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What makes a person sit up and take notice of a vocal talent? Does the voice performer touch your senses in a way that makes you want to pay attention? Tune in further? Makes you laugh? Calm down? Get excited?

What do you need for your project or product? “You’ll know it when you hear it.” they say.
What makes a voice stand out for you? Is it a smooth sound? A fabulous creature sound for animation? What’s needed for “character voices “ can be very different from a “commercial choice” for example.

These are some of the questions program directors, producers and executives are asking in the final stage of development when it’s time to record!

Auditions can be time consuming in searching for that talent to match your imagined sound. What can we do as voice performers to help you make your life smoother and simplify the process?

Training and experience is an essential part of any person’s profession. Being the ultimate expert in our fields carries weight. Maybe you can you trust a newcomer. Sometimes you have to take a leap. If you hear what you want, it isn’t always lifetime of experience that serves your project. We all started somewhere.

I was given a boost as a young performer learning dubbing animation from a one of a kind director, Mr Tim Reid. He allowed me to sit in on a session for a cartoon that was being dubbed from Spanish to English and only after two sessions of practice gifted me a role. I have no idea what inspired him to help me besides the fact he had a heart of gold, but it changed my life. From then on, I kept learning and growing building my confidence and then ecorded demos to launch into commercial work, animation (my true childhood passion) and narration and more recently in in the last 10 years, video games.

Somehow somewhere along the line I managed to have many people step up for me and take a chance and slowly but surely that has helped me continue to blossom into a multi-union card carrying voice performer. A life long dream that started when I was 3.

Listening is an incredible feature of our fine tuned bodies. My ears and my voice work together in tandem for projects to create characters, accents and affectations. I have always had a focused sense of listening. It was and is a big part of discovery of being human.

So being a keen listener is a talent high on my list of priorities to becoming a voice performer as well as hiring a voice performer. If you’re casting a talent, what do your ears tell you? Do you hear confidence in the voice? Sensitively you require for a sweet little children’s show or a robust sound for an add for Dodge Ram? You know what you want and if you are looking for something specific, it’s key listening senses and go with your gut, the second brain.

You have a wonderful gift to give, casting a voice talent as much as the voice talent has a gift for you with their voice. What wonderful exchange we can all be together in this community of the of sound voice world.

I’m listening, what would you like to add in the comments? How can we help each other?

The time had come for us to do our first contest and we wanted it to be special. So, we came up with a concept and partnered with VOStudioTech founder, George Whittam and Michael Deming of Charter Oak Acoustics to create the VO Buzz Weekly Voice Over Star Video Contest. Charter Oak so generously donated their top-of-the-line S700 Studio Microphone as the grand prize, sweet!

We received video promos about VO Buzz Weekly from all of over the United States and Canada, challenging voice actors to showcase their vocal abilities and creativity in just 30 seconds. They did not disappoint and rallied their networks to vote for them daily for 30 days with the top three contestants making it to the VO VIP Judges’ panel. Thousands voted and the top three vote getters were named: Joselyn Beltz, Mark Chen and Dawn Ford & Wyatt Bowen.

The all-star VO judges, Joe Cipriano, Grey DeLisle, Jess Harnell, Ginny McSwain and Nancy Wolfson deliberated and named the Canadian mother/son team of Dawn Ford and Wyatt Bowen the winners! Needless to say, they were ecstatic to learn they had won and promised us they would put their new microphone to good use. Congratulations to Dawn and Wyatt, they did such a great job and we’re so happy for them!

We want to express our gratitude to everyone who entered the contest and assure you there will be many more contest opportunities in the future with more amazing prizes to win. Stay tuned and thank you for getting BUZZ-ed with us!

Posted by: VO Buzz Weekly

How can I get started in the world of voice acting?

Thanks so much for watching some of the many characters I’ve created.
It takes a village to raise a performer and I’ve been graced with a village of characters to build my career.

So many wonderful actors and performers ask me what do we have to do to make a portfolio to become a working voice over artist? I respond with you already are if you are asking this question. It starts with a natural pull or desire to play and celebrate all that can be created from the ground up with body mind and soul.

Voice performers play with a multi-faceted pallet of tools that starts with a simple desire or curiosity that is like a magic carpet ride through the world of ‘play’. Improvisation is an excellent place to broaden your horizon. Most high schools offer it, mine did. John Rennie High School. That class saved me in that it was a place of creativity amidst the book learning of the rest of my day. I couldn’t wait for improv class, it was almost as good as recess maybe better. Improv was fun, freeing and offered a doorway into expanding my awareness. The first rule of improv: receive the offer! It’s called “Yes Let’s”. Whenever your partner or teammates on stage offer you a suggestion, you take it. “No” blocks and ends the creative juices from flowing. So you always have to say ‘YES’! Say yes to play, fun and the imagination.

I highly recommend anyone to take an Improv class at your local improv school, many are online now and easily accessible. These classes help all ages to dive out of their comfort zone and explore characters and situations in the land of imagination. It frees us up to be bigger than life in a sense. Gets us past our inhibitions and thinking outside the box.

Voice performing is like taking all that you learned on a classroom stage and being able to stand still in front of a microphone and deliver the message with out budging. Only minimal movement is allowed in front of the mic. So you go to improv, or theatre school or any acting training to sponge up what you can to be as free as you can. That gold then gets melted down into your cellular memory so that when you approach microphone you can be so still as to not ruffle your jean shirt and make noise, but can manipulate your vocal instrument to carry characters on a magic carpet ride to the listener.

The best way to begin voice acting is to begin. Take classes, read children’s books aloud, to your pets or plants or children if they let you. Record yourself on your cellphone listen back what do you hear? Anything you would do differently the next time you read? Volunteer at a community theatre or a library to read to children. Reading to children on line is also growing in popularity.

Then keep going, there is lots to discover in the world of voice. Just put one foot in front of the other, the next step will appear. More tips to follow in more blogposts to come. For now try a couple of tongue twisters. Each one ten times in a row!

A noisy noise annoys an oyster. Moose knotting much mush, Unique New York

For your voice and joy,
DawnFordVO