New to Everything!

[kenanz]

Hey all, new to the forums and broadcasting in general. I've got thousands of questions that I'm sure can get answered over time but first I'll throw a little out there about me.

 

About me; I'm a 24 year old male who lives in the D.C. area in the Army Reserves and I have a day job as a full time government contactor. I've been toying with the idea of broadcasting for several years and always appreciated the radio as my main news source because of how up to date it is. People have told me I have a great voice that belongs on radio, in commercials, etc. Of course it's not enough to have people you sound good, you have to want it too, which I do!

 

Currently I'm in Afghanistan which has even more given me the push to get into radio and voice announcing and hopefully never end up here again. I don't have much off time, but the time that I do have I've spent researching schools, mentoring organizations, internet radio setup, and other way to get into the industry. The only software I have right now the basic of the basic which is Audacity audio recorder that I play around with, and my hardware is my $300 bare bones 2 year-old laptop.

 

Any encouragement I can get about how to move forward, templates I can follow, schools that are worthwhile, and basically any insight on how the operation of "radio broadcast" actually flows would be awesome. I'm open to voice acting, talk show hosting, radio DJ, commercials, new/traffic/weather, essentially anything. Thanks in advance to anyone that helps!

 

Ken:thumbup:

[Brutish Sailor]

Ha! I got into radio right before my deployment into Iraq. I still cringe from the AFN radio network.

[kenanz]

Thanks for the kind welcomes guys, and yeah, AFN is definitely not the most quality network. I put up a couple things on soundcloud today as it was my day off and well...there isn't much to do around here. Please critique but keep in mind, today was my first day ever doing this, I have a crap microphone with basic software, and won't be buying either for several months. Oh yeah I totally stole the Blaze radio station name from someone on here. Sorry, it sounded good! Thanks for listening!

 

[JamboUK]

Hi mate and welcome to BW forums, we all have to start somewhere mate and without the help that I got from this forum I would still be trying to figure a lot of things out on my own.

 

I had a listen to your soundcloud stuff and you do have quite a good voice, you need to get the music levels right when trying to voice over them which I sure is quite difficult with the limited hardware and software that you have with you at present, the only thing I can suggest is listen to other voice over artists and just keep practicing, listen to the way in which some of the production studios put stuff together as well.

 

Also listen to other radio hosts, newsreaders and talk show hosts, you will find that you take pieces fro each one and end up formulating your own style.

 

Just stick with it, you can gain a wealth of information from the members of this forum.

[Brutish Sailor]

What kind of music do you listen to?

 

My buddys and I actually did this one in Taji back in 09/10. We were walking around the FOB interviewing random guys.

 

[kenanz]

Thanks again guys, I listen to tons of different kinds of music but I guess the main ones I can rattle off are: Rock, Alternative, Punk, Pop-Punk, EDM, House, Dubstep, and classical. As of right now I'm in the works to try and get the microphone from the chapel on loan since no one uses it there anyways.