Finding Your Unique Voice

Welcome to Voice Over Experts, brought to you by Voices.com the number one voice over marketplace. Voice Over Experts brings you tips, pearls of wisdom, and techniques from top instructors, authors and performers in the field of voice over. Join us each week to discover tricks of the trade that will help you to develop your craft and prosper as a career voice over talent. It’s never been easier to learn, perform and succeed from the privacy of your own home, and at your own pace. This is truly an education you won’t find anywhere else. Now for our special guest.
Kabir Singh: Hey, how’s it going? My name is Kabir Singh. And thank-you for taking the time out of your day to listen to my thoughts on Voice Overs. Let’s get started. So today I want to share some ideas and thoughts on how to find your unique voice, whatever that means to you, you know. The voice on a surface level means your pitch or cadence, the rhythm that you speak, the vocabulary that you use, the style. As you can tell I’ve got a very distinctive style. You may call it urban and young, cool and hip hop. Those are ways to describe my voice. So how can you stand out amongst other people with your specific style of voice? I’m going to take you a little deeper into those things though.
I want you to think about your voice as a tool. But what does that really mean? Well, we’ll start off by saying the anatomy of your voice. If you ever notice, your voice is directly in between your thoughts in your mind and your heart which is your feelings. It’s like a passage of truth connecting not only your logic but also your emotions. One thing that I want to stress is that your voice truly starts inside of you. So what does that really mean? Well, it’s your inner voice. That’s our voice of truth, of struggle, happiness, sadness, confidence and all the other emotions that make our existence so pleasurable and painful at the same time. Our voice is us. It’s me. In a way it’s our identity. So how do you find your inner voice? Well, there’s two tips that really have helped me out.
Find your voice in silence. Silence is a journey. It’s a journey into your mind and into your heart. Again, into your mind and your heart which means your thoughts and your emotions. Now when you begin to observe yourself in silence. What I’m looking for you to do is observe your motivations. Observe your stories. And observe the things that make you happy and the things that make you sad. The things that excite you and the things that make you mad. All these different emotions. Observe those things. Because when you look at an audition script you’re going to have to make that audition personal.
So you can use all these thoughts and all these stories and all these emotions that you’ve observed by disconnecting yourself from anything that can distract you. Once you can find those things write them down and keep them with you. Keep them and use them as tools in auditions if you have a certain script that requires for you to be in a more pensive and more intimate type of read, something more serious. Imagine a story that allows you to go to that place. That allows you to really take your time and connect on that serious level. And it will become second nature for you, you know? That story, that feeling will be imprinted in your mind and you can access it any time. So observe yourself in silence. Write down your thoughts and your stories and use those as tools. You’re going to start to observe yourself. And once you observe yourself well then you’ll observe your voice.
Inner voice, inner you. So how do you discover that level of confidence that your clients are looking for when they are auditioning for the script? How do you get people to listen to those important words you have to share? Well I believe one of the most important things is for you to be comfortable with yourself. Really find your own confidence within yourself. You as a person, not a voice actor, but you as a person. You know find that genuine love for yourself. And, you know, these can help you in many things in life. And once you find that genuine love of yourself and you begin to value yourself you begin to reflect that same perception through your voice and the way you speak. And then that level of confidence raises. And one more thing I want to say about that level of confidence, one very important thing is to be completely and utterly fearless.
And when I say that I want you to understand that I’m not saying it’s bad to have fear. I’m saying see your fears. Acknowledge your fears whether it’s your fear of failing, whether it’s your fear of auditioning, whether it’s your fear of not recouping any of your investment back. Whatever those fears are acknowledge those fears. But let those fears inspire you to achieve greatness. You know fear is a negative emotion and if you’re trying to achieve any level of confidence there can be zero fear. Don’t be afraid to be fearful. But don’t give fear any power. And once you do that your level of confidence will rise ten points right there just because you’ve lifted that burden off of your fear. And that’s how you are going to achieve your confidence in your reads.
Don’t be fearful of trying new things. Don’t be fearful of ad libbing a little bit. And don’t be fearful of taking a new class or investing more money in your career. Don’t be fearful of auditioning and auditioning and auditioning and auditioning and auditioning and not gaining a dollar back. Don’t have any fears. And you’re going to achieve that level of confidence. So before I go I want to leave you with a little gift from me to you. And I’m a spoken word artist. I’m a poet. And I communicate a lot of my thoughts and my feelings to younger society and younger generation. And I hope that it can give you a perspective and a real connection with me. And if you have any questions about me or any questions where I can help you in any way please feel free to, you know, shoot me an email, go to my website www.kabirsvoice.com, you know, and get in contact with me. Any way that you may need help man, just shoot me an email, let me know and I’ll do my best to respond.
There’s fire burning in my soul to pursue my goals and never see the end. May death come before I ever quit on myself and give up on my health. For each day I waste I pray another comes and burdens with me strength. I have discovered the power I possess and I fight until God takes away my last breath. I seek peace for those around me. I love for those who take the next step. May your dreams be your reality and your reality never end. When you find yourself on your knees and struggling and questioning yourself again be motivated by the starvation in forms of mental, physical and spiritual pain. Always bet on yourself so that even when you lose you only have yourself to blame. And never forget that hard work always beats talent when talent only chases fame. Always bet on yourself. You can have it all.
Thank-you for joining us. To learn more about this special guest featured in this voices.com podcast visit the Voice Over experts show notes at podcast.voices.com/voice-over-experts. Remember to stay subscribed. If you’re a first time listener you can subscribe for free to this podcast in the Apple ITunes podcast directory or by visiting podcasts.voices.com. To start your voice over career on-line go to voices.com and register for voice talent membership today.