Welcome to Voice Acting Mastery!
Greetings and welcome to Voice Acting Mastery, your home for insider information, tips and advice about how to become a master voice actor in the world of voice over! I’m your host, Crispin Freeman.
If you’re curious about me, you can check out my personal webpage where you’ll find my demos, resume, upcoming appearances and the classes that I offer in the Los Angeles area:
I decided to start this website in response to the the overwhelming requests I got from aspiring voice actors around the world who wanted to know how to break in to the world of voice over! While I offer a comprehensive set of classes on voice acting in LA, I had no way to reach my worldwide audience. Now I can!
I’m really looking forward to sharing my insights, tips, and experience with you. The first thing I’ll be doing is launching a podcast! I’m totally excited about having an opportunity to chat with you about all the different aspects of voice acting.
You’ll also have access to insider tips and tricks via my e-mail newsletter. Just enter your name and e-mail address into the box on the right, and you’ll get regular updates and useful information that you can immediately put to use. As a thank you, everyone who signs up for my newsletter will also receive a free audio download entitled: “The Top 5 Mistakes to Avoid in Voice Acting”. Trust me, you’ll find it insightful and useful!
Thanks for joining me! It’s great to have you here!
Might I say the Top 5 Mistakes was really helpful Crispin. It’s good to play pretend and be believeable when you’re voice acting the character. It’s great that type-casting is my friend not my enemy and knowing what my voice fits best. Voice acting is career whether you have to practice or work hard in order to be believeable and get paid if you do it right depending on the many takes of course right? I really don’t like it when I’m late when I was school or for my work I couldn’t stand it when I’m late. I always want to believe in myself sometimes just to boost confidence or my self-esteem just a little not to get over excited about it. But thank you Crispin Freeman for those fantastic Top 5 Mistakes. I had made myself a couple of notes here in my office like a summary to remember them by.
Thank you. I’m glad you found them useful.
I, too, found the Top 5 Mistakes audio quite informative. I’ll be making sure my daughter listens to it, as she is the aspiring VO artist in the family. Kudos to you, Crispin, for taking the time to put together such an extensive blog/podcast site and for having so many great, thoughtful responses to various questions. How on earth do you find the time? lol
I’m so glad you find the site and podcast useful! Time can be a challenging commodity to acquire! I do my best.
Thank you for the podcast Crispin Freeman. I’m now starting out in the career of voice acting and I wanted to find out what computer software do you use to audition from home. I’m using Audicity (free); that software is good to start off and practice correct? I also managed to get a Rode NT1 A Mic, Samson SR950 Headphones, Focusrite Pre-Amp, and KRK G3 5″ Speakers. The next step while practicing at home is to get voice & diction training and hire a coach to produce 4-5 demo reels. I just started Jan 1st 2014, how I am doing so far? What would you also suggest I work on to improve my skill?
Audacity is a perfectly fine program to use for doing auditions from home. It’s free and relatively straightforward.
Personally, I use ProTools, but that’s because I’ve been working in the industry for a long time and I do far more at home than just auditions (like producing a podcast!). However, ProTools is a very complicated program and is not necessary for doing high-quality recording. The quality of your recording is determined far more by your microphone and audio interface than by what recording software you use. I’m just more comfortable with ProTools because I’ve been using it for so many years and it’s the industry standard here in LA.
The Rode NT1 is a perfectly respectable large-diaphragm condenser microphone. It should work well for auditions from home. In fact, I think my early work in anime on Slayers was recorded on an NT1. I’m not familiar with your headphones, but they’re probably fine. Focusrite pre-amps are quite common. Some of them sound a little “dark” for my tastes, but they’re all of a professional grade. Just make sure you don’t make your recordings sound too bass heavy. KRKs are the second most common speakers I see in recording studios after Genelecs. Sounds like you’ve got quite a setup.
If you are just starting out, I would not say that your goal is to produce a demo. Not unless your skills are professionally competitive. Are they? If you’re just starting out, chances are they are not. Your first goal is to improve your skills until they are professionally competitive. Then it’s time to make a demo. Have you listened to episode 28 of the podcast where I talk about the Top 3 Demo Mistakes to Avoid?
Thank you for the constructive feedback Crispin, it is really encouraging!
I just started taking vocal classes here in NYC with NY Vocal Coaching and have 3-5 classes left. So far, 2 coaches told me that I have a very good voice, but I need to work on not sounding “announcery” and mastering the vocal techniques, which I agreed with. So I’m not competitive yet, but I will be soon. I will also need to get acoustical foam for my home studio because they heard echos.
In addition, I just finished episode 21 of your podcast, so I will be soon on episode 28 and learn more about demos.
Thank you Crispin!
You’re very welcome! Glad I could help.
Best of luck with everything.