talented

"Talent" is another term for an on-air professional in radio or TV, as well as for voice-over professionals. If you have the chance to listen in on the production end of a TV broadcast, for instance, you might hear the director say, "Cue Talent!", and that means, of course, that he wants the floor director (or someone else outside of the booth) to give the announcer a signal that he or she should begin talking. Likewise, when we schedule someone for a recording session, we always refer to that person as our talent; "What time is our Lithuanian talent coming in?"

One of the interesting things about Marketing Messages is that, in addition to the obvious populating of our actual talent roster with pros, we employ many current or former talents in our office positions. They do things such as production of recording sessions, editing of voice files, script writing, and other tasks that benefit from trained ears and real-world experiences.

My office/studio is surrounded by talents.

As I sit here at the computer, Dan Nelson is in the office to my left. His past experiences include some on-air work in radio, but one of his major strengths is as our "go-to guy" on technical issues. He probably knows more about the mechanical aspects of recording than the rest of the office personnel combined, and that's not a slight to the rest of us. He just truly enjoys that aspect of his work and takes great pride in being the best he can be at it.

In the office to my right sits John Hutchinson. John, or "Hutch", originally hails from England, but he hit these shores quite a while back and found great success as a disk jockey. He's had gigs in St. Louis, Tucson, Miami, Boston and New York (where he was David Lee Roth's studio producer and co-host), as well as his original hometown of Birmingham in the UK. He's also had a few parts in movies and TV commercials. Aside from his work in broadcasting, he has a BA in sociology, and has worked as a youth counselor and in educational exchanges. Wonderfully generous man, great sense of humor. I've only given you a bare-bones listing of his accomplishments. He's been in broadcasting far longer than some of the current crop of DJs have been alive, and would still be outworking 98% of them if he wasn't sick of battling some of the slimy folk on the business end of radio.

Sarah Colvin sits directly behind me. She spent quite a bit of time working in news down in the Cape Cod area, Ocean 104.7 and WQRC. She still has that same type of distinctive delivery when doing one of our scripts. In addition to many aspects of recording, editing, voicing, etc., her talents also extend to photography. She has had her work published in a number of places. For instance, if you go to her blog, you can see where some of her recent work has appeared in print.

I'm continually impressed with the skills I see displayed by the people with whom I work, and not just by those of us who call ourselves "talents". The folks who don't do voice-work are just as talented; maybe even more so. There's not a single person in this office who doesn't have some other amazing skill they could fall back on if worse came to worse.

Take our office manager, Kim Gorton. She's a nice person to work with - pleasant, intelligent, all that good stuff - but she also has a pilot's license. Isn't that cool? Nice to know you could just fly off into the sunset if need be.

Rich Snider is the main man here. Without his work, we'd all have blessed little to do. He's the company's leading salesman and he works damned hard at it, too. I respect his work greatly. My Dad was a fine salesman, so I know how hard that work can sometimes be. And I sure as hell know that I have little talent in that area myself. Anyway, aside from being a swell salesman, Rich is also - like Sarah, mentioned above - an avid photographer. His specialty is the landscape; nature shots and such. Want to see some superb outdoor photography? Check out Rich's site.

Aside from the myriad of radio voices, actors, singers, and other entertainment types who have been employed here, other folks I've worked with in this office have been, mostly in their spare time, trained paramedics, working musicians, professional nannies, schoolteachers, computer programmers, elected officials, instructors in religious education, and major league lacrosse players (I'm not kidding. One of our current roster talents once played lacrosse in a now-defunct professional league.)

It's all pretty humbling to have "softball bum" be your major claim to fame while in the midst of such people.

See you soon.

Editing Voices

A few days ago, I was working on a production for a client of ours, a place called Small Engine Warehouse, and it occurred to me that it might be a good one to share with you, in order to show some of what's involved in bringing one of our productions to completion. I won't give you every detail, but some highlights may prove interesting.

First, here is the script from which our voice talent worked, and then the production order I referred to during my work. Please click onto them for enlargement, if needed.




You'll notice the specs - what sort of machine the client has, what sound file is needed in order to be compatible with that equipment, who the voice talent is, the name of the background musical selection chosen by the client, the approximate timing of breaks between speech, etc.

