The internet is big.

Impossibly big.

You could not, and should not, attempt to read everything the internet offers with regard to voiceover. In particular, seek answers elsewhere if you see anything that suggests, “Anyone can work at home and make a good living with freelance voiceover!” The Red Flag is the word, “Anyone”.

Some people have a talent for voiceover. There is a Fortune Cookie that reads, “Having talent but no training is like having wings but no feet.” If you have the talent they say you have then get training. If you have the talent they say you have then any training might get you going in the right direction.

What you want to do is PLAY! It is so satisfying to make your way in life by doing something you find fun and embracing! Everyday you have somethIng exciting to do, some place exciting to go, and someone exciting to be! Every day you get up and press, PLAY!

I’m your champion, I’m on your side, my answers and directions cost you NOTHING! Got something that needs fixing? I’ve got the CURE!

I created this Blog to cut through all the crap and provide real information about career potential in freelance voiceover.

THING ONE:
The first thing you should know is this, it does not matter if you have an accent or do not have a deep voice. There are jobs for a great many voices. If you are good at the job and they are looking for someone with your accent, or your vocal pitch, then you get the job. If you train in a way where you simply and honestly talk to another person, you are more likely to get the job in voice-over.

Tell stories to someone who shares an interest in those stories. Then you are on the right path. The “Path”, by the way, is a lifetime of reading, training, campaigning, and looking for work. That’s the job, finding your next job.

The stories you tell may be Audio Books, Sales Training, Educational Videos, Character Voices for Animation or Film, Imaging for TV, Radio and New Media, or even good old-fashioned commercials. Then there’s live work, Fashion Show Runway Announcer, Master of Ceremonies, heck, my Grandfather used to shout out Bingo Numbers!

Still interested?

This video is the perfect place for you to begin your voiceover education.  It is the perfect beginning for the American Voiceover School because it comes from the U.S. Library of Congress.

It’s titled The Art of Audio Book Narration but everything you will hear is the truth about all voiceover.

The speaker has no agenda, she’s not selling classes or coaching, she has no financial stake in you following her advice.  Everything she says is spot on, right.

You will not find, anywhere on the World Wide Web, a more clear, more definitive description of the demands of a voice-over professional.

For my part, having worked in theater from ages 7 to 17, voice over came easily in some respects, for me.  One could say that my training was “Old School”.  Old School does not mean aged, vintage, or obsolete.  Old School is a term used in sports.  Old School means: Fundamentals, Discipline, and Respect for the Game.

That’s how I was trained.

That’s how I train other people.

I worked in commercial broadcasting for 30 years in Seattle and Los Angeles. I taught acting in Hollywood for one of the largest, most respected, most recommended acting schools in the motion picture business. I have coached voice over students for decades, beginning in 1972. I am who I claim to be, a seasoned professional with all the gravitas required for you to listen seriously.

So, what are the fundamentals of voice-over?

First: you have to understand what you’re saying.  Next: you have to speak clearly.  Finally: you genuinely talk TO someone, not AT them. You do not announce, you do not push, force, fake, pretend, indicate, or try to “sound” great.

I say it this way, GREAT VOICE OVER IS YOU, TALKING TO ME, ABOUT SOMETHING IN WHICH WE SHARE AN INTEREST.

There’s a old joke that goes, “Once you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made!”

There’s old Russian saying that goes, “Every joke has a little bit of a joke in it.”

FUNDAMENTAL ONE: Understand what you are saying. This is the absolute bedrock fundamental on which all voice over is built. It takes some practice with a new way of reading.

One can not make someone else understand something until they understand it.  I’ll say that again, in order to be understood, you must first understand. I’ll say that another way, one cannot make someone understand something which they themselves do not understand.

Your understanding begins by slowing down.

NEW HABIT TO BUILD NUBER ONE: slow your eyes.

Your eyes are capable of recognizing dozens of symbols per second.  Your brain is capable of processing hundreds of intellectual, visual, and emotional cues per second.  Your mouth is capable of speaking three to five words per second.  

For the purposes of your training as a voice-over professional, your objective is to understand what you’re reading, as you read it.  To do that you need to practice getting your eyes, brain, and mouth, all working at the same speed.

Begin by teaching yourself to read small groups of text (instead of what you’re doing now, racing your eyes around the page, trying to grab as much information as you can).

You begin your practices by reading then speaking 3 words at a time.

Later, once you get the hang of it, you will read one idea at a time. A single idea is 1 to 5 words. Six words is two ideas.

Once you have established the habit of grabbing just enough text to make each breath understood, you might be ready to advance to two ideas. Almost never three.

If you’re just reading words aloud, you sound exactly the way you did when you learned how to do that in the second grade.  It’s cute but not very engaging.

FUNDAMENTAL TWO: Clarity.

Clarity of understanding, clarity of speech, and clarity of intention. That’s the work flow of voice over.

Once you get a ‘feel’ for gaining clarity of understading, Clarity of Speech is the next fundamental one must master.

Most people speak the way their mothers speak.  Most people’s diction and pronunciation reflects those of the people with whom they associated during their childhoods.  I cannot begin to approximate the way I spoke in my youth in North Idaho.  Nor would I choose to do so.

