Drop the mic!
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Many years ago, I established the rule of never swearing in a studio. It’s not that I say a lot of swearwords. Actually, I rarely do it. But sometimes… It happens.

I don’t swear in studios because the microphone can be on without me noticing. In a remote recording session this can lead to the client hearing me saying something they shouldn’t. On radio, for example, it can lead to millions of people listening to someone saying something very bad.

It was in a small local radio station in Portugal, many, many years ago, that I made the mental note, for the first time, not to talk trash in the studio. There was a day when I entered the studio and I couldn’t hear the broadcast, as it was normal. I quickly went to confirm if the computer had crashed. It didn’t. I checked if the music track on the mixing desk was down. It was up. Were the sound monitors off? They weren’t. I checked the cables, all the hardware, everything! And it was operational.

Something stupid came out accidentally from my mouth! “What the f*ck is going on!?”

Only then I notice that the microphone track in the mixer was a little raised, which cuts the sound from the monitors so there’s no feedback. My jaw fell on the ground… Maybe my comment was heard in the middle of a song!

Years later, on another Portuguese radio studio, a colleague of mine said a swearword on the air because he didn’t know he was live… And I reinforced the mental note of never swearing close to a microphone.

Well, nowadays… As a voice actor… And despite everything in the past… Maybe I let swearwords slip off my mouth now and then in my audiobooth when having trouble to say a difficult word while I record alone, directing myself.

“That’s ok. I will edit this later. But don’t forget the sweardword rule in the studio, pal!”, I say to myself.

And I always edit it.  

Problem: recently my young children were playing near me as was editing a session that had a bad word, and the speakers were on, loud, and clear… Oops… F*ck!