Week 5 - Release Planning and Voice Over Practice
As a few know, I was out of town last weekend so did not have much time to dedicate to growing in my skills in Voice Over. I have also been dealing with some unfortunate home care issues. Additionally, my roommate is moving out this weekend. That last part is a good thing as it was supposed to be for only 2 months – it ended up being 16 months with only 4 months (extremely low) rent paid. Never. Again. But that’s enough about the craziness that is life!
There are two things I want to discuss today: planning promotions for my upcoming title single and EP releases (September 14/15 and September 21/22 respectively – not certain due to time zone things), and a big takeaway for me in my voice over group sessions this week. Let’s start with music since it is on top of my mind.
Release Planning
One of the difficult aspects of creating art is sharing it with the world. How do you do that without being overly pushy but still get the desired result of people viewing or listening? I mentioned in a previous blog post that I am working with a company to help me run a promotional campaign: Music Gateway, based out of the UK. So far, I’ve been very happy with my interactions with the company and am looking forward to seeing what we manage in this partnership.
The last step I must complete before the actual release day is filming the promotional videos. This is what I’m working on over this holiday weekend. I need to create a minimum of 4 videos (2 per song chosen) for the campaign to address the primary intent of the promotions: new followers and music listeners.
I have a plan for the first video set – I want to show the work I’ve put into the music (my way of showing I’m not an AI artist) for the first, then have a dramatic video following a part of the title track’s story for the second. The idea is that the first video will blend well with the content I already put out on TikTok and YouTube Shorts, which will make it possible for me to blend into the different style of video required for displaying my music.
A similar strategy should work well for the second song, too. The difference is the story I need to tell in the initial video. It will need to be slightly different so it isn’t repetitive – perhaps focusing more on my love of storytelling. Afterall, people who know who you are as a person are more willing to be invested in what you do 😊.
Beyond that, I am waiting for the actual release date before I can claim my Spotify for Artists account. That is the unfortunate side of not selecting a Spotify preferred partner for releasing my music.
Voice Over Practice
In my voice over practice this last week, I haven’t focused as much on the act of creating a character. It was a little more towards narrative or commercial aspects. In a group session I attended related to basic techniques (hearing it over and over helps retain and refine said techniques), I was able to run through a practice script for narration in a small group setting.
One major thing I have a tendency to do is overenunciate. Thanks, childhood theatre without a mic… The other thing noted by the instructor is something they called the “the” rule. My script was affected by this as it was about the Amazon forest. There are two ways the word “the” can be pronounced. The primary pronunciation is “thuh”, but the modulated form is “thee”.
When you use the primary pronunciation in front of a word starting with a vowel, it causes you to use a glottal stop – that is, closing off the air to create a ‘stop’ sound. An example many may recognize is some dialects of British English. When saying the word “bottle,” it may come out as “bah-ole”. The air stop replaced the double t consonant. This type of sound creates what many consider an unpleasant separation between the word “the” and its predecessor in a recording. The solution is to use the alternate pronunciation “thee” to allow for a more flowing sound between words.
I’d rather not take chances on an audition or demo on whether the listener is a sticker for such things, so I’ll be making the adjustment to ensure I follow that rule. This may take a little more practice to feel completely natural, though as a native (American) English speaker I more often than not already do.
Upcoming
That’s it for this week! This upcoming week I’m continuing reading my current Voice Over book of choice, There’s Money where your Mouth is, editing the promotional videos, and meeting up once again with my coach. I am hoping we will begin discussing demos for at least character work as I feel in that regard I am ready.
header.all-comments