Hey there, it's time for voiceover body shop tech talk number 14 8 to 9 I think I see 9 on my thing. I think it's tech talk number 49 It's getting up there. We've been doing tech talk now for two years now and You guys love it. We're here if you've got a question for us about your home voiceover studio or about equipment or About what's the best microphone for voiceover? Don't ask that one Yeah throw it in the chat room and We will get to that a little bit later on in the show because it's not this I can tell you that right now What is that? It's an AirPod Pro. Oh, okay. Yeah, okay Well, we'll be talking about that too and we've got all sorts of interesting stuff as far as You know George's tech update. You've got some cool things. I see in there and We're also going to talk about setting levels because I guess we haven't talked about it enough because It's a new time to talk about setting levels. All right. Absolutely. So anyway, stay tuned It's time for voiceover body shop tech talk now From the outer reaches they came Bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio and Together from the center of the VO universe, they bring it to you now George Wittem the engineer to the VO stars of Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain The professional VO studios of the biggest names in VO today and you Dan Leonard the voiceover home studio master a professional voice down with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home VO studio and Each week they allow you into their world making the complex simple Debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio Answering your questions showing you the latest and greatest in VO tech and having a dandy time doing it Welcome to voice over body shop Tech talk Voice over body shop tech talk is brought to you by voice over essentials.com home of Harlan Hogan signature products source elements remote studio connections for everyone Voice actor websites.com where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt VO heroes.com become a hero to your clients with a word winning voiceover training J. Michael Collins demos when Quality matters and voiceover extra your daily resource for VO success and now Live to thrive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California Here are the guys Greetings all I am Dan Leonard. I'm George with him and this is voiceover body shop or VO We're talking tech on VO BS tech talk anything to do with home voiceover studios or voiceover technology We're the guys to ask. I mean Where else are you gonna go? I mean we have been utterly obsessed with this topic for a very very long time. Yeah Yeah, you hear so much stuff every day and it's like We've tried to standardize it and make it simple for everybody yet. You guys Seem to want to make it more complicated. I don't quite get that, you know, we get these I'm gonna use this piece of equipment and I want to use this and it's like The secret to it is learning how to do it right up front and getting your environment right all these other things But how do you learn how to do that? Well, you could try all sorts of things until someone says, yeah, okay, your audio sounds right Or you could go to the guys that actually do this every day and know what it takes to make things sound, right? You know, it's not a trial and error thing There are some standard things that George and I know how to do that Make it easy for you. And I think that's probably what you and I do better than anybody else, you know That I've talked to we don't try to over complicate it. It's like here's how you use this Here's how you use that, you know, here's how we can improve the sound in the booth you're in I mean, it doesn't have to be sophisticated. I mean, we had will Lyman on last week and You know thinking oh, well, here's here's one of the top guys in the biz He's probably got a great booth and I he's in his closet That's right You know, I mean he treated it right and clearly it works It wasn't even using a really sophisticated microphone of sometimes You know, I mean he's doing front line on a blue snowball Yeah, yeah, but But if you really want to learn how to do it, right? Well, one you've come to the right place because you're watching voiceover body shop tech talk because we talk about all this stuff And clearly you guys like listening to us talk Otherwise we wouldn't keep doing it But if you'd like to work with us Individually if you really want to work with the pro Somebody who can really get you from not knowing what you're doing to maybe not necessarily knowing what you're doing But when you hit the button on record, it's gonna do it right anyway Everybody thinks you know what you're doing when they get a little right exactly Yeah, nobody needs to see how it's done. It's just as long as it sounds good It is good as we like to say but if they want to work with you George, how do they do that? Well, you can head over to George the dot tech that's my website for tech support and there's a new one coming Soon a new website coming soon It is in it is in the very early beta testing stages, but hopefully it'll be available for you guys to peruse soon enough But right now it's available to book services. You can send in files for a sound check You can have me tune your booth and give you acoustical design tips for your Closet or booth or whatever your space is and that's all at George the dot tech damn He has a cup you can send in specimens and yet through that over at that is over at home voice over studio comm and Go over there and you'll see all the services I offer I do full consultations with you or I will teach you from Nothing to actually being competent at recording because it's not as hard as you think Because we cut through all the BS and just make sure that you understand what it takes to do it right and make it sound good And as George was saying I do have the specimen collection cup if you've got your booths set up and you think you're recording great It's amazing some of the stuff I see that comes out of people's booths You for $25 I will give you a full analysis of your audio and offers some Suggestions on how to get it sounding as good as will lineman or as some of the other great voice over people out there because it's It's not the equipment. It's how you use it Right, right Mike placement Mike placement Mike placement Acoustics acoustics acoustics location location location and setting your levels properly, which we will talk about a little bit later But anyway, it's time for your tech update and an update from last week's update. That's right. Oh There's the update theme It's almost too long as it is and it's only 10 seconds Okay All right, well, we had a question about the annoyance of using headphones with cords And you know, we've taught plenty of times about maybe you don't need to wear headphones when you voice act But for a lot of folks having headphones on is still part of the game and so I looked into it I looked into it. How would you have wireless headphones that would still Sound as good as the ones that you're used to using and have none of the issues of a wireless headphone Now, you know, a lot of people are gonna if you start googling by the way, you're not gonna find studio or professional quality Wireless studio monitor headphones. They they literally don't exist. They nobody makes them. It's really interesting You can get Bluetooth that are pro quality You can go buy the Apple Bluetooth headphones But that doesn't make pro audio quality that you can use while recording the problem with all those Bluetooth based systems is there's a big latency Between when you speak and what you would actually hear back. Well, not huge But enough that would really screw up what you're monitoring in your headphones. It would throw you off big time So don't use Bluetooth in the studio now you can use it while you're editing, but even then it's not great So I started looking into it. Well live performers on stage. They use wireless IEMs in your monitor systems. They've been doing that for a long time But I also knew that those systems are really stinking expensive like just to getting the transmitter and the receiver The pro quality ones generally five six hundred dollars or more Then you have to put your headphones then you have to get headphones too, right? So but I did find the prices are coming down and there is a set that is a Wireless receiver system that is becoming reasonably priced now. There's a company called x vive xvi v e And it's the audio you for a wireless System it's around two hundred and thirty to ish dollars And it allows you to send audio wirelessly from your equipment It has an XLR jack so many of you may you need to use an adapter Cable to go to quarter inch or something else, but it will then allow you to send that audio wirelessly to a pack that you would wear on your belt probably and Have control over your headphone level and the audio quality is extremely high quality. It's Again, there's not really studio quality systems for this really But it is they all by all reports that I've read gonna give you quality That's really totally on par with what it would sound like if you were hardwired in Maybe a problem that very few people really have but it did come up. So I thought I would see what I could find Do you think you had ever used something like that Dan or I think I'm using it tonight, and I they weren't charged That's a problem like anything wireless now you have something else Exactly, there's a pain that you know to use wireless stuff, but yeah, I mean I don't like the only wireless stuff I probably use is my my mouse I Have a wireless tripod and I'd be I would be very happy to plug it in if they had a way to do that Right, I charge the batteries. Yeah, so yeah, it's Yeah, wireless is it doesn't really have a place Yeah, I think in the the workflow for your general voice actor unless of course it does I Mean I could think of another thing like if you're doing a lot a