Voice Acting For Dummies

by David Ciccarelli

  When you’ve decided to take your passion for voice acting to the next level in preparation for actual projects, training is one of the most important steps you’ll take on your journey to become a real voice actor. Reading everything you can get your hands on, attending workshops, and studying with a voice-over coach are all ways that you can train your voice.

  Ongoing training is important for any voice-over actor, no matter whether you’re a beginner wondering whether you can find a niche in this market or whether you’re a veteran wanting to fine-tune certain skills. Training allows for comfortable use of the voice, facilitates continued growth, and provides important stamina that you’ll need when working as a recording artist.

  This chapter explores the benefits of training, ways that you can get training, and how you can find a voice-over coach. You can exercise your voice and practice interpretative skills in so many ways. You may be surprised by the sheer amount of free resources available to you online and in your library that can help you do this.

  This chapter also takes a closer look at one-on-one instruction, education in a group setting, and the benefit of attending events such as conferences. We want you to get the best education you can, so be sure to entertain as many of these wonderful ideas as possible.

  Caring for Your Voice

  One of the main benefits from training that you, the aspiring voice actor, can get is that it helps you fully understand how important your voice is to you and how to treat your voice with respect. Think of your voice like a car. Cars need to be maintained and used in a certain way to ensure they work well. You ensure the fluids are topped, the tires are full of air, and the vehicle’s interior and exterior are clean. If cars rely on maintenance to ensure they operate smoothly and efficiently, imagine how important taking care of your voice can be to you, especially if you rely on it as a way to make money. If you’ve never thought of your voice as an instrument and the means by which you make your livelihood, now is the time.

  Focusing on the physical aspects

  Training your voice gives you the tools to help you wisely utilize your voice. With training, physical aspects, such as making sure you have good posture and your support is well aligned, are important. Everything you do, including the way you stand, breathe, project your voice, and shape vowels, impacts the sound that you make.

  Vocal exercises can help you concentrate on these physical aspects. A professional voice coach can give you guidance with what to do. Check out the later section, “Understanding how a coach can help you” for guidance.

  Conserving your voice

  Your voice is delicate. It’s not something you can turn on or off by flicking a switch. It’s also not something that you can carry in a bag or download on the Internet. Simply put, your voice is with you at all times and can’t be put on hold or paused whenever it’s convenient to do so.

  When caring for your voice, be aware of just how sensitive your instrument is. Any number of external elements can affect the well-being of your voice and its performance, including sickness, what you eat, what you drink, and so on. Setting aside time for taking care of and conserving your voice is critical.

  Taking time out for your voice is important for a variety of reasons, but for voice artists, observing set times for vocal rest can be nearly as important as using their voices to record. In today’s day and age, clamming up isn’t always easy. You have many potential distractions. As a voice artist, you never know when an audition will come your way that requires a custom read.

  Carving silence into your schedule may need to be strategic and deliberate. Look for tasks that you do each day, such as audio editing, reading, writing, or production that are solitary activities and don’t necessarily require your voice. If you like to exercise, make your morning jog a time to be quiet and rest your voice. Other people may need to schedule more frequent intervals in with a half hour of silence here or there every couple of hours. To give you some perspective, professional opera singers rest their voices for hours on end in preparation for a performance because of the demanding nature of their jobs and their heavy use of their voices. Although being quiet for hours during a day may not seem practical, make the time. You also want to get a good night’s sleep and leverage those peaceful hours of slumber to benefit your voice.

  So with that in mind, this section contains advice on how to handle these elements.

  Avoiding sickness

  Germs are everywhere, so avoiding them entirely is difficult, but you must try your best to stay healthy. In order to stay healthy, follow these tips:

  Regularly wash your hands with soap and warm water. Doing so can greatly reduce your chances of being sick.

  Keep contact with sick people to a minimum. Staying away from sick people can also reduce your chances of coming down with something.

  Take vitamins. Some recommendations include taking a multivitamin and ensuring you get adequate doses of vitamin C either in tablet form or through orange juice or citrus fruits.

  Stay hydrated. Drink plenty of water and always have a glass nearby to sip from. Limit your intake of caffeine. If you do drink caffeinated beverages, try balancing them by drinking a cup of water for each caffeinated beverage you consume.

  Get adequate amounts of sleep. A general guideline is that you get eight hours of sleep a day. If you’re able to get more than that, for instance nine or ten hours, that’s even better for you and your voice.

  Being sick when you record changes the quality of your voice and its range. Voice acting when sick may also injure your voice. So when you’re sick, let your voice rest and save recording for another day.

  Eating healthy food

  Eating healthy foods also keeps your voice at its best performance. When choosing what to eat, eat healthy foods, such as fruits, vegetables, lean meats, and calcium-rich foods, such as dairy products. A well-balanced diet goes a long way in keeping your body healthy.

