My work as a full time voice over talent depends on my voice always being in shape to work. More often than not, especially during the winter months, friends ask me what I do if I catch a cold. The short answer is, I don’t.
I do have a few tricks up my sleeve in the unlikely event that I do catch a cold, but the best defense is to sidestep them. Notice how I don’t say “eliminate” a cold because the common cold is, well, common…and impossible to entirely eliminate. But imagine if you could lessen the severity of a cold when you do get them.
Introducing this little concoction that my wife and I have been taking every morning for the last two years.
Here’s What You’ll Need
Hot Water
Fresh Organic Lemon
Organic Honey
Why Organic Lemons?
Organic lemons are smaller, more juicy and don’t have any chemicals in them. I also feel that the medicinal component of organic lemons is more potent.
Why Organic Honey?
Most off the shelf honey is filtered before it’s bottled to get rid of impurites in the honey. Unfortunately, by filtering the honey it also takes out the component of organic honey that will boost your immune system.
I am far from a health food, granola type but trust me when I say that using organic lemons and honey is the key to the success of this drink.
How Much Is Enough?
Depending on how juicy your lemons are you’ll want to use a quarter of a lemon…you need about a table spoon of lemon…squeeze that into your cup. Lemon is a powerful antioxidant, it protects the body and strengthens the immune system.
Then squeeze out about a table spoon of honey into your cup and top it with your hot water.
Make sure your honey gets dissolved into the water…stir it up to be sure.
How Often?
Drink this first thing in the morning, every morning before you eat your breakfast to make sure it gets straight into your system and starts doing it’s thing.
Do this every morning and you’re sure to survive cold season unscathed. If anything you’ll find that if you DO catch a cold it’s not going to be as severe.
As easy as that, you now hold my secret weapon in fighting off a cold!
Try it out and let me know how your did in the comments below!
When it comes to writing style I don’t consider myself a “traditionalist”. Two things that I insist on when writing is spelling and punctuation. Both of these things have improved by using two apps on a regular basis: Hemingway and Grammarly.
If you’re writing a script for a commercial, a TV promo, an ebook, blog post or any form of online social media, these two tools will make sure you stay on track.
Grammarly – is more than a spell checker. It checks your grammar, spelling and plagiarism (premium version only)! You read that right. According to their website, “Grammarly’s plagiarism checker cross checks your text against over 8 billion web pages, detecting plagiarized passages and highlighting sections that have been previously published elsewhere”. Another plagiarism checker is Unplag. Learn about their free plagiarism checker here. Or if you want learn more about plagiarism click here.
The web browser plugin checks that comments or posts are grammatically correct.
Grammarly is available for free as a plugin on Chrome, Safari and Firefox.
Hemingway – is a web tool where you simply cut and paste your document and get instant feedback. Sentence structure and phrasing, even passive voice alerts are included.
My personal preference is running my text through Grammarly and then taking it to Hemingway for final touches.
“The man who views the world at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life” – Muhammad Ali
As someone who just turned the big 5-oh I’m not going to argue with that statement from “The People’s Champion” .
Truth be told, I’m certain if I had attended my 25th reunion I would have seen my friends as pretty much the same as they were back in our University days…perhaps slightly heavier, but generally no change. That has never been my approach to my personal life or business.
I’ve had Melodyne in my audio production arsenal for many years and have used it only occasionally to play around with for radio imaging voice overs. It’s main purpose of course is to fix out of tune singers in music production. I call it the more beautiful sister of Auto-Tune.
The other day a friend of mine sent me a video interview his son had done with Dr. Gerald H. Pollack talking about The Fourth Phase of Water [video]. The interview was well done, good questions, great information, nicely edited but at one point in the video the thing all sound guys fear the most when doing these kinds of documentary interviews, outside the location a truck started backing up! Beep, beep, beep, beep….
While it’s understandable given the location and while slightly annoying, I thought it would have been better to find a way to get rid of it in post production. The best they could have done was to play with the EQ and try to knock it down a bit so it wasn’t as harsh…but then I had a thought!
Melodyne.
I opened up a new session in ProTools and imported the video with it’s audio track. Loaded the Melodyne plug in on the audio track and voila! There it was as clear as day…!
I highlighted it and hit delete. And as simple as that, the sound of the backing up truck was gone! Amazing!
Of course there is a bit of EQ tweaking to do but for the most part Melodyne had done the job.
Try it out next time you have the same issue, you’ll be amazed too!
I’ve always said when you have the right tools you can make anything happen. The same goes for my voice over business.
I’ve been asked a million times before what software I use (ProTools), what microphones I use (TLM 103 + MKH 416), what’s my mic preamp (BAE 1073MP) I’m even asked about the plugins I use to process my voice, which depending on the job, is just a combination of compression and EQ. But nobody ever asks me what I use the majority of the time, in my office to help me run the business. What’s up with that?
The tools I use day-in-day-out to run my business are just as important and in some cases MORE important than what I use in the booth.
For that reason, I’ve decided to share the 5 most indispensable tools I use to run my voice over business.
Tools List
Wunderlist (Mac/PC) – My assistant and I live in the same city, by car about 30 minutes away, but thanks to Wunderlist I don’t need to call and ask her what she’s working on, see what’s she’s finished or to give her more information on a specific project. Wunderlist sits on my computer desktop in my office and in my iPhone. No matter where I am my assistant and I are able to keep the business on track.
Fetch (Mac) – I’ve been using Fetch since they invented it to quickly and seamlessly upload finished audio for clients to my online web server. Each client has a ‘Fetch droplet’ on my computer that is directly connected to their password protected folder on my server. I just drag and drop finished audio and zipped files onto the clients droplet and off they go! (PC Alternate: WS_FTP, 20% off with this code: Fetch20)
Typinator (Mac) – Typing the same thing over and over to clients when sending notifications that their audio is ready to download from my server (especially during TV sweeps) is a thing of the past with Typinator. I’ve set up simple codes that instantly expand into larger messages and shave off time when sending emails to clients. (PC Alternate: AutoText)
MaxBulk Mailer (Mac/PC) – Communication is one of the most important aspects of my business. I’m in touch with my clients regularly with general information, like new blog posts they might be interested in, an article that I’ve read or vacation notices. MaxBulk Mailer is the software that I use to stay in touch. It resides on my office computer and lets me email to my entire client list (or just a segment) quickly and easily anytime it’s necessary.
Zoom.us (Mac/PC) – Thanks to the internet and web cams, traditional conference calls are a thing of the past. I believe reading peoples facial expressions and body language is just as important (and sometimes more important) than hearing only the tone of voice. For that reason, I started using Zoom to meet with clients to discuss projects before and after I get into the booth. I use it when doing live webinars with my voice over students and also to meet with my assistant for our weekly face-to-face.
Bottom Line
The tools you use should help you achieve your goals not interfere with them or bog you down. Each of these tools helps me to get to where I want to be faster and more efficiently. Check them out!
DO YOU WANT more useful tips for your voice over business? Subscribe to MyVoiceOverCoach.com
David Tyler is a creative communicator and voice over talent with 35+ years of experience in the broadcasting.
His mantra of ‘Stop Communicating and Start Connecting’ is his counsel to anyone attempting to use media, old or new, broadcast or online.
He writes and lectures on “The Art of Communicating Ideas.”
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