lot of like Commercial work that you're being remotely directed a lot of times what happens is they'll say, okay Let's get approval from the client and you're stuck Right waiting for that moment when they say oh, we're gonna do it again So in that case maybe having wireless headphones could be kind of nice you could wander out of the booth and You could you know let me know what's going on, but yeah, that would be the only case I can think of that would really be that helpful And I kind of been looking forward to what's coming in terms of microphone technology No, I've been pretty much figured out how to make a mic capsule and everything about 80 years ago That those aren't getting any better, right? That's we kind of figured that out but there's there are some modern technologies that are being boiled into microphones now and Some of these are almost becoming literally studios and a mic One that popped up on my radar today when I was looking online is the personas revelator and I can't in any way vouch for the sound quality and I will start off by saying I don't recommend buying mics from mixer companies There's also a Mackie Mackie's got like four USB mics Now that just came out of nowhere I'm not gonna go right out of the gate saying these are good mics, but I'm just talking more about the technology But the personas revelator Is like you're using a console that's inside the mic And so you can use the mic just as a USB mic or you can load their studio live Console and now you've got a full production console that's internal in the mic that allows you to have Loopback playbacks that allows you to mix other sources in it has a processing on the microphone Which it means compression and the EQ like everything you would do in a mixing console with a mic channel is Inside the mic now and it's a hundred eighty dollar microphone I Don't think it's gonna be an amazing sounding mic I can't imagine it's gonna be the quietest mic in the out there because you know what a lot of these USB mics is they're doing is they're trying to be everything every mic for everybody Right, that's what I that's the problem. I have with the Yeti right it has a switch that lets you switch all these different patterns Stereo and all these things. It's a little bit silly But that's what they're doing So they and they put a lot of capsules inside the mic that let you change to do this and you lose some quality When you have all those tiny little capsules inside there, so we'll see But this is what some of the news there's not a whole lots of noon to talk about but this is something that's coming Yeah, well primarily I mean if a company comes out with this stuff They're not thinking about us voiceover guys. Nope. They're they're thinking musicians. You're talking You know billy eilish in her bedroom with her brother Uh trying to figure out to get a particular sound for a particular song Or from a particular situation We're with voiceover. We're just trying to be ourselves in a in a quiet environment So why do we need all this other shit? Eilish is in a studio with her brother just to be clear No It's true though. It's true. It is true I'm thinking by now. They probably got something a little one step up. I'm guessing. I don't know Although i'm a huge huge fan of this fellow from london named jacob collier. Oh, yes, and he's still At 25 or whatever he is now doing grammy getting grammy's and grammy still working in the same bedroom in his parents house That's where he does all this stuff I love that charging him rent It's amazing. Um Now speaking of things that are thinking more about voiceover and the needs of voice actor And this is kind of a this is a crazy end around to solving a problem that we all know should be solved acoustically But anyway, the company towns and labs that makes the sphere l22 microphone that i've gotten to test out and did a little review of This microphone has some interesting tricks up its sleeve now the thing that gets it all the Gets very people excited about it as it can make your microphone now sound like a u67, you know an eight thousand dollar vintage mic Is built into your microphone because it emulates other microphones and we've known about that and it's really pretty impressive stuff But what they've done now is they've added this plugin called the isosphere And it's what it is. It's a sort of a plugin in a plugin. It's a module that loads when you're using their They're modeling software And what it does is this is the craziest thing They designed it to So that when you're using one of these It doesn't sound so crappy so It's just easier to not use one of those I know I know that that was the first thing I saw was the guy demoing I think it was on pro tools expert.com pro dash tools dash expert One of the Reviewers on there had a video where he was demonstrating This $1,500 mic shoved inside this ball of foam But he was doing it to demonstrate that yes This does serve a it does serve some purpose and that is it does Soak up some of the room reverb But it doesn't do it without a cost it definitely ruins the sound of the mic it changes it a lot So what this plugin does is it compensates for that? and so it will Re-queue and whatever it needs to do To bring back the original sound of what that mic should have sound like before you shoved it into an eyeball And I was like that is this most the most ridiculous thing I ever heard but then I saw That they have many different Products like this in they have a little drop-down menu And it's not just one of these it's literally the s e reflection filter x the sc on the x e reflection on filter pro the aston halo The chaotic eyeball with pop filter and without pop filter literally this is in a drop down menu Yeah, it's not amazing. So they they they compensated for the acoustical modifications that occur When using all of these products isovox It's in there. Yeah, it's a very generic foam ball generic foam balls at the bottom But they have vocal booth that's the last one and so That's sort of a generic one But it's just designed to soak up the reverb and the noise that comes from not being in a A really good studio. It's kind of ironic. It's like if you're in a vocal booth Why do you need a plugin to make it sound better? But that's what they call it and and then it has one knob just source distance So whatever however the or the algorithm works You get to give it an idea of how far away from you work the mic And then you just turn it on there's a youtube video you guys can Check it out. Just go on youtube type in isosphere one word buy towns and labs and check it out And you can hear the demo It's a very long video But there is actually a section where they actually record a voice actor In a large very untreated very untreated room and It is pretty good It it got rid of a lot of the room tone, which is fascinating. It's not using Rx, you know, it's not using algorithms to filth scrub out the noise. It's just focusing the microphones pickup pattern In on the voice and doing it in a really really effective way It's pretty interesting technology this to me is like What the future of these smart mics is going to be I think In a year or two from now, I think it'll be out of buy a $200 usb mic that just has this built in And eventually you won't need a whole lot of room acoustics at the end of the day though Still sounds like you're in a reverberant room. It doesn't get rid of all the reverb, but it does dramatically improve What would other be otherwise be a not usable voice over recording? So I don't know It's new. I wanted to talk about it Yeah, I mean they could send me one. I'll be happy to try it out Yeah, well, I mean we could get another l 22. I mean Maybe they'll come out with a junior version of that mic. That's a little bit more price point friendly But you know, it's like if you're using it to emulate an sm7b kind of a bad investment You're buying a $1500 mic to sound like a $400 mic But if you're trying to emulate a u67 It's a pretty fair price $1500 for for one of these microphones. So anyway, but who would do enough to try and emulate one of these microphones in order to do voice over because Like well, so you can say you have one or the I don't quite get that It's a yeah, it's such an edge case like I actually got one for uh, David k last fall Because he was starting to do a show and they wanted him to have a u87 This is the most insane thing he has in his studio a u67 But they're like, no, we want you to have a u87.  We'd really rather you just drive in Mercedes Um, it's kind of the weirdest question But anyway, we couldn't get him a u87 and uh, what it was and I think it was november They're just not in stock Because so many damn people are buying these mics for their home studio So we got him one of these towns and labs sphere l22s and set it up with a u87 model and the client and the studio was like Networks for us so Weirdest use case, but there you go Um, anyway, that's it for tech my my little tech news update. I suspect there should be a good bit more Because this week is nam Yeah, um, isn't it weird? I don't think I've missed a nam show Well since I've moved to la At least I've been at least 15 16 nam shows in a row So it's a bummer to miss that dan. You've been there with me a lot too and yeah, we've been to a bunch of those It's a bit overwhelming. I think it's overwhelming, but it's still a fun way to discover things And um, we're not going to be doing that this year So there's like a virtual nam and you know all the companies are doing press releases and stuff So there'll be some more stuff to talk about in a couple of weeks when we do our next tech talk I'll stay tuned and bring the best stuff. Yeah I want I want to check out more stuff just so I can say it doesn't make a difference I We've done the shootouts and we proved that it's not the interface It's the face that's facing the microphone and what comes out of it. I'm actually kind of glad I'm not one of those Um youtubers that I watch that I watch like, you know, Mike Delgaudio the booth chunky and Those guys it's a pain.  