  Drinking fluids

  Drinking alcoholic or caffeinated beverages can affect the quality of your voice by drying out your vocal folds. Stick to water as your beverage of choice.

  Breathing healthy air

  Smoking cigarettes and inhaling secondhand smoke can also injure your voice. Don’t wear perfume or cologne before you warm up your voice and record because strong scents can affect your respiratory system and may also cause constriction of your throat. Consider an air purifier for your home or office.

  Avoiding certain behaviors

  Protecting your voice is also part of training and using it properly. In order to make sure you don’t damage your voice, you want to avoid or at least take proactive steps to minimize certain activities, such as the following:

  Screaming or yelling: For example, attending a sporting event can cause more damage than you expect. You may not think about how cheering at a game affects the voice, but we assure you, voice actors do. If you’re attending a game, whether it’s your child’s soccer match or a professional hockey game, you can protect your voice by not shouting and cheering. You may instead opt to clap, stomp your feet, or use a noise-making devise to support your team. One night of exuberant cheering isn’t worth two or three days of hoarseness and lost (or subpar) productivity.

  Smoking: The carcinogens in cigarettes are hazardous to your health and also your voice. Smoking can change your voice’s texture and can also affect your range. You also want to avoid secondhand smoke, which can also affect your voice.

  Whispering: When you whisper, your vocal folds don’t vibrate as they normally do when you naturally speak. If your vocal folds are tightened in this way, they’re strained, which can cause hoarseness and affect the way you sound.

  Being realistic

  Your voice has limits, and you need to respect them or you may grow tired quickly and find that your voice is underperforming or that your throat is in pain. Kno
w your range and respect its natural boundaries.

  If you know that your vocal range is limited to an octave or so, don’t push harder to reach low, growly pitches or strain to speak too high, either. Don’t force yourself because you’ll not only sound bad but you’ll also hurt your voice.

  Your natural speaking voice sits in your comfort zone, also known as your tessitura. Tessitura is an Italian word that refers to a singer’s comfortable range that presents its best sounding texture or timber.

  Aligning Goals with Your Abilities and Working to Improve Your Skills

  Knowing your voice type and its characteristics and timber can help you to better align your goals with your abilities. For example, do you want to be the booming voice of the movies but have a more genteel, higher pitched voice? You may have to revise your goals so they realistically match your abilities. At the same time, you can work to enhance your skills, which may alter your goals.

  Certain roles fit your voice better depending on what is required. As you may have guessed, no one becomes a star overnight, so go slowly and progress at your own pace. Some of the best ways to improve your abilities are simple — just a little practice each day significantly can help build your skills. For example, try shorter reads and begin creating characters (see Chapter 5 about how to develop characters). The following sections are some basic areas that you can practice on a regular basis to develop your skills.

  Breathing: Focus on your diaphragm

  Of all the things you need to do when performing a voice-over, breathing should be at the top of your list. We mean strategic breathing that can yield the best performance possible while properly using your instrument.

  We can’t stress the importance of strategic breathing. Breath can make or break a performance. Figuring out how to breathe properly ensures that you can get through a sentence without taking more inhales than necessary, and it also serves as the fuel you need to be heard. For example, if you don’t have gas in the car, the car won’t go very far. The same is true for breath in a voice actor. Your intake of breath and how you manage your breath through diaphragmatic support determines how long you can speak without stopping. It also aids in creating more dramatic reads. Being able to budget your breath and use each one to your advantage can help you get more mileage out of your instrument.

  As a voice actor, you want breathing to be comfortable. To figure out if you’re breathing properly, try this exercise. Bend over and place your hands on your waist. If you can feel the air filling up like a tire around your waist, you’re on the right track. You should feel your back expanding when you breathe in and contracting as the air is being released. You can feel more space open up in your chest, which helps you fuel your phrases.

  Speaking clearly: Good diction

  Seldom do you misinterpret what a professional actor says or miss words due to poor diction on a radio program; however, when it comes to speaking clearly, not everyone is a trained professional and aware of how he or she pronounces words, intones, or delivers his or her speech.

  To practice your diction, enlist another person to listen to your recordings before you promote them. This person can be your second set of ears and help you with the following:

  Being conscious of how you sound

  Watching your diction

  Projecting your voice and not mumbling

  Your voice speaks volumes about you. Your voice can define you, so how you use your voice directly impacts your audience. People expect to hear quality content and pleasant voices in your demos.

  Voice acting is an audio medium, and the most important tool that you have to communicate your message is your voice. If you’re recording for pleasure and aren’t trying to make a business of it, people won’t be as judgmental. But we assume that you’re reading this because you want to voice act professionally for corporations or organizations, so the expectation exists that the voice acting is professional caliber.