My editing platform will be different for different specs, and the medium used for the finished products will, of course, also vary. Having worked with most of the voice talents for many years, I know what pluses and minuses each one brings to the table - variables such as breath control; whether or not there may be multiple takes for me to listen to and then decide which one I like more; regional pronunciations which may effect certain words; and so on.

I see that the script was written by Hutch, one of our writers, from talking points supplied by the client. It's a good script - clean, well-written, grammatically correct, and should supply little problem for Scott, the voice talent.

Now, I'll give you a sound file to listen to. This is Scott's unedited read of the first paragraph.

FIRST PARAGRAPH, UNEDITED

Pretty good read. He invests it with proper emotion, energetic but not over the top. His voice is well-modulated and pleasant. I can use this as is, right?

Wrong. Listen carefully to it, with a critical ear. There are a number of breaths that will have to be removed before it meets our standards. Also, he does make one small mistake in the read. Did you catch it? If not, listen again.

FIRST PARAGRAPH, UNEDITED

The mistake is this: At 17 seconds in, Scott says, "... and have over 25,000 small engines in stock at all times." The script actually said, "... and WE have over 25,000 small engines in stock at all times."

Granted, the "WE" could be understood from the previous part of the sentence, but we always try to give the client exactly what the script says. I'm not saying we're perfect - once in a great while we prove our humanity, as Scott just did - but we have an excellent track record overall. And we think that one of our top selling points is our attention to details such as these.

So, my first job was to see if I could fix this mistake with an edit, rather than having Scott re-voice the whole thing. I scanned the script and saw that the second paragraph contained a sentence beginning with "We have..." Would it be possible for me to take that bit of speech from the second paragraph and then insert it between the "and" and the "over" in the first paragraph? As it turned out, yes. It was a small bit of fine-editing of which I'm justifiably proud.

UNEDITED SENTENCE, FOLLOWED BY EDITED SENTENCE

As I mentioned, the breaths had to be removed, too. Of course, removing the breaths is just the beginning. Each time a breath is removed, we have to make a judgment concerning whether to replace the breath with silence or just remove it and leave no gap. It's a matter of taste, in most instances. And there's not always a "right" answer. Sometimes, you want the flow to be casual, and sometimes you want it to be a bit faster. Mostly, you have to use your ear and then trust your instincts. If it sounds too stiff, or robot-like, you haven't gotten it right.

To give you an idea of how much work is involved in this fine-tuning (which, by the way, not all companies similar to ours do, or for which they may charge extra) listen to this mp3. It contains all of the breaths I removed from the first paragraph.

BREATHS

That's 14 breaths, just in the first paragraph. Scott's whole read had well over 100 which I ended up removing. In addition to excising the breaths, we also search out and remove extraneous little noises that emanate from the throat, nose, mouth, or perhaps from a slight defect in the talent's delivery (popping plosives - a tendency to give a bit too much air to letters such as "p" or "b") or even something as prosaic as an inadvertent kick to a microphone stand; anything which might provide unwanted clicks or pops in the final production.

Here, one last time, is the first paragraph unedited. Please listen again.

FIRST PARAGRAPH, UNEDITED

And here it is after removal of breaths and other unwanted sounds, as well as with the edit made to correct the small mistake in Scott's read.

FIRST PARAGRAPH, EDITED

Could we have gotten away without removing the breaths and correcting that mistake? Probably. Many companies would send it out to the client that way. We don't. We care about our work and we're proud of our work.

Finally, here is the completed Messages-On-Hold production that went out to the client. If you call Small Engine Warehouse in the near future, and end up being put on-hold for any reason, this is what you will hear.

MESSAGES-ON-HOLD

I hope this was educational and informative. I do take pride in my work.

See you soon.

Some Music For You To Listen To

My apologies for leaving you without new material for a while. The reason for the long time between posts is that I've been working on making our company website better.

Now, I'm not a techie, even by the wildest stretch of anyone's imagination. At one time - and not too long ago, when you consider the entire history of mankind - I actually believed that "HTML" was pronounced "hittamill". So, I haven't been writing code or actually constructing anything. What I've been doing, with help concerning the technical end of things, is populating our latest version of the website with selections from our music library.

I'm going to send you there at the end of this, to listen to some of the new selections I've chosen to offer our clients, but first I want to explain exactly why we offer music on our website.

