March 27, 2018 • 26 mins
How to set up your recording booth for voice over
In this episode, I talk about my voice-over recording booth and how I made it, the cost, how to put it together, and some more info about what I am currently work on in voice-over.
I talk about our opportunity as voice-overs artists and discuss what is coming up in the next episode.
If you would like to learn how to work with me to grow your voiceover business, check out my website here
Social Links:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/anthony_pica_vo/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/AVOsJOURNEY
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/avosjourney/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonypicavo/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to a vios journey.
My name is Anthony Pica and thisis episode two.
I am so excited to be back.
I want to start off justthanking everybody for all of
the amazing words and all of thepraise and just I don't pouring
(00:27):
of uh, love and, and I reallyappreciate it.
Thank you so much.
It means the world to me.
Um, I've have to be honest withyou guys.
I literally have been thinkingabout doing this podcast all day
while I was at work andeverything.
So I'm, like I said yesterday,I'm a teacher and I had a good
(00:48):
day at work, but I justliterally been thinking about
this all day, so I'm so excitedto finally be here tonight doing
the podcast and um, today we'regoing to dive right in to
setting up a booth and how I setup my booth.
It, his worked incredible.
(01:08):
It is cheap and it doesn't haveto be a, the crazy thousands of
dollars that you hear about a.
again, not that that's bad.
I mean, it's wonderful.
Whisper rooms are incredible,but there's also other ways to
make it happen.
Um, anyways, so moving forwardwith, um, tonight I want to
(01:31):
start off again by welcomingeverybody in letting you know
that this podcast is abouthelping the new voice over
artists, um, make some money,learn how to be a vo, uh, in
this crazy world.
And I'm with me on this journeyto try to make a career out of
(01:53):
this thing.
So, um, tonight I want to talkabout my booth.
I want to talk about a cool, uh,I don't know, kind of like
epiphany I had today a while Iwas at work and, um, yeah.
And, and see where else tonightleads us.
So anyways, um, real quick storybefore we talk about the booth.
I was at work today and um, wasworking on comparing and
(02:16):
contrasting some differentpieces of theater and cinema
from the past and the presentand uh, came across a song.
So I don't know if many of youare theater junkies like myself,
but, um, I, uh, love, uh, Annie,the movie the musical.
(02:38):
I've produced the musical,directed it.
Um, I've watched the movie amillion times, but there was a
movie that came out in 2014, thenew movie with Jamie Foxx.
And um, I had never seen it.
So, uh, was working on thattoday.
I watched it, and I know thismight sound Corny, but there is
(03:01):
a song in there, um, and um, bythe little girl Annie, she
sings, it's called opportunityand it is just the most
beautiful song and you reallyshould check it out.
And, uh, I really, you get it onyoutube and just type in
opportunity and then Annie onyoutube and pull it up and
(03:22):
you'll see is absolutelyamazing.
But the reason why I'm tellingyou about this is because she
sings the song about this hermoment, um, and this is her
opportunity and she's going toput on the best show.
A part of it is luck, but theother part of it is up to her.
And, um, I really think that isus.
(03:45):
This is our opportunity and it'sonly going to be what we do with
it.
So the world is watching.
And let's put on our best show.
So anyways, that's my, that's mysoap box about that.
Um, anyways, so I want to talkto you.
(04:08):
Let's move on to the booth.
So I'm really actually excitedto talk to you about this
because I'm quite happy with it.
So anyways, moving bank, um,right when I started being a
voiceover artist, I had no ideawhat I was doing.
I've always mixed a live theateror a live sound.
I've never, you know, I hadnever mixed, um, recorded sound
(04:31):
and there's a difference, ofcourse, you know, because when
you're live you don't have toworry about uh, well we, you do
worry about acoustics, butdifferently when you don't worry
about the sound bouncing off thewalls per se, you're trying to,
uh, control, uh, how loud thingsare so that you can hear clearly
and so forth and frequencies.
(04:52):
And we do that here to anextent.
But our job is to also make surethat the sound that is going
through to our files is the verypurest and cleanest it can be.
So that starts with a, um, arecording space that is going to
(05:14):
be quiet as well as not have alot of, um, reverb, which is
what we call a sound waves, abouncing off of walls and
hearing it, it is the time ittakes for your voice to bounce
off of a wall and come back tohit the microphone.
(05:35):
And it sounds like, uh, youknow, that saying where it
sounds like you're in a big roomand, uh, just you hear an echo.
Um, so that's a reverb.
Uh, so anyways, um, one way wedo it is to cut that out, is to
create a booth or some sort ofstructure that we can record in
that stomps the sound frombouncing off the walls that
(05:58):
absorbs it.
Um, there is many different waysto do this and I'm going to talk
about a couple, but like I said,I'm going to talk about the
booth that I created, um, andkind of the journey I was on.
So, uh, I, I literally went onYoutube and I looked up
different booths are differentways, um, to a stomp the reverb.
(06:19):
And I came across this guy whowas talking about blankets and
pillows.
I didn't have any money to spendon acoustic tiling.
Um, I didn't have money to spendon trying to deaden sound in my
house and the space I was in,and I don't know if anybody
experienced this, but, um, Ithink the reality is, I don't
(06:42):
know if you, if you've watchedany other shows, but I swear
every, every show I watch onyoutube, it's like someone just
happens to have the most perfectspace that they're recording in.
