Finding Your Authentic Voice

Julie-Ann Dean: Welcome to Voiceover Experts brought to you by Voices.com, the number one voiceover marketplace. Voiceover Experts brings you tips, pearls of wisdom and techniques from top instructors, authors and performers in the field of voiceover. Join us each week to discover tricks of the trade that will help you to develop your craft and prosper as a career voiceover talent. It’s never been easier to learn, perform, and succeed from the privacy of your own home and your own pace. This is truly an education you won’t find anywhere else.
This week, Voices.com is pleased to present Phyllis K. Day.
Phyllis K. Day: Hi. I’m Phyllis K. Day. Last time we talked, you learned that I hear and see sound. I was born this way. It wasn’t something I learned. However, the good news for you is that it helps me to enable voiceover talents to quickly improve the way they use their voice. This is because to me, each voice has an authentic sound that in some cases has layers that hide that sound. I peel back the layers with the VO talent and it improves everything they do.
I am not an acting coach and I don’t teach acting, but what I can do, I call knowing where the X is. No matter how great an actor you are, if you’re not using your authentic voice, you will struggle. Take Joe Bob, for example. Joe Bob grew up in Amarillo, Texas. He played football, basketball, baseball, (ran track), and the list goes on.
You could say he had the jock gene. He grew to be over six feet tall but he had both jock genes that is he also wanted to be a disc jockey. Little Joe Bob spent many hours of his childhood imitating how one TV news anchor in particular sounded along with many other announcers that influenced him back in the day. When he was old enough, he got on the air, paid his dues and up the ladder he went.
Now, like many other radio guys, he’s working less in auditioning more to little or no avail. Joe Bob has a great voice. He just needs to peel back a few layers. After hearing my last podcast, he contacted me. I listened to all his current demos. I asked him to send me an mp3 of his voice unprocessed talking about his past, present, his hopes for the future, what makes him happy, sad, and so on.
For almost all of his mp3, he was not using his authentic voice. Here’s a little bit of it.
Hi Phyllis. Just want to say thanks so much for spending time with me on the phone the other day and I hope your shoulder is healing. I also want to say how funny I still find it. I’m smiling and laughing every time I think about it when you say I was …
Phyllis K. Day: He was on for almost the whole thing until toward the end. He sneezed and said, “Excuse me.” Without thinking, he used his real voice to say that. Something he’d never do on the air, sneeze, that is. So after sneezing, he didn’t shift his voice back to his radio voice.
(sneezing) Pardon me.
Listen to it again.
(sneezing) Pardon me.
The next plays his authentic voice showed was when he stopped to think about something. Also forgetting to be on and that’s producing a different sound.
She would have been a junior senior as I started. And our games were across the street and all after school, you know. So it was …
So what is Joe Bob’s X? First of all, he’s a growler.
Somewhere between dusky gray and pale green.
Growling was a very popular use of a man’s voice at one time. It gave them sort of a strong but intimate yet manly sound. Sort of. Nowadays, it just makes them sound like they’re saying, “Hey, listen to me and be impressed.” Now, most women can’t do the growl, me included.
Now, Joe Bob is a nice guy. He’s not some puffed-up egotistical fellow. In fact, he was concerned that he couldn’t seem to sound more real and he wanted to. People would tell him, “You sound like you’re trying to impress me. You sound like you’re trying to impress me with your voice.” He wasn’t trying. He just was stuck in a rut.
The second X, little Joe Bob watched way too much Walter Cronkite.
What you include more than 600 papers and 40 books. Place them among the greatest figures in the history of Cardiovascular research.
Now, here’s part of an audition he sent me but don’t listen for the acting. Listen to the sound of his voice and the growl.
The battlefield. There is no other place or such an outpouring of intense human emotion is displayed, from courage, camaraderie, and exhilaration to fear, hatred and agony.
I smacked him around a little bit after that. No, no, no, no, no I didn’t do that. But, after our second session, he sent me this redo of the same piece. Again, listen to how much clearer his voice sounds and not the acting. Not that the acting is bad, it’s just not what we’re focusing on right now.
The battlefield. There is no other place or such an outpouring of intense human emotion is displayed, from courage, camaraderie, and exhilaration to fear, hatred and agony.
Joe Bob will have to be diligent and try to stay authentic and not go back to growling or using the Cronkite effect.
These lavish homes included libraries, ballrooms, billiard rooms, and much more. Homes during this time were built to last to stand the test of time.
He must use what I call his sneeze voice.
These lavish homes included libraries, ballrooms, billiard rooms, and much more. Homes during this time were built to last.
He’ll have another two or three sessions with me and then he’s on his way to make the use of his authentic voice a habit. We’ll wait another month or two and then see how he’s been doing with the tools he now has to keep his sound true. And he’s got a lot of demos to redo in the mean time.
Would you like to work with me? E-mail me at [email protected]. That’s [email protected] and we’ll set up a free evaluation of your voice. Then if you’re ready to move forward, we’ll move forward. I promise. I’m Phyllis K. Day.
Julie-Ann Dean: Thank you for joining us. To learn more about the special guest featured in this Voices.com podcast, visit the Voiceover Experts show notes at Podcasts.Voices.com/VoiceoverExperts. Remember to stay subscribed.
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