Where should I host my Voice Over Demo? Can I upload it to Facebook?

I've gotten this question a couple times from friends and colleagues, and I've never had a great answer for folks.

From my pal Curtis:

Hey Juan, Do you know how I can upload my vo demo to my fb profile? Or is it best to link from another page to fb?

So here's the deal Curtis, we've never had great solutions for hosting audio online. You'd think in a world of streaming HD video, there's be SOME place we could semi-permanently host high quality streaming audio files like Youtube.

Recently, services like SoundCloud have become popular, and their bandwidth caps aren't horrible if you're focusing on something like your demos. The nice thing about SoundCloud is that it not only offers a handy place to upload the demo, and tools to embed the audio file on other sites, but it also makes it pretty easy to share your demo with a variety or services and social networks.

The tricky thing about directing traffic to web pages and social networking is you'll find people have very little patience. There's about zero attention span online. If someone finds you through Facebook they might not follow you to another link posted on your profile. Vice-versa if someone finds your web site, and you try to ship them off to Facebook or another service.

I'd recommend trying to make sure the basics of what you do are well represented individually on all services you use. If I find you on Facebook, I should be able to easily find your contact info, and listen to your demo, on Facebook. Ditto your own personal site.

But Facebook doesn't allow audio uploads do they? Well this is where all these streaming video sites might actually come in handy. Come up with a static image, a brand logo, something with your name on it, contact info, and convert that demo to a video file where it can live on Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook Video, etc.

Between SoundCloud and streaming video, you should have plenty of options for making sure that your marketing materials are easily accessible regardless of how someone might find you online.

For the rest of my VO audience, what services have you utilized for sharing your demo? Have I missed anything which might help people share high quality audio? Drop me a comment below!

Sound Design tips from Create Digital Music

FOLEY IS FUN!

Create Digital Music has some great sound design tips up on their site. What's great is they also include some pictures, so you can see what's involved in getting sounds for media. Pretty funny stuff too.

It's all really crazy, and is some of my favorite recording. We all know the basics, punching a steak for realistic body hits, breaking celery for bone and tissue damage, but I had to come up with some fun ones for my last animation project. Sound effects rule!

Here are just a few.

A slinky and a dollar store toy microphone made great high tension lines and steel cabling.

Slamming a bottle of juice into our apartment's stove became the footsteps of a giant killer robot (and pissed off the neighbors).

Our old ink jet printer/scanner became the motors and servos of the killer robot (think robocop).







And of course there's our in house space alien:



Check out Create Digital Music's article for even more great sound design tips!

Thanks D4Dirty!

Protecting Your Ears!

Hear that ringing in your ears? That's a frequency of sound you'll never hear ever again, a piece of your ear dying.



Ok I don't know if that's completely true, but it does mean you are doing irreparable harm to one of your most valuable instruments. Whether you're in front of the mic, or behind it, consistent monitoring of what you hear is vital. My top bookers do everything they can to not only protect their voices, but also their hearing (no loud concerts, etc).

It's very frustrating sitting in front of my monitors, and recording newbies that cough and clear their throats into the mic, suddenly spike volume after we've checked levels, or try to adjust their copy stand and end up bashing the mic. These things might not seem like such a big deal to the actor in the booth, BUT THEY ARE ALL AMPLIFIED FOR ME! Working at the agency for almost two years now, I've lost almost a full kHz (high frequency hearing) in each ear, and most likely will never get that back.

Trying to explain that to other people is almost equally frustrating. This is how I plan to make my living, and I'm faced with people that probably crank the volume on the earbuds that came with their ipods. The responses range from ultra-cavalier to a genuine "that sucks", but get them in front of the mic again, and it's the same behavior.

*sigh*

Anywho, this article from Gigacrate is written from a DJ perspective, but is good reading for
anyone that depends on vocals or hearing for their work.

How many times have you left a gig with your ears ringing? Or woke up
the next day worried you may have caused some permanent damage to your
ears? My guess is quite often. It’s no secret that as DJs we are
constantly exposing ourselves to super loud noises for extended periods
of time.
With a little care and precautionary measure, you can lower your risk
of serious hearing loss. After all it’s about the music right? Make
sure when you’re 60 you can still hear it.

READ THE REST HERE!