June 2021 Q&A

Transcript

It's June 2021 and that means it's time for another Q&A. Matt here. I've got a bunch of questions from several of you.

Thank you again for contributing questions and being curious. I'm going to start off by saying that occasionally I get some questions that are repeats. Some of them are answered multiple times in other Q&As or in the FAQ on my Discord server or on my website, MoonlightAudio.net.

So if your question falls into that category, doesn't get answered, check out those sources. I've got, you know, some of the stuff that I have been asked many, many times is there. So without further ado, let's jump in.

Marisol asks, which audio of yours are you most proud of? So there's a couple that come to mind here. For sheer technical, and so I'm proud of a lot of my audios.

This whole audio recording thing has been an adventure for me. I have come to appreciate really this activity's ability to, you know, what it allows me in terms of creative expression, what it allows me in terms of expressing myself in the character of Moony that I've created, and the various characters that Moony plays. And so there are some performances that I'm very, very proud of.

But in terms of audios overall that I'm most proud of, there are a couple that stand out because of their technical aspects. First one is the dragon audio, So Fire So Good. And I've said this before, there's a sequence there when the dragon first lands that's like six to eight seconds long.

And it has over 30 sound effects in that six to eight second period that I adjusted to make some sound further away, some closer, some off to the right, some off to the left, some ahead, some behind, etc. And just to create an immersive stereo experience. And so it's right when the dragon lands and people are screaming and the horses are going crazy and people are drawing swords and drawing bows, and the princess is screaming.

And all those are individual sound effects that I overlaid on one another and monkeyed with it until I got it right. That six to eight second sequence alone took me a few hours to really get where I wanted it. So I'm very proud about that.

The other one is the movie star girlfriend coming home. So what happens there is the listener walks in the door, I come and greet her, we go back into the kitchen and then I played with laterality. I make my footsteps fade off to I think the left first and you hear pots and pans.

And then I walk in front of the listener and you can hear the footsteps transition from one ear to the other and then do more stuff over on that side. And it was just you know that that started out for me as just kind of a harebrained idea and a little bit extra time in the afternoon. And I decided to monkey with it and figure out how to do that.

And it was a lot of fun. And so I'm very proud of how that turned out. She also asks, Are there any topics for audios you want to explore in the future? Yeah, there's some things that are the Patreon affords me.

You have to really watch what you put on YouTube. Now I'm a safe for work guy. I'm not going to branch into NSFW territory.

So please don't ask. But that said, even within SFW territory, there's stuff with more adult type of themes, more mature relationships, innuendo, darker personalities. You know, Mooney's kind of a, Mooney's kind of a flustered a lot of the time.

But I, you know, I'm going to put some of my more confident performances onto Patreon. So there's some things that are more adult themed that I want to put on Patreon. And I'm very excited to explore that.

If you could live in any country, which would it be? And why? Well, I would say the US.

I love it here. It's my, my native land. I've been all over this country and I've adored everywhere that I've been.

If I have to pick a nation that's not here, I would say probably the UK. I have, a lot of my ancestors came from various parts of the British Isles. And so I'd like to be able to see a lot of my cultural history, a lot of my, what shaped my family before the immigration of, you know, whenever my ancestors came over here.

Plus I speak the language, kind of. So that'd be nice. Hannah asks, do you have a staple dish or drink you make for friends and family? If so, what is it? And would you ever consider a cooking with Matt special for Patreon? So you may recall in one of my audios, I talked about a HelloFresh box showing up on my doorstep.

That actually happened. And one of the recipes in there was for this chicken sausage rigatoni. That is just, it's very rich.

It's very, very, very good. I've made it several times since then. I've made it for some friends.

I've made it for some family. It's just delicious. And I'll probably be making it again soon.

So yeah, that would be, if I had to pick a staple, quote unquote, that's what it would be. Yes, I would consider doing a cooking with Matt special. And one thing I got for my birthday was a sushi making kit.

And I would love to get better at doing that and maybe make sushi with you all. She asked, what kind of videos do you watch on YouTube not related to ASMR or your day job? Restoring old tools? Ice dancing? I watch a lot of videos of live performances.

