DIY Narration

What is the best way to get great, professional-quality audio narration for your next eLearning project?  Hire a professional narrator.  What’s the best way to disengage your learners with dreadful narration?  Use Text-to-Speech (per the voice principle and any experience you’ve ever had listening to it).  What if you don’t have budget, time, or professionals?  Do it yourself! 

There are times when professional narration won’t work for you.  It might be because you don’t have the budget, but it also might be because you don’t have content that warrants professional narration.  If you are producing a simulation of a coaching opportunity, authentic people (who can narrate with some life) more appropriately match your content.

Before the Session

Equipment

First, you’ll need to have equipment.  Second, you’ll need to know how to use it.  Recording audio can be done on headsets or with higher-quality microphones.  The sound quality is different, but it doesn’t have as big of an impact on the finished product as the recording environment does.  If you don’t have equipment and are looking to shell out serious money, there are tons of recommendations out there.  If you want to do a quality job on the cheap, the Blue Snowball is a mic worth checking out.  Regardless of what equipment you use, you’ll want to make sure you have it available and know how to work it with your computer.

Regarding software, there are several applications out there.  If you are fortunate enough to be using Adobe software and have access to the Creative Suite, Audition will do a phenomenal job.  If you are working on your own and want to save money at every opportunity, check out Audacity.  It’s fully featured (including de-noise functionality), well documented with YouTube tutorials, and really impressive.

Script

Ensure that your script matches the tone you are looking to set with your module.  If you want to talk to someone about the benefits of using your corporate social media site, it will probably be worded very different than your annual compliance training.  While you are writing the script, read the script.  Things sound very different when read aloud (which is why your high school English teacher told you to read Shakespeare aloud rather than silently).  You want to ensure your script makes sense when it is narrated for the module.

Room

When selecting a room, silence is important.  Oftentimes, the best rooms available are the small spaces where the central air ducts don’t reach.  Odd conference rooms or even your bedroom closet work really well.  While your closet may be an awkward place to host a recording session, if you are recording on your own, the hanging clothes make an excellent sound dampener.  If you have the ability to do a sample recording in a room, you’ll want to ensure you get one where the mic picks up no (or minimal) background noise when set at a recording level that it would be used for narration.

Talent

Once you have your script, you can select your talent.  It can be difficult to identify someone who sounds good and is interested in being recorded.  However, technology makes it really easy to have people audition as they can use a built in laptop mic and a default sound recorded to send you a 30 second clip. 

There are also times where it is more important to have the right person rather than the right voice.  For example, if the recruiting department is creating an eLearning module, the director of recruiting is an excellent person to narrate as it provides an appropriate level of authenticity.  That being said, make sure they identify themselves at the beginning of the recording – otherwise, only you will know.  Additionally, if you are recording screen cast sessions, it is important to have someone narrate who knows what he is doing.  Lynda.com provides excellent examples of this as an authentic person (often someone who is actually good at narrating, too) who knows a lot about the tools creates the demonstrations.  For a bad example (which is more fun), try to make it through this EasyBib video narrated by a sales agent for the company.  Listening to someone do it wrong is great inspiration for doing it right.

Rehearse

It seems simple enough, but make sure you get the script to your talent a couple of days ahead of the recording session.  While they don’t have to memorize it, familiarity is ideal in order to prevent any awkward pauses during phrases in the script.  Additionally, this is one part of the experience that can be controlled, which can oftentimes help with your narrator’s nerves.

During the Session

Detail the process

Before you begin, explain what will happen to the narrator.  You’ll want to tell them up front that you will need three takes of each section.  That way, if they nail it on the first take, you can claim a victory and move on.  If they are expecting a single take and have to record something three times, it will make them even more nervous, frustrated, or angry. 

It is also important to set expectations for when (not if) they mess up.  It is often best to have them pause after the mistake (assuming they realize they made one), take a breath, then begin the paragraph over again.  The pause helps you to quickly identify where you need to cut (writing down times helps, too), and starting again from the paragraph allows you to make a more seamless cut with their natural pause.

Multiple takes

The more you record, the more you can choose from later.  If you are recording someone important, you might not have the opportunity to record multiple takes, but it will probably be easier to record multiple takes in one session than attempt to schedule a second one.  If it comes down to it, and you really don’t want it to, you can always splice different paragraphs from different takes together in order to make the best possible narration.

Speed

Narrating is slower than speaking.  Have the narrator read at a comfortable pace.  This is often the most difficult thing for a nervous narrator.  Have them think of how this would be read by a professional narrator and read it at that speed.

Smile

It’s common advice among people in call centers – people can hear you smile.  If you are having a good time with your recording, the hope is that it will be infectious for the listeners.  Additionally, it is easier to work in things like intonation, inflection, and variation if you are smiling and happy during the recording session.

Water

You are expecting someone to talk for a considerable amount of time, so you should probably bring him some water.  Not only is it required to get through the narration and have a consistent voice quality, it can also buy you some thoughtfulness and comfort points if you provide the water for him.

Save

The narrator is doing all the work, and you just get to sit there listening.  While this isn’t entirely true, if you end up in a situation where they do something great, but you lost it, it can throw off the whole session.  As such, it’s important to frequently save your work.  If you can save after each slide recorded, it is pretty simple to have that cadence built in.

Check

At the beginning, and periodically throughout, it is in your best interest to check and ensure you are getting the quality audio you want.  Make sure your sound output is on 50% and you are using the output device your learners will (probably cheap headphones) so you can have the most consistent test possible.  You want to make sure you are getting a good waveform with peaks nearing the top of the available space (without maxing out) and silent spots as near a flat line as possible.

After the Session

Approval

When you are doing testing of your module, if not before, it is often nice to include the narrator in the group.  That way, he can hear what he sounded like.  Often, it is better to let him hear it with some visual content, rather than listening to the mp3 files without the visual.  It just makes it more palatable. 

Thanks

Thank your narrator.  They did something to help you out that was not their job.  Maybe they’ve always dreamed of a job on the radio.  Maybe not.  Either way, it is important to recognize them.  Plus, you never know when some of your content will change, forcing you to go back to them to re-record a section with new information.  If they are left with fond memories of the experience, they’ll be much more likely to help out again.

De-noise

If the audio requires it, you can do some post-production work with it.  While de-noising is available in most applications, if you have the right recording environment, you can avoid this timely and risky step.  There is always a chance that you’ll introduce a metallic sound into the audio which will be even more disruptive than white noise in the background of the original audio.

Conclusion

Recording audio can be an enjoyable experience.  It is a great opportunity to get additional buy-in from key stakeholders or to get others re-engaged with their work by letting them step outside of their typical responsibilities.  Leveraging good narration can add polish to your eLearning project.  It isn’t too difficult to master the non-narrator portions of the process.  However, identification of the right talent and making them comfortable with the process are the keys to getting their best.  Of course, the right (quiet) room is also essential.