I've done enough of those. There's a lot of great There's a guy named there's a guy this guy's podcast Or youtube channel. It's called pos podcast age That guy you watch one of his micro views. He does them formulaically identically every single time it's Very dry, but very informative. So there's other guys out there doing it So dan you want to talk about setting levels? again Yeah, um, I mean there are some basic rules around this And it still amazes me that people don't quite understand this now There are You know, this is one of those things where people can have an opinion about it because if you're recording at a high bit rate You can things can be under modulated a little bit 24 bit Yeah, or over modulated and it's going to give you lots of head room You can't still over mod. I mean you if you record in even 32 bit if you clip Your mic preamp Yeah, you've still you've clipped you've already, you know, there's there are several places to clip audio And distort the audio right but But as you were saying, I I rarely find people over modulating what I find just Way under modulating And why dan why do they do that? I don't know because we've only explained it to them about 500 times and But listen to me There are Specific things and we set up these parameters when when we were you know, we and we still are the world voices Organization by the way, you should join go to world dash voices dot org See what we're all about. We're the industry association of freelance voice talent and We're we're starting to make some differences out there But one of the things we did is we tried to set the standards for home studio voiceover audio, which nobody else did So you and I and uncle rory and cliff. I jovan riper was with us and jordan reynolds we Would the guys who know we're like It was amazing how fast we agreed on all this stuff You know for the most part clips like well No, I can always use this and I can make it and I can twist it and turn it upside down and make it like that But no it works best if you do it. That's the way you're saying But when it comes to setting levels You want to modulate that means get your You know the the the up the up and down At least to minus nine consistently And really try and peak between say minus six and minus four Now in audacity It doesn't really measure it. It's got its own little silly scale on to the left It says zero point one zero point two zero point three zero point four You want to modulate in audacity Your peaks not your peaks, but your modulation your average modulation should be you know always going up to about Oh point zero four or zero point four zero point five and then peaking between zero point six and zero point seven Those numbers don't mean anything because they don't correlate Yeah, use the meters use the use the view meters I think and really the best way to do that is to To look at the meter when you're you know when you set your levels It should always be in the green It should always be in the yellow With it sort of reaching into the orange and red Flashing in there just occasionally right if it's just in the green and not in the yellow you're under modulating Now uh sewer director. Can we can we go to my my uh my screen? She did it before you could even finish asking Oh, she's she rocks. Okay. Where is it? We know it's there. There it is. Okay, so Let me get so so I can actually see it A lot of times this is what it should look like You know and if it looks unfamiliar to you That's because you're not doing it right But a lot of times, you know when people send me audio at my specimen collection cup A lot of times it'll look like this. Yeah Uh and the problem with that is It's under modulated and that creates all sorts of problems, you know, and they'll say my agent says it's it's it's noisy Okay, we'll send me some audio and they'll send me this and I'll go Well, yeah, because if you if you normalize that and we can talk about normalizing in a second if you if you normalize that To say minus three And but that's your that was your original level. It doesn't only make your regular audio louder It makes all the noise in the background louder So Really you want to be setting your levels on your interface say on your your your two i2 which is right over here Not too far for me to reach Don't bring over the one we're using for the show. Oh wait a minute. We're not using it for the show We're not using that one for the show.  Uh, we'll come back to that in a second, but If you if you look at it, you know with the input dial It should be A lot of bit. Well, I've got it set at 12 o'clock Well, no, you want it set much higher than that especially in a focus writer any one of these generic interfaces that are out there right now and go at least to 75 percent And and maybe a little bit more and that will get you back up to the proper levels That you need to be at you don't want to under modulate two or three o'clock is usually a pretty good starting point Yeah, you know all the clocks usually low unless you Are a theater actor in which case you need to learn to stop projecting so much That's the other thing but we've talked about that as well. Yeah people are like it's a microphone. I have to talk louder No, it's picking you up as you exist as you're having a conversation Uh, I don't know why there's so much misinformation out there about this Well, people also record levels low because they're like, well, I do it low because there's too much noise I'm like Well, if you're on a date, would you stand 12 feet from your date so they couldn't see that you weren't wearing makeup that night But that gets you through the date. I don't know. It's kind of like that Like so at some point you're gonna get closer and at some point with the audio They're gonna have to turn it up and when they do The noise will come up as well. So yeah, that's not a good work around. Yeah It's recording at higher bit rates can be helpful, but it's gonna make your life better if you just record with a solid Get yourself into the yellow yellow is okay. Everybody don't freak out And the only exception to this rule would be if you're working in the production and they tell you Something else whatever the producer says wins. So they say we went peaks at some weird number Just go, okay, and just do it. But that's unusual Right, but if your levels are set right and you say you're doing something remotely or you're sending those tracks in They're gonna go, oh, okay great They love it if you've got a good fat signal you're giving them Everything that they can use to make it sound the way they want to make it sound not our job To make it sound The way they're gonna finally use it Yeah, now when there's an engineer producing this thing that's their job Absolutely. They also don't the engineers don't don't like normalizing Um, even though it doesn't necessarily technically screw up the audio Um, they they I think they don't like it and I think the reason they don't like it is I think that's used wrong a lot of the time It's used as we were saying to just make up the level and then it gets noisy Or I think people use normalized to zero db a lot and that's not a good idea either The engineer doesn't get want to get a file whose wave is peaking at the very top of the scale They want audio that has some headroom. It makes it easier for them to produce with so Never normalized to zero for any jobs. Um, minus three is a pretty common Commonly accepted level But we'll do at the end of the day if you don't know what they want just ask and chances are they'll say don't do anything Just send it to us hit record and send it to us. All right, which what you've got is is fine Anyway, we've got lots of your questions that you've been sending in and we're going to get to those And extrapolate on those points to make your voiceover home studio audio the way it's supposed to be Right after these messages Yeah, hi, this is carlo zellers rocky the voice of brocco and you're watching voiceover body shop Hey, you and I know that recording from home can be Noisy you need to hear that noise and do all you can to minimize it So here are the harlin hogan voice optimized headphones version 2.0 to the rescue Good headphones for voiceover playback need to be truth tellers Giving you exactly what you recorded not colored or too bassy The h2 voice optimized headphones have incredibly flat response and give you that truth Other great features include the replaceable plug-in cord and the oh so soft nap a leather ear cups By the way, voiceover essentials has replacement cords and ear cups Both in stock and both ship free in the us Make sure you know exactly what you and your recording space sound like the harlin hogan voice optimized headphones Get them only from voiceover essentials dot com.  