Many of the audio engineering courses I encountered were boring or unnecessarily complicated or more focused on music production. And much of it was text-based. Imagine teaching audio without using audio! Although experiencing different approaches can be helpful, it’s always better to start with a clear and comprehensive course that’s well presented, easy to follow and actually shows you how to record voiceover.

I found it! Check out this terrific course by Dave Schroeder called Digital Audio Principles at Lynda.com. Dave has an easy manner and a good teaching voice.  His video tutorials explain key concepts of audio recording in a completely comprehensible way. He also provides video tours of microphones, audio interfaces and other recording equipment, instruction on microphone placement, even hands-on plugin applications in Pro Tools (EQ, compression, and noise reduction).

Even though he teaches using Pro Tools, his course isn’t Apple-centric. Dave covers common DAW components and key design elements in different audio programs, so that you can find your way around popular audio editing, multitrack and loop-based software. Seriously, I was immediately able to find and use the same features Dave talked about on my PC-landlocked Adobe Audition.  (Will Adobe ever make a Mac version? And no, Soundbooth doesn’t count!)

Seriously, Digital Audio Principles isn’t just a great introduction to digital audio but an essential overview of audio recording in general.  A lot of people who want to learn how to get started in voice over will flounder around for years trying to pick up the basics for recording voice overs. It’s so important not to lose precious time re-inventing the wheel when someone has actually taken the time to put it all together in such a nice neat package. I definitely recommend this course to anyone who wants to start a voiceover career and even veteran voice overs who, like me, got most of their initial training in analog audio recording.

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Lynda.com provides hundreds of tutorials on all kinds of audio software and business applications. At my company, we’ve referred many of our clients to the Microsoft and Mac courses, and finally became affiliates of Lynda.com. The link to the Digital Audio Prinicples course  in this blog can earn us a couple bucks, but you can bypass it if that turns you off and just go directly to Lynda.com. The learning materials they provide are incredibly helpful and the first few chapters are free, so you have a chance to see whether the presentation is something that appeals to you.  You can buy hard copies of specific courses on DVD or CD or get access to all their courses a month at a time for $25.

We have our own monthly subscriptions at my company so that we can learn more about all kinds of subjects (like web accessibility or Adobe’s CS5 apps) and also review training options for our clients.  It’s a great investment.

If you have flash, here’s what the player looks like:
El Sanctuario Promo - English.

Although I had created a page with Html5 tags, I didn’t like how long the page took to load on my iPad. Using this page, gives everyone a faster loading front page for my voiceover demos. Then, iPhone OS users have the option to click on the Html5 version.

There are many audio player plugins for WordPress, but like the standard Html5 audio player, many flash-based audio player plugins load pretty big players. WPAudio is the first one I’ve seen that keep’s things nice and thin. Love it. And you don’t need to use special tags in your post. Just drop in your mp3 hyperlink and the plugin does the rest. Very nice. Thanks Todd.

But my flash-based audio players disappeared from my website! Not nice. Since I had never joined the iPhone bandwagon, I didn’t know until recently that my voiceover demos weren’t available to web visitors coming to my site from their iPhones, or from iPads which use the iPhone OS. People could download my demos, but I didn’t even add download links until earlier this year! And none of my profiles on the voice marketplaces I’m still affiliated with currently use supported audio players. That’s particularly unfortunate for paying subscribers.¹

I know what you’re thinking: what’s the big deal, Nikki? Your flashy audio players work just fine in Internet Explorer and hardly anyone uses their iPhone for surfing the web. And Steve Jobs will eventually cave in and support flash on the iPhone OS. Yes, and crude oil will become water soluble.

Like most of my hungry voiceover colleagues, I would like my website to work as well as it can on whatever devices or browser a site visitor uses.  In fact, many of my new contact emails are coming from iPhone users. And this was before my upgrade.

So here is the upgrade, a cleaner design with a bit more contrast and these few content coding changes:

• A background image behind the flash player on my home page so that iPhone visitors don’t see a big empty space.
• Html audio tags with embedded audio. This required minimal coding and the addition of .ogg versions of my demos for browsers that don’t support .mp3 in html5.  The most universal syntax for the audio player seems to be to separate out the source tag like this:

<audio preload=”auto” controls=”controls”>
<source src=”voiceoverdemo.ogg” />
<source src=”voiceoverdemo.mp3″ />
</audio>

The “controls” option loads a rather ugly player in every browser except Opera. Most browsers will also support an autoplay option which I find obnoxious and don’t recommend. The preload option (formerly “autobuffer”) is still being adopted by browsers and will be great when it works more universally but I would only use it on the first couple demos.

