Having Fun With Headphone Volume

hey there it’s David H Lawrence the 17th
and today I want to talk to you about
earbuds headphones whatever it is I
insist that you use these when you do
your work when you decide you’re going
to do work as a professional you have to
know the quality that you’re doing the
way your so many different aspects of
using your voice and using your
microphone properly and being able to
monitor that when you do that it’s so
important there are some experts out
there some coaches who say don’t don’t
do this because basically what you’ll be
doing is getting in your head and
falling in love with your voice you know
I spent probably thirty five years in
radio and yeah the very beginning I was
really happy and really excited that I
could hear my voice in the headphones
but after a while it became really
apparent to me that headphones were more
than just a great way to hear my voice
headphones were a way to know what was
going on the air what it sounded like on
the air it was kind of a confidence
monitor and it also is really important
when you’re doing things like audio book
work you have to know when a sound is
happening off in the distance that you
wouldn’t even notice or maybe you would
forgive because it’s kind of just part
of the environment if you don’t have
your earbuds on when you have your
earbuds on or you have your headphones
on
all of a sudden everything becomes much
more precise and you don’t know how you
actually sound on the microphone you
don’t know how you sound how close you
are how far away you are how intense you
are whether or not you sound off mic or
on mic you don’t know that until you go
back and you listen you also don’t know
if you’ve popped your peas or bees you
know you’ve done a plosive thing on the
microphone or you’ve popped a dental you
hit a dental really hard at T or a D
really hard or a hard vowel and you’ve
over driven it but if you’re wearing
earbuds and headphones you can tell when
that happens immediately and you can
stop and you can use either the stair
step method or whatever the method is
that you use
make those Corrections and do that
pickup right then otherwise you have to
go back and listen to everything that
you’ve done and I know there are some
people go well yeah you should do that
no you really shouldn’t you should be
listening to the one that worked out
best otherwise you’re gonna be listening
forever so no that’s not the case and
there’s two other instances where
wearing headphones can be really really
useful and that is one when you want to
do a very intimate read when you want to
get right up on top of the microphone
and you want to make a read that is
really soft and intimate but still
intense what you want to do there is
turn the volume on your headphones up
because what will happen is you’ll
naturally drop the volume of your voice
to match what you want to hear in your
ear as an example if you’re ever around
anybody who’s listening to music very
loudly in their earbuds or their
headphones and you’re not you’re just
sort of watching them and you say hello
to them hey how’s it going oh it’s great
everything’s fantastic you know they’ll
they’ll they’ll have that desire to hear
themselves the way they would normally
hear themselves if they weren’t wearing
their headphones and of course when they
take their earbuds or their headphones
off then they talk normally because they
do hear themselves the way they normally
do so if you turn the volume on your
headphones up and you’re hearing your
voice louder than normal you’ll
naturally drop the volume and it will be
a natural progression to an intimate
read that isn’t faked you’re not doing
it softly like this you’re actually
doing it softly like this and you’re
giving it the vocalization that it
desires that it demands and then the
reverse is true as well if you want a
shout lower the volume of your
headphones and then you’ll naturally
raise your voice as opposed to a fake
version like all naturally raise my
voice that you know you don’t want to do
that you want to make sure that you’re
doing it with all the natural attack and
pitch and and timbre and and all the
other little colorations that are in
your voice when you do something
naturally by raising or lowering your
voice so just to remind you raise the
volume on your headphones when you want
to lower the volume of your voice and
lower the volume on your headphone
when you want to naturally raise the
volume of your voice does that resonate
with you tis that that’s something that
you knew about or something that you had
heard in the past is it new to you or do
you just simply completely and totally
disagree with me like some of my peers
about wearing headphones and how useful
those are when you’re recording look
we’re professionals and we can get past
the whole idea of oh you’ll fall in love
with your voice or you’ll get in your
head you want to be able to be accurate
about what you’re doing and the only way
to do that is to listen to yourself
while you’re doing it with a really
great pair in here or on the ear
monitors let me know what you think
leave me a comment below I’d love to
know that do it at vo – go go comm
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will play it for you I’m David H
Lawrence xvii I thank you so much for
watching and I will talk to you tomorrow.