We want you to come as you are be comfortable Okay, maybe not bathrobe comfortable Pants for the customer on aisle four, please In the camera Watch anywhere anytime on an unlimited number of devices sign in with your netflix account to watch instantly at netflix dot com The ice cream maker is a big risk that can have huge rewards Until you forget to turn it on Well, that's it guys time is up. Hey, it's jmc. Thanks for watching the voiceover body shop If you're demo ready or looking to get there check out jmc demos dot com and see a sample of our work Now let's get back to dan and george and this week's tech wisdom Hey time to talk about source connect. I'm assuming because the camera is on me now um source dash elements dot com is the place to sign up and get A source connect trial so you can be available to connect to studios all around the world Using the tool that many producers prefer to use Because it makes their workflow just better They can plug in a plug in that works directly with pro tools And it inserts your audio right into the timeline of their system while it's recording When the session's over they've got your audio. It's already in the timeline It's already synced up in a lot of cases It's already been approved by the client Because they're listening in on the phone patch or whatever they're doing And it's all done and that that's why they love this kind of workflow There's a lot of other tools out there But this one's been in common use in production studios for a long time I personally Have known and used it or set it up for folks for over over 12 years so it is definitely a A force to be reckoned with in the recording business and you want to be ready to use it When that call comes so if you want to get it set up you can get a trial Actually, you don't have to spend anything up front to get it tested and running Just go to source dash elements dot com To get your account set up and get yourself a trial You don't have to have an iLock usb dongle key thing anymore For source connect standards. So don't worry about that Get it up and running and and if you do need help with that I also supply support for that as well at george the dot tech slash sc So anyway, go give it a try and we thank source elements so much for supporting us On v obs another year. Thanks guys. I'll be right back Yep, this is v obs proven anybody can have a show these days And we're back You know, I don't know why my clock is at that time, uh jim. There's no particular time other than the battery ran out You know, I bought two of these clocks and I do like them because they have that minute hand that moves smoothly around Remember the ones in school You know where the mini hand doesn't tick it just moves smooth. It's like this Yeah, so I got these clocks that do that the problem is I found out over trial and error is that that kills the battery Way faster So the kind of tick tick ticks the battery lasts like 10 times longer These I got to put batteries in like every three freaking months So it sort of defeats the purpose of having an accurate. Thanks for pointing that out jim. Yeah Well, one of the things that george and I really like to do is answer your questions as a matter of fact I think that Between you and me that's probably the most favorite thing in our lives is answering people's questions um Because most of the time we have the answer Because we've answered so many other questions Uh, but the the bottom line here is is we got people sending these questions and you can send in your questions in the chat room Which jeff holman is uh watching carefully tonight. You've got a question for us Send it in there right now. Uh, but the first question is from jim wilson sort of talking about what we were talking about earlier When it comes to uh, the kaonika eyeball He says given that there wasn't much good to say about the kaonika eyeball foam mic cover Which it is not when it debuted Uh, I appreciate your thoughts regarding why most of the photos I see of shotgun mics have the foam covering still on them What's a good reason to leave it on in a recording environment when the wind isn't a factor Which if you're in a recording environment wind really shouldn't even be part of the equation Even the famous host of v obs. I think he means you has a foam cover on his road shotgun Your thoughts You'll notice he's not using it this evening Well, that's because I read this question and I thought that would be a silly to have it on after I got lambasted for having it up by mark cashman too um Yeah, you don't you don't need a pop screen with proper mic placement proper technique and a voiceover studio You don't need a windscreen You don't need a pop screen You don't need any of those things because if you use your proper mic technique, you're good The one reason I think I keep putting this thing back on Is it would just be rolling around on my desk and we get lost that's one reason to know Like I why I never take my glasses off because otherwise I'd lose it to This and this is this is something to think about I do use headphones all day long when I'm doing zoom sessions. I'm You know doing tech support all day talking into this microphone And I get the I sort of get that dj effect I Get so used to the way I sound when I'm right up on the mic That I'm always eating the damn mic because I want to hear the way that sounds in my headphones So and when I do that then the pops start slipping in there and that drives me nuts So then I put the windscreen back on And the windscreen does reduce a little bit of the plosives That also keeps me from eating the mic as much when it's sticking out like say about here Okay Sue we'll we'll hold for sue holding on a second. Oh Yep, everything's good sue Yeah, I can't hear her but Yes, we are Let me make sure work our stream is going Still looks like It's going on youtube and it's going on facebook Everything's still five by five sue Okay, worst-case scenario. We'll just roll out the show in this in this shot I think the world Okay, anyway, so anyway, so where was I so Okay So the windscreen is a no-no in most cases, but for me it sometimes is a helper Sometimes it helps me a little bit guide where I'm going to be on the mic And it does sometimes help reduce plosives from time to time But this is an entirely different deal than this The eyeball the whole idea behind this is it's trying to soak up some of the room ambience Around the microphone and get rid of it. So you have less reverb It does that okay As you saw earlier in my tech talk It definitely colors the sound and so it's it's enough of a problem that a company came out with a plugin to correct for the problem caused by having something around your microphone like this so It's a very different animal, but that's what the chaotic eyeballs for Yeah, I mean it makes a great volleyball, but to me that's about all it's really good for I mean Why take a $10,000 mic? That they've spent millions of dollars of acoustical research and how the sound goes through it and shove it in You know in a bagel And that's why they give away so many of them because They don't cost a lot to make I can guarantee it. Yeah, and they're not cheap to buy so Right. Uh, yeah, it's Yeah, the windscreen is a windscreen The chaotic eyeball is not a windscreen. It has a windscreen on it. It does have one. Yes But it to me that just makes people use bad mic technique, but then again, it was not designed for voiceover But it certainly has been marketed to voice. It was really for singers that want to eat them Eat the mic and get that really a close sound and That's that was for okay Jeff Holman's question. Jeff Jeff really wanted to ask this question. So I'll let you read his question He says my Sennheiser me 66 shotgun mic has a built-in low frequency roll-off filter at 100 hertz Um, I've read it is minus 10 db at 100 hertz Slash minus 20 db at 50 hertz Is that like a high-pass filter? Yes, it is What they're describing when they talk about minus 10 db minus 20 db Is this is how much this the the sound is reduced? At those different frequencies So they're saying at 100 hertz it reduces it by about minus 10 And at 50 hertz it reduces it by minus 20 That tells me that that's not a very suitable High pass or low cut for voiceover work Because that's going to take away 10 db At 100 hertz which is a lot of the bass of your voice. That's like the lowest end of your voice That's the basement kind of fundamental of your voice It's going to thin it out quite a bit. I think don't you think Dan? At 100 yeah, I usually will It really depends on the per individual because everybody's voice is different and I have found that Certainly on female voices. They rarely go down to 100 hertz Maybe 125 hertz Some guys voices who are just you just have that kind of a voice Yeah, you don't want to you don't want to really you know cut out too much below 80 And I know some of our our our engineer friends You know who talk about this are like, well, you know If you cut it out, you know at you know a little above 80 it might actually take out some resonance And my thoughts are no one's going to tell the difference And if you've got a rumble down there that's increasing your noise floor even though it's somewhat inaudible That's okay But Yeah, a hunt a roll off at 100 hertz. It really should probably be at 80 so You know, but then again, what is that's the the the 66 designed for? But there's only way to find out And that's to hear it. That's right. Is every voice is different That's right. And every room is different. So if you're in a boomy Very bottom-heavy small room Then that actually could work out in your favor to have a take away some of the low end so you don't know Yeah And I also found that, you know, a lot of people think that they're you know, they have a very reverberant room because You know, it sounds like they have, you know, a little bit of bass reflex When in reality, they're just eating the mic Mm-hmm. So don't do that Okay Next oh and how important is it to have a shock mount? Not really very important at all to be honest because you're not The shock mounts are really important for a hand holding a mic on a boom pole Because you'll get sound transmitted from your hand down the pole And you don't want to get that in the mic but the mic in your studio is firmly mounted and Uh, you know, you're not recording 20 Hertz you're not recording extremely low frequency stuff. So Technically, you don't really need a shock mount for the 416. It'll work fine with the clip I have found in pretty much most all cases. So I have as well Uh question from demigods music cue Great name Go for it. Looking at doing some basic room treatment and there's super cheap amazon foam. Yeah, there sure is Um or pretty pricey gik acoustic panels Can't seem to find anything mid-priced which has a good balance of price and performance any suggestions Yeah, they're definitely is I mean gik has some affordable stuff But they also have some really fancy ones with wood freight wood faces that do diffusion and all this kind of stuff um I think