If you’re on a web-compliant Internet browser (unfortunately that means any popular browser except Internet Explorer), you should be able to see what an Html 5 audio player looks like here:

That’s it as far as coding. Until browsers are updated to incorporate more of the html5 web standards (which are still being vetted), my preference is to keep it simple. And since Internet Explorer isn’t expected to adopt enough of these web standards any time soon, it’s probably a good idea to use both a simply flash audio player and html5, which is what I did here.  Of course, I’m still into making things look pretty so I opted not to use the html5 tags on the home page and instead prominently featured my Voiceover Demos link so that it’s part of the first screen content mobile browsers will see.  Yep, not the best way to go for a voiceover web site, but probably the way I’ll keep things until I can make html5 audio controls more universally appealing.

Personally, I’m looking forward to more browsers adopting html5 open web standards, especially the audio tags. Embedded audio is just a better, cleaner concept for web development. I also like that visitors can right-click the player and download the files when they need to so you don’t really need a separate link. As for making it look pretty, a little javascripting and use of the new <canvas> tag will ultimately improve the look and functionality of media players on the web.

Hope you like the new site and that you find it much easier to navigate. Let me know!

One of our biggest challenges has been to better position our clients’ web sites on Google search results. For Florida attorneys this has been particularly difficult given recent Bar guidelines which significantly restrict their web content. Nevertheless, we’ve managed to consistently get clients on page one of Google search results for specific searches. Considering the number of Florida attorneys out there, that’s a tricky endeavor.

These experiences have helped us develop a better understanding of what works. Here are some of the ways we’ve improved our clients’ search standings. These are tips which you can implement today without spending a fortune for search engine optimization:

Treat the entire web site like a collection of specific landing pages. This allows you to market a specific service or highlight a unique selling proposition (USP) on specific pages. From the outset, this also compels you to utilize other best practices for search engine optimization.

• Target a specific audience
• Keep page content shorter, optimally under 3 paragraphs unless it is an article.
• Keep pages focused, on topic, specific, on point. Grandma’s spicy pumpkin soup recipe can be shared on Facebook.
• Use rich keywords for the page content. If you sell pink widgets cheaper than anyone else then cheap, pink, and widget would be good keywords to weave into your text, your title and your meta tags, more on that below.

Optimize each page of your web site for specific keyword searches and page content. You’re wasting virtual real estate if every page just generally describes you as an English male voice actor. Use one page to promote your uncanny ability to sound like Morgan Freeman; another page might promote your extensive experience narrating military training videos; and another page might showcase your live voiceover work at industrial trade shows. Your meta tags for each page should then match the page content.

• Textual Content. You can optimize your page content, the actual text a site visitor can read, by using specific formatting.

• Use header tags like <h2> or <h3> for your page titles
• Bold keywords like voiceover and IVR.
• Use bullet points or numbered lists

• Non-Textual Content. You can optimize non-textual content, like images or audio files, by using alt tags or link title attributes on non-textual content like audio files or images.

Use unique title tags specific to the content, target audience, USP for each page. The title tag is the meta tag which displays a page title or short description at the top of the browser window for most browsers or as part of the browser tab. The title tag is html code nested within the <head> tags of your page code and might look something like this:

<title>Voiceover Web Site Search Engine Optimization Tips</title>

Don’t give up on other meta tags, keyword tags and content description. Although some web developers speculate that meta tags are losing importance, search results repeatedly show that Google and other major search engines continue to give significant weight to meta tags as long as they are supported by related page content.  Your keyword and content meta tags should be tailored to the specific page content.

Bottom line: focus is the key to effective search engine optimization.  Everything about a specific web page should be focused: the page itself, the page content (what your site visitor can immediately see) and the meta data (the extra information in the background code for your page).  Even if you’re a jack of all trades, you can develop web pages for each thing you’re good at.  Then, drink two or three espressos and you’ll be well on your way.

How Jeff Bridges Voice-overs Imperiled Hyundai’s Oscars Blitz
by Brian Steinberg - Published: March 01, 2010

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Hyundai Motor America was all ready to bombard this year’s Oscars with a raft of commercials — seven different spots were locked, loaded and ready to go. With just a few weeks to go before the March 7 ceremony, however, the company was told its commercials were unfit for air.