  Practicing breathing basics

  When you were a little baby, breathing came naturally. Over time, you lose your ability to breathe properly and fall into some bad habits. When you’re singing, speaking in public, or acting, you need access to as much supported breath as possible, and that may mean that you need to relearn how to breathe deeply, sustain the breath, and use it to buoy your phrases.

  Try this exercise: Stand up and try to clear your head to concentrate only on breathing. Feel the air as you inhale and it fills your lungs, and then gently exhale and release. Put your hand on your stomach now as you breathe. When you breathe in, your rib cage should expand as your lungs fill with air. When you breathe out, let the air leave you slowly on a hiss.

  Panting like a dog can help you to establish proper breathing technique in its earliest stages. Try it. You can’t help but inhale and exhale properly when you’re panting. Pant quickly at first to get the rhythm and then slow it down so you can dissect your breathing technique. When you breathe in, your stomach should expand. When you breathe out, or exhale, your stomach should return to its normal state.

  Twisting your tongue

  Aside from holding power speaking-wise, the tongue is also described as being the strongest muscle in your body. As such, the tongue plays a principal role in speech production and is one of the most critical parts of your articulating arsenal. Your tongue can either make you or break you in voice acting. This is why it’s so important to loosen your tongue and get it working for you.

  Many voice actors rely upon tongue twisters to be more nimble with their speech. Try the following to warm up:

  A big black bug bit a big black bear.

  Someone said something simple.

  A simple something said to me.

  Simply simple someone said.

  A simple something said to me.

  Swiss wristwatch.

  Unique New York.

  One smart fellow he felt smart, two smart fellows they felt smart, three smart fellows they all felt smart.

  How much oil can a gumboil boil if a gumboil can boil oil, if a gumboil can boil oil how much oil would a gumboil boil?

  Narrating: Read books aloud

  Audiobook narration basically covers the art of storytelling by assuming the role of narrator and providing unique voices to characters for dialogue between characters. Unlike shorter scripts for commercials or telephony, narration is all about the long distance run and is by no means a sprint to the finish. Vocal endurance (having a strong voice that can go on and on) as well as artistic consistency (being able to differentiate between character voices) are two necessary skills to complete a quality audiobook recording. Narrators need to have a special sensitivity when delivering copy because they play the role of someone who is all knowing and able to share what is going on without emoting too much.

  Voice actors also need to have basic understanding of audio editing if working on a project like this from home. Here are a couple suggestions you can try to get used to narrating:

  Read books aloud to your family members. If you have children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews, or even a godchild, read the story to them and practice the voices.

  Consider volunteering to read for the blind or the dyslexic. Placing a call to a local nursing home to volunteer as a reader to their residents is also a good way to gain experience in this area and help you to build up your stamina as a narrator. You may even receive some excellent feedback, too.

  Doing character work

  Character work simply means that you’re able to create distinct voices for characters in a script. Sometimes characters can be archetypal, meaning that you can base how they sound upon a standard character type, such as the superhero. Other situations require that you interpret the characteristics found in the script, either based on how the author presents them or how the artistic director instructs you. People often think that any old
voice that sounds silly will do when it comes to characters and are unaware of the amount of thought that goes behind creating a character voice and understanding the character in general. Consistency is also important because you don’t want to slip in and out of character while delivering the lines. Furthermore, you want to make sure you’re clear about how the character relates to others, or you want to diversify many character voices so that people can easily distinguish them from each other.

  One way you can staff up your character arsenal is to start with a few basic archetypes and build off each one, adding an accent here, a lisp there — the possibilities are endless! These characters can become like friends to you and help you diversify your stable of voices. Having a few key voices to draw upon as a starting point makes it simple to tweak or add to the voice when creating a new spin on an old friend.

  Like in radio and on the stage not the same as voice-over work

  If you have come to voice acting from broadcast radio or theater, you may think that voice acting should be easy because you have been paid for nearly your whole life to talk. A great number of people who started and built a career in radio find that voice acting has very different requirements when it comes to using their voices. Although some skills are transferable, oftentimes you need to develop and master new techniques to perform as a convincing voice actor.

  Getting inside the head of a brand, an author, or a copywriter is one of the hardest things you do. Every voice actor, no matter how many skills they have mastered in terms of technical or artistic ability, needs to be able to intuit what the copy needs and be able to break it down to find clues and provide context. The good news: You can develop this special skill. Chapter 5 covers this topic as it relates to character development in greater detail.

  Going With a Personal Voice Coach

  Studying with a voice coach can help you assess your talent and develop your skills. Having a coach is the best preparation and nourishment that you can invest in to build a solid foundation for your voice acting career. A voice teacher can instruct, mentor, and prepare you for a lifetime of using your voice to make a living.