A very voice over afternoon...

While Sunday was filled with music projects, today was a big voice over day for me.  It all started with a phone call which, by the end of it, had me diverting all my energy from working on George's picture toward tweaking my website, editing my demo and doing general research and organization. 

The call was from another voice over talent and coach who was administering the free evaluation I had solicited a few weeks ago via this site.  They say they'll evaluate your career if you send them a demo and let them look at your marketing materials (e.g. website whatever else).  Always a skeptic, I wasn't sure what to expect but I figure it couldn't hurt. Worst they'd do is try to sucker me into paying for something I don't want to pay for, which wouldn't be a big deal since I don't have a whole lot of money to throw at things like that anyway.  There was a red flag because they offer some kind of package deals to promote you to talent agents, etc.  I've always heard you should never give anyone money up front for representation so I was all set to turn down whatever they were going to offer me. 

But, in fact, they were brutally honest and actually quite helpful.  Which, let's be honest, is exactly what I need at this stage.  Realism.  I've known for sometime that either Edge didn't give me much of a head start or I didn't take advantage of them enough.  I came away with the feeling that I wasn't quite ready to market myself, not simply because I was still working on getting my materials together but because I didn't get a whole lot of mic time during the three months I worked with them.  The notion that they sort of churn out voice talent at an alarming rate is certainly out there and hearing it from this woman today was not a surprise to me (One of the coaches I worked with at Edge even said so!).

Other than bashing the place I did my "training" she did have some fantastically valuable information on marketing, specifically pointing out some of the things I was doing wrong and evaluating my choices, putting them in a different light.  For example, I though it was a good idea to advertise that I do both music and voice over on the same website, and I even put this question to someone at Edge and got the opposite answer from what this woman gave me.  Apparently, as a result of putting voice over and music stuff on one site, it's confusing and casting agents don't have a lot of time to be confused.  A lot of people I spoke to about it were agreeing with the notion that casting agents looking for voice and music for projects (like most of them) would be attracted to someone who could do both.  It appears to make logical sense.  So I went with it.  But, as this woman pointed out, it also makes me look like I'm not outstanding at one or the other, I just happen to do both.  And I thought about it some more.  A casting agent is casting voice talent.  They're not necessarily trying to source music for a project as well.  That's someone else's job within the production company.  So maybe I could market myself to someone like this but ultimately, I need to be considering the fact that the vast majority of jobs I'd be looking at doing, I really only need to be impressing a casting agent and not necessarily trying to reel in the whole production team.  Maybe eventually once I've established that I'm a pretty decent voice talent, I can start advertising both together.  But even then, the above situation still applies.  Casting agents don't have time to care that I do music, too. 

So anyway, the other major thing that she pointed out is that I should really have a commercial demo.  Something that's been on my mind for a while now...well, since I've been doing all this research and found a few production companies that, when soliciting new voice talent, asked that I upload a commercial demo.  The vast majority of jobs, she tells me, in the voice over world are commercials.  Narration gigs and the like are specialty jobs and are fewer and farther in between.  This is something that never came up at Edge where they tell you what they think you'd be suitable for after evaluating your voice at one 4 hour seminar.

Well, you live and you learn and I've gotta think about this as part of my education.  It's not as though I've wasted time or money.  I didn't get absolutely nothing from Edge.  They certainly are a great resource even if their methods are not the best.  And I'm not going to cower in the corner because some professional voice talent says I'm not ready for an agent.  In fact, she wasn't even suggesting I do that.  What I thought was great was that she pretty much told me what I had to do before I'd be ready for an agent and gave me a lot of options, none of which was to spend money on something I wasn't ready for.  So, that was cool.

Anyway, this whole thing launched me into a revamping of my marketing materials today.  I emailed my graphic designer and my web designer to start working on it all.  The plan is to have a separate single page website for voice over that will be linked from my main page but will be a different URL, voice.timdaoust.com.  Hence new business cards strictly for voice.  I'm even considering taking the logo down to just say my name instead of Tim Daoust Audio.  We'll see though. 

