Sounds of a First Time Voice Actor

Stage one: Ew

When I found out we were going to be learning how to voice act, I didn’t expect our first lesson to involve an oddly graphic video of someone who had shoved a camera down their throat to record the movement of their vocal chords. I also didn’t expect this, and several other videos of the same type, to be replayed and/or re-referenced nearly every lesson leading up to the recording session, presumably leaving everyone who witnessed them with a mild form of PTSD.

Having said this, the videos, however disturbing, were useful in discovering not only true and false vocal folds, but also slack, stiff, thick and thin vocal folds. It also helped us identify the larynx and what tilting it to certain positions can do to the voice. We used it to explore: speech (comfortable, yet monotone), falsetto (high pitched, the top of your range), twang (nasal with no low frequencies) and sob (widening the larynx to make a ‘crying’ noise). We practised these in advertisements, before choosing an audio drama to apply them to.

Stage two: Hmm

How the Marquis Got His Coat Back was the radio drama our group of three picked to record in three weeks’ time. Having assigned our characters, we initially struggled to distinguish between their voices. While on a stage we wouldn’t have worried about this, the fact that the audience cannot see the characters brings a greater emphasis to their identifiability. In a previous session, Charlie Barnes (creative director of the Sheffield based theatre company Dead Ernest) had emphasised to us the importance of taking on a somewhat melodramatic tone to effectively portray each character in a different and unique way. For this drama specifically, it was recommended that we did this by establishing the status of each character, not only in their personal lives, but also within the individual scenes. By considering how this affected the way the characters spoke to one another, we managed to play with a more diverse range of voices.

Experimenting with pauses was also something that influenced our final recording. Lengthening pauses could not only build awkward tension but also add elements of comedy to our performance and show time passing (which we could later emphasise with sound effects in the recording process).

Stage three: Ooo

While we worked as a group to perfect How the Marquis Got His Coat Back, we worked individually on two shorter audio pieces: an advert and a character/animation. I spent a lot of this process recording myself and listening to it back to get the idea of what I would sound like in the final more professional recording.

With the advert in particular, I found that making subtly more dramatic changes to your voice actually made it sound more professional. For example, I would emphasise my intonation to what seemed, in my head, like a very extreme level, but, when recorded, it simply added more expression. I also tried planning the ‘rhythm’ of that intonation as though it were a piece of music, choosing when I would speak faster or slower, and what pitch I would use at certain points to emphasise specific parts of the advertisement.

The character voice took a bit longer to work out, but it was also a lot of fun! Luckily, the character description provided came with some videos of different actors that they wanted the character to sound similar to. It was also highlighted that they didn’t want the character to come across as ‘whiny’. Based off these instructions, I applied twang to emphasise my American accent and used slack vocal cords to create a slight creak to the voice.

And, with that, the only thing left to do was rehearse and record!

Stage four: Ahh!

The third week was finally here, and my nerves were reaching new heights; we were in unknown territory. My anxiety was matched only by the utter confusion of hearing my voice through my own ears.

We did one practice take and recorded two ‘official’ takes of the audio drama, as well as doing one or two takes of our advert and character. If we messed up a line, we just paused and started the line again, making me feel much calmer about the whole thing, since there wasn’t as much pressure to get it perfect first time.

In the end I was very pleased with the outcome of all three audio recordings.

It feels wrong to leave this blog on the negative noise displayed above. I have, therefore, provided a conclusion with a much more cheerful title:

Stage five: Yippee!

In all seriousness, I thoroughly enjoyed this process. Exploring and creating character voices were among my favourite parts. Looking back, perhaps I should have established a greater sense of character within my audio drama and considered each line more carefully in relation to this. But all in all, the whole process was a great experience, and I was able to put into practice a lot of the useful things I learnt about how to adapt your voice and act in front of a microphone.