A short practice quote line from the Chronicles of Narnia:

― C.S. Lewis

Last week I saw a casting call that needed characters for a Minecraft (a video game) animation series. I love Minecraft and wanted to be involved, but there weren't any characters my age for me to audition.

So I messaged the host of the casting call and asked if he'd want any help with the audio. He messaged me back, and to skip some other chat that wasn't important, and he gave me a test.

He sent me a short, second long animation, and asked me if I could create a sound for it. So, I sent him a sound that would probably match the video. When I sent it, he said it didn't sound just right. Then I sent him a new one. He thought it was great! This is the final project:

In my previous post, I wrote that I auditioned for a project that needed a sound designer. Well, There's still no feedback from that (even though I was supposed to find out if I was picked or not a week ago), but a few days after I auditioned, I asked the director of TCE (the channel I voice act for) if he needed me to do any more voices. He said it'll be a while until more lines for me come in, but if I'm interested, I could script write or SOUND DESIGN (did you see that he said SOUND DESIGN??? Right over there!!). Maybe I got a little carried away... Anyways, I said I would do it, and he gave me a choice of 2 different projects I can start on! Either Darth Vader, or The Trigger. I told him I could do The Trigger, but he should have some back up in case I don't do it right. Then, he gave me a LOT of really cool sound effects! After working on it for a few days, I asked him what the deadline was. He said a few months. Then I knew I didn't have to worry too much.

The way I approached putting in sound is by making sure it wasn't too loud, and I didn't want it to overwhelm the narration because this isn't a complete audio drama. If I were to put sounds throughout the whole story nonstop, it would make it sound like the narrator was actually there, and not describing it.

Here's a small clip of the sound effects I put with a piece of the story:

I recently auditioned for a part of a sound engineer in a casting call called "Dandelion" - Student Short Film. There were 2 other auditions, and they were really good! What the person needed was someone to put together sound effects for a 2-minute short video. Though it's not paid, I thought I would audition for this because I like to put together sound effects sometimes and that if I get chosen, it would be a good experience for me, since I usually do voice acting and audio editing, and it's really short, so I wouldn't feel too pressured for a big project like that.

This was my audition:

Sometimes I think, what if Au had... This. If it had the things I think it should have, editing could be more than twice as fast. But of course, that would be pretty hard to make. But the things I had in mind are these:

• Make it so that if you select, for example, the word "um", and somehow process it throughout the episode (somewhat like the noise reduction effect), then select all the "um"s it can find, I could then delete it. But I can see an issue where if it selected all the "um"s, it could get mixed up with another word like "from", thinking the "om" from "from" would think it was an "um".
• Improve the noise reduction effect so that when it clears out the background noise, it can also take out the noise (as in white noise in the background) from the parts where the guest and or the host are speaking.
• This one isn't actually for editing, but recording (and Au might already have this option): be able to control the gain of the mic while recording.

For fun, I decided to take advantage of the effects in Adobe Audition. So, I recorded myself a bunch of times, then had fun changing it around, like making some parts stereo, or changing the pitch, or even making my voice echo. Here's the final "product":

This just shows how with technology these days, you can make really cool stuff with sound. There's also a site called Voice Changer where you can quickly run a recording through a process that you like, and it can do lots of really cool effects, and even customize and make your own! Just go to VoiceChanger.io.

I've mentioned Casting Call Club (or CCC for short), including my post right before this one, and it's a site where I can find over 1,000 casting calls, although unfortunately, less than 10% of them are actually paid. Even if there is a role that is paid (if you're there for the pay), most of the time it's going be $5-10. Sometimes I'll come across some that are actually pretty good (not that long ago, there was a videogame developer who needed some voice actors to play at least 10 roles, and was paying each actor $300 (except I wasn't in the age range of the characters)), and it's a very good place for practice. The projects that aren't paid, most of the time isn't worth it, mainly because anyone can host a casting call for free, so there are a lot of people who aren't very serious about their project, or who are, but end up giving up on it because they don't have enough time for it (mainly because either their work or school) . And most of the actors have really bad mic quality and aren't very good. But again, there are still some professional people there. And CCC isn't only for voice acting, it's also for singing, art, video editing, directing, producing, audio engineering , composing, and animating. But if you're starting any of those talents, I would totally recommend CCC, as it's very good for practice and getting started.

