Note: Realized at the end I said "into his mind" instead of "to his mind"

I really enjoyed your character voice for the tongue twister!

Really nicely read! Great emotion and variation in pacing, tone, pitch, volume, etc, which really help bring the story to life and lift it off of the page. It felt like a natural read.

0:25 Missed word “his”

0:44 Missed words “as more”

0:53 Read “Peter worked on “ instead of “Peter began working on”

0:56 Missed word “of”

0:58 Missed word “the”

1:02 I hear “outta” instead of “out of”

Nice change up with the character voice in the tongue twister. In auditions having a second take that is distinctly different from your first take helps to show casting directors your range. 

The read was a little swift and could have slowed down a bit more to make it easier to listen to. If this story were being read to little children, they typically wouldn’t process things quite that fast, so bear in mind the audience you are speaking to as you read.

Following the script to the letter is a very important skill in voice acting. In an audition, if you go off script to “improve” it in one take, be sure to have a second take with exactly what’s written. Some writers will also take offense if the script is changed by a voice actor, so that is a potential risk as well. Adding humanisms to a script (like sighs, laughs, hmms, etc.) that aren’t necessarily words are often what is recommended to enhance a script versus changing the wording. Be sure to quality check your work after recording to ensure you correctly performed the script. It is very important to many casting directors to have voice actors accurately read the written copy (script).

For the purpose of this homework to work on enunciation, articulation and clearly pronouncing the words, and in particular the “P”, “T”, and “D” sounds for this exercise… I felt like you did a very good job overall. The last letters of words are easy to “lose” when reading and I did hear some here and there that weren’t fully pronounced at the end of words. Slowing down to really focus on over-articulating and practicing can help to strengthen this skill as will the tongue twisters. 

Keep up the excellent work!

To answer your question - Practice breathing as silently and as quietly as you can. This is actually a skill to develop. With increased stamina and lung capacity (as well as practice), it gets easier to control the breath sounds. One technique you can practice is taking nearly silent microbreaths periodically to help refill the air without a full breath pause. Another technique is to quietly turn your face away from the microphone if you can do this without the movement being picked up to help reduce the loudness of the breath directly into the input of the microphone. Ideally you should be recording with your microphone slightly offset like 20-30 degrees to the side, but still pointed at your mouth (this helps reduce the sound of breaths and plosives) and if you are able to slightly turn your head away from the mic input, this may help to further reduce breath sounds. The reality though is that breaths are perfectly normal! And it's okay to have breaths in your recordings. As long as they don't stand out as extra loud or obnoxious or patternistic, it's perfectly okay to have them. If we don't breathe in our recordings, sometimes listeners will be slightly on edge waiting for a breath to come because it's normal to breathe and if it doesn't come it can create a sense of anxiety in some listeners.