Recording Voice Over at Home

1. Promo: a good voice over is a key component to an engaging video. You want to sound clear and professional, but how can you do that from within your own home? My course features tips on how to warm up and prepare for voiceover recording and how to improve your vocal performance. Also included is advice on your technical set up and editing your voice over. My name is Mary and I have seven years of experience working as a freelance video producer and designer. I hope my experience, knowledge and advice can help you record voice overs that captivate your audience is attention. 2. Warming Up: warming up before you record. A voiceover is necessary in order to loosen up your vocal cords for a smooth sounding recording. There are many ways people warm up to prepare for recording a voice over, and everyone is different. You contrive various tactics in order to get your voice prepared, including having a normal conversation with someone before recording. This can help you get into a more natural speaking voice. Tone Singing Singing helps you hit higher and lower ranges of sound. Don't record first thing in the morning or late at night. When you are tired, it comes through in your voice tickets. Hip From Morgan Freeman You on a lot. It relaxes and soothes your vocal cords. 3. Vocal Performance: vocal performance. The way you deliver the reading of the voiceover is important to enhancing the engagement of a video. Make sure to consider the tone of a script and put the appropriate emotion into the reading . Pay attention to a marked upward document. Put more emphasis on the marked upwards when you record the voice. Think about the intent or tone the script is trying to achieve as you read through the script, and you can continue to make notes within the script file as needed for your wrong reference. Is it a casual tone and upbeat advertisement? Is it an informative read or something more sad? Avoid sounding monotone. Remember to change your pitch and expressiveness throughout the recording. Focus on the words of the script and the emotion they are trying to convey. Pitch variation is key to delivering a more engaging sounding voice over, for example, saying something like, Sit back, relax and enjoy your vacation. When you focus on the emotion of each word, it can sound more like this. Sit back, relax and enjoy your vacation for recording a very happy line, actually smile when you were recording it, it's crazy, but it actually works, it helps bring a more upbeat sound to online. You really want to come across as happier. Here's another example. Millions of Americans are starving. Please donate today. Consider the tone and goal of this kind of sentence. You really want to emphasize Million's, since it's a shocking number starving, concerned, a little more downbeat and slower. Since that is, of course, a more serious and sad topic. And please donate Today can bring in the urgency and definitiveness that this is a matter that needs to be addressed today and not yesterday. So now it sounds more like millions of Americans are starving. Please donate today. Reading and understanding the goal and intent of the script first, especially if you didn't write it yourself can help you with your voice over delivery. 4. Technical Setup : technical set up, your recording location is extremely important. The room you're in should, of course, be a quiet location. Let people in your household. No, you are recording so you can avoid interruptions and background noise. Avoid recording in a large room. It's a bad idea, since there will be eco due to sound waves bouncing off of walls and hard surfaces. Record in a smaller room or even a closet, even if the room has objects and uneven surfaces. This can help lessen and break up the sound wave bounce, minimizing echo that could come through in the voiceover. Even a small room that is completely empty will still get some echo in your recordings from hard surfaces. Pad the room. You'll see soundproof padding used in professional voiceover and music studios. This helps break up sound waves and reduce echo when recording voice over at home. You may not have that luxury budget or space for setting that up, but if possible, you can use comforters over hard surfaces or noise control. Acoustic foam. I use foam that came from a computer delivery, so something like this thickness can work. Ah, good way to test the echo in a room is to clap your hands and listen to the echo it produces. Here's a picture of my set up so you can get an idea of what can work well for recording at home. I tried various areas in the house but found that my closet was the best spot. It may look strange, but it works for my microphone. I use audio Technica, 80 are 2100 USB cardio oId dynamic microphone. But there are many out there that can work. The cardio oId pattern reduces the pickup of unwanted sounds from the sides and rear. So when you are shopping for a microphone, this type is best for voice overs. Your microphone placement shouldn't be too far away or too close to your face when recording. As this will change the volume of the recording, test it out and find the right distance that works for you and you are set up 5. Editing & Noise Reduction: editing and noise reduction. I use audacity for recording voiceovers. It's free and fairly easy to use with a lot of features. Even for advanced editing, I'll just be covering some basics. In this lesson, you can change the volume levels, also called gain. By moving the slider on your recorded track. You most likely will want to do some noise reduction on your recording once you are finished with it, to remove any white noise that might get picked up in the recording like a computer home. To do that after your recording is done, hit record and say nothing. Just record the silence of your area for about 5 to 10 seconds. Once you do that, highlight that silent section. Go to effect noise reduction and click get noise profile. This is done to get a sample of audio that audacity can then filter out of the recording. Once you've done that, highlight your entire track. You can do this by pressing control a on the keyboard. Then again, click effect, then click noise reduction. This time, click OK, playback your track, and you should hear the white noise removed. If not, try playing around with the settings the sliders for noise reduction, sensitivity and frequency smoothing. Keep in mind this doesn't remove echo or breaths. It just removes any steady, subtle background noise that might be being picked up. When you're recording a voice over this way, you can get a cleaner sounding voice over how to avoid the dreaded P pop. The P pop is the noise of air blowing straight into the microphone. When you say words with the letter P in it, one thing you can dio is by a pop shield or filter to go over your microphone. Another thing you can dio is move your mouth to the side, slightly away or off center from the microphone. So you are not recording facing straight at the microphone. This way, Air is not directly blowing into the microphone. When you are recording, enhance your voice over with music, choose an appropriate song to go with your content. Consider the tone of the script and content, and what music can work well with it? You can drag the music file to your audacity project toe, add it as a second track and lower the volume levels on it so it doesn't overpower the voiceover When searching for a music track in a website like the YouTube audio Library, you can search by mood or genre to get the right music for your content. This site also includes a section for sound effects. Everything here is a royalty free or creative commons license. Thanks for taking my course. I hope these lectures can help you get started recording voice over from home. 6. 8 Steps to Creating a Video: 7. Skillshare: If you've enjoyed this class and want access to other classes on skill share, please visit my referral link to get two free months of skill shares. Premium membership a premium skill share membership unlocks unlimited access to all premium classes. Like my other courses. Create animated explainer videos with Pau tune produce, engaging whiteboard, animations and video scribe and freelancing on Fiverr super seller success tips. You also get access to thousands of classes taught by creators from around the world. No commitments, and you can cancel anytime. I hope you've enjoyed my course. Thanks again and good luck.