The struggle with PASSION

I'm interested in so many things. Building things, taking things apart, up-cycling, acting, singing, nice dress shoes...

Seriously.

So I've always struggled with the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I never had an answer to that, and to this day, I really still don't.

First of all, what does "Grow up." mean? In my brain, and I'm willing to bet in yours, I'm still 23 or 24, even though I am now twice that age. I have more responsibilities, own a house (well, the bank does anyway) run my own freelance company and work a day job at a respectable college.

Is that grown up?

Being an actor and a voice talent is where I've ended up, not through any pursuit of passion, it just all fell into place. My technical background of theater brought me to radio, radio brought me into staged readings, then I was on stage in a show then voicing commercials. It all flowed.

Dilbert

I recently saw an interview with Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. And I realized, that my varied background, has allowed me to succeed in what I do TODAY. And today, will help me move into what tomorrow brings.

Passion can grow from success.  For me, curiosity feeds an interest, that interest will feed some research and perhaps even an experiment. The worst that can happen is that I'll fail. But at least I TRIED.

Do What You Love?

I've heard from a couple sources, to "Follow your passion, and the money will follow." or, (and this is my worst problem) "Focus, and become the best at that one thing."

There are not enough hours in the day to do what I want to do! People who say, "I'm bored." I do not understand.

Passion

Ok, back to passion. It's a struggle! It's hard for me to define what I'm "Passionate" about. I like good wine. Enjoy a motorcycle ride through the fall colors but I'm not a sports fan. I don't follow any sport or team to get all cranked up about. Pirates win! Pirates lose! Meh, who cares. I do like superhero movies and I'm a big Star Wars fan, but am I willing to get into an argument about Jar-Jar? Nah. Me no think so. Is that passion?

As I get better and better at this voice and acting thing, I can see how I can begin to focus on it more and more. But to have it be my one thing? I can see how if I focused, I could become spectacular at it.


Oy.  Can't do it. Focus on ONE THING? but what about the rest of the cool things?! Where would I be today if I focused on just one thing? Who knows?!

But I'm willing to bet, I wouldn't be as happy. And I really do love a well polished pair of dress shoes, and I'm a big fan of shoe trees. (Don't even start me talking about watches... oooo a Submariner!)

What I build in my "SPARE" time.

Ok ok... I DON'T have spare time. But once the brain is in gear, it's hard to stop. So when I do have a moment, I avoid the interewebz and go build something.

My latest creation is a speaker and amp built out of a cello.

It has a 100 watt blueTooth amp so I can run it from my iPhone as soon as I enter my office.

The whole build is here.

It sounds pretty decent actually and looks wicked pissa cool. (to my family from Southy!)

I'm already toying with the idea of creating a short stage piece using it somehow. Perhaps a short story of a cello player and a small napkin in the breeze...

:)

If you want something done, ask someone who's busy.  Wait till you see the next great thing.

Where ya been!?

You wake up and IT'S AUGUST!

sheesh. So I started the summer theater season at the Mac-Haydn Theater playing the part of Mortimer, the man who always dies, in The Fantasticks.  And told the theater that I was really planning on doing just one show this summer, then going to go sailing, fishing, and work on the house.

Ha.

The director, John Saunders, mentions to me, "Would be interested in doing another show?"

Fantasticks wraps, our A Cappella group is on a mini tour, and I get this email. Would I consider playing Thenardier in Les Miserables.

Um. YES!

So there ya go, three weeks of rehearsal and a two week run, 8 shows a week...

When the sewers run with blood....

Then right into rehearsals for an indie movie short. Who needs sleep?

Details Details Details...

So the room sounds great. It really does. People walk in, we shut the door and there's a "Wow" factor. It's that cool.

But.

You knew there was going to be a but, right?

The audio I was capturing, didn't sound 100%.  It was time to fine tune, get into the details of it.

The More You Listen

It's true, the more you listen, the more you hear. It was time to bring in a second set of ears and start tweaking some details. This is the hard stuff, you're ears much like your eyes will start to glaze over after a while due to fatigue. I brought in my brother-in-law Fred.

We could insert the usual "Brother-in-Law" jokes here, but I trust Fred and I trust his ears.  He's the Front Of House engineer (FOH) for Infinity Hall in Norfolk CT. (voted one of the best music venues) he takes care of his ears and if something sounds strange, he'll say so.

So I played what I was recording. It didn't sound bad, it just wasn't up to my standards. (me being all snobby...)

Start Testing Gear

The first thing to test, was the microphone.  I used my road kit as a test bed. PreSonus USB into a MacBook Pro laptop using a Mike Joly modded Rode NT1a. Good clean sound. I then swapped out the Rode for my Neumann u87ai.

Different levels, the Rode had a much hotter signal, but overall, once you normalize both of them, they sounded the same. So the microphone was ok. We tested the cable, it checked out too.

Onto the preamp. My suspicion was that the vintage Mullard tube had given up the ghost. But we started with various settings and found in the headphones, that things sounded ok as well. We bypassed the preamp (ART MPA Gold with vintage tubes) and went straight into the Mackie mixer. That sounded fine too.

So what the heck was going on?