I'm scheduled for a coaching session with one of my coaches from Edge who is now no longer with Edge and whom I always see at Learning Ally.  I made the decision a while back that I would go get some more coaching and now I'm thinking of making it a regular monthly (at least) thing.  I'm going in with a very direct plan with clear goals, one of them to work up to recording a commercial demo. 

That having been said, I need to get to sleep here soon.  I'm getting up at 6am to travel to Philly for that recording session and I have a big day of traveling after that too.  Headed by train to DC where I'll be hopping on the DC metro system to meet my brother-in-law at the end of the yellow line.  I'm going to be very tired but very jazzed, because I'm getting to visit with my nephews and niece for a bit before we head to NC.  I'll blog more from the bus tomorrow if I can.

Composing on the go...

It's warm(er) out and I'm sitting in DUMBO with some unexpected free time, contemplating composing at the piano vs. composing on the laptop.  This is something I keep going back to in my mind, now more than ever because I actually have the laptop and can compose anywhere…like, I could be composing right now but instead I'm typing this blog.

There are many reasons why one would prefer to compose at the piano, ranging from the practical to the more aesthetic.  One practical reason is that when composing at the piano, it's a lot easier to tell if the stuff you are writing is playable and that there are no voice crossings or hand crossings or ridiculously large chords (piano music) that might require inhuman Rachmaninov-type hand stretches.  You can get pretty carried away with a computer program that will play back anything you input, using professionally recorded samples of every instrument imaginable.

Aesthetically speaking, the stuff you play vs. the stuff your computer software plays back from what notes you input is a lot more inspiring.  There's something about playing an actual instrument.  You can get lost in playing it and just record yourself and transcribe later.  You can play the lines with a lot more artistry and feeling than a computer can and are therefore more likely to come up with something more musical than mechanic.  Plus, since improvisation on ideas is a huge part of my own compositional process, actual playing the lines is essential.  In this way, it certainly helps to have at least a MIDI keyboard plugged up to my computer when I'm composing with the computer (something I can't carry around with me as easily right now).  Otherwise, you're basically just inputting values with the computer keyboard and tweaking them this way or that without regard necessarily to all those practical things like voice crossing, hand crossing and whether or not any real person can play the notes.

Having a laptop to jot down ideas, though, is invaluable these days.  Ultimately, I've saved time if I can put something into Sibelius while at work and then have something to play around with when I get home to the piano.  But that having been said, I do get to a point where I've done as much as I can, or care to, with the laptop and I just want to bang things out on the piano.

The piano which now sits at the foot of my bed.  I really need to get into a routine of just jumping up and playing piano first thing in the morning after turning off my alarm.  Only, of course, on mornings when I wake up after my cousin has left for the day.

So starting tomorrow afternoon, then.  Barring any unexpected work.  I got called in to Technicolor a few times this week so that blew out a lot of my plans for what I have to get done.  One of the other things I can only really do at home ultimately, voice over, being one of them.  I was able to do some test records in my room and wrestle with the noise floor and the acoustics.  Synopsis: I really need to put some stuff on the walls to tone down some of the reflections that are making their way into the portable audio booth I built.  I have all of my scripts together though for the Narration Demo and only really need to get a couple better takes for the Documentary Demo and I'll be ready to do some more coaching with my old voice coach, the one who also volunteers at Learning Ally.

So, at this point, I think I'm going to compose the piano and electronics piece I'm working on out here for a bit and maybe work on logistics of performing said piece.  I've decided that it's pure insanity, not to mention severely limiting and somewhat impractical, to do all the sampling live. I'd be better off taking a recording of her playing and chopping it up and doing all the processing (reversing samples, etc.) at home and then having it ready to perform alongside her.

So wish me luck.

Confusing wisdom...

Finding wisdom in the inside of a label on a bottle of tea is pretty standard stuff these days.  And I drink a lot of tea.  But today, I had one of those interesting days where I seemed to be getting signs from not just tea bottles but just about everything around me and some of the signs were conflicting with others.

