There are a lot of interesting things that happen at our Voices.com page on Facebook including conversations among members that generate some very interesting and useful ideas!
One of these insightful encounters involved Ben Straley and Doug Brunelle.
What were they talking about and how could it help you?
Find out!
Help!
Ben Straley posed a question on the Voices.com wall at Facebook that read "You're doing an audiobook. The text required two characters to speak in unison. What do you do?"
It didn't take long for someone to answer Ben. That person was Doug Brunelle of Premier AudioWorks. Doug is an audio producer who helps people with editing and post-production. His services include anything from editing raw voice over files to productions of any kind needing mixing/mastering to stereo.
Here's Doug's answer to the question of how to make it so that two characters can speak at once.
Mixing Voices in Unison
Doug's answer:
This kind of thing is easy to do, if you have a DAW application (Digital Audio Workstation) on your PC or Mac, almost all of which have the capability to record multiple tracks. Record the first voice for the section you need to double, then on another track, record your second voice, while listening to the already-recorded track.
If it's a long phrase, or a whole paragraph which needs doubling, you might run into timing problems, because it's hard to remember the exact timing or phrasing you used, for a long spiel. In that case, break it up into sentences, doubling each sentence as you go through the section. You should be able to closely match the timing of each sentence, especially if you listen to your first recording of the sentence a few times.
Another way to do it would be to record the phrase which needs to be doubled, once. Then, duplicate the track and delay the second track by 50-100 milliseconds, and perform some random pitch variation on it, to make it sound more like a natural (two person) doubling. I like the method above, though, because it gives the best, most natural-sounding results.
The Possibilities!
There are people in our community who are more than happy to give some input or share tips. If you haven't joined the Voices.com Facebook page already, or our LinkedIn group for that matter, I encourage you to check them out!
"Like" Voices.com on Facebook
Become part of our group on LinkedIn
Best wishes,
Stephanie
©iStockphoto.com/Catherine Yeulet
