March / April 2012

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Well, things have been booming here in the 1st quarter of 2012 in my voice-over business adding some great new clients, and just in the past few weeks I have also been busy traveling and working some rodeo events too.

The last weekend in March found me traveling to the Jersey shore to work the Atlantic City Boardwalk PRCA Rodeo as it’s music director. Steamboat Rock, Iowa’s Hippie Englekes worked the barrel, Tim Fuller of Tulsa, Oklahoma was behind the mic, & Jessica Blair along with Shane & Suzie Karson provided the awesome specialty acts. Janet Markowitz and the Atlantic City Boardwalk Rodeo committee did an excellent job putting on this second year event. The crowds were very responsive and fun to work. They have invited me back again for next year and am already looking forward to it!

Last week Nicky and I went to Brookings, SD for one of the best regular season College rodeos in the Nation, the 58th South Dakota State University Jackrabbit Stampede. This was my 10th straight year as the in-house announcer and the 7th year for Nicky to be running the music. The Swiftel Center crew (especially Tom Richter, & Scott Smith) along with the SDSU Rodeo Club, and Sutton Rodeo do an excellent job putting this event together! All but 1 year since I have been working this rodeo it has been a double header, meaning two separate rodeos in the same weekend. A total of 6 rodeo performances and the two short round performances (that features the top 10 of each event in each of the two rodeos) was televised courtesy of South Dakota Public broadcasting.  South Dakota Sports Hall of Fame Broadcaster and longtime rodeo announcer Jim Thompson of Spearfish, SD and K Country 102.3 morning show host Brad DeBeer hosted the telecasts. All 6 performances were right around 2 hours each, for College rodeo that is a real fast moving performance.

For those of us here in the mid-west a very unusually mild winter has been followed by an early spring. As I returned from the rodeo in Brookings, my friends at the farm were anxious to get me down to start field work for the corn planting season. Already with a couple of rain delays we are still a few weeks ahead of schedule and hope to have 3,000 acres in by May 5th.

Once again I will be in Litchfield at Cowgirl Tuff arena for the Western Wishes “Never Give Up” Charity Barrel Race, then things really get busy pretty much right through September with events nearly every weekend.

Until next time, stay safe out there and God bless!

Davie

P.S. Congratulations to Scott Smith Operations Manager at Swiftel Center, he and His wife are proud parents of a brand new baby girl born sometime after we left Brookings. Celia Lynette Smith 19″ 6 lbs 12 oz!!!

A little voice-over fun!

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I stumbled on this and thought it was pretty fun and brings up a very important question.  Do you have a regional accent? If so, what have you done about erasing it?

Lot’s of voice-over talent myself included, have had coaching just to get rid of that regional accent and get that neutral American English that is most widely accepted in professional voice work. True, there is that occasional job that prefers the regional accent of a given area. One of the hardest things to do is to switch between a regional accent and neutral English when needed.

For fun I invite you to take this test linked below, share your results in the comments below. What training have you done or tricks do you use to control your regional accent?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/spl3/american-accent-quiz.html

Great show for those with a “Home Studio”

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For the past year there has been an excellent resource available for those that are wanting to learn more on the technical side of operating a home recording studio. EWABS otherwise known as East West Audio Body Shop is broadcast on the internet most Sunday nights at 9 p.m. ET. You can find the live stream along with past recorded shows on their Ustream channel here http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ewabs .  The co-hosts are Dan Lenard “from the East” and George Whittam “from the West” both are experts in audio engineering and specialize in helping people that seek solutions for their home studio problems.

Dan is from the Buffalo New York area and you can visit his website here http://www.homestudiomaster.com/Home_studio_Home_Page.php.  George is based in the greater Los Angeles California area, he is Virginia Tech graduate and was the personal studio engineer for the late Don LaFontaine who was the voice-over guy that starred in the Geico TV commercials and one of the most famous movie trailer voices of all time. George’s website can be found here http://eldorec.com/.

Both offer services to those that need help troubleshooting and properly setting up their home studios.  They both offer free evaluations of your current audio from your home studio that can be uploaded to their websites. From this sample they can make suggestions of changes that can be made to improve your audio quality. Both are very reasonably priced and very efficient. I have personally used George’s services setting up my own voice-over studio and through Skype and remote software he was able to help customize the settings that I needed specifically for my recording space environment.

The voice-over industry has changed greatly in just the past few years and now most voice-talents not only have to deliver superior reads, but also have to be able to produce professional quality audio from their home studios.  EWABS is one very important resource that can help us all provide the quality audio necessary to be competitive in todays voice-over marketplace.

What are you currently doing to ensure you’re delivering the best audio possible from your own home studio?