A common conversation in the voice acting biz revolves around the concept of “finding your signature sound.” Oftentimes, this concept is met with absolute, sheer panic, as in: “Oh no! I don’t know what my signature sound is and I better find it RIGHT THIS SECOND!” Hopefully, this blog post won’t illicit that kind of reaction, but instead, will help illuminate what finding your signature sound means and how to start figuring out what yours might be.

Show me the money.
Your signature voice is, by definition, your money voice. It’s a distinctive kind of delivery and niche sound that people consistently hire you to perform. This is almost never an extreme, stylized vocal delivery, but instead, it’s the down to earth vocal sound you would deliver on a piece of ad copy or as a narration on a documentary. Disappointed? Yeah, I know it might seem super boring, but the reality is that by mastering that unique signature delivery, you will have an original, go to sound to build outward from. It’ll be the “home base” where you can always refer back to and rely on. It will most likely end up being the voice that will help launch your voice acting career and land you most of your voice-over work.

Where oh where is my signature sound?
The truth of the matter is that it usually takes time for you to discover your signature sound. You will need to experience with performing a wide variety of copy, and take the time to experiment with your reads. Your signature sound is most often the voice and style of copy that allows you to produce the most natural, authentic deliveries. As you start submitting auditions for voice acting gigs, you’ll begin to notice consistencies emerging, and you’ll be able to identify what types of deliveries routinely get noticed by voice seekers. You may also find that you can start to identify what other people feel your strong suits are.

Finding your essence.
As you become more familiar and comfortable with your voice, you’ll start to find that you can begin to identify the attributes that are specific to you. One way you can start identifying your signature sound is by determining some of the basic characteristics that make up your personal essence or vibe. What first impression do you feel your deliveries give to the listener? Making a list of descriptors that encapsulate your voice and your way of speaking can be a helpful way to start zeroing in on your signature sound. Is your essence warm, caring, and friendly? Confident, opinionated, and assertive? Goofy, playful, and crazy? Ask people in your life what their impression of your essence is to get an idea of how others hear you.

Are your personality and your signature voice related?
Your voice-over work will often run parallel to your essence and to your interests. For people who fit this mold, identifying and honing your signature sound may come more readily. While your signature sound can be a true reflection of your personality, some voice-over professionals actually find that the voice they are consistently hired for contrasts with their natural self and what they consider to be their personal signature. Confusing, I know, but one way I like to look at this is having an “alter ego” as your signature voice. You may discover this “other you” while playing around on the mic, trying different approaches to a piece of copy. It might come from mimicry, or trying to emulate a particular type of delivery or vocal quality. It may even happen completely by accident. However, as long as it feels and sounds authentic, your signature voice can be different than your personality.

Are your vocal quality and your signature voice related?
They may very well be. Your voice could be raspy and deep, or it might be crisp and clear. That deep voice may sound more serious, authoritative, and intense. If you have a higher tone, you might come across as fun, outgoing, and charismatic. Identifying and embracing your vocal characteristics is another way to start honing in on the types of qualities your signature voice is made up of.

When it doesn’t come easily.
Finding your signature sound may take a while. Try not to put too much pressure on yourself to find your signature sound on a specific timetable. The most important thing is for you to discover for yourself your own personal and particular vocal qualities and sound. There are so many opportunities in the voice acting industry that there’s no reason for you to feel the need to alter who you are and what you sound like in order to be successful!

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                                                                      About the Author

Claudine Ohayon is an Emmy Award-winning director/producer, commercial and promotional voice talent for brands like Verizon, Listerine, and MasterCard, native Brooklynite, published photographer. She was also the live announcer for the first ever televised Hollywood Film Awards on CBS.

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As a voice-over artist, your voice-over demo is the most useful tool you have in getting your voice heard and allowing potential clients and agents to have a comprehensive understanding of what you offer as a unique and capable voice talent. When you think about it, your demo is your calling card, business card, and resume all rolled into one! That’s why

Here’s how to create a compelling voice-over demo:

Get up to Speed

It’s important to become familiar with industry standards and understand the reasoning behind them before creating your voice-over demo. Most demos are around 60 seconds long these days. One reason is because people have shorter attention spans than ever before. Another reason is that there is more content being made nowadays and potential clients simply don’t have enough time to listen to longer demos in order to decide who they are interested in working with. Making sure your demo fits into the voice-over landscape shows clients that you’re in tune with what’s going on in the industry.

Focus on Genre

It’s important that your voice-over demo showcases one specific genre, as opposed to being a compilation of different genres on one demo. Voice seekers are busy, and they don’t have time to wade through a long montage to eventually see if you can master the style they’re looking for. That’s why having a genre-specific demo that accurately showcases your current skill set in that particular genre is a must for any voice-over artist.