You see, we deal in both music and voices, for use in telephony applications. We offer these services individually or in combination. For instance, if your company needs to prompt callers through a menu of choices, making their interactions with you go quickly and smoothly, you can purchase stand-alone voice prompts from us. If, instead, you wish to enlighten your potential customers concerning what your company has to offer, by way of sales or specials or new goods, you might order a combination of voice and music, which we call Messages-On-Hold. You can choose to have that play on your phone system whenever customers are put on-hold for a minute or two. Or, you can order Music-On-Hold, which is simply nice music, chosen by you from our music library, that entertains your customers while they wait.

Music-On-Hold, to my way of thinking, is a much nicer option than just having your customers waiting on-hold with silence for their only companion. If all you offer your customers is silence, they're never quite sure if you're ever actually going to come back on the line at all. At least if music is playing, they'll know they're still connected. In addition, most of your callers will probably find the music quite pleasant. Some may actually be disappointed when you come back on the line, bemoaning the fact that they didn't get to hear the end of the tune that was playing.

(OK, I'll grant you these people may be nutjobs. But, if you have to deal with nutjobs, why not make them happy nutjobs by giving them good music to listen to? It will certainly make your job easier than if you just leave them to stew in silence.)

Getting back to the delay in posting, I wanted to specifically do a piece concerning our Music-On-Hold, but I didn't want to publish it until I could send you to our brand-spankin'-new music pages, complete with super-duper new audio players embedded on each page. These new players should allow you to more-or-less instantly hear any musical selection you click onto.

(I'm presupposing that your computer isn't so ancient that it's powered by a hamster running on a wheel inside of it. If you've at least upgraded to twisty rubber bands, such as those found on balsa wood airplanes, everything should work just fine.)

Before I send you on your way, however, I'll answer a question that some of you may have been thinking: Why should I pay for your music when I can just play the radio over the phone, or perhaps some CDs, while my customers are on-hold?

The simple answer is that it's illegal to play the radio or CDs over the phone. ASCAP and BMI, music licensing agencies, vigorously pursue criminal copyright complaints, and if you play CDs or a radio over the phone, you are, in effect, stealing their product. You can be hit with a fairly hefty fine if you're caught and prosecuted. Meanwhile, our music is fully-licensed and legal for you to do with as you please, once you purchase it. And our prices are extremely reasonable, especially when compared to what you could be paying ASCAP and/or BMI should you be hit with fines.

Anyway, go HERE to listen to some of the newer selections I've chosen. Of course, we offer 12 distinctly different categories of music for use in productions, so feel free to roam around amongst the various categories and listen, at your leisure, to whatever strikes your fancy.

(Of course, if you don't like having your fancy struck - it can be painful - then just go on your merry way and I'll see you next time around. You'll be missing some dandy tunes, though.)

Notes From The Music Director

Get it?

Music Director? Notes?



OK! OK! I'll get to the point.

My work, as I explained in the first piece published here, involves doing voices for advertisements and telephone applications. If that were all that was involved, I'd be a very happy man indeed. I'm a big ham at heart. Give me a script to read and then let me imagine that many thousands of people will hear me? I'm in heaven.

However, that isn't all that I do. My actual workday usually includes much more of the stuff I don't like to do than the stuff I truly enjoy. I suspect that's how it is for most of you, and some of you certainly have jobs that are more gnarly than mine, so my complaining about life not being all lollipops and roses probably won’t endear me to you. Oh, well. I'm going to complain a little bit anyway, so you may as well pour yourself a cool drink, sit back, and make the best of it.

My actual job title at Marketing Messages is "Music Director". So, aside from doing voice work - and handling production chores on the recording sessions for other talents - I am in charge of choosing which music will be included in our production library, and thus available for use in our productions.

Unfortunately, this does NOT mean that I get to buy everything ever recorded by my favorite musicians and then sit back grooving on righteous tunes all day. All of our production music has been recorded expressly for use as production music. The licensing fees involved in acquiring the rights to Top 40 tunes, for use in our productions, would most definitely not be cost-effective for our clients or for us.

