Musical Instruments

If you’re looking for training techniques for voice overs, a simple internet search will pull up all kinds of topics from how to deepen your voice, how to raise the pitch of your voice, how to increase your stamina, or how to change the character of your voice completely. If you are new to voice acting and you are looking for some tips, be careful about which pearls of wisdom you opt to follow!

While the pros have great pearls of wisdom to bestow on us all, don’t forsake your common sense to enhance your voice and your career! Not all advice out there is worth following, and many pieces of advice can actually hurt you.

Although I can’t give you a complete list of advice that’s safe to follow, I can give you some pointers of what not to do:

1. Drink hard alcohol and smoke. This one is obvious, right? Not to everyone. In the radio business, DJs used to, and maybe still are, advised to drink and smoke to enhance the resonance of their voices. The smoking and drinking actually does help them develop more resonance, but at the cost of lowering the range of pitch at the same time. This process actually happens naturally as a person ages, but smoking and drinking a lot expedites the process. This means that a person who drinks and smokes ends up losing the “young” sound and gaining the “old” sound while they are still young, but when they get old they have no sound!

2. Take the edge off with a shot. Leading up to a live recording session, you should only be drinking water for the health of your vocal cords and to prevent pops and smacks in your mouth. If you are doing a live recording session, it is normal to get nervous if you are working in front of the client. It is not advised to take a shot of alcohol before you go into a recording session though! While alcohol helps some people relax enough to get a couple good takes, you don’t ever want to risk your professional relationship with your clients. A client may not say something at the time, but they may decide to call a different voice talent in the future if they even think you have been drinking. Instead, try exercise to help calm your nerves.

3. Surgery on your vocal cords. This just sounds scary! While you can, in theory, change your vocal range by changing the structure of your vocal cords, there is no guarantee that you will end up being satisfied with your voice post-op. Vocal cord surgery is way more expensive that voice over training, and it’s simply dangerous. The voice over industry is expanding at such a rate that voice actors will all different qualities and sounds are needed for video games, audio books, commercials and narrations. If you invest in the voice over training, there’s no reason you can’t develop your niche with your own natural speaking voice.

4. Take your vocal range to the breaking point. Stressing the upper and lower registers of your vocal range is not a good idea, and it won’t help you become a better voice over artist in the long run. In the short run, you’ll give yourself a sore throat. In the long run, you may diminish your ability to control your natural vocal range. Developing a more dynamic voice involves the diaphragm, not the vocal cords.

Basically, if a suggested technique is painful or bad for your body, it probably isn’t doing you any good anyway. Stick to your common sense, and don’t listen to everything you hear. What works for one voice actor might not work for you, but one thing is for sure — drinking vodka tonics or whiskey won’t help you rake in the voice jobs! There is no quick fix when it comes to your vocal technique, and there’s no substitute for hard work.

Find out how to book more voice over work immediately! If you want to starting landing more voice over jobs, get all the information you need to get busy today!