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Zone Recording and Auto-Tune

Blair Hardman — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 23:15:11 +0000

We have a saying at Zone Recording in Sonoma County, that “we can make you sound better than you do” This tongue-in-cheek statement does have a basis in fact. Since the beginning of sound recording, engineers have strived to make the best possible recordings and then to enhance the sound with the tools at hand. These include effects such as compression, that even out the dynamic volume of a recording, EQ, or tone controls to add more bass for treble, echo and reverb to place the sound in a simulated ambient context. We can even move a voice or instrument forward or back in time to improve the rhythm or alignment with other instruments.

But there are few effects that have changed the music business like Auto-Tune. In case you haven’t been watching American Idol for the last decade, where singers are judged partly on the trueness of their “pitch”, Auto-Tune is the electronic voice tuner that can make out of tune singers sound in tune. It is currently used on virtually all pop records, either to fine tune vocals, and other instruments, or to add a fluttery or robotic effect to the voice. That sound has become such a part of the vocal tradition among young singers, that they are now achieving the robotic effect in their natural voice.

At Zone Recording we use all the tools at our disposal to make the best possible recordings. But we do have one rule, and that is to not use Auto-Tune on young singers. We think it is important that they learn to sing in tune with out artificial help. We refer to Auto-Tune as a “gateway software” that can fool them into thinking they are better than they are.

If you would like to experience how good we can make you sound, give us a call, or email, and we can set up a demonstration. And check out the New Yorker article below to learn more about the history of Auto-Tune.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/09/the-gerbils-revenge connected through a social-networking platform.

The Transition

Tourists black out reflective retinas in snapshots before printing them, and millions of people refer to strangers they’ve never spoken to as friends, because they’ve from living in the stubborn physical world to managing a life that is split between platforms, where the ability to change aspects of your identity (at least digitally) is always an option, is becoming more common. It should come as no surprise, then, that singers sometimes choose to correct recorded flaws in pitch with modern software, like Antares’s Auto-Tune.

Andy Hildebrand, Auto-Tune’s inventor, spent eighteen years in a field called seismic data exploration, a branch of the oil industry. He worked in signal processing, using audio to map the earth’s subsurface. His technique involved a mathematical model called autocorrelation. The layers below the earth’s surface could be mapped by sending sound waves—dynamite charges work nicely in unpopulated areas—into the earth and then recording their reflections with a geophone. As it happened, autocorrelation could detect pitch as well as oil, and Hildebrand, who had taken some music courses, turned his engineering skills toward pop.

Most of the time, Auto-Tune is used imperceptibly, to correct flat or sharp notes. The New York producer Tom Beaujour, who records rock bands that sound nothing like contemporary R. & B. or pop, says that it gets used, in one way or another, in almost every session that he works on. Often, it solves logistical problems: an artist has left the studio and has no opportunity to return just to re-sing one or two off notes.

But pitch correction has also taken on a second life, as an effect. You’ve probably heard it, most recently on the No. 1 song in the country, Lil Wayne’s lazy, mildly naughty rap “Lollipop.” Auto-Tune, properly torqued up, is the rare edit that calls attention to itself. Auto-Tune software detects pitch, and when a vocal is routed through Auto-Tune, and a setting called “retune speed” is set to zero, warbling begins. This, roughly, is what happens: Auto-Tune locates the pitch of a recorded vocal, and moves that recorded information to the nearest “correct” note in a scale, which is selected by the user. With the speed set to zero, unnaturally rapid corrections eliminate portamento, the musical term for the slide between two pitches. Portamento is a natural aspect of speaking and singing, central to making people sound like people. A nonmusical example of portamento would be “up-speak,” a verbal tic common in some people under thirty. (Can you imagine the end of every sentence rising in pitch? Like a question?) Processed at zero speed, Auto-Tune turns the lolling curves of the human voice into a zigzag of right-angled steps. These steps may represent “perfect” pitches, but when sung pitches alternate too quickly the result sounds unnatural, a fluttering that is described by some engineers as “the gerbil” and by others as “robotic.”