Another factor is that, since most of our work is for on-hold telephone applications, the music has to be instrumental. The majority of what I do ends up being heard while someone is on-hold, waiting for an actual live person to pick up the phone. While they wait, they hear a mix of our music and, intermittently, one of our voice talents extolling the virtues (and/or pitching the latest products/bargains) of the company they are calling. It can't include vocals because those vocals would cause confusion to the caller listening to our work. Listening to one person singing while another is talking isn't conducive to... well, anything, except a headache.

Now, if you go to our website and click on "select music", then choose a category from the drop-down menu, you can hear samples of the various types of music we have available.

Some of the music is decent enough for me to listen to outside of the job. To be honest, though, most of our clients prefer music that is non-threatening, non-jarring, easy-listening, and other hyphenated terms not usually associated with the type of music I like to listen to when not working. However, if you look around there a bit, you'll find that we have a fairly large selection of styles to choose from and, within those styles, quite a few samples.

I mention all of this as background for what follows.

***********************************************************************

Another part of my job is to recommend music to clients. For example, say they own a mortuary and they ask my opinion concerning what music of ours to use in their production. I might suggest a medium-tempo classical piece, nothing too somber but definitely not upbeat, either. Or perhaps some sort of pleasant and non-threatening new age stuff. I would NOT recommend that they use a Doobie Brothers sound-alike or something in the style of Fats Waller.

Usually, I ask them to go to our website and pick out exactly what they'd like from the many choices available. In that way, there will never be a production coming back to me with a request for different background music, which is what occasionally happens when they ask me to choose the music. I can usually gauge what's appropriate, but I can't always be sure of someone's tastes, so sometimes they'll request a change. Just because I think a Van Halen knockoff isn't right for a nursing home’s telephone message doesn't mean that someone from their PR department won't think that "Hot For Teacher" would be perfect.

We guarantee satisfaction with the finished product, so if they didn't choose the music to begin with, we will change it at no charge. Obviously, if they choose the music, it's best for all concerned. Especially me.

Now, here's an e-mail I received Friday from a client:

"I am particularly interested in religious or faith-based music. Do you have a catalog of music that you could send me?"

So far, so good. He has stated his preference and then asked a simple question.

My reply:

"We don't have a great deal of religious music in our on-hand catalog. There are a number of Christmas Carols, of course, but not so much of the non-seasonal variety. I can do a search to come up with something, but it would be helpful to know exactly what you'd like. For instance, I can specifically try to locate Gregorian Chants or even Buddhist Temple Music. So, what sort of religious music are you looking for? If you could give me an idea of the instrumentation desired, that would also be helpful. Thanks!"

His reply to me:

"Generic Christian and Judaism (separate, of course) and I would also be interested in holiday music."

Ooooookay. That doesn’t tell me much of anything. We've eliminated the Buddhist Temple Music, I suppose, but that's about it.

My reply:

"For the holiday music, your best bet would be to go to our website and give a listen. As far as the other selections are concerned, might you be interested in classical, i.e., aves, requiems, etc., by Mozart, Bach, Handel? I have a few of those. Otherwise, I come up with some ‘churchy’ organ pieces and a few chants for the Christian side of things. For Judaica, I find a fair selection of horas, Eastern European violin pieces, and a few klezmer-inspired wedding songs, among other things.

Anything strike your fancy? Something to narrow the search parameters for me?"

His reply:

"Whatever sounds good."

ROWRRRRFFFFFCRUNCHCRUNCHPTOOIE.

(That's the sound of me taking a bite out of the corner of my desk, chewing it up, and spitting it out.)

I think ALL of our music sounds good. I wouldn't have the music in our library if I didn't think it sounded good.

Now, if I send this guy an upbeat klezmer piece, and it turns out he wants something less joyful, then he's going to come back and ask for a reworking of his production. That will mean another couple of hours work which could easily have been avoided if he'd just been specific about what he wanted. And what if I give him a generic "Amazing Grace" type of song, for the Christian side of things, and he actually wants something more folky or more classical? Or perhaps Gospel would be more to his liking? And does he want piano, trumpets, guitar, clarinet, organ, tuba, sitar, accordion, vibraphone, or perhaps a chorus of kazoos?

I truly want to help our clients as much as possible, but it’s so hard to do so if they’re not specific about what they want.

