• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer

Stephen M. Miller

Award-Winning, Bestselling Christian Author

  • Home
  • About
  • Books
  • Blog Features
  • Bible
  • Contact
Painting/photo of Jerusalem Temple-Casual English Bible

Steve’s crappy voice for Bible videos

Stephen M. Miller
Stephen M. Miller
BARN DOORS FOR A BAD VOICE. I have a terrible YouTube voice, I’m told. Too soft. So, with the help of family and a friend, I hung acoustic panels in the media room to improve the sound-recording quality. The hardest part was making and then hanging these barn doors that we embedded with acoustic foam and fabric. I couldn’t have done that project without the help.

THE PROBLEM IS MY SOFT VOICE.

I sound like John Boy Walton or Mr. Rogers or Whispering Bill Anderson.

If you’ve never heard of any of those people, it’s probably because of their voice.

When I create Bible-background videos for my YouTube channel, I always seem to get complaints about my voice.

  • “Why is he whispering?”
  • “What’s up with that voice?”
  • “He sounds whining and gay.”

For the record, I save my whining for the Kansas City Chiefs in the fall, KU basketball during March Madness, and self-serving politicians all year long.

As for being gay, I’m happy.

With good reason. I have a sugar-mama wife with a real job, along with wonderful kids, kids-in-law, grandkids, and dogs—five woofers in the extended family of the Stephen M. Miller Clan.

Trying to build a media room for a weak voice

I decided to do something about my voice.

I can’t change it. But I can change the conditions under which it’s recorded, and hopefully make the sound richer. Or just rich. Or maybe somewhere in the same ballpark as rich, if not the parking lot.

I decided to make some acoustic wall panels, to help absorb some of the bad noises, such as echoes off the hard walls.

I also needed to do something about the ceramic tile hallway that leads out of the media room where I record videos.

I decided to build bypass barn doors and hang them on parallel steel rods above the doorway. I wanted acoustic foam and fabric on the media side of the doors, but I couldn’t find any doors like that. So my son and I built them. Then our wives helped us add the foam and fabric to the media-room side of the doors.

Carpenter needed

After that, I was in trouble.

I knew nothing about how to hang those doors, or what to do about door guides on a ceramic tile floor. The YouTube how-to videos didn’t look encouraging.

What I knew was that I could hang those doors in such a way that the room would feel like one of those crazy rooms at amusement parks. When I walked in there as a kid, everything felt crooked, and the floor looked downhill.

I asked a friend of mine for tips on how to approach the project. I had gone on a mission trip with him and watched him serve as the brains of our team as we built a huge ramp for a lady in a wheelchair. My friend knows his way around a saw, a level, and a hammer.

My friend, Dave, said he recently hung a barn door in his house. He said you have to be really careful to get the rails level.

I knew that I can be really careful getting the rails not level.

My friend offered to help me with more than tips.

He came to my house and spent half the day helping me hang those doors.

Then he came back a few days later to help me straighten those doors. As it turns out, the doors my son and I built were not what you would call square. They weren’t quite rectangles, either. Ever so slightly, they were parallelograms.

We did a little cutting on the doors, and we re-drilled some holes to attach the roller bars to the door.

The barn doors are straight now.

That took another half day.

If you’re reading this on the morning this feature is released, my friend and I are scheduled to be working on this one more time, hoping to finish the project.

We’re building an oak threshold to keep the bottom of the doors from swinging front to back. The doors roll too far to the right and left for simple door guides, which usually work for sliding closet doors. We had to create a custom guide for these custom doors.

Good friends are good to have around

So these days, I’ve been thinking a fair amount about friendship.

It’s good to have friends we can talk with.

But sometimes, we need friends we can work with.

If we have even one friend like that, we should probably consider ourselves pretty lucky.

I know I do. That puts me in good company:

“You are better off to have a friend than to be all alone….If you fall, your friend can help you up. But if you fall without having a friend nearby, you are really in trouble” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 CEV).

Ditto if you dare to hang barn doors by yourself.

But you could do worse. You could try hanging them with your spouse.

Something just now occurred to me: If I recorded my videos with the voice I would use while hanging barn doors with my wife, I wouldn’t need any acoustic panels.

Doggone. Why didn’t I think of that several hundred dollars ago?

Casual English Bible
Bible Gateway

Share this:

  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest

Like this:

Like Loading...
View All Posts - Ordered by Most Recent First
« Previous
Next »

About Stephen M. Miller

STEPHEN M. MILLER is an award winning bestselling Christian author of easy-reading books about the Bible and Christianity and author of the Casual English Bible® paraphrase. His books have sold over two million copies and include The Complete Guide to the Bible and Who’s and Where’s Where in the Bible.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Anastasia

    August 1, 2017 at 11:43 am

    Mr. Miller…keep on rockin’, Sir. Your voice is a respite to all of the flashy internet “look at ME’ stuff! That’s where the adjective “crappy” should truly be applied! 🙂

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Sidebar

Casual English Bible Website

Featured Book

Complete Guide to the Bible

Complete Guide to the Bible
Buy from Amazon
Buy from Books-A-Million
Buy from Christian Book Distributor
Buy from Google Play

Latest Posts

  • I do one thing better than God May 27, 2025
  • When our faith glitches May 5, 2025
  • Job is the right book for me now April 16, 2025

  • Home
  • About
  • Blog Features
  • Books
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy

  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn

Copyright © 2025 · Stephen M. Miller · All Rights Reserved

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use. To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
Reject AllAccept All
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
CookieDurationDescription
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional11 monthsThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy11 monthsThe cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytics
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
Others
Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet.
SAVE & ACCEPT
%d