And it just looked so wonderfuland then they just pop up some
things and it's like Walla.
It's amazing.
While I was in literally a roomthat had an ad to two entrances
(07:03):
and exits one into the kitchen,one into the hallway, it was
right on the end.
Um, I'm in a different house nowand I'll tell you about the
house I'm in now.
But where I started was, I'm inthis room, we were right next to
the railroad tracks, so thetrain and they were very active
railroad tracks.
So the train went by all thetime.
And I, I'm literally a, waslike, it had to be the loudest
(07:28):
room and I happen to have, wehad bought a new frigerator I'm
not kidding.
And it just so happened that thefrigerator was literally right
next to the doorway.
So like every time, every time Iwould go to record, the
frigerator was turning on tomake ice and everything and it
could hear all of this.
So, uh, you know, it was.
(07:48):
So I had a sound, I had a noiseissue as well as reverberations.
But anyways, so the furtherresearch I did, I had come
across some people who, uh, weredoing some sound tests with
blankets and pillows anddifferent things and acoustic
tiles and foam and found thatthe reality is, uh, most of the
(08:12):
acoustic foam and things thatyou have, um, blankets, certain
types of blankets and pillowswork just as good or better
than, than, than the foam.
So I literally went out and Ihad this idea that I was going
to create a structure out of pvcpipe.
And a, I, there's, there's lotsof different.
(08:33):
I think there's some tutorialson youtube about other people.
I think I've seen some otherpeople who do it too, but
basically what I did is I tookmy desk.
So this is what I suggest ifyou're looking for a way to do
this.
So I took my desk, I measuredthe size of my desk and I wanted
to be able to come in, in andout of this structure.
(08:53):
I wanted to be able to stand upand record and sit down if I
needed to, but also be at mydesk for all of my equipment
that needed to sit on it.
So I measure the size of mydesk.
Uh, I measured the depth, so mydesk was just happened to be
around four feet wide and thenit was a couple, it was about
two feet deep.
And um, so I did pretty muchlike a four by four literally.
(09:18):
And then the height I wanted tobe able to stand up.
So I did the height at aroundsix, six, which is, which for
me, I'm like, who am I?
Five eight.
So, you know, six, six is prettyall pretty tall, so I did that
and I went to Lowe's and I gotpvc pipe and I got fasteners
(09:41):
they have those um, cornerfasteners, they have the ends
that you can put three differentsides of a pvc piping and I
basically put a rudimentarystructure together that held
itself up and the shape of arectangle using these ends.
(10:02):
And I'm a, I cut the pvc pipe atthe time.
I had literally a hand saw andthat I had bought from Lowe's
for a couple of dollars.
It took awhile, I have to admitgut NAN's out on, off of my
chair, but I did and I put thestructure together and then I
(10:23):
bought packing blankets and Istarted out with one set of
packing.
Well, when I mean one set, Imean for, I bought four sets of
packing blankets but meaningthat each side.
So I had the back the front, uh,and well actually, so the
structure, the packing blanketsmade it all the way around.
So I had four.
So I'm three.
(10:44):
Made it around all the signs andthen one over the top.
So when I did that, itcompletely took care of the
reverb.
However, what it didn't takecare of was the sound.
I mean the noise.
So I realized that no matterwhat would the packing blankets,
they help the river, but theydidn't do anything for the
noise.
So what I started to do was goon an adventure for finding
(11:08):
different ways to deaden theextra noise, which I will talk
about later.
But um, what I, uh, what I didthough is his first I had to
eliminate that reverb.
And um, that's how I created myown booth.
Um, oh.
And what I did was I simplybought from Lowe's some, um, um,
(11:30):
grips or some clamps, some handclamps that you can just
squeeze, you know, the, theblack ones.
And then there's the silver oneswith the blue tips.
Are there tips?
And our fan base knows, butthey're, they're not very
expensive.
I spent under$100 to do this.
And then what I did was, is Itook some pills from home and I
pushed them on the sides, on thebottom.
(11:50):
I took a blanket that I had athome, put it over desk, Tom.
Uh, I had a light, uh, and um, Iuse an imac computer, just
something that I happened tohave.
It wasn't something I bought,I'd had it for years since 2011
and I started from there.
So, and, and we're going to talkabout equipment and another
(12:12):
episode, but I just wanted totalk about the booth and
everything, but I also wanted totalk to you about something else
with a booth at a friend.
Really, really cool.
So I stopped there and Irecorded for a while, you know,
I recorded for a long time withjust that and I was able to find
(12:33):
some different ways to reducethe noise floor.
Uh, which the noise floor is theum, the like your room noise.
So like you're the, the roomlevel that the noises at, in
your, in your recording area.
Uh, so I was, uh, you know, Iwent and found some different
(12:54):
plugins and things that helpedwith that, but, um, I, when I
moved to my new home, I don'tknow why this was, but, uh, I, I
had this whole new room that I,that I'm using just for our
recording now and uh, I had mybooth, same one I built before
and I brought it up, but theroom itself is all wood.
(13:15):
I mean the floor is all wood andI'm the walls and everything.
It was very echoey in the room.
