Getting Started in Voice Over
When people come to me for voice over coaching, they are at all different point in their VO journey. Sometimes they are quite experience but many are totally new to VoiceOver and are making the bold move to pursue their dreams. Building a strong foundation is extremely important, and my production partner Dave Scott and I work really hard to help our students learn things the right way from the start. Still, whatever regardless of when you plan to do your demos, it is really important to start practicing on an actual microphone with a preamp or interface in a studio setting for several reasons. Here are some thoughts to consider:
Learning Mic Technique
Good microphones are powerful. Whether you are starting out with middle of the road mics like the Rode NT1 or the Cad Equitek E100S, or investing in a more expensive microphone right away like the Neumann TLM 103, these microphones are condenser mics and will pic up all the sound in a large radius around them. You need to learn proper technique to best enhance your sound. Also, technique varies by genre. The way I work with my mic for conversational commercial reads or intimate reads is different. When I do video games I move around a lot and often back away from the mic, especially when I am shouting and doing effects. These are all skills I was taught and worked hard to hone, I did not wake up one day and just know how to do it. It takes time. And you do not want to walk into a studio for a job or worse for a booking and not have the skills necessary to rock that session!
Form Good Habits
Put simply, lessons are expensive. When you pay for a voice over coach or take a voice over class online, you are investing in yourself and your career. Whether it is the time spent with the coach in sessions, the time spent doing your homework in between sessions, or for daily practice, you need to be establishing good habits. You simply cannot do this without the pro equipment. You need to set up your studio so that you can prepare to be a professional. There is only one way to do this and you need to master your technique early on so that it is seamless when you launch your business.
You Might Have Diction Issues
No one in VoiceOver wants to have speech issues. Speech issues that I have had to deal with as a voice over coach range from diction issues, regional accents, articulation issues, plosives, and sibilance. If you only record on your computer and submit, it can be really hard for your coach to pick up some of these, or pick up the severity of some of these. Imagine speeding months coaching, getting ready for demo day, going to a pro-studio, stepping in front of a U87, and your coach hears a major diction issue they never noticed until demo day. What a disaster! This can, however, be easily avoided simply by setting up your professional home studio and working with your coach on real recording equipment.
The other side of this is that you need to become a critical listener of your audio too! You need professional headphones, or cans as we call them, that do not have a filter in them. You can not really hear how you sound without them, and you can not really hear what clients will hear or be listening to without them, so this is essential to your training!
You Need to Practice Recording and Editing
When you are working with a VoiceOver coach, you need to practice recording and editing they way you would when you would submit for an audition or a job. You can only do this if you have a functioning booth with a microphone, preamp or interface, computer with a DAW, and good cans. You need to practice editing your audio every day so that you get used to the ins and outs of your DAW and become efficient at producing pristine audio. Nothing else will suffice in this business. And it does not happen overnight, believe me!
Conclusions
I hope this has helped you better understand why you should not wait to set up your home studio! Timing matters a lot. While budget plays a factor for most people, even with cost in mind we can work with you to help guide your choices as your start to big gear for your home studio. It’s better to have it ready and get going and be well-practiced when your launch your business. For those of you thinking that you might get coaching, do your demos, then build your booth, that is not advisable. Read the blog again and re-think your plan! Now, best of luck in your VO journey!!
frankly I was nervous about fitting into my dress! While their tips and tricks are under a tight NDA, I started to realize that in addition to feeling better and losing weight, I was actually getting done all of the items on my “To Do” list, something that I confess has not happened for a long time. What I started to realize is that mindfulness in one area, like health, seems to have a trickledown effect into all realms. I know seem to be able to focus much better on reaching my VoiceOver goals,
Much of the same applies to voice over. How might you clean out “the junk” in your VO way? Might it be avoiding negativity or the ill-informed on social media?
arts school in central Pennsylvania called Elizabthethtown College. She texted us this photo of gluten free donut holes. She said she urgently needed us to go to Trader Joe’s right away to get them for her. She was concerned that they would sell out immediately. Even though Emma has a car, there is no Trader Joes near her school so she was very much hoping we could help her out with this.
leave without the donut holes, I sought assistance. The first guy was working on oranges. He went to where he thought they’d be. They were not there. He pulled in another gal who then pulled in a third woman from the bakery who then pulled in a fourth woman, a manager. So yes, I had FOUR people helping me look for the donut holes. We worked hard and were thorough. Two of them were positive they had been in the store.
As a full-time, professional voice over actor, I typically have multiple live sessions every week. Most of my clients prefer Source Connect, and in truth I am so used to that at this point that I do too. On Monday morning, my first session of the week, with new clients, was over Teams. That was fine, so that was the first item that stood out. The second was that I was the only one with my camera on. Next, we were all in different countries. I was in the United States, and they were scattered from Italy to the UAE to Bahrain to India. I believe there were nine of us on the call, but possibly more. This session was different because this group was very chatty and wanted to talk amongst themselves a lot. They also wanted me to hang out while they edited their video, which is not standard, but luckily I had time on the other end and I could accommodate. So, from the get go, this session was different in all kinds of ways.
At the start of the session, the creative director wanted to make sure that I understood both the branding and the traditions surrounding Ramadan in the region. While I had, as I always do, done brand research in advance of the session, I was very pleased to learn about the traditions surrounding Ramadan, like the way that they decorate their homes with twinkle and fairy lights, in the importance of gracious hospitality in this festive holiday season. He also spoke of the emphasis of the changing and more egalitarian roles that their footage was clearly depicting. As I watched the footage and listened, I was struck by how many common shared values our cultures shared, especially with all of the spring holidays coming in the States. I was delighted by what I learned and it certainly informed my read.
Just like other genres of voice over, when you are new to audio books, you need to build your street credit. The more titles you have under your built, the more experience you gain. It is hard, however, to book work without titles to your name. A great way to do this is to narrate books that are already in the “Public Domain.” That means that these books have been published more than 100 years ago and are free for anyone to work with. The other good news is that every January more books become part of the public domain! I had gone to Karen Commins’ site Narrator’s Roadmap, which can be found here 
You will want to upload your public domain book for kindle. In order to do this you need to do a few important things!! First, you need to create a separate and unique email address, different that the other address you use as a narrator on acx. Make sure that it is something that you can remember.
