the imaging voice

Written by Justin Coombes-Pearce

Discovering your voice

This can be one of the most exciting and frustrating parts of your beginnings in the voice over industry. Most people who ever write or present any information aimed at aspiring voice talents quite often refer to this little saying “my friends and family say I have a good voice and I should be doing voice over’s… how do I get started?” So here is my take on this. Unless your friends and family are in a position to employ you then their suggestion really doesn’t mean that much. The other point is you don’t necessarily have to have a good voice to succeed in voice over. Mind you those with a bad voice rarely succeed. My point is that it’s not as much about the voice as it is about the way you can deliver it.

A simple trick I use to gauge what stage an aspiring voice talent is at is by asking them to read a paragraph from a magazine with this bit of instruction.

1. Read it in a natural voice.

2. Present the information as if it is coming directly from your mind and not from the page in front of you.

3. Make it believable.  

There is no reason why you can’t do this yourself. Once you have recorded you can then listen back with is in mind.

1. Did it sound natural?

2. Did it sound like it was coming directly from you? Or did it sound like it was read?

3. Was it believable?

In most cases when you are starting out you will rarely have a positive answer to these questions. This should not be disheartening as it now gives you a simple direction to work in.

I use this phrase a lot with both voice talents, radio presenters and even actors. “One of the toughest things to achieve is to sound like ourselves” We quite often have a preconceived idea in our head as to what we should sound like… in most cases our idea on what we think we should sound like is totally wrong.

I mentioned before about not listening to our friends and family unless they are in a position to employ you, this may seem a little harsh so let me explain a little more.

Our friends and family will either tell us we a great for encouragement, they will tell us we’re not so great out of jealousy or in some cases they will be spot on with their assessment. The problem is whether they are right or wrong really doesn’t help you in anyway as unless they have walked the line before you, otherwise there is nothing that will qualify them to give an accurate assessment. Without you being confident in your friends and families ability to know exactly what a prospective employer will be looking for in voice talents, how can you be confident they are sending you down the right path?

There is a simple solution to this problem. Find some people who have walked the line before you or are in a position to employ you and ask them to asses your work and progress. At the same time thank your family and friends for their advice… it keeps the harmony at home.

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