So when I set up my booth, whatI found was, is that it's still
echoed and I was like, oh, thisis crazy because I put my
blankets or anything.
So I went out and I boughtanother set that will made it
all the way around again, justlike I bought a, a second set of
(13:38):
four blankets and I put them up.
I put a extra set up against theback and then of course decked
out the rest of it.
Like I told you, excuse me, andI have to say, it works
fantastic.
The sound, um, is, is, iswonderful and it just, it, it
(13:58):
completely deadens the sound orthe reverb and um, the sound is
pure.
I have like barely no noiselevel and um, or no noise, you
know, and, and it just iswonderful.
So I'm thrilled with it.
The noise itself from outside.
I happened to be in a quietneighborhood.
(14:20):
So that's still the reality is,is I moved to another place
where it's a quiet neighborhoodand that has helped a lot.
I don't have a train anymore.
I don't have planes flying overby, I don't have loud roads, but
if you have those things, mysuggestion is you start with the
reverb record at night.
(14:41):
I know that might not be anoption for some of you, but
recording at nighttime reallyhelped me.
I kind of had to record atnighttime anyways because of my
family.
Um, I had to wait till my kidsgo to bed so I know if any of
you have kids out there, but Ihave a couple.
They're young and uh, you know,I don't get to spend time with
them unless I spend time withthem at night before they go to
sleep.
So what I do even even now I'mrecording this, it's, you know,
(15:04):
the, all the kids are to bed andmy wife went to sleep and I'm up
in my booth recording for youguys.
And then after this is done,I'll go ahead and work on a book
that I'm doing called, um, thegratitude effect by Nancy
Baldwin A.
Anyways, so I record at nightand what I found is, is that it
(15:25):
really is a lot quieter at nightand it is a great time to
record.
So my advice to you is if youare having a loud noise problem
in your area that you'rerecording in record at night, if
that's possible.
Um, if it's not possible.
(15:45):
Like I said, there are some waysthat you can, uh, take out the
noise from your, from your floorand you know, go from there.
But my best advice is to createthis booth that I told you how
to do and go ahead and try torecord at night, get the packing
blankets, get the hand theclamps.
(16:08):
It shouldn't cost you more than$100.
I mean, I guess it depends onwhere you live.
It might be a little bit over,it might be, you know, hopefully
it's under, but it should bearound there and use some
blankets and stuff you have athome and you literally can
create a fantastic booth withunder$100.
Um, and the cool thing aboutthis booth too is that it was
(16:29):
portable.
So for the first year, so that Idid my business, I literally
took down my booth every singlenight.
Now I have to tell you that wasa pain in the butt, especially
if I recorded into the like twoor three in the morning and I'm
trying to take down this pvcpipe booth without waking
anybody.
It was a pain.
It was a pain, no doubt.
But, um, it did teach me a lotabout perseverance in Africa.
(16:54):
It was a pain.
It was, it was a pain.
I'm not gonna lie, it was apain.
I don't recommend it, but at thesame time I guess I kept telling
myself, you know, you do whatyou gotta do.
Uh, so, um, there was somenights where I didn't do
recording because I just didn'twant to put up the booth and
take it down, but uh, I made itthrough that and finally found a
(17:14):
way to keep it up.
So this is just one structure.
You can put something like thistogether and a closet.
You can put something like thistogether and understands
somewhere totally Harry Potter.
It, uh, you can do whatever you,wherever you can find a space,
um, that is easier for you tocreate a structure or put up
(17:37):
some sort of acoustic treatment.
I'm like, I'm just literallyusing packing blankets and
different home blankets and soforth.
And the sound's great.
So, um, tell.
Anyway, so yeah, so that's,that's the booth that I created
and hopefully that helps you.
And I can tell you this too, I'mreally going to.
(17:57):
Youtube will help if you're notquite sure about the structure
in your mind, but literally Ihave three tiers, so I have a
bottom structure with the pvcpipe that makes a rectangle, but
I ha, I leave the bottom open onthe end that I walk into and
then I leave the second tier.
Uh, it's three pipes, so there'sthree pipes on the bottom that
(18:18):
go and, and, and a rectangularshape.
There's three pipes in themiddle that go in rectangular
shape and I leave one of them,one of our, one on each of those
levels off so I can walk intothe booth.
And then on the top there's fourpints that go around the top.
And then I literally connecteach one of those sections with
um, uh, either there are threethreeway, a pvc connectors or
(18:42):
the top ones are just the elbowjoints.
So you can literally put ittogether for next to nothing.
Pvc Pipe is cheap, you just haveto cut it and even some lows
will cut it for you.
I know home depot cuts stuff foryou too, so whether you, which
one or even ace hardware or evenif you have a local hardware
shop or somewhere that you canget a plumbing shop, you can get
(19:03):
pvc pipe.
It really is easy and it'squiet.
Um, you know, unless you'rehitting it and stuff.
But other than that it's reallysturdy and it works wonders.
So, um, anyway, so that's mybooth and if you have any
questions about it, please feelfree to message me.
Um, and, or, you know, ask me aquestion through, uh, through
(19:27):
the soundcloud account ormessage me.
Um, you can send me a message atmy email address, which is a tp
cre@gmail.com.
I probably should put a link tothat or something.