The first popular example of Auto-Tune’s distorting effect was Cher’s 1998 hit “Believe,” produced by Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling. During the first verse, Auto-Tune makes the phrase “I can’t break through” wobble so much that it’s hard to discern. More successful is the gentler variation in the following line, “so sad that you’re leaving,” which highlights the software’s strength. Auto-Tune can produce a controlled version of losing control, hinting at various histrionic stations of the human voice—crying, sighing, laughing—without troubling the singer. It is notable that “Believe” ’s big chorus—“Do you believe in life after love?”—is delivered (mostly) in a full, human-sounding voice, with no robotic modifications. You can only feel so bad for a robot.

Before “Believe,” Auto-Tune was a closely held producers’ secret. (“They didn’t want to be known to manipulate the pitch of sound,” Hildebrand says.) After “Believe,” radical pitch alteration showed up repeatedly—in, among other places, a chunk of Madonna’s “Music” album, from 2000, Jamaican dancehall singles, and pop hits like JoJo’s “Too Little Too Late,” which uses a human-to-robot ratio very similar to that of “Believe.” In the manual accompanying Auto-Tune’s fifth-release version, the zero speed setting is described as “the Cher Effect.”

No one has used Auto-Tune’s zero speed setting more consistently and successfully than the R. & B. singer T-Pain. Born Faheem Najm, in Tallahassee, he has become such a common guest on pop records that in a single week last year he was featured on four singles in the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, including the No. 1 song, Chris Brown’s “Kiss Kiss.” In the same way that the dry, flat drum sounds in Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” will forever say “mid-seventies,” T-Pain and Auto-Tune will forever remind people of the late aughts.

T-Pain, who is currently working on his third album, “Thr33 Ringz,” spoke to me on the phone from his studio in Miami. He first heard the Auto-Tune effect on a song by Jennifer Lopez—he doesn’t remember which one—and borrowed it for a mixtape appearance in 2003. He says it’s no trade secret that he uses Auto-Tune with the retune speed set to zero, and likes to recall a time he spent selling fish out of a truck with his father in Tallahassee: “My dad said, ‘They can know what you’re using, but they’ll never know how to use it. They can see that we’re using salt and pepper.’ ”

The Auto-Tuned T-Pain is rarely a mopey presence. In his hands, the program becomes pop music’s rose-colored glasses, or a balloon’s worth of helium inhaled. His vocals hang, flickering, and suggest not a technological intervention but a chemical one. His vocal hooks sound delirious, not desperate.

Someone once asked Hildebrand if Auto-Tune was evil. He responded, “Well, my wife wears makeup. Is that evil?” Evil may be overstating the case, but makeup is an apt analogy: there is nothing natural about recorded music. Whether the engineer merely tweaks a few bum notes or makes a singer tootle like Robby the Robot, recorded music is still a composite of sounds that may or may not have happened in real time. An effect is always achieved, and not necessarily the one intended. Aren’t some of the most entertaining and fruitful sounds in pop—distortion, whammy bars, scratching—the result of glorious abuse of the tools? At this late date, it’s hard to see how the invisible use of tools could imply an inauthentic product, as if a layer of manipulation were standing between the audience and an unsullied object. In reality, the unsullied object is the Sasquatch of music. Even a purely live recording is a distortion and paraphrasing of an acoustic event.

Sir George Martin, via e-mail, wrote to me about his work with John Lennon, one of the most famously processed voices in pop history. “It’s true that John was never satisfied with the sound of his voice,” Martin explained. “He failed to realize that what he heard came through the bones of his body and was not his true sound. He was always looking for perfection, and in his imagination his voice was always superior to the sound of anything on tape.” To paraphrase, what we hear on Beatles records is Lennon’s imagination. T-Pain’s deployment of Auto-Tune is a similar assertion of self, no different in kind from the older, more traditional tricks of tape-splicing, double-tracking the voice, and adding a little reverb.