A little more tuning on the preamp found the HPF, high pass filter, was turned up more than it should. We basically turned that off and the Neumann sounded brighter. The next thing we noticed is that the Mackie's preamps were up a little, so we turned those off. Clearer.

Still More

But when listening through the Yamaha NS10s monitor speakers, it sounded like a phase issue. I double checked the wiring, ground to ground, hot to hot, no mistakes there. The cables all checked out. I use Hafler amps to power the Yamahas, and I pushed it from stereo to mono on the back of the amp and the sound changed.

It shouldn't have.  We were listening to a mono file, on one channel panned center. Telling the amp to be stereo or mono should have made no difference. A couple more pushes on that button and it cleaned up and sounded right.

DUST! Seriously. The dirty connection was causing a weird phase issue and canceling out some of the audio.

NO WONDER!

And we also retired my 30 year old AKG K240 headphones. When we compared them to a set of Sony MDR7505's... the AKG sounded like mud.  They had served me well, but time marches on.

At this point, it was wine-O-clock. The recordings sound better. I'm happier. Thanks Fred!

Don't Buy Cheap Tools!

Simon, dial the way back machine to 1982....

Back in High School I worked with a genius, he taught French during the day and ran a company called Sound Dynamics at night. He was a true teacher. Pierre Paquin. He taught me volumes about sound and sound re-enforcement.

One night we took a trip to visit a friend of his in Cambridge MA, because he was selling a Reel to Reel recorder. A Technics. I had no idea how good a deal I was getting and bought it right there with the recommendation from Pierre.

This machine has been following me around the country for over thirty years now. I take good care of it, and it takes good care of me. The best part is how well it takes care of tape!

When I worked for Berkshire Broadcasting, we had some Revox decks that were brutal to tape. If you hit that stop button, it would STOP cold. You could almost hear the tape stretch. Bah.

But back on topic.

I have a method to my madness. I don't buy cheap tools. Cheap tools don't last and they break when you need them most. Can you imagine buying the cheapest saw blade you can find? There it is, whirling along at several thousand RPM and it decides to disintegrate... good plan.

Same goes with my audio gear. Solid gear. Mackie mixers, Pro-Tools, Neumann, MOTU. With good cables and proper connections. When I go into my studio to record, everything should work. No "fiddle with this till it comes on..." type of idea.

Invest in Yourself

This life is too short for half-hearted attempts at things. Go big, or go home. Seriously. If your goal is to be a voice actor, don't get the cheapest tools you can find and expect to have a positive experience. Now don't go out and buy a Neumann U87 and put in your closet recording space without really treating that room properly, you need to invest wisely. But don't buy junk. And when you need a piece of gear 30 years later. That freaking thing fires up and works and gets the job done. Period. Thank you Pierre!

The Magic of Marketing

Ok. I have an agent. James Pentaudi of Albany talent is one of the people that represents me and gets me work. Great guy, been with him for years and love working with him.

He books me for an on-camera shoot at an Albany studio doing pharmaceutical training material. I'm to play a patient with an unknown stomach ailment. I get the script a week early, it's a couple of paragraphs so I memorize it before the shoot, bring in a couple of oversized shirts as requested, show up ten minutes early, get my make-up done and I'm ready to rock.

Here's the fun part, the actors roster of who is going to be in for these several days of shooting is a long list of names. First and last. Except me.

I'm Monk. That's all it said. 2:30PM, playing the part of Frank Heller, Monk.  When I walked onto the set, the director yells "MONK!" The producer greets me as well. I handed off to the associate producer one of my Monk mugs, and she makes sure everyone knows that she has her own personnel Monk mug.

I am by no means a big fish in this sea, but name recognition, and friendly greetings and working with the same company a couple times on bigger and bigger jobs.... Nice.

Studio Build 28

I can not believe the last time I updated this project was in October 2012!

I have been able to sneak some work in here and there between theater productions. (ah the limelight!) So I figured I would give an update.

Saturday after Valentines Day, we got some LIGHTING DONE! No kidding, I have been using all sorts of standby lights, work lights and such to light up the space. A friend of mine donated some nice lights and I had a Saturday off with no rehearsals on the schedule, so I got busy!



These are the lights above the mix/edit desk. A nice warm glow, that's easy on the eyes.

Here is the other large image/sound absorption panel to the left of the desk.




Here is the door, when closed. The latch fits in the "Hatch" of the rocket ship. (sorry for the blur, must be too much coffee..)





Behind the mix desk are a couple of "Producer" chairs, nice comfortable chairs to listen to a mix or playback. The Rocket Lamp is created from an old theater light, now rewired as a glowing mood light.



And of course the microphone that started this all, my u87ai sitting next to a flatscreen monitor for script use.



Overall I would have to say the room is done, the lighting was the last major thing to tackle. I have a small display case to build for various props and such, (Rocketeer Helmet, lightsaber, raygun...) plus other cool things to art up the joint.

It's a great sounding space, dead quiet and comfortable to work in. Time slips by. I have to give a universe shout out to Mike Sommer who helped with some of the design, his drawings and guidance were what I needed to jump in and tackle this project. There will be a plaque on the wall thanking him!

All that's left to do is wire in a "Recording In Session" light that Scott Nilson gave me. The switch for that is in, I just have to finish the install outside the door.

 soon...