The problem? Actor Jeff Bridges has been doing voice-overs for Hyundai since 2007. But Mr. Bridges is also a nominee for best actor in this year’s contest for his role in “Crazy Heart” . . .

I feel bad for the car company, worse for their ad agency. That’s a tough spot to be in. Hope they work it out.

• Be realistic about word count.  If your message must be delivered in a specific duration, you can only fit so many words into the script. A :15 TV spot, for example, will accommodate only between 35 to 40 words. Deliveries that are supposed to sound rushed can definitely fit  a few more words. But you can’t fit 100 word script into a :15 spot and expect effective brand building or ROI. Audiences can’t realistically understand let alone absorb a word-bloated :15 spot, if it can even be produced.
• Check your script before you send it to the voice actor. Nothing will delay a rush script faster than mistakes that could have been avoided, but are instead sent into production. Phone numbers and web sites are the usual suspects when it comes to script mistakes. Other culprits are bloated word counts for short commercial spots. To avoid delays and additional voiceover charges for  script corrections, trim your script for the appropriate running time of your commercial, verify your contact information, and check any other detail before sending it for recording. Remember that voice actors are only responsible for their own mistakes, if such a thing can occur.
• Remember that numbers are words. A phone number is not a single word even if your word processor  says so.  A spoken ten-digit phone number is almost always ten separate words. Each digit should be included in your total word count to make sure it will fit in your :15 spot. (On projects that may be charged by the word, for voicemail systems for example, expect voiceover talents to appropriately count phone numbers and addresses as a separate word per digit.)
• Consider omitting superfluous information when script duration is an issue.  For example, if your script has a web site address, remember that “www” is three words (or two if you use the more urban “trip dub”). The “www” is generally implied and you may want to consider dropping it from your script to save on precious real estate. Most web servers will in fact accept a web site address without “www.” Try your web site address and see whether it works without the trip dub.
• Don’t just write your script. Speak it. Conversation should flow, and often something that looks good in writing, sounds awkward when you say it out loud. Choose words that flow unless you’re trying to achieve a particular effect with the script.
• Create a script for  your audience, not for your message.  Describe your house first to an architect,  then to a close friend, and finally to a child. Chances are good you would not choose the same words each time.  Choose words that appeal to the people you’re trying to reach.
• Don’t translate more of the script than you should.
  • If your script is to be translated into different language, Spanish for example, only provide a Spanish translation for a web site address if you’ve actually created the Spanish domain. Otherwise you’re sending people to a non-existent web site. That’s kind of a duh, but it happens.
  • Similarly, only translate numbers in mailing addresses for English-speaking countries. Leave the “P.O. Box,” street names, citys and states in English (maybe with a slight Spanish pronunciation) to ensure that Spanish listeners correctly address mail the way an English-speaking postal worker will understand it.