the most reasonably priced and I've been using their products for many many many years and have Always had good success are from a company called ats acoustics Um, I think they're bang for the buck extremely hard to beat. They're about 35 bucks for a two by two panel wrapped in fabric two inches thick and You know, you the thing if to remember is you get much more effectiveness out of a two by two Properly made panel that's lined with rock soul, uh, which is a much better material than the foam And so you don't need as the sheer volume of material that you do when you use foam The foam just isn't as effective per square foot. So When you really price it all out those panels buying a few of those properly made panels or making them yourself Actually end up being very similar in price. Sometimes even cheaper So, um, you know using the right things putting them in the right place made the right way Can save you money So Hope that helps all right Brad giffin asks Uh onward to tech talk george I've enjoyed your youtube videos that offer tips tricks and techniques about twisted wave A lot of great hidden gems, but instead of hunting and hopping from video to video george Do you offer for a single? Offer for sale a single comprehensive twisted wave course from soup to nuts so to speak checks in the mail brad I will I will that's on my my my list for this year is to start producing tutorial videos for sale As I've done in the past, um, and uh, that's what I want to do I want to have like a video that's pretty comprehensive that you'll learn everything That you want to know about twisted wave in one video So that is in the works brad. Thanks for asking asking and you know, definitely stay tuned Of course as soon as I launch them you guys will know here because I'll certainly plug them But uh, I'll have info at george d.tech when I do get to them um, the number one software requested by the way For this video production work is uh, w audition So i'm starting with the w audition because that was the most asked for actually do have a little survey on my website Which one do you want to learn first, you know, there's a whole thing you can fill out But twisted wave was a close second. So that would be the next one. I'll do so. Yeah, probably by mid Mid spring. I'll have all these videos in the queue So I hope you're patient If you need to help with those george, I am available. That would be fun. Yeah. Yeah, uh, let's see here Um, uh, great question from jim mcnicholas with a single word answer George was thinking of tossing a dbx 286 in line to treat the sound a tiny bit good idea No I think the only thing that's good for is the high pass filter It's kind of a silly thing to buy just for that one feature No, I don't really recommend it. It's a great thing for podcasters who are just trying to Get reasonably good loud audio with the least amount of noise possible But it's kind of a blunt instrument It's not the best quality audio you're going to get from a unit. It's No, not for voiceover It's really designed really as you were saying for podcasting although broadcasting long before podcasting was even a word It was designed for live broadcast. This is something that would be in a in a television studio or a radio studio uh to Keep a consistent level because we're always talking about keeping a consistent level and the 286, you know, it's got I think it's got a You know a noise gate on it and all this Expander yet. We're not big fans of channel strips in front end processing Because once you record it with something like that It's there forever You can't you can't be married to it. Yeah. Yeah, and and therefore I guess the question really comes down to you know, it says to to You know to treat the sound a tiny tiny bit treat it For what? Yeah, that would be the question. What are you trying to fix by adding that? That's really what that would More inform the opinion of whether it's useful for you what you need or not exactly Uh, let's see here question from brad geffen. Go for it Uh, can one make a case for purchasing an Apollo twin if one is simply providing raw voice for commercials? That you know, no processing um Why would I yeah, basically why would I use the Apollo twin if i'm not going to use the processing? I guess is the question It's a tough thing that that's a tough thing to justify in my mind. I mean when there's things like the ssl to usb audio interface, which is amazing There's new audience products out now the id for mark 2 which is Apparently really good. I'm hoping it is stands the test of time to be good But there's just so many other far less expensive but great sounding interfaces Okay, but you wanted to know if you have two microphones And you want to have a very seamless workflow that allows you to switch between them at any time And then have your software be able to hear either microphone without having to muck around a lot of settings Yes, as adobe the the Apollo twin makes that pretty easy If you know what you're doing It's not easy unless you know how to set it up to do that And that's not easy But once it is set up for you by someone like myself that sets these things up for folks It does make that kind of thing easy. So there are things that can do really well But for for the cost, it's a little bit persnickety. Uh, the interface is a little hard to learn It doesn't work well with zoom At all does weird stuff with zoom So, yeah, it's a real caveat-empty kind of situation Talk to me more offline about that bret Yeah, yeah, we got one more question here, but I'm gonna wait a week on it Because he's asking about About eq and all this stuff If it's really need more time to unpack that one, I think well, not only that but I want to hear it Yeah, we're always talking about you know, I need to hear stuff, you know, is it a buzzer? Is it a hum? Well, no, it's not actually a buzz or a hum. It's actually a rumble or George and I have had terminology for what things are and we know what each one of those things is and what usually causes them so We also know whistle What what it's supposed to supposed to sound like right Kahuru if you're watching Send us a sample. So we know exactly what you're talking about It has to do with he's applying some stuff and it's changing the sound Well, of course, it's going to change the sound, but let's give it a listen and then we'll move on from there Sure, sounds good. Those are all the questions we got this week and then we're all great ones and uh Done and done So we'll be right back after these messages to wind things up and tell you know tell you what's coming up next Right after this. You're watching v obs dot tv I don't know why it's crazy what they do here. I think I'm going to go somewhere else and have a cheese sandwich You hear a lot about audiobooks that it's an awful lot of work And not a lot of money And when I hear that I think to myself, man, I wish I could help that person understand That yeah, not everybody makes a ton of dough in audiobooks, but you won't do yourself any favors if you just Try things out see what sticks and you don't get proper training and put in A good system a good production flow I teach a course called the acx master class and we're about to launch our winter 2021 series We've got a series of three free videos about this very thing How much opportunity there is and sometimes how little money there is in return and how to fix that Go to acx masterclass.com. That's acx masterclass.com Watch the videos. We'll open up registration for the acx masterclass real soon And we'll give you a discount as well for watching vobs acx masterclass.com. Thanks In these modern times every business needs a website when you need a website for your voice acting business There's only one place to go like the name says voice actor websites.com Their experience in this niche webmaster market gives them the ability to quickly and easily get you from concept to Live online in a much shorter time when you contact voice actor websites.com Their team of experts and designers really get to know you and what your needs are They work with you to highlight what you do Then they create an easily navigable website for your potential clients to get the big picture of who you are And how your voice is the one for them plus voice actor websites.com has other great resources Like their practice script library and other resources to help your voice over career flourish Don't try it yourself. Go with the pros voice actor websites.com where your vo website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what Yep, this is vobs proven anybody can have a show these days And we're back With mr. Woodham fixing audio is hard It can't it can't be Yeah, it's it's not it this system we're using and I you know when you hit play you have no control over the level It just is what it is. So we'll work it on that getting the levels matched again Okay, next week on this show Debbie Dairybury will be with us a little you know two-foot pile of dynamite It's a little taller than that a wonderful lady voice of jimmy newtron and a lot of other great Animation voices and a very marvelous musician So we'll talk to her about animation and character voices next week. So Make sure you're around for that. I know we have maryland wistner coming on in a couple of weeks She'll be with us. I believe march 1st And so I'm booking way ahead now I love it You know, I feel it's good. I'm doubling down. I'm getting all the good people. It's awesome Uh, anyway, who are our donors of the week? Well, we've got michael kerns christie burns graham spicer Sonia mobley michelle blinker christopher epherson sarah borges and philip appear I should by now have those names memorized because they've been subscribing and sending us a little bit of money every month For a really long time and now they get a crawler and they have a crawl It's cool. We love our technology. Don't we? Thank you, sue Um, but yeah, it's it's nice. It's nice to have you guys. Yeah, absolutely We need to thank our sponsors like harlin hogan's voiceover essentials dot com voiceover extra source elements who make source connect vio heroes dot com voice actor websites dot com and jmc demos All righty. Uh, thanks to jeff holman for uh, monitoring the chat room tonight and relaying all those questions Yes Yeah, uh our technical director sue merlino who's just pulling her hair out. Yeah She's gonna show us her picture or she did Yeah, okay good I sue thanks for all the work you do and for your dedication to our show Which is or sure Uh, we really appreciate it and lee pennie for being lee pennie Anyway, that's gonna do it for us this week. If you got questions for us write to us at the guys at v obs dot tv Uh, if you want to work with george, you can go over to george v dot tech And if you want to work with me go on over to home voiceover studio dot com See how quick she picked up on that just throw them right in there. Seamless. Alrighty Uh, hey, look, we're here to help you with your home's voiceover studio and getting your audio sounding the way it's supposed to But look if it sounds good It is good That's gonna do it for us this week. I'm dan lennard and i'm george widham and this is voiceover body shop or v o b s tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk See you next week guys. Thanks for joining us