When I asked T-Pain if he could ever forgo Auto-Tune, he said, “I got a song on my album about my kids. I ain’t use it on that one.”

If you are looking for more information about professional audio recording, call Zone Recording Studio today at (800) 372-3305 or email us at blair@zonerecording.com.

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The World’s Most Recorded Musician at Zone Recording in Cotati

Blair Hardman — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 23:36:12 +0000

Hal Blaine the drummer and session musician is best known for his work with the Wrecking Crew in Southern California, playing on thousands of pieces of music over four decades, including numerous hits by popular groups, including Nancy Sinatra, Elvis Presley, John Denver, the Ronettes, Simon & Garfunkel, the Carpenters, the Beach Boys, the Grass Roots, the 5th Dimension, the Monkees, the Partridge Family, and Steely Dan His career is highlighted in the upcoming documentary film “The Wrecking Crew” about the unsung heroes behind hundreds of chart topping singles.

Some years ago Hal took a break from the LA scene and moved to Sonoma County. During this time he played with the legendary accordionist Jim Boggio, the man memorialized by the life size bronze statue in the Plaza in Cotati. Their group was playing at Graziano’s restaurant in Petaluma, and the owner asked them to make a radio jingle. So there he was, the most recorded musician in the world, right here in the Zone Recording Studio drum booth. Naturally I was a little nervous, knowing he had worked with some of the best engineers in the world.

Well, he turned out to be a total sweetheart, and one of the best show business storytellers I’ve ever met.

He told us about the Frank Sinatra recording sessions. They were double the length of most sessions, six hours instead of three. The orchestra would get set up and rehearse the songs to perfection, while the engineers and technicians checked and double checked the microphones, chairs and music stands to make sure there were no extraneous squeaks, or rattles. Then Sinatra would come in, say hello, and get to work. Most of the songs were done in one take, and the Frank would leave to go have dinner with friends at one his favorite restaurants.

Blaine has played on 50 number one hits, and over 150 top ten hits. He’s is a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum, and the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame.

What follows is the transcript from Blaine’s interview on the NPR Program, Fresh Air, in 2001.

http://www.npr.org/2015/03/13/392780627/drummer-hal-blaine-talks-about-making-music-over-the-years

This is FRESH AIR. I’m David Bianculli, in for Terry Gross. The new documentary “The Wrecking Crew” tells the story of what may be the most successful group of studio and session musicians in music history. This anonymous collection of players can be heard on many hits of the 1960s and ’70s. Songs by such artists as The Beach Boys, The Byrds, Frank Sinatra, Lesley Gore, the Mamas And The Papas, The Monkees and Nat King Cole. The musicians were used by music producer Phil Spector to create his Wall of Sound.

Our next guest, drummer Hal Blaine, is featured in the documentary and is credited for coming up with the group’s nickname, The Wrecking Crew. In March, 2000, Hal Blaine was one of the first five sidemen inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He’s featured on thousands of records and over 40 number one hits. Terry interviewed him in 2001. They started with one of his hits from 1963. That year alone, Hal Blaine played on “Then He Kissed Me,” “Da Doo Ron Ron,” “Another Saturday Night,” “Surf City,” “Surfer Girl,” “Surfin’ USA” and this record, which has one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most famous opening drum lines.

THE RONETTES: (Singing) The night we met I knew I needed you so. And if I had the chance, I’d never let you go. So won’t you say you love me? I’ll make you so proud of me. We’ll make them turn their heads every place we go. So won’t you please be my little baby, say you’ll be my darling. Be my baby now, whoa oh, oh, oh. I’ll make you happy…

TERRY GROSS, HOST: Hal Blaine, welcome to FRESH AIR.

HAL BLAINE: Thank you very much.

GROSS: Now, is the opening on “Be My Baby” – was that drum line your idea?

