I wish I had a dollar for everyone who has told me that someone else has told them they have a great voice. The next line is normally folllowed by talk about entering the broadcasting business or finding a way to do commercials. It makes me smile and upon hearing their words I sense a need to reach out and help these people in some way.

Voice-over work seems easy on the surface but it’s a lot of hard, intense, subjective work. Most everyone has a voice. That’s a good start, but there is so much more to it than voice. I know a number of people who, in my opinion, have horrible voices. They, however, are doing quite well in voice-overs. Conversely, there are quite a number of people whom I believe have excellent voices and have yet to land a recording opportunity.

I’m trying to share how subjective the voice-over business is. Your potential career lies in the hands of someone’s idea of what sounds good. To a certain degree you can control the subjective nature of the business. The “how” comes in another posting. 

One of the first things producers and engineers look for when getting vo’s from talent is the clarity of sound. They are listening for a crisp and clean production from you. They are looking for studio-qaulity sound from your home studio. It is surprising the number of produced pieces on which you hear the whir of computers, air-conditioning and heating systems, children playing in the background or worse yet, a television playing in the background. There are a number of basic remedies to these distractions which are fairly obvious. Solutions to not so obvious sound problems like noise on the line will be covered in subsequent posts.

Cheers,

Freddie Bell