Commercial and narration demos are common genres to focus on initially, and will remain staples of your demo arsenal. As you grow in your voice work, you may want to create specialty demos in other genres. These include animation, promo, audiobook, narration, and foreign language.

Great Content

When selecting scripts for your demo, make sure the copy is strong and allows you to shine as a performer. Choose marketable content that accurately reflects your capabilities. Ensure the spots you choose are evergreen, meaning that they can be used months and potentially years down the road without the content feeling dated.

Show Your Range

As a voice actor, you’ve honed the ability to create a variety of different reads and interpretations. Your demo should showcase your best performances, showing enough range and versatility to capture the listener’s attention, hold it, and leave them wanting more.

Quality Matters

Your demo should reflect the level of professionalism and quality you aim to offer your future clients. In keeping with a high standard of excellence, it’s optimal for your demo to be professionally recorded in a studio. The most marketable passages with the strongest performances should then be selected, ideally by a post producer with experience in the industry. Finally, an audio engineer should bring their expertise to the table, adding music and sound effects, and ultimately editing, sequencing, mixing, and mastering the demo.

It’s easy to feel nervous about creating your voice-over demo, especially for the first time, but if you start out having these key points covered, you can feel confident that you’re ready to create a compelling voice-over demo.

Check out our VO Pro Membership and the Such A Voice blog for more content like this!

About the Author

Claudine Ohayon is an Emmy Award-winning director/producer, commercial and promotional voice talent for brands like Verizon, Listerine, and MasterCard, native Brooklynite, published photographer. She was also the live announcer for the first ever televised Hollywood Film Awards on CBS.

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For this week’s staff spotlight, we’d like to introduce you to our Vice President of Production, Claudine Ohayon!

SAV: Hey Claudine, thanks for joining us today! We’d love for you to tell everyone a little bit about what you do here at Such A Voice.

Ohayon: I do a couple of different things here at Such A Voice. I serve as a producer to students, which means I help prepare them for their demo recording sessions, as well as direct them once they get into the studio. I am also the Vice President of Production, which means that I oversee the production process through to the final product of the amazing demos we create for our students.

SAV: You have an exciting background in the arts as an Emmy Award winning director/producer, a live announcer, and a killer VO talent! Tell us more!!

Ohayon: I was always very interested in and excited by the many aspects of production and the arts. I begged for a Panasonic tape recorder for my eighth birthday. When I got it (thanks Mom and Dad!), I would go out into my neighborhood in Brooklyn and interview people about their lives, and then I would sort of do the voice-over parts in between the interviews. In high school, I directed original musicals and I would have parts in the performances as well. When I got to college, I was drawn to studying journalism and television production. In my senior year, I did an internship at CBS news and pretty much kept working from there, landing jobs in public relations  at several major networks. Then I worked at VH1 for several years, where I won an Emmy Award for a World AIDS Day Special that I produced and directed about people living with AIDS.

The whole time I was doing the production work I was also performing. I did improv in New York City, appeared in some indie films that friends of mine made, and acted in small roles on TV shows. I first started doing voice-over work for promos for friends and co-workers at MTV and Lifetime. Then I decided that I wanted to pursue voice work more seriously. The only thing I needed was a demo, so I produced my own. I got together with an engineer friend of mine with copy I had ripped out of magazines and transcribed from TV commercials. He recorded my reads and then we produced the spots and cut a demo just like I do now with our students at Such A Voice! Soon after, I landed an agent. I have been working in voice-over ever since. I’ve voiced commercials, promos, narrations, science and medical videos, animation, audio books, and live announcing, to name a few.

For a long time, it was frowned upon to be a “multi-hyphenate.” People wanted to put me in a box of either being a producer/director type or a performer/actor type. I’m really glad that’s not the case anymore.

SAV: What was your favorite voice-over job that you’ve done so far?

Ohayon: I did a couple of full-length animated films, “Plan Bee” and “An Ant’s Life,” playing the idealistic lead bee and the brassy ant that gets things done. Voicing these animated characters was such an incredibly fun experience. Animation is my dream gig!

SAV: We’d love it if you’d tell us something (if you wouldn’t mind sharing) that most people don’t know about you.

Ohayon: French was my first language. My mom is Swiss and my dad is French, so they only spoke French at home. When they put me in preschool, I cried nonstop. About a week later, the school called my parents and suggested to them that maybe I was crying because I didn’t understand English – and they were right! So I stayed home for several months and learned English from watching soap operas. True story.

SAV: Who is someone that you really admire?

Ohayon: I have been a long-time admirer of Pamela Adlon. When she played one of the friends in the quintessential teen movie “Say Anything,” everyone said I sounded just like her. At that point in my life, a lot of people made fun of my deep and raspy voice – a group of guys even used to go around calling me a truck driver! But being compared to her was empowering and gave me the sense that maybe my voice could be an asset.