BLAINE: You know, this was the beginnings of rock ‘n’ roll. Somehow, with my experience, I keep thinking that I was an awfully good faker. And it could be that the lick went (imitating “Be My Baby” opening drum beat) with a backbeat (imitating “Be My Baby” backbeat). And at one point, while we were rolling, I may have missed the second beat. So we went (imitating “Be My Baby” opening drumbeat) and it stuck. It became a hook and, of course, one of the most famous hooks in rock ‘n’ roll.

That also happened to me – just to get off the beaten track – it also happened to me with the Tijuana Brass when we did “A Taste Of Honey.” The song (humming “A Taste A Honey” hook) and everybody comes in (imitating “A Taste Of Honey” hook) – well, unfortunately, nobody was coming in together. It was like a train wreck. So at one point, me in my comedic mind, they went (humming “A Taste Of Honey” hook). And I looked at the band, and I started slugging with my bass drum (imitating bass drumbeat). Everybody came in. And once again, that became a major hook for that song. It happened to be my first record of the year.

GROSS: Why don’t we hear that part you’re talking about?

GROSS: Hal Blaine, what are some of the other records that had the most memorable beats that you played?

BLAINE: Well, I remember doing a record with Sam Cooke – “Another Saturday Night” it was called. And that was another one with that same drum lick every eight or 16 bars, whatever it was (imitating drumbeat). And all these drum licks kind of became the standard for rock ‘n’ roll. You know, all the drummers that I’ve spoken with through the years have told me that they grew up listening to the records that I played on, and that’s how they learned. And I grew up listening to Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich, and that’s how I learned.

GROSS: In fact, I’ve bet you’ve been to countless restaurants where people have been playing your rhythms on the table.

BLAINE: That has happened, I guess, in the past, you know? Sometimes I’ve actually – you know, it’s funny you mention that. I’ve actually turned around to someone and said, do me a favor and let me play the drums.

GROSS: (Laughter).

BLAINE: In a nice way.

GROSS: Right, right.

BLAINE: Where I would explain to them that they were trying to play their fingers along with whatever the music was playing coming out of the speakers in the restaurant. That actually has happened to me, which is kind of funny that you would hit on that.

GROSS: Now, you did a lot of records with Phil Spector, including “Be My Baby.”

BLAINE: Yes.

GROSS: What are some of the things he had you do that other session heads didn’t? What was different about working with Phil Spector?

BLAINE: Well, first of all, every Phil Spector session was a party. Everyone on the session – all the guys and girls were the first call people. Everyone wanted to work with Phil Spector because they knew that some kind of a hit record – I mean, it was the talk of the town. Phil Spector was the guy that everyone wanted to see how he worked. He had a big sign on the door that said closed session, and yet anyone who stuck their head in – he’d grab them, and he’d shove them in the studio, and he’d say, Hal, give them a tambourine or a shaker or some claves, some noisemakers. Let him play something.

GROSS: Did Spector hum for you or clap for you the kind of things that he wanted, the sound that he wanted?

BLAINE: Not on – not for drums. Phil used to use me like a racehorse. He would have me sitting there while he rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed. He would keep me from rehearsing, and I’d be chomping at the bit. I’d want to play. And finally, he would point to me. He used to be in the booth, and he’d run back and forth. He had a huge window. And he’d run back and forth like he was conducting a symphony. And he’d look at the strings and use certain, you know, symphonic movements or the way a conductor would do.

And he would look at me and he would say, now. And I knew he was saying now, which meant go for it. And I guess I used to go nuts sometimes on those drums because if you listen to some of the fade endings on just about all those records, we used to go into double-times and all kinds of things that were unheard of on records. And everybody would go whacko. And then there was a time when Phil threatened to put out a record or an album of all the fades that we did.

GROSS: (Laughter).

