Last month my boyfriend Richard and I took a somewhat impromptu 6-day trip to Paris.

We swore we’d pack light and I’m proud to say we pulled it off-just a small carry-on and a backpack for each of us.

We had an incredible time.

What a pleasure to cruise through customs and right out of the airport without having to wait for luggage. What a delight to pack and unpack in a flash and dress quickly from a small stash of carefully curated clothing.

And although I chose to book myself out and not record while I was away, I easily could have slipped my mac book air, apogee mic, folding microphone stand, high quality earbuds and pop screen into my pack.

So how about you-planning to take your voice over business on a trip? Whether it’s to a weekend retreat or to the other side of the world, I’ve got your back

This week I’ve got five tips for you for doing voice overs while you travel. So listen up, tip number one is to have a checklist. Don’t depend on your memory. Now these are the kinds of things that should go on your checklist, your microphone, a folding microphone stand. You can buy one on Amazon for cheap, under $20 and they work great.

The next one is an audio interface. If you’re not using a USB microphone, the audio interface is the box that goes between your mic and your computer. Of course, your laptop, headphones that are not noise canceling. So these are a different set of headphones than the ones you might use on the plane to reduce the noise. They look something like this. These are professional quality studio headphones from Sony. They’re the MDR-7506, they’re not expensive, but they’re great professional headphones. You want to bring those. Bring a pop screen and make sure you have a cloud account to save your work outside of your computer, or if not, an external hard drive for backups will also work.

The second thing you want to do before you go is test your gear. Make sure everything is working properly. Send yourself a sound file, listen to it, make sure everything is great because you don’t want to be hassling with that when you’re on your trip.

Number three is to call the hotel or go on their website and make sure there’s wifi. Now, I know almost every place has it these days, but you’d be surprised in some hotels, it’s not in the room, it’s in the lobby. You want to make sure there is great wifi in your room and even better if it’s free. And also make sure your room is quiet. So when you call the hotel, make sure you book a room away from the elevator, away from the swimming pool, on a high floor if possible, just tell them you want the most quiet room.

Number four is to have a TSA friendly carrying case. I can’t tell you all the times that my carry on luggage was torn apart by the TSA because they were looking for those cords, that microphone, that was deep inside. So what I like to do is I have all my travel gear in a little carry case. Actually, it’s about this big, and I just stick that in my carry on and I can easily take that out and have it screened for TSA, it really saves time. And then the final is what I call my luggage rack porta booth. So, you don’t need to bring, if you use one of those foam, chaotic eyeballs, I don’t even think you need to bring that when you travel. What I will often do is I’ll take a hotel luggage rack, stick it on the desk, cover with a blanket, put a towel underneath it, some pillows inside it, stick my microphone in front of that and I have an instant portable recording booth.

In this week’s Inside Voice Over video training blog check out these 5 great tips for recording from the road.

Watch this week’s short training video Here Now

After you watch the video be sure to leave a comment. I always love to hear from you so I can support you as you grow your voice over career.

To your voice over success,

Susan Berkley
Founder, The Great Voice Company