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This is a AAA radio ad that entices the listener to trust AAA for their auto insurance. I had it almost perfect on the first take, but I paused too long in between "Save me money" and "on my auto insurance." Not a big deal, as I found out, because that's the take you hear. Also, the script had a typo,
and even though I tried to correct on the fly, the line ended up sounding
too awkward. The edit is at "So when you're pumping..." The script originally read, "So when you pumping..." My first read clocked in at 29 seconds, and
my second and third at 30 even.

This one was a lot of fun because it was more "character" than "announcer."
I listened to the original, and hit the "Lords, Ladies, Good Gentles all" line
right on the beat. Unfortunately, the take the engineer used was a bit too short, he moved all my dialogue forward by about half a second. Now,
though my bit ends perfectly, it sounds like I delayed my entrance by a
beat. I'd rather have done a fourth take (I believe I did three altogether)
than have it come in late like that.

On my second take, instead of saying "Duke of Norfolk," I said "Dork of
Norfolk." Needless to say, we didn't use that take.

This was early in the recording session. The delivery had to be
"announcery," which for me meant, "deeper, no deeper, just a bit deeper..."
It showed me that I need to work on making my deeper register sound more natural and conversational.

I think this may have been the first take. I stumbled a little at "financial
solutions." I know I did other takes where I corrected that line, but this is
the one they gave me.

This was a tough read. They wanted me to get a low, resonant "announcer"
voice, stay natural and flowing, read some pretty awkward dialogue, and
keep my energy. Say, "The Associated Builders and Contractors
Construction Rodeo," or "Merit Shop Scholarship Fund" five times fast. I did quite a few takes on this, and I'm not entirely pleased with the results. Part
of the problem was that if they didn't like something, or if I flubbed a line, I
had to read the whole thing over again. If I'm going to have to read copy
like this in the future, I'd better work on my Don Lafontaine impression.

For Fun:

Here is the earliest thing I've made. This "movie trailer" came from my desire
to figure out how to use my Cakewalk Sonar Home Studio software. The only mic I had at the time was a cheap plastic mic that came with my dad's 1998 Dell PC. I didn't have a pop filter either, which is why my plosives sound like they're backed by a small nuclear explosion. Also, I had no idea how to use
the envelope feature, so I masked the fact that I couldn't make the music
fade by using record scratches. Pretty cheap tactic, I know. Also, I'm not pleased by the number of silences. My comedic timing has come a long way.

I also used some real music (which I don't own) in this:

1. Crossfire by Stevie Ray Vaughan.

2. Neon Knights by Black Sabbath.

3. Concerto for Organ and Orchestra no.10 in D Minor Mvmt. 1 by George Frideric Handel. I have no idea who recorded this. The CD has no information other than the fact it was printed in Canada.

4. Irving Berlin's Blue Skies by 101 Strings.

5. Misquito Brain Surgery by Spastic Ink.

If any of the people who wrote or own the rights to this music want me to
take this file down, that's fine. Please email me and I'll remove it.

Good Heavens, this was fun to record. I made this in about 2 hours after listening to my friend, Ted Stoltz's hilarious Meta Public Radio spoof. By this point I had gotten a nice Audix OM 2 vocal mic, a FireWire Solo interface,
and a pop filter. I still hadn't realized that my version of Sonar had a volume envelope yet (I thought that feature was only on more expensive versions),
so I had to figure out a way to make the music fade at the end. I highlighted the last few seconds of the music and did a three decibel cut. Then I'd move
to the right by half a second and do another three decibel cut. I kept doing
this until the music faded into nothing. Fortunately, I learned that I had a volume envelope and never had to do that again.

Now, as to the recording itself, it's a loving tribute to the advertisements of
the fifties, very much a la Ren and Stimpy's "Log" toy. The Thingamabob represents the "beat the Jones's" type attitude that human beings have.
Even when we have no idea why we want something, we know we have to have it just because it's expensive, exclusive, or even just shiny. What does
it do? Who cares? It's cool!

The music used was Irving Berlin's But Not Too Much recorded by 101
Strings.

This was another fun one to record. The main voice over part took only one take, which made me glad because it was really rough on my throat. I
recorded myself doing some grungy riff on the guitar and laid down another track of me going nuts with some sort of guitar solo. My favorite part was
the falsetto scream of "RAMPS!"

I've gone to my fair share of mud bogs, demolition derbies, and tractor pulls. They're a blast, but I always feel sorry for the announcers. They must go
home with super raspy voices, and I'll bet they have throat nodules on their throat nodules. So, I wondered what it would be like if one of these guys
quit the tractor pull gig and started doing ad copy and voice over for the
local opera house. Not too deep, but it was a fun commercial to record.