And um, you know, and anythingyou want like that or you can
message me on facebook atAnthony Pico.
Vo Or um, leave a comment.
(19:50):
I'm, I'm new.
So I'm just on itunes.
It just popped up.
So please subscribe and um, ifyou like to give, give me a good
rating and uh, if you didn'tthat's okay too.
Let me know, you know, what,what, what, uh, you know, what,
what you like, um, and uh, Iwork really hard to help you
(20:11):
out.
So, um, I wanted to leave offtoday also letting you guys know
just really quickly somethingabout today was uh, or yesterday
after I had gotten done acx.
So I do a audio books as well.
So part of some things thatwe'll be going over also is the
(20:31):
different areas that we cancreate money.
And uh, when I first startedrecording I did audio books and
royalty deals and I started, um,you know, kind of racking up
those books.
I learned a process, uh, from anawesome a vo coach named Earl
(20:53):
Hall and uh, he's really cool.
Check him out.
He has, he's everywhere.
I'm earl hall was his name andnow he helped me with a process
and then I took that process andI kind of modified it myself and
came up with some ways.
Anyways, needless to say, Ifound a way to pick books on,
um, on audible or excuse me,acx, which is the platform that
(21:17):
Amazon are audible owns, whichAmazon owns that uses to find
our connect narrators with the,um, with the book creators, with
the Authors and anyways, so Ifound a way to pick books that
reduced the amount of time ittook me to record them and also
maximize the amount of money Iwould make with royalties.
(21:39):
So, um, I did a whole bunch ofbooks and I started getting
these royalty payments.
So like yesterday I got paid, itwas a February, was there about
their month behind February's alittle slower month.
So I made about$560 that I gotpaid and it's like directly
deposited into my bank account.
Usually it's around, it can befrom 800 to a thousand dollars
(22:02):
depending on how many bountiesand bounties are these things
that acx pays.
If a person within an accountthat opens up a, a subscription
account, if the first, um, ifthe first book they buy their
free book with theirsubscription account is one of
your books, they give you$25.
Well they give you 50, but yousplit the royalties, what the
(22:23):
author.
So he gets the, you know, he orshe gets 50 to$25 and then you
get$25.
But it's really great because,you know, you know, you sell,
you know, 10, 20, 30 of thoseand you're already making
hundreds and hundreds of dollarsjust by selling a couple of
books.
So that's really nice.
But anyways, I just wanted totell you that.
So, you know, I'm, I'm, I'mselling, I sell some knives
(22:45):
between 400 to six, 700 books amonth.
Uh, and that is, um, I get aroyalty from that.
Uh, so that's really nice.
That's kind of where I am rightnow.
I'm the last book I did as aroyalty deal.
I went through and it took offand I'm uh, this is in the
(23:07):
second month and it's alreadysold 50, 60 books and um, I've,
I have to be honest about itthough.
I've done a really piss poor jobof actually promoting the books.
So we're gonna we're gonna workon that.
I think we're gonna I'm gonnatry something and we're going to
see if I can promote it.
I was reading some things aboutreddit and nat and so forth, but
(23:28):
we'll talk about.
We'll, I'll know I'll, we'lllaunch a book.
I launched a book or do one andthen when we go to do it, I'll
try to promote it some becausethey see x gives you free books
to promote and stuff.
And I've done a very poor job ofactually promoting the books.
But anyways, I'm digressing.
So, um, I hope this was helpful.
(23:49):
I feel like just get it startedtalking.
I'm looking at them and I'mlike, oh my gosh, it's 24
minutes.
So, um, thank you.
Hopefully you stuck around againto the end.
I really, really appreciate it.
If you have any questions,comments, please send them to
me, messaged them to me,subscribe and, uh, tell your
friends.
Hopefully this is helpful.
(24:09):
I want to keep on this theme ofwant to get into equipment and a
Daw, which is digital audioworkspace.
And I'm going to keep talkingabout throughout this.
I'm going to keep sprinkling itwith what's actually happening.
So like right now I'm recordingan audio book, like I said
earlier, it's called, it'swritten by Nancy Baldwin and it
(24:32):
is the gratitude effect.
And um, it's a fantastic bookand it's about 21,000 words or
so.
And I'm, you know, I'm, I'mmaking, I think like I'm being
paid$500 to do this book, whichis, you know, a couple hours of
work if 9,500 words an hour,which is typical of finished our
(24:54):
work.
Um, you know, that would makethis book around to and you
know, two hours and 20 minutes,two hours and 15 minutes when I
was 20 minutes of finished work,which if we do it right, if we
do it right, we try to get a twoto one kind of ratio, meaning
that you would like to only workor I only like to work two hours
for every one hour I record andif I can keep it to that, that
(25:16):
means that, you know, I onlywere four to five hours on the
book as opposed to me workingthree or four extra hours per
hour, which is a standard.
Usually three, three hours is astandard that's judged off of
per finished hour, but I reallytry to keep it to two and we'll
go over some techniques thatI've learned that, that
hopefully will help you guys outwhen it comes to editing and
(25:38):
mastering because I do all thatmyself.
So anyways.
Um, okay.
I'm going to go this time.
Thank you again very much andlook forward to tomorrow night
for the next one.
We'll talk about equipment.