In truth, it all started with an impromptu discussion with a co-worker and friend of mine about working in the corporate world and how it's always going to be the same no matter where you go, as far as workplace politics go and you're really only ever going to avail yourself by being your own boss.  Which, in a way, has simultaneously discouraged me from even trying to job hunt for a better career in this climate and encouraged me to work that much harder at being freelance eventually.  The end of that conversation actually found me feeling grateful that I have a job and a lot more level headed about my general situation than I have been for months when at times, I tended to get rather frustrated that things weren't better with the money situation or the hours.  

It's file checking week at Learning Ally where we go through all the audio book files that have been recorded and spot check them for errors.  Today, one of the audio books that I was checking today at Learning Ally was some kind of business text book that had a ton of chapters about building resumes and interviewing for jobs, etc.  So, while I waited for my assigned booth to open up (the last volunteer was still finishing up her session), I perused a bit of it and got thinking about what I was doing wrong with my last few attempts to find a job.  Here I am now swinging back the other way in my thinking about what I need to focus on right now.  Should I take another shot at job hunting but be more focused this time?  Should I be so cynical about the job market?

On the inside of my tea bottle was this quote though: "Lack of money is no obstacle, lack of an idea is an obstacle." - Ken Hakuta

Maybe I just need a good idea.

Here's one, I'm doing some freelance audio stuff for George's next film and if it needs music, I'll likely be doing that too.  The audio stuff will be operating the boom mic for the first few scenes of a pilot for a series he's going to be putting together.  The scenes will act as a teaser/short for the pilot which will eventually be shot and pitched a few places to get support to do the series.  It's exciting because it could be some steady work and it seems very interesting.  I won't say too much else about it so as not to jinx it.

But anyway, all those confusing signs and I'm tired.  Need sleep.  Tomorrow I see apartments.  The first one is in Park Slope and I might just fall in love with it, so long as it's cat friendly.  Good night.

The next step...

I sent the letter to my landlord via certified mail on Monday, saying that we wanted out of our lease. The ball is rolling and I'm feeling pretty good about it all.  And about a lot of other things too.  Let's forget for a moment that I just hurt my leg jumping the stairs in the subway trying to catch a train, right before I'm about to go out of town to go backpacking.  Let's also forget for a moment that I'm a little scared that I can't really afford this move right now.  I've proven to myself over the last few years that I'm remarkably resilient and though I may not be entirely solvent, I am incredibly resourceful and intelligent enough to always find a solution.  So, go me and all that.

I actually sort of had an epiphany, or rather, have been having an epiphany, slowly over the last few days in a sort of it's gradually dawning on me kind of way, that things may be going pretty well even though I'm nowhere near my goals.  The thought occurred to me that I could be on the right track and still be pretty far from the destination, or in this case what I want to achieve.  And maybe I'm not going to be able to see the destination over the horizon for some time. And strangely, as the Universe tends to do to me on occasion, right after the epiphany becomes solid, I get some kind of sign that I've interpreted the signs correctly.

This all kind of started earlier in the week when I got thinking about the informational interview I had with that composer a few weeks ago.  How he was pretty much saying that it sounded like I was on the right track and to just keep doing what I'm doing, writing new music and trying to meet people and network.  It's funny.  It still didn't set in fully, even though I had said, at the time, that it was great to hear that from someone in the business who is actually out there doing it right now and has probably been where I am now and knows exactly how I feel.  The first chance I got to start doubting myself I was right back in the pits thinking I had so far to go and about how frustrating it is to work so hard and not seem to be getting anywhere, how things seem to be blocking me at every turn.  But then at the beginning of this week, I entertained the thought again that yes, I was on the right track, probably for no other reason than I was sick of hearing myself think negative thoughts. 

On a practical note, I realized that, in voice over and in music, I've been far too eager to jump ahead, often deciding where I want to be and trying to just go there directly, i.e. applying for jobs I have no business applying for and wondering why I don't get them.  Sure, I should have the confidence to apply and maybe applying doesn't hurt, but ultimately, I was expecting far too much.  What I really should be doing is, yes, applying for whatever the hell I want, but also taking the time to consider what level I'm at and having some realistic expectations.  Maybe figure out what kind of jobs I can get right now and how I can find them.