BLAINE: And the fades if – for those who don’t know what a fade is, it just means when you hear a record playing and it gets to the end and it gets softer and softer and softer until it’s gone. That’s called the fade. With Phil, it went on forever. And finally, when everyone had had enough – and I always kind of had that feeling. I knew when it was – I would go into my quarter-note triplets against whatever was being played…

GROSS: Clap a quarter-note triplet for us.

BLAINE: Well, in other words, (clapping drumbeat). It’s over. And I go (clapping and imitating drumbeat). So everyone knew here it is. This is it. And Phil would never stop the machine until I played that – those quarter note triplets. So they’re on the end of every record.

GROSS: The musicians who you used to play with on rock ‘n’ roll sessions were known as The Wrecking Crew. Why were they called The Wrecking Crew?

BLAINE: In the late ’50s, we started playing rock ‘n’ roll. A lot of people said it was a dirty word. They didn’t want to hear that kind of music. They thought the musicians were just rank amateurs. They had no idea that we were all well-learned and studied musicians with degrees and so forth playing music. And the old-timers, the guys that we kind of replaced, used to say these kids are going to wreck the business. And I just automatically started calling us The Wrecking Crew. And then I became a contractor very early on doing the hiring for the sessions that I was playing on. And I just started – you know, people would call me and they’d say, get your crew together. And I’d say, OK, The Wrecking Crew, here we go. And I’d make calls. Eventually, I had a secretary who made all my calls and so forth. So The Wrecking Crew stuck.

BIANCULLI: Drummer Hal Blaine, member of The Wrecking Crew, speaking with Terry Gross in 2001. More after a break, this is FRESH AIR.

THE MAMAS AND THE PAPAS: (Singing) All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray. I’ve been for a walk on a winter’s day. I’ve been safe and warm.

THE BEACH BOYS: (Singing) I’m picking up good vibrations.

BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let’s get back to Terry’s 2001 interview with Hal Blaine. He is the drummer for the Wrecking Crew, the session musicians of the ’60s and ’70s profiled in the new documentary also called “The Wrecking Crew.”

GROSS: You were the drummer on a lot of the Beach Boys records.

BLAINE: Just about all.

GROSS: But, I think it was Dennis who was actually…

BLAINE: Yes.

GROSS: …The drummer with the band. I imagine at the time, nobody knew that he wasn’t the drummer on the records.

BLAINE: A lot of people did not know in the early days that Dennis did not play on those things. Sometimes Dennis would come in and overdub with the tambourine or something.

GROSS: So, did Dennis feel bad that instead of him, it was you on the record?

BLAINE: No, no. I’ll tell you – I’ve told this story before – Dennis loved the fact that while I was in the studio in the afternoon making 35, $40 for the afternoon, Dennis, that night, was making 35 or 40,000 on stage. I mean, they were making a lot of money. And he was thrilled that he could just be on his boat. He didn’t have to be in the studio. He didn’t have to rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

GROSS: Well, let me rephrase the question. Did you feel resentful then that he was making all this money on stage and you were making next-to-nothing in the studio?

BLAINE: Not at all because I knew what it was leading to because my phone started ringing off the hook with – from Phil Spector dates and Beach Boy dates.

GROSS: Right.

BLAINE: All of a sudden, I was getting calls for Elvis Presley and Johnny Rivers, and 5th Dimension came along, and Mamas and the Papas. I mean everybody came out of the woodwork.

GROSS: Is there a Beach Boys track that you particularly like your drumming on that we can play?

BLAINE: Well, you know, there are certain songs that’ll make you cry. Songs like, “God Only Knows,” one of the beautiful songs. “Good Vibrations,” of course, was another sort of a trilogy of – Brian put that song together. Sometimes we would do, you know, five minutes on a session and he’d say, thank you. And sometimes we would work for days putting that song together. He just – he used to use little bits and pieces of this, that and the other. I remember that on one of the sessions – and I think it was part of the “Good Vibrations” – Brian wanted something different, a different sound with drums or percussion. We used to drink a lot of orange juice and they came in little small bottles out of a vending machine. And I took three of those bottles, taped them together, cut the tops off to various sizes almost like the tubes on a vibraphone. And there were three different sounds and I used a mallet that would be used on a vibraphone. And I got this knocking sound (imitating knocking sound), three different knocking sounds. And I used it on that section where we were playing (imitating tune of song section). Well, I was playing (imitating knocking sound), different tones.