I'll talk to you about the mic,my earphones, my Daw, um, my
audio box, et Cetera, et cetera.
(26:00):
All right, well, thank you guysso much again, and uh, this was
a vios journey and I will talkto you tomorrow night piece.
Welcome to a vios journey.
My name is Anthony Pica and thisis episode two.
I am so excited to be back.
I want to start off justthanking everybody for all of
the amazing words and all of thepraise and just I don't pouring
(00:27):
of uh, love and, and I reallyappreciate it.
Thank you so much.
It means the world to me.
Um, I've have to be honest withyou guys.
I literally have been thinkingabout doing this podcast all day
while I was at work andeverything.
So I'm, like I said yesterday,I'm a teacher and I had a good
(00:48):
day at work, but I justliterally been thinking about
this all day, so I'm so excitedto finally be here tonight doing
the podcast and um, today we'regoing to dive right in to
setting up a booth and how I setup my booth.
It, his worked incredible.
(01:08):
It is cheap and it doesn't haveto be a, the crazy thousands of
dollars that you hear about a.
again, not that that's bad.
I mean, it's wonderful.
Whisper rooms are incredible,but there's also other ways to
make it happen.
Um, anyways, so moving forwardwith, um, tonight I want to
(01:31):
start off again by welcomingeverybody in letting you know
that this podcast is abouthelping the new voice over
artists, um, make some money,learn how to be a vo, uh, in
this crazy world.
And I'm with me on this journeyto try to make a career out of
(01:53):
this thing.
So, um, tonight I want to talkabout my booth.
I want to talk about a cool, uh,I don't know, kind of like
epiphany I had today a while Iwas at work and, um, yeah.
And, and see where else tonightleads us.
So anyways, um, real quick storybefore we talk about the booth.
I was at work today and um, wasworking on comparing and
(02:16):
contrasting some differentpieces of theater and cinema
from the past and the presentand uh, came across a song.
So I don't know if many of youare theater junkies like myself,
but, um, I, uh, love, uh, Annie,the movie the musical.
(02:38):
I've produced the musical,directed it.
Um, I've watched the movie amillion times, but there was a
movie that came out in 2014, thenew movie with Jamie Foxx.
And um, I had never seen it.
So, uh, was working on thattoday.
I watched it, and I know thismight sound Corny, but there is
(03:01):
a song in there, um, and um, bythe little girl Annie, she
sings, it's called opportunityand it is just the most
beautiful song and you reallyshould check it out.
And, uh, I really, you get it onyoutube and just type in
opportunity and then Annie onyoutube and pull it up and
(03:22):
you'll see is absolutelyamazing.
But the reason why I'm tellingyou about this is because she
sings the song about this hermoment, um, and this is her
opportunity and she's going toput on the best show.
A part of it is luck, but theother part of it is up to her.
And, um, I really think that isus.
(03:45):
This is our opportunity and it'sonly going to be what we do with
it.
So the world is watching.
And let's put on our best show.
So anyways, that's my, that's mysoap box about that.
Um, anyways, so I want to talkto you.
(04:08):
Let's move on to the booth.
So I'm really actually excitedto talk to you about this
because I'm quite happy with it.
So anyways, moving bank, um,right when I started being a
voiceover artist, I had no ideawhat I was doing.
I've always mixed a live theateror a live sound.
I've never, you know, I hadnever mixed, um, recorded sound
(04:31):
and there's a difference, ofcourse, you know, because when
you're live you don't have toworry about uh, well we, you do
worry about acoustics, butdifferently when you don't worry
about the sound bouncing off thewalls per se, you're trying to,
uh, control, uh, how loud thingsare so that you can hear clearly
and so forth and frequencies.
(04:52):
And we do that here to anextent.
But our job is to also make surethat the sound that is going
through to our files is the verypurest and cleanest it can be.
So that starts with a, um, arecording space that is going to
(05:14):
be quiet as well as not have alot of, um, reverb, which is
what we call a sound waves, abouncing off of walls and
hearing it, it is the time ittakes for your voice to bounce
off of a wall and come back tohit the microphone.
(05:35):
And it sounds like, uh, youknow, that saying where it
sounds like you're in a big roomand, uh, just you hear an echo.
Um, so that's a reverb.
Uh, so anyways, um, one way wedo it is to cut that out, is to
create a booth or some sort ofstructure that we can record in
that stomps the sound frombouncing off the walls that
(05:58):
absorbs it.
Um, there is many different waysto do this and I'm going to talk
about a couple, but like I said,I'm going to talk about the
booth that I created, um, andkind of the journey I was on.
So, uh, I, I literally went onYoutube and I looked up
different booths are differentways, um, to a stomp the reverb.
(06:19):
And I came across this guy whowas talking about blankets and
pillows.
I didn't have any money to spendon acoustic tiling.
Um, I didn't have money to spendon trying to deaden sound in my
house and the space I was in,and I don't know if anybody
experienced this, but, um, Ithink the reality is, I don't
(06:42):
know if you, if you've watchedany other shows, but I swear
every, every show I watch onyoutube, it's like someone just
happens to have the most perfectspace that they're recording in.
And it just looked so wonderfuland then they just pop up some
things and it's like Walla.
It's amazing.