With voice over, for example, I tried for a few weeks to apply to jobs on Voice123.com but then I started to really get a feel for the culture up there and what it's really good for.  People who get jobs on Voice123.com, first of all, only supplement their income with those jobs and are typically the kinds of people who can apply right away, (i.e. those doing voice over full time and therefore people that are really good already), and be among the first submissions, and therefore be the first heard and probably most likely to get the job.  I have a day job and cannot apply to every job that comes to my inbox and even if I could, I don't have the chops yet to stand up next to people who have been doing it for years and years.  The same thing came clear when I was looking into Guru.com again, a site where I can find freelance jobs in both fields, music and voice over.  They have something called a Customer Acquisition Rate that affects your ranking on the site, and your likeliness of being awarded projects.  It's the age old catch 22 that you need experience to get work but in order to get experience you need to work.  Suffice it to say, these sites probably take a long time to benefit the people using them.  Sort of like a microcosm of our entire careers.  It takes a long time to be solvent in any field.  A lot of dues paying and waiting for that break. 

So, what I'm realizing is that these sites are not for me right now.  I was at Learning Ally today just finishing up my regular weekly 2 hours of recording and I decided that I wanted to try and chat to my voice coach Sylvia, a former regular at Edge Studio where I did the demo, and get some advice.  It really only occurred to me this morning, er, afternoon, when I woke up, that all of these questions I've been having, the what to do next's and the am I doing this right's could easily be addressed to Sylvia, who was ever helpful, though I only had one or two real sessions with her at Edge.  I was thrilled, back then, to discover that she volunteered at Learning Ally too.  Anyway, when I cornered her after my session, she was saying exactly what I was thinking, that these sites are good for practice but that even the people who work on them successfully only do them as a supplement to the jobs that actually earn them the bulk of their wages.

Anyway, the question that leaves me with (and sometimes narrowing it down to a question, even if you don't have an answer, can be satisfying enough) is what is the next step?  I keep envisioning where I'd like to be but that place is often several footholds up the rock I'm climbing and I need to look for footholds that are closer to where I'm hanging at the moment.  Sylvia told me I was on the right track with voice over, practicing weekly at Learning Ally.  Soon, they'll be doing voice coaching at Learning Ally as well but in the meantime, I may do some additional coaching with Sylvia.  And my new composer friend also told me I was on track.  So beyond knowing the answer to that question of what the next step is, it feels great to finally let go and just accept that I'm on the right track and, for all intents and purposes, I may just be exactly where I'm supposed to be right now.    

2 years gone...

I've been in NYC for 2 years exactly today. The time really feels like it flew by when I look back and it also sort of snuck up on me, too, this date. But I don't want to spend too much time thinking on it. I've got a lot to think about as far as what's coming up this next year and I think I'll spend a good bit of time tonight on my next steps. Once Collapsing Elbows' score is really finished, instructions for electronics and improvisational sections included, it's time to start rehearsing with Tania. Soon I'll have that laptop and I'll start working on new electronic music incorporating the guitar and the ideas should flow like wine. Soon the website will be up and I'll feel like I can really start to push the voice over thing. But before any of this can happen, I feel like I need to sleep for 10 hours and have a real day off before I burn out.

Incidentally, speaking of voice over, I did my first reading test at Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic last Wednesday and tomorrow I should have some idea of how I did. I'm going in for another volunteer session at 3:30pm, something I'm going to be doing every Wednesday from now on. When I can. In two Wednesdays, Lacy is coming up and we're going to jam on some of her songs and bounce ideas off each other for live performance. So that'll be fun.

