For years I trained in classical flute. Anyone who has ever played a musical instrument knows how frustrating it can be when you hear how something should be played in your head – the notes, the rhythm, the volume, articulation, but you just can’t play it as it appears on the page. You keep stumbling over it, missing the same notes or timing again and again. One day at my flute lesson, I stumbled into one of these road blocks in the middle of a complicated run, and it was clear that I was getting frustrated with myself. My teacher stopped me as I was about to try it again and told me that this time I should make sure I mess it up.

Mess it up? Wasn’t that what I had been doing – wasn’t that the problem? She told me to intentionally mess it up, let myself mess it up. She knew that by allowing myself to butcher the music, I wouldn’t put the unnecessary pressure on myself to play it right the next time. Oddly enough, that bar was very easy after messing it up on purpose a couple times!

Voice-overs are just the same! Especially when you are starting out as a new voice-over talent, it can be difficult to produce your “natural” sound when you’re busy thinking about what words to emphasize, not duplicating the rhythm in each sentence, billboarding, and enunciating the words clearly.

Voice-over work, just like playing flute, takes hours of practice practice practice. The good news is that you can have faith that you will get better with practice. One of the more rewarding benefits of recording practice reads is that you will be able to hear yourself make progress with each read!

When you do hit a stumbling block – whether it’s a tongue-twister of a script, or you just don’t sound like you think you should, try messing up on purpose. It can actually be fun to take a voice-over job and read it as if you’re doing a caricature of the part you are reading for. You may even discover that your phony version actually nails the sound you were going for to begin with. Over-acting a part can sometimes reveal that the reason you weren’t getting it right to begin with is because you were under doing it.

Messing up all the time can certainly damage your ego, but being comfortable with messing up will alleviate the pressure to get it right the first time. Sometimes it takes messing it up royally to finally get it right!

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Voice-over training requires a lot of talking! If you are not used to projecting your voice for a continuous period of time, your vocal chords may tire easily. [Teachers: you have a leg up on all of us!] Your vocal chords will eventually adapt to the added demand you make on them as you practice controlling your pitch, attitude, volume and energy. If you find that you feel a bit tired or winded after practicing voice-over technique, maybe you are not using your diaphragm. Learning to use your diaphragm will not only increase your stamina, but it will allow you to control your pitch, attitude, volume and energy more adeptly, and put you in the perfect place to get more voice-over work!

Your diaphragm is a smooth muscle that lies beneath your lungs and controls the mechanics of inspiration. You are always using your diaphragm to inhale and exhale because it is a muscle that works automatically, like your heart. When you inhale, your diaphragm actually contracts to allow air to be sucked into your lungs. Your diaphragm then relaxes, which puts more pressure on your lungs so that you exhale. While your diaphragm does this without your conscious awareness, you can deepen your breath, calm your nerves, and control your voice by consciously engaging your diaphragm.

First, you need to find your diaphragm! Do this exercise to learn where your diaphragm is and what it feels like when you consciously control it.

Start by lying on your back on the ground. Place a book on your abdomen and breath easily for a few minutes, just like you normally do. The book should rise and fall with each inhalation and exhalation. Next, watch the book rise on an inhale, and this time when you exhale try to keep the book (and your abdomen) raised like it was at the end of your … you can deepen your breath, calm your nerves, and control your voice by consciously engaging your diaphragm. inhalation. You’ll feel like you are pushing down into your stomach when you exhale in order to keep your stomach raised, which is why this exercise is sometimes called “deep belly breathing”. Continue to keep the book elevated with your abdomen as you slowly inhale and exhale.

You should feel a definite increase in your lung capacity after doing this exercise for only a few minutes. Try starting each voice-over job or practice with this exercise, and see how you feel after only a couple weeks!

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