While I was in literally a roomthat had an ad to two entrances
(07:03):
and exits one into the kitchen,one into the hallway, it was
right on the end.
Um, I'm in a different house nowand I'll tell you about the
house I'm in now.
But where I started was, I'm inthis room, we were right next to
the railroad tracks, so thetrain and they were very active
railroad tracks.
So the train went by all thetime.
And I, I'm literally a, waslike, it had to be the loudest
(07:28):
room and I happen to have, wehad bought a new frigerator I'm
not kidding.
And it just so happened that thefrigerator was literally right
next to the doorway.
So like every time, every time Iwould go to record, the
frigerator was turning on tomake ice and everything and it
could hear all of this.
So, uh, you know, it was.
(07:48):
So I had a sound, I had a noiseissue as well as reverberations.
But anyways, so the furtherresearch I did, I had come
across some people who, uh, weredoing some sound tests with
blankets and pillows anddifferent things and acoustic
tiles and foam and found thatthe reality is, uh, most of the
(08:12):
acoustic foam and things thatyou have, um, blankets, certain
types of blankets and pillowswork just as good or better
than, than, than the foam.
So I literally went out and Ihad this idea that I was going
to create a structure out of pvcpipe.
And a, I, there's, there's lotsof different.
(08:33):
I think there's some tutorialson youtube about other people.
I think I've seen some otherpeople who do it too, but
basically what I did is I tookmy desk.
So this is what I suggest ifyou're looking for a way to do
this.
So I took my desk, I measuredthe size of my desk and I wanted
to be able to come in, in andout of this structure.
(08:53):
I wanted to be able to stand upand record and sit down if I
needed to, but also be at mydesk for all of my equipment
that needed to sit on it.
So I measure the size of mydesk.
Uh, I measured the depth, so mydesk was just happened to be
around four feet wide and thenit was a couple, it was about
two feet deep.
And um, so I did pretty muchlike a four by four literally.
(09:18):
And then the height I wanted tobe able to stand up.
So I did the height at aroundsix, six, which is, which for
me, I'm like, who am I?
Five eight.
So, you know, six, six is prettyall pretty tall, so I did that
and I went to Lowe's and I gotpvc pipe and I got fasteners
(09:41):
they have those um, cornerfasteners, they have the ends
that you can put three differentsides of a pvc piping and I
basically put a rudimentarystructure together that held
itself up and the shape of arectangle using these ends.
(10:02):
And I'm a, I cut the pvc pipe atthe time.
I had literally a hand saw andthat I had bought from Lowe's
for a couple of dollars.
It took awhile, I have to admitgut NAN's out on, off of my
chair, but I did and I put thestructure together and then I
(10:23):
bought packing blankets and Istarted out with one set of
packing.
Well, when I mean one set, Imean for, I bought four sets of
packing blankets but meaningthat each side.
So I had the back the front, uh,and well actually, so the
structure, the packing blanketsmade it all the way around.
So I had four.
So I'm three.
(10:44):
Made it around all the signs andthen one over the top.
So when I did that, itcompletely took care of the
reverb.
However, what it didn't takecare of was the sound.
I mean the noise.
So I realized that no matterwhat would the packing blankets,
they help the river, but theydidn't do anything for the
noise.
So what I started to do was goon an adventure for finding
(11:08):
different ways to deaden theextra noise, which I will talk
about later.
But um, what I, uh, what I didthough is his first I had to
eliminate that reverb.
And um, that's how I created myown booth.
Um, oh.
And what I did was I simplybought from Lowe's some, um, um,
(11:30):
grips or some clamps, some handclamps that you can just
squeeze, you know, the, theblack ones.
And then there's the silver oneswith the blue tips.
Are there tips?
And our fan base knows, butthey're, they're not very
expensive.
I spent under$100 to do this.
And then what I did was, is Itook some pills from home and I
pushed them on the sides, on thebottom.
(11:50):
I took a blanket that I had athome, put it over desk, Tom.
Uh, I had a light, uh, and um, Iuse an imac computer, just
something that I happened tohave.
It wasn't something I bought,I'd had it for years since 2011
and I started from there.
So, and, and we're going to talkabout equipment and another
(12:12):
episode, but I just wanted totalk about the booth and
everything, but I also wanted totalk to you about something else
with a booth at a friend.
Really, really cool.
So I stopped there and Irecorded for a while, you know,
I recorded for a long time withjust that and I was able to find
(12:33):
some different ways to reducethe noise floor.
Uh, which the noise floor is theum, the like your room noise.
So like you're the, the roomlevel that the noises at, in
your, in your recording area.
Uh, so I was, uh, you know, Iwent and found some different
(12:54):
plugins and things that helpedwith that, but, um, I, when I
moved to my new home, I don'tknow why this was, but, uh, I, I
had this whole new room that I,that I'm using just for our
recording now and uh, I had mybooth, same one I built before
and I brought it up, but theroom itself is all wood.
(13:15):
I mean the floor is all wood andI'm the walls and everything.
It was very echoey in the room.
So when I set up my booth, whatI found was, is that it's still
echoed and I was like, oh, thisis crazy because I put my
blankets or anything.
So I went out and I boughtanother set that will made it
all the way around again, justlike I bought a, a second set of
(13:38):
four blankets and I put them up.