On another unrelated note, I do still remember to take pictures of my experiences up here, just so you know. The problem is remembering to post them. That and they're almost exclusively taken with my phone. But here are a few from the past month:

Misc. Jan-Feb

I was thinking about it and it might just be that I'm not a tourist so much anymore. Or I could be just so pressed for time these days that stopping to take pictures of beautiful and interesting things is not always the first thing on my agenda. When I first moved here and I had buckets of free time, it was no problem to just hop the train up to Prospect Park or some Manhattan neighborhood I hadn't yet visited on my day off and take the camera with me. But now, not so much. Also, factor in that the camera I own now is a bit bulkier than a point-and-shoot, albeit much nicer. It became a hassle to remember to bring it with me on my every day trips into the city.

Either way, as you'll see from this album, and though I may have expressed sentiments to the contrary, snowfall still warrants pictures due to the lingering novelty of it all. I think I'm ready for spring however. We're about to hit a record amount of snowfall for a winter season here in the city and it's all banking on how much the next one drops on us.

Right now it's raining and the piles of muddy crusty slimy snow and ice are slowly shrinking and dark brown mud is covering everything. Also, bits of flotsam and jetsam are slowly being revealed as the ice disappears. On my walk to the subway to head home in the mornings, there is a car that has been parked on 15th Street halfway between 8th and 9th Avenues on the north side of the street for several months now. It was never dug out which leads me to believe it was abandoned. There's also the fact that it's full to the brim with newspapers and trash and covered in graffiti. I'm not sure why this car is so intriguing to me but seeing it get completely buried and then slowly emerging again like all the other trash in the city just gives a measure to the scope of how dirty this city can get. Maybe it could serve as some kind of extended metaphor for our own personal problems and how hard it is to truly bury them. The ice will always melt and reveal what it was hiding underneath.

So, I'm not really sure where I'm going with that but it does lead me to something I've been thinking of lately. How sometimes you just have to let go of things from your past, old behaviors and things you clung to, even old relationships that no longer function or have run their course. Maybe in order to make room for new things or to get out of old patterns. But ultimately, they'll keep coming back to stare you in the face unless you sincerely do let go...as opposed to just burying them under the ice.

That's enough profundity for this morning. I should get back to work. I promise to reveal my new website soon...and even sooner you may all be able to buy some of my music. More on that later. Goodbye for now.

Twas the week before Christmas...

Last night there was a lunar eclipse. I got the chance to view it from the roof of the building where I work because I was helping the assignment editor with the camera equipment because the news department wanted footage of it but there was no one else who would come in overnight to do it. The best time to see it, apparently, was between 2 and 4am. Also, coinciding with the eclipse was not only the winter solstice but the Ursids meteor shower, which I unfortunately could not see because of a giant wisp of cloud blocking the northern sky.

There was something unique about the night as I was on the way to work. I got there early and stepped back out into the night to pick up a snack at the Duane Reade on 8th and 16th and noticed something odd. It was quiet. Of course, I didn't have my headphones in and when I say quiet I don't mean backwoods country quiet but there were few people outdoors and any ambient noise seemed far off. Maybe it wasn't that the city was quiet but that some of the din was stripped away so that it was almost like you could hear the city breathing. Some of the hum of heating vents on the giant Port Authority building and a few fire trucks some four or five blocks to the north were all I could really hear. I relished in it and took my time getting back into the building for work.

It's hard to believe I'm going into my third year in the city. I had friends in the city this weekend for a brief visit and they asked me how I was liking it. Whenever I'm asked this, I usually answer, when the person has barely finished the question, that I love it and I'm never leaving. I have found, however, that it is nice to leave on occasion, but that the place pulls you back relentlessly. I've never felt this way about a place. To some it might be laughable but a lot of other people get it, even if they don't get New York (or Brooklyn...although most people I know who know Brooklyn, get why and how you could love it).

At this time of the year, and more so now, especially since I've been deepening my yoga practice and becoming more aware, I start to think about goals for the following year and accomplishments from the previous one. I think this year, I'm going to divide it into two categories, things I'm going to do and things I'm going to change.