GROSS: Well, why don’t we hear that part of “Good Vibrations?” This is Hal Blaine.

THE BEACH BOYS: (Singing) I, I love the colorful clothes she wears and the way the sunlight plays upon her hair. I hear the sound of a gentle word on the wind that whips her perfume through the air. I’m picking up good vibrations. She’s giving me excitations. I’m picking up good vibrations. She’s giving me excitations. Good, good, good, good vibrations. Good, good, good, good vibrations. Close my eyes. She’s somehow closer now…

GROSS: That was Hal Blaine on drums and percussion. Now, Hal Blaine, we’ve been talking about your rock ‘n’ roll sessions. You also worked with Sinatra. Did you have to get a different kind of beat when you were working with Sinatra? As a jazz singer, Sinatra was more behind the beat. Rock ‘n’ roll tends to be very on the beat.

BLAINE: One of our secrets to rock ‘n’ roll was learning to lay back. And we used to – in other words, if you were looking at a scale on a ruler, every time your back beat came on – one, two, three, four – every time we’d hit two and four, it would be just, just a hair behind that actual tune four. That was how I got the great feeling going all the time with Joe Osborn, the great bass player. And Larry Knechtel. You know, we were known as the three killers who used to come in and make these like, “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” records like that that were just so incredible – all Grammy winners. You mentioned “Be My Baby,” (imitating opening tune of song). When I did the record “Strangers In The Night” with Frank, which was record of the year and his only gold single – believe it or not – that went right to number one, I was playing the same beat quietly. (Imitating tune of “Strangers In The Night).

GROSS: You’ve been on about 8,000 different songs that have been recorded. Do you actually remember what you were on, or do you have to like, consult a list to figure out if you were on something?

BLAINE: Well, it depends. Obviously I had all those records of the year, the Grammy winner of the year, and I don’t have to think about those records. I know those records backwards. When it comes to certain songs, it was just a blur of so many songs and so many sessions. I don’t know, it’s very difficult to explain, Terry. I just played what I felt and they let me play. You know, once you kind of make a name for yourself, then when producers would come in they would say, oh Hal, just do your thing, you know, don’t worry about it – just whatever you feel. They felt that I would always do the right thing.

BIANCULLI: Drummer Hal Blaine speaking to Terry Gross in 2001. He’s featured in the new documentary “The Wrecking Crew,” which opens today in theaters in New York and LA, and additional cities in coming weeks. The film also is available now through iTunes and video on-demand. Coming up, David Edelstein reviews a new horror film, “It Follows.” This is FRESH AIR.

If you are looking for more information about professional audio recording, call Zone Recording Studio today at (800) 372-3305 or email us at blair@zonerecording.com.

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P!nk promises ‘The Truth About Love Tour’ will have new songs and lots of fun

Blair Hardman — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 15:00:30 +0000

It’s official: this morning, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter P!nk announced an upcoming tour to support her new album, “The Truth About Love” beginning February 13, 2013. The album is P!nk’s unique take on the different shades of love – the dark, the light, the happy and the sad.

She followed the press announcement with a live web chat with about 2900 fans who asked about everything from who would be designing tour costumes (her answer: Bob Mackey), to whether she’d be shooting a DVD on the tour (her answer: “I don’t know. If it’s good.”). The tour will have songs from each chapter of her life, though she promises a “ton of new songs.”

Several fans asked what fun things she’ll do, and though she said she didn’t know yet, she promised to do “everything in my power to make it better than the last one, shy of shooting myself out of a cannon.”

