Pause and reflect before recording. As a long-time yoga practitioner, mindfulness is a topic that’s near and dear to me.
Being present mentally and physically takes constant effort and like all such things that take effort the results make it a worthy pursuit.
When I’m feeling mentally hectic, I like to slow down, sit in a sunny spot, and read. If I don’t have much time, a magazine is a great option because of all the short articles. But which magazine should I read?
Tape Op is a Great Magazine
This magazine checks all the boxes for me because it’s chock full of articles and ads that are focused on my passion, my hobby, and my career as an audio engineer. I’ve subscribed to Tape Op magazine since 2011 because it’s so well written, edited, put together, and altogether extraordinary. Most of the recording gear I’ve purchased since 2011 was selected after a favorable writeup in its Gear Review column. I’ve turned dozens of friends onto the magazine as a fantastic resource but until today I never thought to share it with all of our blog visitors.
I’d like to share today because of one article in particular that I found so wonderful, so profoundly insightful, and inspirational that I think anyone who records audio should read it. I’d tell you about it, but really, you should take some time and read it for yourself.
Mindfulness
How This Factors Into Our Workflow
I read the article and found I had to pause and reflect several times because it was so on point!
We’ve all been there, in the studio, professional voice talent ready, engineer ready, producer ready, client present. In our sessions at Marketing Messages, we work from a carefully crafted IVR voice prompt script. It’s been looked at by all involved parties, iterated over, finessed, and finally approved by the powers that be.
Paper savers that we are, we’re each looking at the copy on our screens. The session begins, the talent speaks, the engineer listens, the producer listens, and the client speaks. “Oh, wait, that’s not the latest version. We made some changes this morning. Can we work from this version instead?”
Game-changer or mere hiccup?
Fortunately, we too practice mindfulness in our sessions. We pause and reflect before recording. We are present and open to acceptance. We do not resist the change but embrace it willingly, finding a way to readily distribute the new version of that IVR voice prompt script to everyone’s unique device. The talent takes a moment to drink water. The engineer double-checks the audio levels. The producer does something magical that no one else understands and the client smiles contentedly. We accept that we’ve been given the chance to record the best version of the latest copy. We smile, we get quiet, and we record the most natural-sounding VUI audio to date.
If you’d like to book a session with us to record your IVR prompts, auto-attendant greetings, on-hold messages, e-learning speech, narration, or more, please contact us.