• Provide the essential details about your project. This is true for any project you need a quote on, whether you post it on a marketplace or request a quote directly from a voice talent:
  • Type of voiceover: voicemail, DVD promo, TV tag, radio imaging, medical narration, audiobook narration, documentary narration, etc.
  • Length of script: in seconds, minutes or pages. Keep in mind that a normal rate of speech is 150 words per minute and a standard page is double spaced with 12pt font which is about 15 words per line and 275 words per page. Movie scripts have larger margins and are closer to 160 words to follow a page per minute format.
  • Your deadline: a rush is a rush. If you need it yesterday, expect to pay more, otherwise there is less incentive for a voice actor to set other clients’ projects aside to push yours through. Either way, be realistic about the time frame. Large IVR jobs and audiobooks can take a few weeks. Short-form projects can be turned around in a day, schedule permitting.
  • Expected market: regional TV viewers in New York, local radio listeners in Tampa, in-store shoppers in Minnesota, a group of investors with a lot of money in Nevada, your Aunt Mae in Atlanta. Let us know who will hear the voiceover and where.
  • Your budget range: let the talent bid between the numbers, but generally it’s best to let talent know the minimum and maximum you are willing to pay.
  • The project rights you want to purchase: whether you’re expecting a perpetual buyout (you use it as long and as many times as you want) or other limited terms for your use of the voiceover (for example, a TV spot which you want to air an unlimited number of times, during a 13-week cycle). You’ll also want to let the talent know whether you’re offering residuals (pay per play) fees.
• Avoid wasting your time and the talent’s.
  • Request only as many auditions as you’re willing to listen to. Generally, a marketplace will send you an email for every submission and those emails will fill your inbox for every project you post. The process can be overwhelming.
    • Consider also that each custom demo you request has to be recorded and sent by a voiceover talent on the other side, which is a time-consuming process usually without compensation. The voice talent has already paid a hefty subscription fee for the privilege of submitting auditions to your job leads. So they have already invested time and money on your project. There is simply no reason to ask someone to submit an audition you don’t intend to listen to.  A good practice is that you CLOSE THE JOB if you select one of the first submissions.
  • Shop for prices first, talent later. Some marketplaces will allow you to post a job with an “open” budget. Well, if you must. But request a custom demo only if you’re willing to post a budget range. If you are merely fishing for low bids, do that first. Provide a detailed description of your project and request a related stock demo from the talent. That’s all you need for the first round. Otherwise you’ll get custom auditions from voiceover talents who are beyond your budget. That happens. But it is never appropriate to request a custom demo you don’t intend to hear.  Consider also that many voice actors, myself included, have a policy of not providing custom demos for projects without a posted budget.
  • Be realistic in determining whether your project even needs a custom audition. There is almost never a good reason to request a custom demo for standard voicemail – for english press 1 – unless of course you have unusual names for your company or staff which will be part of the voicemail script. If that’s the case, consider limiting your demo script to a couple lines with those unique names and provide a pronunciation key:
    • “Thank you for calling Ouachita (WA shituh) Valley Bank’s Natchtitoches (NA ku tosh) branch…”
• Consider whether the project should be directed to a narrower pool of talents. If your project requires a more discernible level of experience and professionalism, you may want to limit the lead to union or accredited voiceover talents. Unlike union status, accreditation requires a voiceover talent to go through a peer review process for assessment of performance and technical proficiency. It is a growing trend and a good resource for voice seekers. Both union status and accreditation suggest a level of commitment to the profession that you may find more reliable.
• Expect some watermarking or script changes on audition demos from time to time. Some talents have had their audition demos effectively taken as a final product without ever receiving payment for them.  As a result, voiceover talents may choose to watermark their clips with an underlying tone,  fade on company names, or purposely  change phone numbers and web addresses on the script to render them unusable as a final product. It’s not a mistake on the demo. This is as common a practice as buying CDs or clothing with security tags on them. Don’t take it personally. It should be an issue for you only if it prevents you from evaluating the overall demo. Although I rarely watermark an audition demo, as a matter of policy, I don’t audition for leads from voice seekers who object to their use unless they have a good reason and an established reputation.
• Consider providing additional information on time-sensitive projects. For example, provide pronunciation keys for unusual words. As a matter of course, always provide that information if you have it. I’m old school. Never reinvent the wheel. If you have the information, why force someone who’s developing a project for you to hunt it down on their own?
• Understand that a phone number is not a single word. Huh? In determining script durations and word counts for projects charged by the word, it’s important to understand that a ten-digit phone number is ten separate words: 9-5-4 - 5-5-5 - 1-2-1-2. If your script has phone numbers and addresses, expect to be charged by the number. You may not be, but expect it anyway. At a minimum, consider the digit=word rule when writing copy for short TV and radio spots since it can seriously affect timing. More on that in another blog.
  • Tip. To get a more accurate word count on long scripts with lots of numbers, open the script in your favorite word processing program. Do ten quick searches, one for each digit 0 through 9, and replace each number with the same number but add spaces before and after the digit. Example: search for “1” and replace it with “ 1 ” so that this: 954-555-1212 turns into this: 9 5 4 – 5 5 5 – 1 2 1 2. Your word processing program will now give you a more accurate word count.
• Expect to provide your contact information. Voiceover is a business that requires financial transactions and accurate records. Each project I do results in an invoice that you will need in order to deduct the cost of the voiceover as a business expense. The invoice provides information regarding my business for tax purposes as well. It’s a necessary and mutual exchange of information. I frankly avoid doing business with prospects who can only provide a gmail address.

Follow at least most of the applicable guidelines – definitely the ones regarding project details – and you’re sure to have a better experience hiring voiceover talents either directly or through a voice marketplace. Good luck with your project!