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.

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.)

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!