I've watched a lot of videos of different musicians covering different parts of songs. For example, a drummer covering the drums for, well, one of my favorite ones is, I don't know if it's Gee or Gee, Gia Anselmo, covering the drums for Through the Fire and Flames, which just is insane. Go to that.

In fact, I'll drop a link to it in the post. It's insane. And he nails it.

It's just amazing. I've also watched a lot of game playthroughs and just humorous things, some of the stuff that trends, funny things that come up, that sort of thing. And then a lot of stuff that's functional.

I look up how to do X, Y, or Z, and there's a video, so I'll watch it, that sort of thing. I'm very much a do-it-yourself kind of guy at home, so a lot of the videos I've watched have to do with that kind of stuff. Which one of your videos do you wish would get more attention? There are a couple that probably I would love if they got more attention.

One of them is the Dragon Audio. One of them is the Dorky Demon, which didn't get all that many views, but it was a lot of fun, especially with the vocal effects that I did from time to time. And I have to say, probably another one that didn't get as much attention as I'd like, although I'm not sure exactly what the view totals are for it, but the Dorky Ghost Haunting the Car, where the cool ghosts have kicked me out of the haunted house, so I haunt a used car.

And that one was a lot of fun, too. Would you ever consider doing voiceover work, and if so, in what area? I would consider doing it.

I haven't really thought about an area. So I have done some work with my friend Mute Zero. He did a collaboration called the Casablanca Affair, which I did together with Panthera Audio.

He did a, oh, how many voices was it, 10 or 12 voices in Meme, which was an audio drama almost an hour long, and I played one of the three villains in that. And then he's got a radio serial that he's working on, and I played a number of parts in that, including, well, I'm not going to give it away. For that one, I actually had to figure out how to do a German accent, which I think I did reasonably okay.

But those are some things that I guess, you know, I know it's not voiceover work, but it's work that I've done that was not my own creation, in a way, you know. Even when I do scripts for Mooney, I personalize them a lot. This stuff I did the way Mute Zero wrote it.

And then it's been suggested to me that I would be very good for foreign romantic films that need an English dub, that I'd be very good at that. So thank you. I consider that quite a compliment.

Unrefined Sugar asks a few things. Number one, are you one to plan your outfit for the next day when you go to sleep, or do you figure it out when you wake up? Neither.

I plan it in the morning when I'm standing in my closet about two seconds before I put it on. I really rarely plan out my outfit. Now if I know that I need to wear something specific, you know, some dressier clothes, I try to plan that out and have them ironed the night before and that sort of thing.

How do you feel about mint chocolate flavored things? You know, I mean, I'll tolerate them if something I like more isn't around. It's not my favorite.

I'm not disgusted by it. It just, it is what it is. Although thin mints are like the best cookies ever, so.

What is a lesson you've learned that you wish you'd learned earlier than you did? Okay, first off from audio is to be careful about the personal, how personal your content is. I've had some content that I put out, not all of which is available anymore, that was very, very, very personal to me.

And, um, and, uh, the interwebs can be a harsh place and, um, and some, there are some things that I've recorded that are just for my ears. So fortunately I did learn on some of those things not to put them out there. And then for on the personal side, one thing that I, and this is still a work in progress that I'm learning.

I have a very active mind. I constantly want to be doing something, go, go, go. And I'm learning to be still and enjoy doing nothing and to empty my mind and just be.

And as I get better and better at that, I anticipate it helping out a lot with my stress, relaxation, meditation, all that sort of thing. And she asks DC or Marvel. My answer is Batman.

I really don't have a preference DC over Marvel. Batman is my, my favorite superhero. Although I love Spider-Man too, and a bunch of others, but, um, Batman dude, Batman, he's, he's the ultimate bad-ass.

Okay. The guy doesn't even have superpowers and yet he rolls with the, with the superheroes. Okay.

JJ asks, would you ever consider doing an M for M audio? I would not. And the reason is, uh, first off, according to YouTube statistics, about 5% of my listeners are male.

And that means by doing an M for M audio, I would be of necessity, excluding 95% of my listeners. Um, I try to be very inclusive in my audios as I'm sure a lot of people have, um, appreciated. I never say your blue eyes or your brown hair or anything like that.

I try to make it so that whatever color your eyes are, whatever color your hair is, whatever, et cetera, my listener can insert him or herself. And so that's why I try to make my content M for A.