Last month I auditioned for a character on Casting Call Club, a site where I can audition for casting calls. I auditioned for a character (young Luke Skywalker), and they chose me. They then gave me the scripts for the character, and I sent my lines to them. They have a Youtube channel and make Star Wars and sometimes Marvel comic fandubs, and put sound effects and voices with the pictures of the comics. It's really cool, and if you want to see them, you can click here.

I've now played as 4 different characters for them, and they have a group chat with all the actors, the director, and the sound designers. It's been a great opportunity to connect with other actors and a good way to practice VO.

Recently I learned a very useful tool in Audition; the Noise Reduction Process. This came in very handy when editing a podcast and there's a lot of bad white noise in the background. Well, this effect saves the day! If I select a piece of white noise from an episode (it has to be only white noise by itself) then right-click it and click "Capture Noise Print", then select the whole episode (or wherever you want it to take out the white noise), then go to the "Effects" rack, then select Noise Reduction/Restoration > Noise Reduction (process), it'll lead me to the control panel where I take it out.

It should look like this:

Whenever I finish editing a podcast, I always run it through a program called "Auphonic", which will level out the decibel level, remove any weird hum throughout the podcast episode, and level out the stereo sound. We started using this program about 2 months ago. It's helped out a lot and especially helps out when some spots are quiet or other spots too loud. We've learned what helps is if we take out a little of the top part of the editor screen, it gets all of those annoying saliva sounds. I've also learned some new to do besides just editing a podcast, because one of my clients asked if I could get 2 excerpts from the episode so that she could use them to advertise on Facebook. That started about 2 weeks ago.

Also, I have another blog for my voice over (yes, that's another passion of mine that actually started me in editing by learning a lot about Audition), and the address is voiceofsimeon.posthaven.com. Hope you enjoy that blog too!

Not-so-recently I listened to a podcast about a radio drama me and some of my siblings like listening to, and they were interviewing an actor named Jess Harnell, Who plays as a main character in the show. I just have to say, he can do AMAZING voices! He's been in lots of movies including Cars, Transformers, Ice Age, Toy Story, Despicable Me, WALL-E, and lots more. I love all the different voices he does, including accents and impressions of people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Christopher Walken, and the Beatles. I especially love the voice he does for the character in the show; Wooten Basset.

A while ago, I was listening to one of my favorite singers; Peter Hollens. Peter is an acapella singer, which is singing using only your voice and without instruments. He has to record a lot of tracks, and in this video, he gives a little peek of how he records, and you can see that he uses multitrack to channel all of his recordings. Imagine how hard that would be without multitrack! This is an example of how useful and powerful multitrack is. I've also played around in multitrack in the software I use for editing (I always use waveform when I edit), and for fun, I put together a bunch of free sound effects I found online to make a scene.

You know at the end of an ad the voice actor always talk really fast, but too fast that they're not actually talking that fast? (I hope that wasn't confusing) Well, I finally figured out how to do that! Today I was editing a podcast, and the host was talking a little too slow so that she could be more articulate, but just too slow. So, I did some research and finally found how to make the audio faster! And the effect doesn't change the pitch of the voice. So it just made the audio faster without making it sound like the speaker was hitting puberty. Although unfortunately, I have to switch the audio from waveform to multitrack, there's probably a way to do it under waveform, which would make it easier, because I never edit in multitrack.

When I download podcasts, they'll, of course, be in a certain format. The three formats that I've come across of, are MP3, WAV (waveform), and MP4. My favorite format would have to be MP3 because it's the smallest file of them, and downloads fast. The WAV file was created by Microsoft and IBM. It's meant for storing bigger files, but the format is huge, so it takes forever to download a file if it's WAV. Last of all is MP4, which I think is pretty nifty because you can hold audio, photos, and videos with it, which WAV and MP3 can't do. A few times I've had to use this one, but the one I most have to use is WAV. It would be nice if I could download more MP3s, but that's just how the podcast episodes get sent to me.

