A Mixed Audio Bag

I had my ups and downs in the audio world today.

First, I got a message back from Pat about the excerpts I recorded last night: no go. We're working to find just the right tone, and apparently I hadn't hit it. But he gave me some pointers and I just finished re-recording and sending them off a few minutes ago. We'll see what the new batch brings.

On the up side, I also went down to Rancho Mirage and the Voicetrax studio today, which is always a happy thing. I went down early to record a sampler--a one minute compendium of some of my strongest stuff. I'm not ready for prime time (i.e.: the LA market) quite yet, but Samantha definitely thinks I have a shot at getting non-union work out in the desert. The sampler will go onto the online service that Voicetrax is working on, Voice Yenta, the goal of which is to match non-union talent with producers. I'll also get a copy of the file, which I intend to put up on a web site; getting that thing will be the indication that it's time to pony up and get promoting. It'll be fun to hear, I think, because with a promotion tool like this, they'll "sweeten" the recording--add in music and sound effects so that the scripts I was reading will sound like actual commercial and narration projects. I'll, of course, let you know when that goes up.

Later in the evening I had a full class, called The Desert Connection, in which we'll be working on scripts in the presence (or at the direction) of local producers in the desert region. It's always nice to see my fellow voiceover folk, crazily random and randomly crazy bunch that they are. We ran a set of dialogues that I was awful at, but we also worked on copy in our range--and out of the class, I was the only one Samantha considered "competitive" (i.e.: had I been auditioning in LA, I would have had a shot at the part). That's always nice.

The one thing the day affirmed for me was how much I really enjoy this work. Now if I could just figure out where it fit into my life...