Optimizing Our Facility For Vocals (Not Just Voice Over)
At Voice Talent Online, we’re accustomed to providing the highest standards in global commercial voice over production, video localization, talent casting and associated audio production services.
One of our greatest strengths is our own voice over agency we have at our disposal, with our expert team able to access certified studios across the world to provide a high level of consistency every time they’re commissioned for a creative project.
Our post-production and editing skills are also of the highest quality, thanks not only to the tools at our disposal but because of the dedication, passion and knowledge of our sound engineers, no matter what they’re tasked with.
Commercial voice over is where our passion and ambitions lie.
But we managed to make different use of our tools, editing skills and voice over expertise recently, when we dipped our toes into the world of music production.
Tweaking Our Work-Flow for Vocals (Not Voice Over)
So we were surprised and excited recently, to receive an enquiry from a local musician – could he use our high-end voice over facility to lay down lyrics for his new track? ‘Why not?’!
And so it was last month, that we worked alongside local musician John Dennard Powell. 16-year-old John is an aspiring rap artist, driven to carve an identity and career in the music industry.
He sent us an original backing track and the lyrics to his song ‘Baby Girl’, which is a deep and honest reflection on a relationship’s growth and loss, and we were enormously impressed with its passion and honesty.
After chatting with John, we thought it would be a great one-off project for Voice Talent Online to delve into. We set up a booking and invited John into the studio!
Tech Specs
There he stood sealed inside 20k’s worth of vocal booth and equipment:
- isolated to a signalto-noise ratio comfortably surpassing -60dB (very quiet)
- soundproofed to an ‘RT60’ under 300ms (no detectable echo in the room)
- facing a Neumann U87 microphone, an aspiration of voice talents the world over
As he peered out of the heavy, triple-glazed window at his sound engineer, an observer might fear that the technical surroundings could stifle John’s first ever recording session. But with easy smiles and some quick come-backs, his music cascaded easily through.
Lessons We Learned Working With Vocals
From our point of view, working with John was a fun way to use our high-quality voice facility and audio expertise for the good of a local artist. It was a nice change for us; John was a pleasure to work with and it was rewarding passing some skills on to John to assist him in his future career.
For instance, we used some voice over production techniques to help make the lyrics sound natural and less polished. Our sound engineers also compressed and normalized the song to fill it out with that richer sound.
Video
With our strong track-record in video, we had a bit of fun shooting some situational booth video for the session, as well as extra footage nearbyfor some fun publicity! .
Back To Work!
The finished audio track can be viewed on our SoundCloud account and also through our Facebook account where we’re delighted to say it generated a lot of social activity for John, including lots of reshares.
In time it will be released commercially.
We’d like to extend our thanks to John for introducing us to the world of ‘grime’ and trying to tempt us into professional music. It was an entertaining and fun project for us to try but, sadly John, not enough to tempt us away from our commercial work! We’re not a label you know!
John we wish you the absolute best of luck in the future!!
You’re an inspiration!
We’re Voice Talent Online. We speak your language. Contact us today to find out more about our industry-leading multi-lingual voice over talents, casting, localization and audio production services today.