our joy of sharing is live broadcast the other day about creativity hacks and if you don't know what I'm talking about I'll link their video in the description below. They're recording of their broadcast and as they were talking I was thinking of a couple different things. One of them was the heat transfer foil. So I happen to have this brand. It's from creativity vision stamps.com. I'll link their website in the description below. We were introduced to it at the retreat I went on in October to South Carolina and normally you it'll transfer via a laminating machine onto a laser printed image and they sell images but I was wondering what's what can I stamp some of my stamps and designs with that'll transfer the foil. I don't have a laser printer. That's an expensive piece of machinery. I don't want to invest in right now. So I was trying different things. So I had a big embossy embossing stamp pad that didn't work and I don't know if it was just because it was old or I don't know that did nothing. I tried an embossing pen and rubbing that over you know the rubber stamp that did nothing. So I was about to just give up and put everything away and I thought why don't I try a glue stick. What's the worst that could happen as long as I wash it off the stamp right away. It should be fine. So I tried both an Elmer's and a you who stick. This is the Elmer's. This is you who while these are sort of a little bit detailed stamps and so you don't get a perfect image but I do like the image I got plus when you do this kind of embossing you also have these waste pieces that are interesting to do things with. So then I'm thinking okay if it does that which I'm okay with with the more detailed stamps these are the atomic age stamps and they always come with their layering stamps like a lot of other stamps are and so you always get the solid and then the detail and you stamp the solid first and then the detail. So now I'm wondering what will we get with the solid. So this is what you do. So I'm going to take a piece of card stock and I'm using my Tim Holtz stamping thing. Forget what it's called. I'm going to take one of my stamps and I'm going to lay it flat down. Actually I'm going to just take both of them. I want to see what they both do and then I'm going to close the lid and I'll stick to the lid. One of them kind of had some ink on it but that's okay. Then I'm going to ink up the one that sort of look like moons with the Elmer's and you the only thing about this is you want to be kind of quick and I'll link up the ink up link up ink up the squares with the Yoohoo. I do find the Yoohoo is a little bit more stringy. If that makes sense then the Elmer's so you're going to get like glue boogers. You're going to want to put something in here to hold the paper down when you lift because the paper will want to stick to the stamps. We're going to take a piece of foil. This one is called Pride I believe. Yep, my favorite one and then put it into a piece of printer paper and then run it through your heat laminating machine. So I'm going to do that and I'll be right back. I'm going through the heat laminating machine. I'm going to take some baby wipes and clean the glue off my stamps. Now I'm not usually very diligent about cleaning my stamps or stencils unless I'm using them with mediums or glue or something. So I would recommend if you're doing something like this so you clean them off afterwards. Okay, then you just peel. Look at that. So you don't need anything fancy if you run across some of this heat transfer foil and you have a coupon or it's on sale. Pick it up and as long as you have a glue stick and a heat laminating machine, you can do a lot of stuff. You may be able to do this with an iron to just FYI but I haven't tried that yet. If one of you have, let me know. Put something in the comments below. That's it.  So one of the things that came out this year. Sorry, I'm going to move my chair so I can sit down. Okay, one of the things that came out this year was pearlized alcohol inks. So I was kind of wondering as they were talking about them and pearlizing inks they already own. Could you just like make your own alcohol ink and I know you probably could but like from these things that I already had in my stash. I didn't buy any of this. I have the gum Arabic because it's a really great binder for some of my watercolors. I had powdered pigments because they're great not only to make watercolors with. You can mix it with acrylic mediums. You can also mix it with resin and I always have ice purple alcohol around. So I don't know let's try it and see what happens.  These were gifted to me for my friend Lindy Lesserd. Thank you, Lindy. Okay, so I'm going to use the pipette because I think it's the easiest way to get the alcohol out of the bottle without making a big mess. I don't want to make too much of this. Okay, so we've got a little bit of oops, where are we? Where's the camera? There we are. A little bit of rubbing alcohol that much. The bottle is not very big. It's little. Okay, this is a color art powdered pig primary elements pigment and this one. Do we know what color this one is? Let's see. Glasses, Guatemalan green. That's what it says. I'm going to need a different way to get it out of there. I was afraid I was going to have to cut there and that because I was going to make a mess and that was just going to go everywhere.  I'm just going to put a little teeny bit in here. This is a pure pigment. It doesn't have any binder in it, but it hence the gamarabic. So this is a binder. So let's you know one of those adult proof caps on it. Holy cow. Had to have some income help. Go help me. All right, so now we're going to no idea how much I need. I'm just guessing here. I'm going to put the little stopper thing on. Put that on so that we can shake it without it going everywhere and mix it up. It looks pretty. Oops, where are we? Looks pretty. I don't know what it's going to do. And again, we're just completely guesstimating here. It's kind of watery, but that could be the pigment because I didn't put enough in there. It's not dry all the way yet, but the edges are dry. I don't know if you guys are going to be able to see on camera that the pearlized part of this, but it is definitely a pearlized pigment and it is not wiping off. The little bits of pigment that I didn't mix very well are coming off, but the rest of it is definitely sunk right into the paper. So that's pretty interesting. I like that. So, you know, if you don't have alcohol inks or you don't have pearlized alcohol inks, don't go out and buy them. Use what you have. That's pretty. I'm having trouble telling because all my fingers are dirty at this point because I've been playing with supplies, but yeah, I know it's not coming off. That's pretty cool. I was telling a friend about our alcohol ink experiment. She said if you have alcohol ink, how does the pigment mix with it? The answer is it mixes very well. So I took some of my rubbing alcohol, which is in the spray bottle. I used it for other things and I put it in here and then I put some of the powdered pigment in it and mixed those two together and then added out regular Ranger alcohol ink and I got this beautiful color. Now the powdered pigment is called lemon drop and that's where all the shimmer is coming from. The alcohol ink is latte and it doesn't have its Adirondack ink. It has no shimmer in it at all. So beautiful. I like powdered pigments because you can do this sort of thing with them. You can mix them with acrylic mediums and make an acrylic paint. You can mix them with gum Arabic and make sort of a watercolor that's rewettable. So that's really cool and so I usually have powdered pigments around. So if I'm going to invest in anything, it's usually these to be honest, but that's me. So you need to decide what's good for you. All right. That's it for today. So play with your supplies. See what you can do and share in the comments below if you have any tips for paralyzing your own inks or making your own inks or paint and let's get a conversation going. You can also do that over in my Facebook group, A Life of Art and Self Expression and you can find the links to support the free content on my channel, the links for the Facebook group, Patreon, my tip jar, Amazon wish list, all that stuff, happy mail address, all that stuff in the description below and or on my the link tree link that's in the description below. If you click on that, you're going to find me every place you can find me on the internet. So that's it for today. Go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later. Bye guys.


