Awesome take Laila! I feel you, my mic is like 4ft away and it still clips haha. Great job on the enunciation! Not too sure yet if volume is ok to be dynamic for this read, but I feel that you kept it interesting with the volume and style throughout.

Best, Brian

Nicely read! Great job working on projection!

Yeah, it sounds like you need to turn down the gain on your microphone and/or add a bit more distance between you and the microphone input to keep from clipping and distortion in the audio. Suggest lowering the gain and adjusting your position so that your peaks for yelling/loud projection land between -9 dB and -3 dB. Try adjusting your microphone so that you speak just passed the mic at a slight offset to limit plosives. To further improve your read, I would add a pop filter if you don’t already have one to reduce the sound of plosives. Generally a good distance from your microphone as a rule of thumb is the space between your pinky and thumb when they are extended apart from each other for normal talking. The way you are processing your files could also potentially be adding to the issue. For instance, if the loudness is caused by normalization, please bear in mind that it’s always good to leave headroom on your wave peaks. Shoot for -3dB of headroom. For normal talking, try to have the waveform peaks between -12 and -6 dB. If this doesn’t help, check the master settings in the sound control panel settings too on your computer - sometimes that can play a role in high or low sound. If you find you’re still having issues after making these changes, feel free to DM me on Discord and I’ll see what I can do to assist.

Don’t forget to record and export voice audio files in mono and not stereo.

Try to keep the room tone/silence at the beginning of your file to around 0.5 seconds.

0:06, 1:23 Mispronounced “Bonanza”. Don’t be afraid to look up how to pronounce words online if you aren’t familiar with them. Some great reference sources include Cambridge Dictionary (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/), youglish.com, forvo.com and You Tube Videos among other places (there’s a lot of options out there). You can simply type in “How to pronounce [word]” in Google search and it should give you several references. 

0:10 I hear “ghoul” instead of “ghouls” - be aware of changing words and dropping or adding “s”. 

0:18 Nice job reading the company’s name. In commercial scripts when you get to the brand name, give it some extra love like you did here. This is the client who’s paying you! They want their name to be remembered positively in commercials. :)

0:21 Read “or gartitude” instead of “of Gertrude”

0:23 When you get to sounds written in a script like “haha” it’s okay to read it as you did, but it’s also okay to put in a genuine laugh too. 

0:39 Read “the” instead of “this”

0:51 Read “delightful” instead of “delightfully”

1:11 Read “dug” instead of “dung”

1:27 I hear “casset” instead of “casket”. Make sure not to lose that “k” sound in “casket” when you’re working on articulation and enunciation.

1:30 Typically, you’ll hear phone numbers starting with “1-800” read as “One-eight hundred”. In commercial scripts where you’re limited for time, and if the client doesn’t specify how they want the numbers read, any shorter ways of saying numbers to save time is a good thing.

For actual gigs and auditions, 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). 

When you misread or have a little stumble (happens to everyone and it’s okay!), it’s highly encouraged to start again at the beginning of the sentence or paragraph or a point that would make it easy to remove and replace the mistake during editing. If you just keep going and don’t return to a solid point that makes it easy to edit out the mistake, you may need to come back later and re-record as a pick-up, and it becomes challenging to make it sound the same as the original recording. So, a good rule of thumb is to record so that it’s easy to edit later. When the mistakes are then edited out, it will sound like you read everything perfectly. Becoming a good cold reader is a skill to develop. When you are able to hear the mistakes as you are reading, you can pause and fix them right away which saves time later and gives you a better end result.

While the read was a little choppy in places, I could tell you were practicing articulation and felt you did a pretty good job with it. As you get more comfortable articulating and enunciating, the read will smooth out so keep practicing. 

Make sure you don’t lose the ends of words when practicing articulation and enunciation. In natural speaking, the ends tend to fall off or not be hit hard, but exercising and strengthening the quality to fully pronounce words is an excellent tool to have in your tool box. Really focus on hitting all of the letters in the words and clearly pronouncing all of them. When practicing articulation and enunciation it’s good to over-do it.

If you repeat the “B”, “G” and “K” sounds this exercise focused on, note the placement of your tongue and mouth as you make them and use this knowledge as you practice articulation in your read. The tongue twisters will also help so keep having fun playing around with those as well. Vocal warmups help loosen the tongue and vocal cords and will make it easier to pronounce the words. Other exercises, such as the Peter Padderton script is another good one for practicing “P”, “T” and “D” letters. That cork trick Burger showed in class is also very helpful to practice over-articulating to make words easier to say.

Keep up the great work!