If you have a podcast, you want to make it sound as good as possible. The better the quality, the more listeners. So, I've made a list of things to make your podcast sound better:

• Have a good microphone. If you have a cheap and low-quality mic, it'll pick up that annoying white noise that everyone knows and hates.
  
• Have a short 1-3 minute intro to the podcast so that if someone's listening to the podcast for the first time, they can get to know you or what the podcast is about.
  
• Have a podcast editor!!! You need someone to take out all that excess sounds, filler words, repeated sentences, etc.
  
• Write down on a piece of paper about what you're going to talk about so that you don't forget in the middle of the podcast.
  
• If you're interviewing, let your guest know what you're going to talk about and ask him/her beforehand.
  
• Have an outro so that your listeners know where to go to find out about stuff on your blog, or find out more about the guest speaker.

There are six different types of podcast formats according to Charli Prangley:

1. Interviews are podcasts where there's a host(s) interviewing their guest. Example podcast: Richer Soul
2. Conversational podcasts are podcasts where the host(s) talks about certain topics. Example podcast: The Tolkien Road
3. Educational podcasts normally have more than one host and center towards a certain topic that is educational. Example podcast: A Way With Words
4. Solo-casts are podcasts that center towards the podcast host and their experiences. Example podcast: Einstein Blueprint
5. Non-fiction storytelling are podcasts where the host(s) talk about real stories that have happened in the world around us.  
6. Podcast Theatre podcasts are basically radio drama but in podcasts. It would have sound effects and voice actors to make it a TV show, but video.

Some podcasts episodes are solo-casts, and others are interviews. It's a piece of cake to edit if it's solo, but interviews are a different story. Interviews are harder to edit because if one person needs editing, you don't want to edit the other person out. One of my clients is always interviewing, but thankfully, he always sends us the podcast episodes in a "Stereo" channel, which means that the host and guest are separated from left to right. How does this make it easier? Because in Audition (the program I use to edit podcasts) you can turn off either left or right. For example; if the host (who's on the left) has a phone call, and the guest (who's on the right) is speaking at that moment, I wouldn't want to cut out what the guest is saying, so I just silence the right side, and then I can get to business with the left side.

If you're editing, and you hear an "um", then, of course, you'd want to take it out. But one of the things that can ruin the edit, is if the sentence still needs it's "break". What I mean is that normally when people say "um", it means that they're thinking of what next to say, so they just blurt out "um". But when you take out that space, the listeners can hear/tell that something was cut out. Think about how robots would speak; they just say the words with no expression and no break until they finish their sentence. That's how it can sound if you don't clean out the "um" right. What's the secret? Replacing it with a nice (not totally silent) piece of sound that has nothing except the sound of the quiet white noise in the background of the person who's talking. That way, it sounds like the speaker is thinking silently, instead of the annoying "um".

A few days ago I ordered a pair of wireless Bluetooth MPOW headphones, and they just came in yesterday. They are excellent! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ five stars! You can connect them to your phone or computer by Bluetooth or just using an AUX cord. When it's connected to a phone, you can answer and decline calls by pressing a button on the headphones. It even has a mic, so when you're on a phone call, you can just talk through the mic, instead of having to be right next to your phone. But the best part about it (which was what I was looking for) is that it was very noise canceling. When I'm editing, there's always a lot of noise in our house (I have eight siblings, so you can imagine why it's always loud), and it's super distracting when I hear something that I think is coming from the podcast, but is actually my baby sister.  Oh! I forgot the very BEST part of it! It's...*drum roll*...COMFY! Yep, you know by how I emphasise it with CAPS, Bold, Italic, and Underscore that that is very important!