Hello my people, welcome to the SCORE channel and welcome to NOVA Southeastern University! I'm on the last leg of my awesome trip through the United States and I stopped for a few days in Miami. As usual, I sat down with the International Missions Counselor, Mirela Batista, to talk to her a little bit more about NSU, find out what makes it so great for international students. Will you be an NSU shark? Let's find out. My name is Mirela Batista. I'm originally from Brazil. I've been working here at NSU for about two years as an international admissions counselor. We have more than 50 different undergraduate programs in all different areas of study, but marine biology, environmental science are two of the most popular programs that we have. Business program is very popular. NSU started out originally as only a graduate school. That means that all of the undergraduate programs have really been designed to help you pursue a master's or a PhD. That makes it a really great option if you're looking to study something like medicine, where you need to do a pre-med course like biology, which is coincidentally one of the most popular undergraduate options here at NSU. In fact, they have over 30 dual admission programs where if you get into the undergraduate program, you'll also get a spot in their master's program if you decide to continue your education. And then we also have a lot of opportunities for students who want to go into the medical and dental program. Law school has a very good law program and a lot of the students want to come here and do a criminal justice bachelor's degree and then go into the law program. All of the facilities here are extremely modern. I've been walking around this campus, taking a look at all these buildings, going inside, and everything looks new. So we are actually known as one of 59 universities with high research activity and community engagement. So this is part of what we call experiential learning. So students get a more hands-on opportunity. Usually they have to do six units of what we call Excel, so experiential learning. I mean, internship, study abroad, and the other one is a research. So what kind of student does NSU look for? So we don't really have an ideal candidate. What we are looking for is for that student who wants to make a difference. We're big on innovation, so if you are someone who thinks out of the box and wanted to do great things in life and want to engage in the community, we have lots of students who come from all over the world and they want to be doctors and then we ask them, okay, so how do you want to be a different doctor? Like, how do you want to make a difference? If you are someone who wants to help the community, help the world be a better place, then you're definitely a good fit for NSU because we are going to support you throughout your years of studies. That's something that really stood out to me, was the focus on community engagement and also just on research in general. NSU really does look to change the world and they want students who want to do the same thing.  Now, when it comes to cost, this is a private university, so you don't have to think about in-state or out-of-state tuition. Although there are benefits for Florida residents. Florida gives grants to every resident even if they're going to private universities. So if you do have a parent living in Florida, you might be able to cut your costs significantly. Even if you don't, you can still apply for any of the scholarships that NSU offers. Several different opportunities for international students to apply to scholarships. The Dean's Award is an automatic scholarship they receive between $5,000 and $19,000 a year. And then there's the Razor's Edge Scholars Program. Now, this is a four-year program that requires you to live on campus. That's a plane going by. In Florida, you're near an airport, man. So the Razor's Edge Program is one of the most popular scholarships, five different tracks for different interests. And it comes with a $24,000 scholarship. There's other scholarships too for people who are looking to study business. There's even one that gives you money towards a startup idea if you want to launch a business coming out of college. And then we also have the Presidential Scholar. That's like a full tuition, but it's by invitation only. So students who qualify for that scholarship, they are going to be notified upon admission and then they will be required to interview. With all the clubs that are here, all the community activities and all the great sports facilities, you're going to have a good time. You're going to meet a lot of people. And on a very diverse campus like this, you're going to feel right at home. We are a very diverse campus. We have students from more than 50 different states and more than 110 countries. So you are going to be able to make friends from all over the world. We have more than 120 clubs and organizations. We even have a festival that we call Sharko Palooza. Students from all the clubs, they showcase what they've been doing and they're trying to get new members. Campus is pretty safe. We are located in Fort Lauderdale. We do have a public safety department that is available 24-7. Students can just press a button if they need help. As someone who comes from a very cold place and now lives in a very warm place, weather is just sort of whatever to me, but that made a really good point when she talked about the weather in South Florida. In South Florida, it's warm all year long. We are located 20 minutes from the beach in Fort Lauderdale, 45 minutes from Miami. It's a perfect place for students who are coming from South America to feel more home because I know the transition is not easy. You're going to be away from home, away from family. You want to have at least a place that's warm, welcoming, you know, and friendly. So NSU is all of that. The application for Fall 2022 is open now. Early decision and early action deadline is November 1st and regular decision is February 1st. You don't need to take the SAT. All we require from you is official high school transcript related to English by a certified translator. We also require the English proficiency test. It can be the TOEFL, the IELTS, the Duolingo. If you went to IB school, then we can definitely wave that, just get in contact with me. NSU has further proved that if you dig a little bit deeper, you can find some really great universities for you. Thanks again to NSU and thanks again to Medela for taking the time to talk to me about NSU to share a little more of Nova Southeastern with us today. Plains. If you want to check out some of the other videos on this amazing US tour, then check out the university episode from the University of Pittsburgh, or take a look at the first one that came out from this trip from Hillsdale College. I'll see you next week.


So, appreciating the present moment is something that I have started and attempting to do because it's so easy to get caught up in different scenarios in your head when that has nothing to do with what you're actually present doing. If you're hanging out with your friends, for example, and in the back of your mind, all you can think about is tomorrow you have to go to work and wake up early and you're really not living in the present moment because you're worrying about other things in the back of your head. No matter what, you're gonna have to go. No matter about if you worry about work the next day or not, you're gonna have to go to work. Therefore, why not choose to not worry about work the next day and just enjoy the time that you have now with your friends instead of ruining your time with your friends just because you have work the next day. Or that's just an example, but whatever, maybe you could input your own situations into this. When you overthink something, it just creates a snowball effect into overthinking pretty much everything and that is eventually just going to lead to mental fog and you're not gonna be able to ever be clear with yourself and you're never gonna be able to be present in the moment and enjoy it thoroughly for what it is. I know that overthinking can be the death to a lot of us. I know pretty much everyone loves to overthink and it's just kind of like in our second nature. That's just what we do because of how we've been brought up. We've always been taught to worry. Or it's really hard to not overthink and to not think about 10 different things at once. Being in the present moment has just helped me so much get to get out of my head and to really just reflect on other situations inwards and just be present in every single moment which has led to mental clarity and which has led to me actually having the best times and enjoying life and loving myself because I'm not always in my head about everything. So the way that I like to be mindful and to help myself stay in the present moment is by practicing meditation. So basically what meditation is is it's just you clearing your mind of any thoughts literally just pretty much like erasing your mind at the moment and just thinking of absolutely nothing and just being. I like meditation because it helps me train my mind for those moments that I want to be in the present moment and the best way to get to know yourself and the best way to love yourself is to be in the present moment with yourself all of the time and not to be so scrambled in your head because when you're scrambled in your head that creates anxiety, worries, stress. Meditation kind of can help you retrain your mind, help that muscle in your brain that whenever you want to be present it just kind of flicks on and you can just ignore all of your worries and your stresses.  You can just lay in your bed, sit down on a mat, lay down on a mat, whatever you want to be, whatever you feel most comfortable with and literally just put a 10 minute timer on. If you want you can put like a soundscape in the background or white noise.  Just clear your mind and it will be hard at first but eventually you're going to retrain your mind and help train that muscle in your brain to just be in the present moment and this will help so much with your self love because you're not going to be constantly going back and forth in your head and worrying every single day. Sitting in the state of meditation is going to help you to get to know yourself because you're completely going to be blocking out those annoying thoughts that always come up and just literally sitting in your body with yourself and spending time with yourself without thinking about anything else and it's so so precious and if you don't take the time out of your day to do this then those thoughts are just going to keep accumulating and you're never going to give your mind a break and you're never really going to ever sit with yourself just you and really get to know yourself and feel into yourself.  You're stuck in your body forever so if you were stuck with somebody forever and you could never leave their side would you not want to have a good relationship with them? Would you not want to love them? You're your own best friend. Treat yourself like you are your own best friend. Put yourself in the shoes of one of your best friends. If one of your best friends was having a bad day, if one of your best friends was feeling sad what would you do for them? Would you check in on them if they're okay? Would you go over and talk to them? Would you go and watch a movie with them to make them feel better? Would you go buy them their favorite things? What would you do to your best friend? And that is what you've got to do to yourself. That is how you have to treat yourself because at the end of the day we are so hard on ourselves because it's just ourselves like oh it's just me so I can be this hard on myself. But would you be that hard on your best friend? Probably not. You have to put that into perspective and look at it that way where you're literally stuck with yourself for the rest of your life.  