I just re-read a blog from this week last year and, though I only vaguely outlined my resolutions there, I figured it was a good place to start with what I'll do, by looking at what I said I'd do last year. What stuck out is that I said I'd write prolifically like I did back in 2007 after I restarted graduate school, and I can't really say that I did. I had a few good gigs and some great accomplishments, don't get me wrong. But the sheer output of new material just wasn't there. I think, in the interest of being realistic, what I did then was to focus on defining long term goals instead of struggling to do a lot of stuff. Which is why I started the voice over career and why I began to really flesh out my ideas for the live electronic music project. But now that those plans are in place, I need to focus on what's going to make me accomplish them.

I thought about what it was that made me write so much back in 2007 and it was first, emotional trauma (divorce), but more than that, it was the prospect of having it all performed. That's what I lacked last year. This year, I already have at least one performance slated and the live electronic music project, if all goes well, will have built-in incentive to write because of the potential for live performances. Hopefully, this will work to my advantage.

As for voice over, right now I'm volunteering at Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, which will ensure that I keep practicing even if I don't always get to it at home, but soon, I'll have to start applying for jobs. So that's my strongest resolution, to be aggressive in my attempts at job hunting for VO jobs. Beyond that, I'm going to get the electronic music off the ground and I'm going to submit a few of the things I did finish last year to competitions and try to plan to record them, along with some of the old stuff.

The things I'm going to change, however, I'll work on on my own in the next week or so. For now, I'm going to wind down. I get to sleep in tomorrow so I must take advantage. On Christmas morning I have to work at 6am and I'm not looking forward to getting up that early. Especially since I just went to bed today at 730am. Good night and Merry Christmas.

Decluttering and Destressing...

Sitting at home on a Saturday night working on a piece of music, taking a little break for an update. I got done with a lot of small tasks on this particular piece I had set aside for tonight. Things like fixing a few mistakes I'd caught, writing a few new parts and finishing re-entering parts of the score from the printed copy that were missing from the older copy I had to revert to after the virus. Now, I'm getting to the point where I'm taking a step back and listening to my ideas, thinking about what the piece is missing. I have a lot of logistical things with this piece, like sampling and looping the orchestra parts, that I'm trying to work out as I write it, but some of the logistics I can't really bother with until the piece is written anyway. So, now it's time to rethink a few things. The structure of the piece is there but it's lacking in some places...there's no real arc yet.

Anyway, so right now my other big thing has been this ongoing battle to get the room to a point where it doesn't feel so cluttered so I can work in here more effectively. I had a discussion with my roommate/cousin about all the things that are hanging about with no real home and cluttering up the common space and it started to make sense to me to rent a storage space for these things. The only big things are my beer equipment, camping gear and window AC unit...so now I have to justify other things that might go in there. Some of the boxes under my bed come to mind. Musical instruments are all staying here, of course.

If I'm going to stay in this apartment another year or more, I do want it to be comfortable, so it's probably best for me to just stop fighting the fact that my bedroom is so small and start really working to solve the problem. I have a friend donating her flat screen monitor to me soon, so I imagine that this monitor I'm looking at now that takes up 1/4 of my room by itself, will probably go in storage until my dad takes it back.

But blah blah blah. The best news of the week is that the six piano sketches are all done and ready to be performed...better yet, published. That's the next thing to do. More on that later.

Additionally, I've done my second volunteer training session at Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic. Mainly, I've just been "directing" which entails merely, listening to the narrator, catching mistakes and marking page numbers. It's fun though, and I'm learning their conventions for how they read certain passages. It's interesting to note that they are required to describe photos and diagrams in these text books as they go along. I've met some nice people there so far and hope to be doing it once a week until I get fully trained and then maybe once or twice a month.

What else is there to tell? It's getting cold in the city and will probably snow soon. Work is going well but taking it out of me slowly for all the schedule switching but I could be doing something a lot worse for a company that sucks quite a lot more. The company isn't bad, though. They threw us another great Christmas party and I even won one of the raffle prizes and then danced my face off while full on some excellent catered food.

I should get back to work though. I may be burnt out on the orchestra piece but I think I'll work on some electronic stuff. Laters.