I recorded a short video showing how I edit, and what I take out, and how this helps professional podcasters sound nice and smooth.

https://soapbox.wistia.com/videos/yPqGTgz33U

Today I was podcast editing again, and when I was about to save the progress I had gotten so far, I noticed in the history rack (there's more about the history rack in one of my blog posts) it said that I had 225 edits! That's a lot, especially since I had only been editing for about an hour, and had edited around 20 minutes. So, that gave me the idea to talk about the average amount of edits it takes for a podcast episode. 

Through my calculations, the average amount of edits per podcast episode is about 700 edits. I work for someone who is better than the average amount, who's podcasts is normally around just 300 edits! That's what I call relaxing! But it's not always like that. One time I experienced a very tragic episode, scoring around 1200 edits! And that was a year ago, so I wasn't as experienced as I am now. But, after a LOT of hassle, my dad and I (if you didn't know, he helps out with the editing) were able to finish it. I must say, it opened my eyes to how bad the feature episodes could be. A few times we've experienced episodes almost as bad, but that's another story.

This is a simple showcase of the basic things you need to know when editing in Adobe Audition:

1. These are the tools for the spectral frequency display (see 2) to help you edit the little sounds annoying sounds.
2. The spectral frequency display allows you to view the audio more detailed, so, for example, if you delete the bottom part, then it would make the audio sound higher pitched (if the red/yellow is at the top of the frequency display, then it's higher pitch, and if it's on the bottom, then it's lower pitch).
3. This is the history rack, where it lists your previous edits. It comes in very handy when you make a mistake, and you want to go back and re-do it.
4. These are the controls for listening to the audio. First of the buttons is the "stop" button, then "play", then "pause", then go to the beginning, then go back a little, then go forward a little, then go to the end, then record (I didn't say it was just an editor program!), then repeat the selected audio over and over, and last, skip the selected audio.
5. This is the timeline, which shows you how many minutes/seconds/hours you are into the audio.
6. This is what I like to call the "pitch bar", and if you play the audio, a green, yellow, and red bar will start moving, and if it's green, that means it's quiet. If it's yellow, that means it's not too loud, and it's not too quiet. But if it's red, that means its off the pitch, and way too loud.
7. This is the marker rack, which shows you the list of markers (see 13) and options for them.
8. this is the frequency analysis, and I don't quite know what it does, but it's basically the pitch bar (see 6), but it's more advanced.
9. This is the adjustive amplitude panel, which can turn the audio higher and lower.
10. This is the file rack, which is the most important of all. This is how you open the files, delete files, save files, etc. As you can see I already have 3 different files in the program, and I have one selected (which is the one displayed in the picture).
11. These are two different settings. Right now I have it under waveform, where I can see the certain selected file. And then there's multitrack, where you can play multiple audio files at once, except it's not as advanced and detailed as waveform.
12. This is what I like to call the "help panel", where you have the File panel, Edit panel, Multitrack panel, Clip panel, Effects panel, Favorites panel, view panel, Window panel, and the real "help panel". I don't want to get into details of what all of the panels do, but maybe another time.
13. This is a marker, which is VERY useful, because if you hear something interesting in an episode, and you have to keep on editing, but you don't want to lose that spot, then you just leave a marker where it was, and you can even name it so you don't get confused if you have a whole bunch.
14. Last of all, this is a separate adjustive amplitude panel, for the separate editor called the "Preview Editor".

Hello! Simeon back again to talk about podcast editing. Yesterday I was editing a podcast, and the person being interviewed used a lot of "ums", which is pretty normal, except he used more "ums" instead of background noises, repetition, "so", etc. This made it kind of easy, but after a while, it can really get on your nerves!

I've experienced someone like this before (in fact, he was one of the hardest people I've ever edited!), who would literally say "um" or "uh" EVERY...TEN...SECONDS!!!...*Clearing throat* anyways, he was a big problem. My dad and I (who goes through the podcast after I edit it to clear out any excess noise) knew it would take forever to finish, at least a week! So, we decide to edit the first few seconds the host and the guest switched off from talking. And even though it wasn't tip-top shape, it was the best we could do.

Well, I guess that's it! (Yep, a super short one this time...only 142 words!)