NEW HABIT TO BUILD NUMBER TWO: Slow down and open your mouth.

Most people stop learning, stop sharpening their speech patterns, and stop building their vocabulary by the 9th grade.

Almost everyone has reading problems.  Almost everyone has lazy lips.  You are probably beginning to see a pattern here that demands serious preparation if you intend to work professionally in Voice Over.

As I said, I have the cure, for all this stuff.

Dr. Morton Cooper, for decades the head of Speech Pathology at UCLA, invented a couple of simple techniques which, when practiced correctly, provided actors and voice over professionals with organic clarity of speech and INSTANTLY located their optimal pitch — what he called, “Your Money Voice”.

Speech pathologists call it, “Getting Into The Mask”. Dr. Cooper’s routine for this is the simplest and most agreeable thing one can imagine.  It is possible to get it wrong.  It is impossible to teach it with a typewriter.  It takes about 60 seconds to learn how to practice, and a couple of months of deliberate practice to get a ‘feel’ for it.

By saying, “Um HUmn!” That agreeable little utterance that comes out when you’re in a big room and someone asks you if you’d like to make money by talking. “Um HUmn!” you smile, with the rising inflection on the end, that’s what you have to do to (technically speaking), to get into the mask.

When you are in the mask you need more air so you automatically begin to breathe diaphragmatically. That forces more air to pass over the vocal cords, that makes you louder and raises your pitch (makes your voice higher and gives you more range). With more air you need to accomodate the added volume so you open your mouth. With your mouth open wider, in order to bend and break the vowels and consonants, you are forced to articulate more clearly, giving your speech the crispness expected of a professional speaker.

I know, that’s a mouth-full.

The entire thing is effortless and organic to practice.

You keep seeing that word, don’t you?  Practice.  You’ve seen it before.  You respond by saying, “Oh, yeah … practice … sure, I’ll do that”.  And then you don’t

The only way to master the fundamentals of voiceover, or anything else, is through disciplined, deliberate practice.  You can’t just figure it out or memorize the correct answers, this isn’t college.  I routinely made $400 to $700 dollars an hour, a couple of hours at a time, a couple of times a week, for nearly 30 years, because I practiced, I got correction, and I practiced some more until I ran out of mistakes. That took about a year because I practiced a couple of hours a day, every day. Your results may vary. Practice less than that and it will take longer to run out of mistakes. Fail to practice, and you’ll just get bored and quit.

That’s the routine for your preparation for your life in art, practice until you run out of mistakes.

Now, building a client list takes about 4 to 8 years.  Preparing to audition takes 10 months to 2 years depending upon the amount of correct practice one does.

FUNDAMENTAL THREE: “Intention” 

The definition of Communication is this, one person, making one idea clear, to a group of persons. The essence of Communication is Intention.

Run into a crowded theater and yell, “FIRE!”

Your intention is clear.

Voiceover is art.  Your success in art depends on making your intention clear. You do that via your imagination and creativity.  You have to cultivate your imagination in a way that is specific to voice-over.

Read the script a few times to gain the clarity you will have to impart.  Next, via your imagination, who would be interested in what you have to talk about?  Be specific, you know this person. Imagine the conversation that preceeds what the script tells you to say.

Simply said, Under what circumstances could you believe you might actually need to say such things?  

Make up some reason why it is vital to your friend to understand what you are saying. That is your INTENTION. I intend for you to understand, that is your WAY of saying the thing, the HOW you say it. That is the behavior, the emotion that you bring to your understanding.

NEW HABIT TO BUILD NUMBER THREE: Know with whom you are speaking and why. Be Specific.

In your practice you need to play with imaginary circumstances until you find things that make you feel something: mad, sad, bad, glad.  You need to learn what hits your triggers and makes manifest those feelings in you.

A disciplined routine of practice, and I mean a couple of hours every day, will take you in the direction required to get a couple of hours of work every day.

Of course, I can show you a routine with which to practice and become conversant.

There is one more element Fundamental to your success in Voiceover.  

You need to make yourself an expert on the voice over business.  You need to identify those professionals who are already doing the kind of work you want to do.  Learn how they got started.  Learn how they prepared.  Who would you emulate?  What do they do that stirs you and makes you want to get in that booth, put on your cans, and sell me a set of tires?

WARNING!
Do not imitate anyone — it is impossible to turn yourself into someone else and the effort to do so will make you sound like a fool (it will also make you crazy). Who you are is unique and more special than you can know at this moment. Do not compare your self or your work with anyone else’s — that will only serve to make you either vain or bitter. If someone makes it in voiceover without having to put in the work that you must, or practice you way you must, or risk what you have to risk, well that’s just tough.
Rule #1 — LIFE IS NOT FAIR!

If you were to see EG Daly or Wally Wingert in the Mercado would you be able to walk up to them and talk about their work?  Do you know what they have done?  Would you recognize them if you saw them?  Do you know who Merriwether Williams is, and why?

If this is the business in which you want to spend your life you had better know everything about it.  Who are your heroes?

Now, what are your questions?  Let’s start there. 

Thanks for listening.