The tour starts on February 13 in Phoenix and runs through March 28 in Boston. Tickets go on sale to the public beginning September 29 at LiveNation.com. Citi card members will have access to pre-sale tickets. Facebook fans will also have a pre-sale code and access to early seats.

International dates and cities haven’t been announced yet but she told fans to keep checking back to the site, since more information will be coming in the next two weeks.

Pink’s evolution and success as an artist can be traced back to the 90’s when she debuted her signature short hair and “pink” style.

[hr]

Zone Recording Studio specializes in audio recording, voice overs, editing and custom music, mixing and mastering, and much more.

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Chicago Blues Bash this week!

Blair Hardman — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 16:49:16 +0000

For anyone located in the windy city of Chicago, IL:

Thursday Sept. 27, 2012
5:30 to 7:30pm
Buddy Guy’s Legends
700 S. Wabash
Chicago, IL 60605

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Everything You Need To Be a Voiceactor, and One Thing You Don’t.

Blair Hardman — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 02:38:03 +0000

By Blair Hardman

Owner/engineer at Zone Recording Studio

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ItM7tv0hGs” rel=”0″]

This is not about getting an agent or a making a VO demo or marketing yourself. This is about you.
Well you need a mouth. You should have good control of it and it shouldn’t make any unnecessary noises like lip flaps, lisps, pops and whistles.
You need an ear. And the ear should enjoy listening to other voices. A musical ear helps because all sentences have a melody and different melodies and inflections convey different meanings.
You need lungs. Big lungs that take deep quiet diaphramatical breaths. Because when amateurs read scripts, they often take lots of little unnatural breaths.
You need a heart. Emotion is what makes a voiceover believable. It’s what moves people to give to a charity or motivates them to buy a new car.
You need arms. When you speak from the heart, your whole body is engaged. You gesture, and the moving of your arms affects the sound of your voice.
You need a mental soldering gun to rewire yourself. When we read, our eyes take in the words, they go to the brain, and straight out the mouth, bypassing the gut, the heart and the body. You need to learn to read the words, send them down through the body and back up to the mouth.
You need rhythm. Many people speed up and slow down when they read, or have little unnatural surges.
You need a life. Have you noticed how most teenagers end sentences on an up inflection, like a question? Is it because they don’t know the answers to life’s questions yet? Listen to someone who’s been through life changing experiences and can you hear it. Your life changes your voice. It gives it depth, and variety.
You need to forget elementary school. Reading aloud in front of a class was, for most people, a very tense situation. We developed stilted mannerisms; sing song inflections or monotone pitches, because we were so nervous.
You need an education, especially for narration and technical reads. You never know what subject you will be asked to speak about with authority.
I recently did a 30,000 word narration for Medtronic, the people who make the little tubes for your arteries. Medicine is a hobby of mine so words like neointimal hyperplasia, and myocardial infarction came easily.
You need to be an actor. But the challenges are different from being a stage actor because you can’t memorize your lines, nobody can see you, and you have to stand in one place.
You need to have a screw loose. Especially for character voices. You may need to come up with the voice of a Dr. Scholl’s shoe insert or a glass of milk or a water skiing possum.
You need stamina. Especially for audiobooks. I am expected to read 3 to 4 hours a day and sound the same at the end of the day as I did at the beginning.
You need lessons. And lots of practice. On a microphone. Learning voiceacting is like learning to play a musical instrument. And there are about as many fully employed voiceactors as there are football players in the NFL.
You need to not say “I’m Sorry” when you make a mistake during a recording. It takes you out of character. Recording at Zone Recording Studio means never having to say you’re sorry.
This sentence intentionally left blank . . .
. . . to remind us of the value of silence and the importance of spaces between words.
The one thing you don’t need to be a voiceactor is a great big voicey voice. Many scripts these days ask for a strong confident voice, but not “announcery”. This is the age of the “natural” voice. So now we can all get into the exciting fast paced world of voiceover.

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