I put a extra set up against theback and then of course decked
out the rest of it.
Like I told you, excuse me, andI have to say, it works
fantastic.
The sound, um, is, is, iswonderful and it just, it, it
(13:58):
completely deadens the sound orthe reverb and um, the sound is
pure.
I have like barely no noiselevel and um, or no noise, you
know, and, and it just iswonderful.
So I'm thrilled with it.
The noise itself from outside.
I happened to be in a quietneighborhood.
(14:20):
So that's still the reality is,is I moved to another place
where it's a quiet neighborhoodand that has helped a lot.
I don't have a train anymore.
I don't have planes flying overby, I don't have loud roads, but
if you have those things, mysuggestion is you start with the
reverb record at night.
(14:41):
I know that might not be anoption for some of you, but
recording at nighttime reallyhelped me.
I kind of had to record atnighttime anyways because of my
family.
Um, I had to wait till my kidsgo to bed so I know if any of
you have kids out there, but Ihave a couple.
They're young and uh, you know,I don't get to spend time with
them unless I spend time withthem at night before they go to
sleep.
So what I do even even now I'mrecording this, it's, you know,
(15:04):
the, all the kids are to bed andmy wife went to sleep and I'm up
in my booth recording for youguys.
And then after this is done,I'll go ahead and work on a book
that I'm doing called, um, thegratitude effect by Nancy
Baldwin A.
Anyways, so I record at nightand what I found is, is that it
(15:25):
really is a lot quieter at nightand it is a great time to
record.
So my advice to you is if youare having a loud noise problem
in your area that you'rerecording in record at night, if
that's possible.
Um, if it's not possible.
(15:45):
Like I said, there are some waysthat you can, uh, take out the
noise from your, from your floorand you know, go from there.
But my best advice is to createthis booth that I told you how
to do and go ahead and try torecord at night, get the packing
blankets, get the hand theclamps.
(16:08):
It shouldn't cost you more than$100.
I mean, I guess it depends onwhere you live.
It might be a little bit over,it might be, you know, hopefully
it's under, but it should bearound there and use some
blankets and stuff you have athome and you literally can
create a fantastic booth withunder$100.
Um, and the cool thing aboutthis booth too is that it was
(16:29):
portable.
So for the first year, so that Idid my business, I literally
took down my booth every singlenight.
Now I have to tell you that wasa pain in the butt, especially
if I recorded into the like twoor three in the morning and I'm
trying to take down this pvcpipe booth without waking
anybody.
It was a pain.
It was a pain, no doubt.
But, um, it did teach me a lotabout perseverance in Africa.
(16:54):
It was a pain.
It was, it was a pain.
I'm not gonna lie, it was apain.
I don't recommend it, but at thesame time I guess I kept telling
myself, you know, you do whatyou gotta do.
Uh, so, um, there was somenights where I didn't do
recording because I just didn'twant to put up the booth and
take it down, but uh, I made itthrough that and finally found a
(17:14):
way to keep it up.
So this is just one structure.
You can put something like thistogether and a closet.
You can put something like thistogether and understands
somewhere totally Harry Potter.
It, uh, you can do whatever you,wherever you can find a space,
um, that is easier for you tocreate a structure or put up
(17:37):
some sort of acoustic treatment.
I'm like, I'm just literallyusing packing blankets and
different home blankets and soforth.
And the sound's great.
So, um, tell.
Anyway, so yeah, so that's,that's the booth that I created
and hopefully that helps you.
And I can tell you this too, I'mreally going to.
(17:57):
Youtube will help if you're notquite sure about the structure
in your mind, but literally Ihave three tiers, so I have a
bottom structure with the pvcpipe that makes a rectangle, but
I ha, I leave the bottom open onthe end that I walk into and
then I leave the second tier.
Uh, it's three pipes, so there'sthree pipes on the bottom that
(18:18):
go and, and, and a rectangularshape.
There's three pipes in themiddle that go in rectangular
shape and I leave one of them,one of our, one on each of those
levels off so I can walk intothe booth.
And then on the top there's fourpints that go around the top.
And then I literally connecteach one of those sections with
um, uh, either there are threethreeway, a pvc connectors or
(18:42):
the top ones are just the elbowjoints.
So you can literally put ittogether for next to nothing.
Pvc Pipe is cheap, you just haveto cut it and even some lows
will cut it for you.
I know home depot cuts stuff foryou too, so whether you, which
one or even ace hardware or evenif you have a local hardware
shop or somewhere that you canget a plumbing shop, you can get
(19:03):
pvc pipe.
It really is easy and it'squiet.
Um, you know, unless you'rehitting it and stuff.
But other than that it's reallysturdy and it works wonders.
So, um, anyway, so that's mybooth and if you have any
questions about it, please feelfree to message me.
Um, and, or, you know, ask me aquestion through, uh, through
(19:27):
the soundcloud account ormessage me.
Um, you can send me a message atmy email address, which is a tp
cre@gmail.com.
I probably should put a link tothat or something.
And um, you know, and anythingyou want like that or you can
message me on facebook atAnthony Pico.
Vo Or um, leave a comment.
(19:50):
I'm, I'm new.
So I'm just on itunes.
It just popped up.