Her career has always been enviable to me- she’s done a ton of animation, winning an Emmy for voicing Bobby on King of the Hill and she’s appeared in a bunch of really interesting series. She’s now writing, producing, directing, and starring in her own show, “Better Things.” I actually auditioned to voice the promos for her show this year!

SAV: What’s a skill that you’d like to learn and why?

Ohayon: I would very much like to have the skill of being able to sing harmony because my bucket list fantasy dream job is to be a backup singer.

SAV: Any voice-over marketing disasters that you can share with us? (So we can all learn how to avoid them…)

Ohayon: I can’t think of a single particular “disaster,” but more of an overall attitude of not promoting myself consistently enough. I used to feel like I didn’t want to “bother” people by following up, reaching back out, and putting my work out there in a promotional way. I have gotten better at that, but could always use improvement.

SAV: What does a perfect day look like to you?

Ohayon: Waking up without the assistance of an alarm, doing my morning meditation, then having a great cup of coffee out in my yard on a crisp fall day with my husband and dog. Doing some creative work in my studio. Going for an afternoon hike with a friend and having a really good talk. Spending time with my kids – just enjoying being with one another. Having a good phone call with my parents. Doing some more work in the studio. Being sous chef to my husband as he makes a delicious dinner (he is an amazing cook) while my son provides the soundtrack (he’s a gifted singer and piano player) and my daughter bakes something decadent for dessert. Eating together as a family outside with a nice glass of wine. Taking a walk around the neighborhood after dinner, then snuggling up and watching something funny. Sleeping on fresh sheets with the windows open. Please note: a perfect day does not include laundry or errands!!!

SAV: I have to ask… would you prefer a comedy club or a dance club?

Ohayon: That’s tough because I LOVE improv and I definitely love to laugh. Truth be told, I’m usually the first one on the dance floor and often the very last one to leave at the end of the night.

SAV: We’d love it if you’d tell us one of your favorite inspirational quotes. Something that drives you to follow your dreams and to never stop learning, growing, thriving, and having fun in this exciting voice-over industry!

Ohayon: I am not much of a quotes person, but one that really speaks to me is: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

Next week, we will be catching up with one of our voice-over coaches, Dave Tolar. Stay tuned!

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Improv is a vital way for voice-over artists to build confidence in their skills. Why? Because as modern day voice actors, we’re spending more time working alone in our home studios than ever before. With no one to bounce our performances off of, it makes sense that creating fresh, creative, dynamic performances time after time can become difficult. Losing perspective on the work we’re doing can quickly lead to insecurity. These classic rules of improv can help you build confidence in your voice-over work. 

Create the where (and who and why).

Improv is performed without costumes, props, or scenery. Improv actors need to focus on quickly establishing a vivid sense of place, building a relationship to the other actors in the scene, and defining a purpose for being there. As a voice-over artist, this practice can help you become more confident in your script analysis skills, making it easier for you to establish the “Who am I? Who am I talking to? What is my point of view?” in any script.

Learn to adapt.

Actors need to keep moving through a scene together even if the circumstances change, otherwise the entire performance will fall apart. This requires listening to scene partners, making spontaneous choices, and remaining fully present in every moment. As a voice actor, this practice will prepare you to respond to direction, react immediately, and continue varying your deliveries throughout an audition or a recording session.

Contribute something.

One of the basic tenets of improv comedy is known as “Yes, and…” The actor’s job is to accept what is presented (“Yes,”) and contribute something to the scene (“and”) no matter what crazy things actors present to one another in an improv setting. This practice will help you make any script your own, establish your unique point of view, and provide you with confidence when developing characters.

There are no mistakes, only opportunities.

In improv, there’s no safety net, no road map, and no way to control what’s about to happen. At first, it can be a terrifying thing to try. You might worry and think “What if I mess up?” There’s this special beauty in the art of improv. This magic in improv often exists where a “mistake” shows up as an opportunity to make the scene better. As a voice actor, this practice can help you to take risks, feel excited to perform, and turn perceived setbacks into happy accidents.

Improv can help you be more confident and capable behind the mic. Plus, it’s a ton of fun, too! Want to try it out? Look for an improv class or Meetup near you. In the meantime, here are some more improv-centric things to explore:

http://dontthinktwicemovie.com/

https://www.amazon.com/Upright-Citizens-Brigade-Comedy-Improvisation/dp/0989387801

http://improvencyclopedia.org/games/

About the Author

Claudine Ohayon is an Emmy Award-winning director/producer, commercial and promotional voice talent for brands like Verizon, Listerine, and MasterCard, native Brooklynite, published photographer. She was also the live announcer for the first ever televised Hollywood Film Awards on CBS.

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