Treat yourself with love every day. Treat yourself like you would want your best friend to treat you and act towards you. Your best friend always saying negative comments to you that's not okay. You would not allow your best friend to say negative comments to you or be toxic towards you. Therefore don't allow yourself to be toxic towards yourself. Just figure out what makes you feel good. What you need from yourself whether it's a day of just self care once a week. Whatever it is make sure that you're giving that to yourself because you have to maintain that relationship with yourself. When you have a best friend or when you have even a friend you don't go and not talk to them for a year. You know you want to check in on them and you want to hang out with them and have a good time with them. So literally do the same for yourself. Treat yourself like you want to be treated by others. Yourself is the most important person there is. Follow through with what you want to do. If you make a promise to yourself to go to the gym don't start making excuses in your head because when you let yourself down that's like like I said before like letting your friend down. You wouldn't let your friend down. So why are you going to let yourself down? If you cancel on your friend, if you have an appointment at the gym with your friend and you were her ride you wouldn't cancel on her. So if you're going to the gym with yourself why would you cancel on yourself? If you have a commitment to yourself to let's say start to eating healthy, getting back to a good workout schedule, follow through with that. You owe it to yourself, you're free to yourself, we'll thank you for it. When you look back at yourself in five years you're going to be so thankful you did what you did. In order to love yourself you have to know that making mistakes is part of life and it is okay to fail sometimes it is okay to make some mistake because if you don't make mistakes then you don't learn. A lot of the times we can beat ourselves up for the sole purpose that we didn't succeed or it didn't go how we would like it to or we made a mistake and the most important thing to take away from mistakes is to learn something about it because to me personally if I make a mistake or if anybody makes a mistake if you learn something from it to me it's not a mistake it's a learning opportunity because if you don't make mistakes how else are you supposed to learn how else are you supposed to know better and I think that making mistakes is honestly one of the most important things in life because that's how you grow, that's how you move on, that's how you learn new things and learn how to get past obstacles and it's so important not to beat yourself up about making a mistake or failing because everything happens for a reason and if you have to keep pushing then you have to keep pushing if you have to try to find another way then try to find another way but beating yourself up about something that you made a mistake about or that you failed at is not going to do you any good. It's why you make out of your experiences you guys at the end of the day if you look at a mistake and you think of it as something negative then it's going to be something negative and it's going to be something that you're going to hate yourself for but if you look at the outside perspective of looking at a mistake as a learning opportunity I promise you it'll help you look inwards rather than beat yourself up about it and get mad at yourself and hurt yourself over it. I just think it is it is one of the most beautiful perspectives that you can have on life. Another word for mistakes is sinning and I feel like a lot of the times what people deem as sins can be just perceived as well as learning opportunities, learning from your mistakes and I really encourage you guys next time that you guys make a mistake or you fail or something along those lines just to look inwards and see how you can learn from that opportunity because it's like the quote you can't have sunshine without rain which is like the exact same thing you need to fail or you need to make a mistake in order to grow and learn otherwise you'll never know if you didn't go through it and on that same note it is totally totally normal to go through tough times in life it is totally normal to sometimes wake up and just not be in a good mood happens to the best of us it happens to every single one we're all human if you're feeling shitty don't go beat yourself up about it because you're feeling shitty for a reason so maybe it's just a simple fact that you need to start having a more positive outlook on things or maybe you really just gotta reflect inwards and change something in your life if you guys are feeling shitty or sad or if you're falling into depression or whatever it may be know first of all that it's going to get better for you and you just have to have yourself at the end of the day and know that things will get better for you but it's also up to you to take those steps in the right direction and to grow from it and to turn inwards it's so important to look inwards for validation rather than caring about what other people think and this is so tied into self love if you care about what other people think then you're literally facing your happiness on other people and what they think it's not about you and what you do it's on what other people think so you're putting your happiness and your love for yourself in other people's hands you want to snatch that right back right now if you're happy with what you're doing and if you love what you're doing then that is all that matters you don't need validation from anybody if it is making you happy it is your path and you love doing it that is all that matters do not seek external validation I think that your internal validation is all that you need at the end of the day because you're the only one that's gonna be with yourself forever you're the only one that's gonna be there for yourself forever caring about what what other people think and looking outwards for validation is only going to literally disconnect you from yourself because that just goes to show that doesn't matter what you think or you like it matters people other people are thinking about you and what other people want you to do if you want to find true self-love you have to know that you're enough at the end of the day if you want to do something all you need is your own validation you do not need anybody else's and you should trust yourself and love yourself to know that you're enough and you do not need anybody else also just remember that we are 100% all completely unique in our own ways 100% completely unique in our own ways every single one of us is different do not compare yourself to other people on social media to other people you see in your life do not compare yourself first of all social media is fake people photoshop their pictures all the time it's not real it is not real if you're comparing yourself to social media you may as well compare yourself to a plastic Barbie doll because it's literally almost the same thing if you want to seek true love and true self validation you have to stop comparing yourself to other people and you just got to know that you're enough you're unique in your own way everybody is different everyone is different and that's what's special about you and you have to realize that in order to love yourself is that every single thing on you every single thing in you is unique nobody is identical therefore we are all unique for a reason at the end of the day you're the only you that exists and I know it sounds like really cheesy but it's so true it is so true there's no such thing as being ugly or pretty in reality there's no such thing it's what society deems as being ugly or pretty there's no such actual thing it's just something though but a concept that we've created everybody is just different and that's it at the end of the day everybody is just different and that's it so just know that honestly what helps is just like sitting and being like wow this body is housing me right now like this body is housing me like wow and appreciate that appreciate your body that your heart beats for you every single day your lungs breathe for you every single day your brain works for you every single day and appreciate that about your body and how amazing that is because it is truly amazing and you're the only person in your body like this is your body like it's yours like it's not crazy that's just so crazy but yeah just know that you're stuck in your body forever so appreciate it your body has been through so much mentally and so much physically you have to reward it for what it's been through and realize that and appreciate that because once you start appreciating your body your body will start appreciating you it's got to come from the inside out also another big thing is protecting yourself you guys you have to protect yourself what I mean by that is let's say you have a younger sibling or even a friend you obviously want to protect them from bad things do that for yourself cut toxic people out of your life don't let negative people in your life protect yourself protect your heart protect your soul because you do not deserve any negativity that is unnecessary in your life in order to love yourself you have to feel protected because that is just such an important aspect to self-love is protecting yourself and not just opening yourself up to everybody because you have to know how special you are and how valuable your time is and your life is and you shouldn't just allow any buddy to just randomly walk in that especially negative people or negative things just be very cautious and maybe even reflect on if there is people that's are toxic or negative in your life right now that you need to cut out and reflect on that and realize that it's totally okay to cut people or things out of your life that are toxic or negative because at the end of the day there's no point of surrounding yourself with any negativity when you can choose positivity just think about it and ask yourself like am I protecting myself who am I allowing into my life and what am I allowing into my life are the things in my life making me happy are the things in my life that are negative and making me sad love yourself enough to let toxic people go out of your life what do you say when you look in the mirror what do you tell yourself when you look in the mirror how do you feel when you look in the mirror how do you feel when you're doing your makeup do you need makeup to love yourself or do you feel beautiful do you need to do a specific hairstyle to love yourself or to feel beautiful reflect on that and think about the things that you're telling yourself every single day when you're getting ready for work getting ready to go out getting ready for school whatever you're getting ready for in the morning whenever you get ready be conscious of what you're saying to yourself in the mirror and as you're getting ready because you may even be feeding your mind and your body with negative thoughts without even knowing it. So next time you guys look into the mirror and you're getting ready be conscious of what you say to yourself and how you're treating yourself in that time. We can be so negative to ourselves and just say all of these things and just not even realize it's happening even though it's getting registered in our body and our brain. So make sure that you're very aware of that and if you catch yourself saying something negative at one point change it to something positive and flip the switch on that. Realize how important it is to feed your body positive thoughts about yourself and get in the habit of doing that every single day even if it's as cheesy as looking in the mirror and telling yourself like I'm beautiful I just live the world nothing can make me beautiful because I'm already beautiful and you just you guys have to really see your true inner beauty and beauty comes from within and it shines out. All starts with what's inside and how you're projecting the hours to yourself.  Because we always admire everyone else's beauty but sometimes we forget to admire our own. Live your life for yourself and for nobody else. It's your life. You decide what happens in it to learn how to not care about other people's opinions, don't care about what other people think about you. That's when the true self-love is gonna start to spark and come out and you're going to really start loving yourself. That is the key to being happy, being confident from within loving yourself and who you've become, who you are. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. It was a little different so let me know how you liked it. I love you guys so much. Thank you for tuning in and I literally appreciate you guys more than anything. I'm always sending you guys positive vibes and my gratitude. I love you guys so much. See you guys in my next video. Peace out. Love yourself baby.


This is Karakam Secretary-General Irwin Lara. I took the jab, the COVID-19 vaccine. I'm encouraging you, my brothers and sisters, to join me. Take the jab and observe the protocols. We're saving lives and jobs.