So please subscribe and um, ifyou like to give, give me a good
rating and uh, if you didn'tthat's okay too.
Let me know, you know, what,what, what, uh, you know, what,
what you like, um, and uh, Iwork really hard to help you
(20:11):
out.
So, um, I wanted to leave offtoday also letting you guys know
just really quickly somethingabout today was uh, or yesterday
after I had gotten done acx.
So I do a audio books as well.
So part of some things thatwe'll be going over also is the
(20:31):
different areas that we cancreate money.
And uh, when I first startedrecording I did audio books and
royalty deals and I started, um,you know, kind of racking up
those books.
I learned a process, uh, from anawesome a vo coach named Earl
(20:53):
Hall and uh, he's really cool.
Check him out.
He has, he's everywhere.
I'm earl hall was his name andnow he helped me with a process
and then I took that process andI kind of modified it myself and
came up with some ways.
Anyways, needless to say, Ifound a way to pick books on,
um, on audible or excuse me,acx, which is the platform that
(21:17):
Amazon are audible owns, whichAmazon owns that uses to find
our connect narrators with the,um, with the book creators, with
the Authors and anyways, so Ifound a way to pick books that
reduced the amount of time ittook me to record them and also
maximize the amount of money Iwould make with royalties.
(21:39):
So, um, I did a whole bunch ofbooks and I started getting
these royalty payments.
So like yesterday I got paid, itwas a February, was there about
their month behind February's alittle slower month.
So I made about$560 that I gotpaid and it's like directly
deposited into my bank account.
Usually it's around, it can befrom 800 to a thousand dollars
(22:02):
depending on how many bountiesand bounties are these things
that acx pays.
If a person within an accountthat opens up a, a subscription
account, if the first, um, ifthe first book they buy their
free book with theirsubscription account is one of
your books, they give you$25.
Well they give you 50, but yousplit the royalties, what the
(22:23):
author.
So he gets the, you know, he orshe gets 50 to$25 and then you
get$25.
But it's really great because,you know, you know, you sell,
you know, 10, 20, 30 of thoseand you're already making
hundreds and hundreds of dollarsjust by selling a couple of
books.
So that's really nice.
But anyways, I just wanted totell you that.
So, you know, I'm, I'm, I'mselling, I sell some knives
(22:45):
between 400 to six, 700 books amonth.
Uh, and that is, um, I get aroyalty from that.
Uh, so that's really nice.
That's kind of where I am rightnow.
I'm the last book I did as aroyalty deal.
I went through and it took offand I'm uh, this is in the
(23:07):
second month and it's alreadysold 50, 60 books and um, I've,
I have to be honest about itthough.
I've done a really piss poor jobof actually promoting the books.
So we're gonna we're gonna workon that.
I think we're gonna I'm gonnatry something and we're going to
see if I can promote it.
I was reading some things aboutreddit and nat and so forth, but
(23:28):
we'll talk about.
We'll, I'll know I'll, we'lllaunch a book.
I launched a book or do one andthen when we go to do it, I'll
try to promote it some becausethey see x gives you free books
to promote and stuff.
And I've done a very poor job ofactually promoting the books.
But anyways, I'm digressing.
So, um, I hope this was helpful.
(23:49):
I feel like just get it startedtalking.
I'm looking at them and I'mlike, oh my gosh, it's 24
minutes.
So, um, thank you.
Hopefully you stuck around againto the end.
I really, really appreciate it.
If you have any questions,comments, please send them to
me, messaged them to me,subscribe and, uh, tell your
friends.
Hopefully this is helpful.
(24:09):
I want to keep on this theme ofwant to get into equipment and a
Daw, which is digital audioworkspace.
And I'm going to keep talkingabout throughout this.
I'm going to keep sprinkling itwith what's actually happening.
So like right now I'm recordingan audio book, like I said
earlier, it's called, it'swritten by Nancy Baldwin and it
(24:32):
is the gratitude effect.
And um, it's a fantastic bookand it's about 21,000 words or
so.
And I'm, you know, I'm, I'mmaking, I think like I'm being
paid$500 to do this book, whichis, you know, a couple hours of
work if 9,500 words an hour,which is typical of finished our
(24:54):
work.
Um, you know, that would makethis book around to and you
know, two hours and 20 minutes,two hours and 15 minutes when I
was 20 minutes of finished work,which if we do it right, if we
do it right, we try to get a twoto one kind of ratio, meaning
that you would like to only workor I only like to work two hours
for every one hour I record andif I can keep it to that, that
(25:16):
means that, you know, I onlywere four to five hours on the
book as opposed to me workingthree or four extra hours per
hour, which is a standard.
Usually three, three hours is astandard that's judged off of
per finished hour, but I reallytry to keep it to two and we'll
go over some techniques thatI've learned that, that
hopefully will help you guys outwhen it comes to editing and
(25:38):
mastering because I do all thatmyself.
So anyways.
Um, okay.
I'm going to go this time.
Thank you again very much andlook forward to tomorrow night
for the next one.
We'll talk about equipment.
I'll talk to you about the mic,my earphones, my Daw, um, my
audio box, et Cetera, et cetera.
(26:00):
All right, well, thank you guysso much again, and uh, this was
a vios journey and I will talkto you tomorrow night piece.
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