This track was an exercise in creating ambient noise for a restaurant. I recorded random dialogue in different voices, in some cases not even using
real words, and stacked the tracks on top of each other. Then, I recorded myself clinking silverware and glasses. Then, I wrote a simple, repeating bassline in MIDI fretless bass and recorded myself playing some jazz guitar overtop. Then, in my Humphrey Bogart voice, recorded the protagonist PI talking about meeting some mobsters.

Nick's Meeting was a test I did for a character created by my friend, Adam
Williamson, Nick Neutered. Nick's a very serious, but very incompetent PI.
He knows, just knows that deep down inside is a natural born Private Investigator, but Nick has yet to spew him forth. I don't know why, I love characters that know how incompetent they are, but try anyway.

I find game show formats highly entertaining, but not for the right reasons.
I'm particularly entertained by The Price Is Right. When the contestants lose
or are disqualified, Bob Barker feigns pity and sends them packing. Winning
Isn't Everything is barely a parody. Plus, I tried to give them appropriate names:

Harold the announcer: Herald, because he heralds, of course.

Rob DeLoser: Rob the Loser. Can be taken to mean that he likes to rob
losers, or that he, Rob, is a loser.

Dirk Singleman: Singleman. He's a single man. No deeper than that. Dirk was
an appropriately geeky name, so that's what he's got.

The applause took forever to record. At first, I set the mic in the middle of
the room and had the game show play in the background. I would get up, go across the room, and record myself clapping. This wasn't a problem until I
went back and changed some of the dialogue. The echo of the track had
been playing into the mic, so the dialogue didn't match up anymore, and the echo was different from the main track. 40 hand claps had to be deleted. In
all, I clapped over a hundred times to make the audience in this. I didn't use any reverb, so it ended up sounding like a talk show audience. I'm going to make another one of these, and I'll add reverb and more tracks. The beeping
of the wheel was an old keyboard and the initial creak of the wheel turning
was my creaking office chair. Lot's of fun, even with the frustrations of
creating an audience.

Oh. and thank goodness for the volume envelope.

The music used was Cole Porter's White Tie and Tails by 101 Strings.

For Serious:

Mid Atlantic Concrete Equipment

I recently performed voice over for Mid Atlantic Concrete Equipment's phone
system. Most of my performances were voice mail and menu systems, and I
will post some samples of those soon, but the most difficult, time consuming,
and interesting bit of voice work I did was for the lengthy on hold message.
There were many takes with many different reads, but we finally arrived at
a performance and voice type they were happy with. This was all done long
distance, I live in Florida and MACE is in Pennsylvania. They had to be very
specific with their direction and I gave them many choices in delivery style.
In the end, they got an entire phone system's worth of voice over and I got
a very nice paycheck!

Cooltek Air Conditioning

I recorded these for one of my dad's clients, Cooltek Air Conditioning. He had done the recordings for the "Hello" and "Sorry we're not here," but he didn't
like how they sounded. My dad and his boss, Owen Blevins, asked me if I'd
do them. I happily agreed. Unfortunately, Cooltek USA is now off the air and
my dad closed the Onebox account. Oh, well. At least I got to lend my
voice.

After placing an order for some very rare beer, the elusive and very tasty Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout, I talked with the owner. He was a very nice fellow, asking for my shipping info, when he said something along the
lines of, "You sound so well spoken, are you an announcer?" I was flattered,
so I recorded this ad for him.

Mike Nelson, the genius behind 9 seasons worth of jokes on Mystery Science Theater 3000, has started a new venture called Rifftrax. Since he can't
afford the rights to mainline movies such as Star Wars or Lord of the Rings,
he records a commentary track, sometimes with his old MST3K cohorts, and sells them as mp3's from his website. Recently, he had a contest to write
new theme music for his commentary tracks. My friend, Ted Stoltz, and I
each wrote and recorded an entry for the contest. Neither of us won, but
gosh it was fun.

I originally wrote this as a pop/rock song, complete with choruses and bridge.
I felt it worked better as a theme song, so I rewrote it. The guitars and bass were quick records, only taking a few takes, but the drums took me forever.
I'm not a drummer, so I had to write, rewrite, rerewrite, and rererewrite the drum track until it sounded real. It was a big learning experience, and taught me the value of a good rhythmic foundation.

Exactly what it sounds like, it's pretentious guitar music. Ted Stoltz needed some guitar music for one of his Meta Public Radio spoofs, and since I was already playing one of the characters, interviewee and poet Armand
Bordeaux, he asked me if I'd record something for him. This was the result.
He said he was humming it for days after we did the recording together.

Simple, just two guitar tracks stacked on top of each other.