I really like your tone and cadence. It definitely makes me want to go buy something. I thought the volume sounded fine. There were a couple moments where you stumbled over a word and would get a little quieter but overall good volume!

Lovely read! Nicely done. You have a smooth, velvety voice. I could picture you in luxury commercials, or perhaps in a villain character voice. Great character voice for non-villains as well. 

0:01 I hear “style” instead of “styles”. The words that have “s” at the end and “s” at the beginning of the next one can be challenging. A good way to ensure you pronounce the entire word is to slow down a little so you can comfortably leave enough space to say both words naturally.

0:34 Missed word “on”.

0:37 I hear “limit” instead of “limited”. Be sure to go slow enough to fully pronounce all of the words clearly.

1:05 Read “experience” instead of “experienced”.

1:10, 1:23 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 good pause 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. 

1:28 Added word “and”.

1:43 Added word “a”.

1:45 Missed word “a”.

1:51 Read “purchase” instead of “purchases” - be aware of changing words and dropping or adding “s”.

Yes, the audio level may have been a little low. 

For the purpose of this homework to work on projection, I feel like there was room to go much further. This felt like a very quiet, intimate read. Practice projecting even more such as with the scenario of being in a gym or large auditorium with no microphone and you need your voice to be heard in every single corner of the room. Engage with your diaphragm and take in a big, deep breath to fill up your lungs so that you have the power to push your voice out even further. You can turn the gain down a bit if you feel it will be too loud during recording to keep it from clipping. Try to have waveform peaks for yelling/loud projection land between -9 dB and -3 dB. For normal talking, try to have the waveform peaks between -12 and -6 dB. Shoot for -3dB of headroom. You may need to adjust your gain for louder and quieter parts; if so, it helps to know where to turn the gain to in order to achieve optimal levels during recording. 

Practicing the SOVT exercises will help increase your stamina and ability to project. It will also help to reduce the “gasping” type breaths that may stand out to listeners.

Be sure to listen back and quality check your work on actual auditions and gigs after you’ve recorded to make sure you’ve accurately read the script. 

Our homework next week will be focusing on articulation and enunciation. 

Overall, excellent read! Keep up the great work!