What I feel like writing back to him is a rant asking him if he actually has a clue concerning what he really wants. However, I can't write to a client and tell him that. It’s not good for business and I’d regret having done so. So, instead, I told you about this. And I thank you for letting me get it off of my chest. One more day of sanity, thanks to you, and I'll gladly return the favor somewhere down the road.

But only if you're extremely specific about what you want.

I'm Not Just Saying That

Here at Marketing Messages, I perform a number of different functions. My actual job title is Music Director, but I’m also one of the people on-staff who engineers recording sessions. In addition, I occasionally do voice-overs for our clients.

When people ask me what I do for a living, and I tell them that I do voice-overs, they’re genuinely interested in hearing about it. They ask, "What have you done that I'd be familiar with? Have you done anything that I've heard?" My answer is, "I've probably done something that you've heard, but probably not much you'd be familiar with."

That’s not doubletalk. Most of my voice-over work involves telephone applications, so there's a decent chance they've heard my voice, but it's doubtful they’ll remember exactly where they heard it. For instance, I was the voice of the National Amusements/Showcase Cinemas chain of movie houses, in some 17 or 18 states. If you called one of those theaters - to find out when a certain show was playing, or for directions, perhaps – I was the guy you heard, in a recorded announcement.

Outside of Marketing Messages, I do some TV and radio spots, but only very sporadically. If I had to rely on that money to put food on the table, I'd have starved long ago. However, when you get placed on-hold and a deep baritone voice tells you interesting things about the company you're calling, while music plays in the background, it might be me you're hearing. If a male voice is instructing you to "Press One for Customer Service... Press Two for Shipping...” it could be me.

Sometimes, in the course of my duties, I’m asked to read a script concerning a product I know little about. For instance, I recently said this:

New technology and innovative techniques in the field of cosmetic procedures now produce enhanced aesthetic results in the areas of facial rejuvenation, contouring, skin youthening, eyelid beautification, nasal sculpturing, tumescent liposculpture, and radiofrequency laser photorejuvenation.

Of course, "youthening" isn't really a word, but I'm being paid to say it, so now it is! And do you think I could tell you even one salient fact concerning nasal sculpturing? Not even if you told me you were holding my mother hostage and you wouldn’t let her go until I did so. However, I sure do have the ability to sound like a board-licensed nasal sculptologist, and that’s why I get the medium-sized bucks. Tumescent Liposculpture? Sure, who wouldn't want that? It’s probably very good for the economy. Radiofrequency Laser Photorejuvenation? Absolutely. Had some yesterday. Tastes like chicken.

We’re an honest company. So far as I know, we’ve never done any productions which contained outright lies. There have been occasions, though, when I couldn’t have told you if what I was reading was the truth or not. For instance...

Do you know what the wearable computer and rugged mobile computer markets did last year? (Client Name) can keep you informed about industrial measurement and control with reports like Industrial Distributed Remote I/O and web-addressable distributed remote I/O, which will be a must have. Learn about the critical issues suppliers face as they attempt to establish competitive positions in next generation application segments.

Sounds entirely plausible to me.


Some of you may think that voice-over people, like big-time actors, are exorbitantly well-paid. I have no complaints concerning my salary here, to be sure, but when I do get the rare TV or radio job from a studio independent of Marketing Messages, I usually get in the neighborhood of $100 or $200, which is not exactly the ritziest of neighborhoods. I don't get residuals - that is, no matter how many times a spot airs, I don't get anything extra. Heck, I've done spots that are 5 years old and still airing, but the only thing I get when they show again is an ego boost.

And, insofar as a real ego boost? As I implied at the beginning, unless I tell someone what I do for a living, nobody really knows who I am. If I speak to a stranger, the best I can hope for, as far as fame is concerned, is a quizzical "Do I know you from somewhere?" look. Every so often, something clicks in his or her brain. They've heard the voice, but they never, EVER, know where they've heard it.

Well, this is beginning to sounds a bit like a whine now, and I really don't mean for it to come across that way. I generally enjoy my work, and I have a really good gig compared to some folks. It’s still a major kick when I'm not paying attention to the TV and I suddenly hear my voice on it. And it’s truly spooky when I get put on-hold and I’m talking to myself!

Anyway, the next time you get put on-hold, and you hear a male voice telling you "We're sorry to keep you waiting..." it might be me. And, if it is me, I really mean it. I’m just that kind of a guy!