Plosives and how to fix them!
Today on VO Life Toby talks about 'plosives' and 'popping' the enemy of voice recording experts everywhere! We discuss why this occurs and investigate the various methods for reducing this artifact in your recordings. Brought to you by the complete voice over career platform - Gravy for the Brain Oceania:
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Here’s a transcript:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of vo life with me Toby Ricketts. demystifying some of the myths and technical things around voiceover, I'm starting a new series today, which is all about mic technique, because people seem pretty interested in finding out how to have better mic techniques. So that's how we interface with our microphones how these devices, record our voice, and how the laws of physics kind of work around microphones and how you can best do that as a voiceover artist. This episode is brought to you by gravy for the brain, Oceania. If you haven't checked it out, please do at Oceania dot gravy for the brain.com complete platform for voiceover artists from beginner to Pro. And you can find out more info in the little link below. So today, pops and plosives What are they, and what are some techniques that we can use to to work with them in our practice. So as you can see from this view, is right in front of my microphone, it's pointing straight at my mouth. Whenever I make a plosive like a P or B, or "Chuh" - anything that lifts air out of the mouth in a big wave, it goes into the recording elements which are very sensitive in the microphone here. And it's a very sensitive instrument. So that wall of noise will go right in and all sort of fluff on the microphone. I've got a pop filter here at the moment. As you can see a metal I think it's a Stedman screen I've got here, which you'll find, like ubiquitous in recording circles, because this is very prevalent, especially with really sensitive condenser microphones like this. Okay. So if I was to take that away, and we'll start a new audition recording here, let me just get into my system. There we go. So let's start recording. And you'll be able to see, and the spectral view, whenever I do a pop of pretend to read a plosive script, I'll stop that you can see down here, every time there's a pop, there's one there, and there's one there, everything under about 100 hertz, there's a huge wall of sound you can see. And so this sounds like a ball, like a big you can get rid of these in post production you can do but we always try and you know, go for the gold standard and do everything right the first time. This is why we have pop filters. And but sometimes that's not enough, if you're doing some really like over the top cartoony sort of voicing, then you need to have other things in your arsenal as well, because even with pop filters, and some mics are just very sensitive to pops. I know my I've got a Neumann kmi 84 pencil condenser. And that is extremely sensitive to pops like even with two of these pop filters. The pops still get through. So this is when we have to use a mic technique. So for plosives the mic technique involves either directing that pot away from the microphone. So options for this is that you get a bit further back, but then you've got proximity effect. So your bass is going to roll off. So if you want to stay close to the microphone, then you can just turn your head slightly. So you can when you went to kind of read the script here, Peter, and Bill went to pick some plums. And so if the piece go off to the side, you can you can sort of turn your head and then direct the Pops away from the mic, and there's still enough sound coming out of the side of your mouth, there's still like sound good. So let's do a recording an audition and see if that made a difference again. Peter, and Bill went to pick some plums. So oops, there we go. So there is no pops in that recording, I've got my pop filter. And I have also turned away you can see this a tiny remnant of one, but you won't hear that pretty much. So that is one technique you can use for pops. And the other one is to kind of swallow the Pops. So it's too and you can practice this on your hand again, like if you go full noise and Peter and Bill went to pick some plums and then try and swallow the peas. So instead of going not going like like that, but it's like halfway to that. So you basically go Peter, Peter, Peter, and Bill bill instead of Bill, Peter, just go Peter, and you kind of suck in at the same time as you're saying the P it is possible to say these words without actually making any plosives as well. And that's kind of like the best mic technique if you can train yourself to do that. So there are two options, three options really if you include hardware so you've got your pop filters you've got your direction and you've also got the swallowing of the of the p there. If you've got any other ways that you get rid of pops then please do let me know Toby. At Toby Ricketts dot com is how to get in touch or leave a comment below. I always love hearing your comments down below. Don't forget to check out gravy for the brain, Oceania. I do webinars every week, pretty much and we do script read throughs all kinds of stuff like that to help you be a better voiceover artist. So check out Oceania gravy for the brain.com for more info and I will see you next week for another Have an episode of vo life about Mike technique. See you next time.
