When it comes to getting started in voice over, first and foremost, it starts with desire, followed by commitment, followed by quite a bit of hourly and monetary investment. Take all that and put it with some talent, and you are well on your way. The best practice when looking for where to start is to read as much as you can and ask as many questions as you can before you ever spend any money on the business. There are several people out there who will be more than willing to answer your questions and share their knowledge with you free of charge and will be happy to help point you in the right direction. Though you must be cautious, for there are many that will try to charge you for that very same information. Learn more about what to look out for in the artilce: What is Voice Over Training? Profiting from Hopeful Talent?

When it comes to helping people, we've set up a voice over forum for beginners that is frequented by veteran voice over talent willing to help out in a pinch. We also have in-depth articles about voice over training as well as technical artilces about home voice over studio design. Our Voice Over Insider Interview series has interviews with some of the most accomplished voice over talent in the world. All of those resources along with all of the others you can access freely on the site should be put to use when it comes to figuring out if this business is for you.

If you find your self asking, "What is Voice Over?" That question is most easily answered this way: If you're watching T.V. and during the commercials you hear a voice, but can't see the person who's speaking, that's a voice over. If you are listening to the radio, and the station goes to a commercial break, every person you hear in the commercials is doing a voice over. The people who do voiceovers are called VO's or Voice Over Talent, usually a select breed of folk that practice long and hard at their craft.

Just think of every time you hear a voice; but don't see the person speaking. Think of the amount of times, and then think about the amount of money. It's a lot, and people are out there making it every day.

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What kind of talent do you need to do voice over?

It comes in a few different categories. This may sound like we're trying to be funny, but it's serious; you need to know how to read. Yes, your basic reading skills are a must, but you need to be able to read several different types manuscript (or Copy, as it's known in the business). You need to be able to pick up a newspaper and read it aloud, you need to be able to pick up a medical journal and read it aloud. Lets face it, you need to be able to pick up anything and be able to read it aloud.

Here's the kicker, you need to be able to do more than just read it. You need to be able to speak the words on the paper as if they were your own. This is one part of the talent many VO's spend countless hours training to learn how to do. Some of them learn how, and some of them don't. Therein lies one of the needed talents. You need to develop the ability to grab a piece of paper (that is sometimes handed to you minutes before you go into the studio), dissect it to find it's true message, and read it aloud as if the words were flowing from you. If you practice, and practice, and practice, and still don't develop the ability, then you might not have the talent...

Some of the other talents that certainly help are the ability to act, and be funny. A lot of people might think they are funny, but you need to be funny. Many of the commercials that are recorded today, whether they are for television or radio, have some aspect of comedy or comedic acting in them. Tandem spots (Tandem is more than one VO in the spot, a spot is a commercial) generally demand that the actors, or Voice Actors, be funny. How does one know if they possess any acting or comedic talent? Take some acting lessons. Or go out to an open mic night at a comedy club and do 7 minutes on stage. Trust us, if you think you are funny, one night at an open mic should answer that question. Your time is best spent getting professional training from a qualified acting coach for acting, and a voice over coach for learning voiceovers. A coach will generally know if you have what it takes to advance in either career.

The third and probably most important is a good voice. By good we mean clear, "listenable", articulate, and in some way unique. One of the biggest misconceptions is that you have to have some sort of dynamic, over-the-top high, or low voice to get into the business. Not true. What you need, are the abilities mentioned above and a sharp, concise, speaking ability. A very regional voice (as in having an accent) can hurt a lot more than it helps. A very heavy accent or inner city affect will most likely not get you very many calls If that's one of your voice characteristics, it's time to start working on getting rid of that accent. Talent is being able to turn it on or off. Don't loose it; just find a way to turn it on and off.

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What does it cost to get started in Voice Over?

Getting started in voice over doesn't have to be astronomically expensive, however, if you want the right coaching, the right demo, and the right studio, you can pay all sorts of fees.
Every aspect of this business costs money. What you get for that money differs widley. The best bang for your buck is 1 on 1 coaching. There is no other type of training that can match or surpass it. Many companies offer group sessions, phone training known as tele-classes, group seminars called boot camps, work shops, etc. Though some of them provide valid and at times valuable information, they will never be as effective as 1 on 1 coaching and you are well advised to steer clear of most of them.
Below are some figures you might encounters.

Coaching: $250 to $500 a month. Demo Production: $500.00 to $2500.00. Additional Studio Services: $45.00 to $150:00 per hour.

Coaching usually goes on for some time, months for a lot of people. Continue it as long as you can afford it. Demo fees are usually one-time fees. Some include duplication services, some do not. Other studio services only come around from time to time.... Also realize that there are startup costs when it comes to computers, editing software and studio equipment.

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How do I go about getting a demo made?

There are several people and studios all over the place that are capable of producing a good demo for you. What you're looking for when you begin your quest for a producer is:

Do they actually work in the field? Are they up front about all the details as far as cost, duplication, timeline for completion, materials to be used, copy, etc. How much of the production is the studio going to out-source i.e., are you actually talking to the person who is going to do the work? How long of a demo are they thinking of producing? How will your demo hold up to changing times? Will it still be relevant one, two, three years from now? Are they going to provide coaching and direction while recording the demo, or is this a "We record you, you decide." type of deal. (If it is, run away, fast.)

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Should I build my own Studio?

If all you wanted to do was practice reading copy, it is always good to get some sort of recording device to record yourself reading. Without having something to reference it is very hard to hear mistakes and other vocal anomalies that need to be worked on. You don't have to run right out and buy the best of everything to do this; just a simple digital recorder and a quality high impedance microphone will do the job. Radio Shack, MicroCenter and Office Depot sell some very reasonable products for this type of setup. What you are looking for in the practice recordings is the ability to hear yourself well. You should be able to accomplish this with this very modest setup. Just realize that this is for practice only, and wont get you very far at all when it comes to performing and getting paid.

From a training perspective, when you get into voice over, the next consideration, and one that is more recommended than the first, is to get yourself setup to record directly onto your computer. This can be a little tricky, and can get very expensive. But when done right you can move beyond a practice setup to one that would actually allow you to audition in the business. This requires a lot of equipment and even more money, but is needed to really begin to move forward. You can read more about what you will need in the Getting Started in Voice Over Checklist."

After you get a halfway decent setup for recording voiceover on your computer, you may notice while listening to your playback, that you hear the neighbors car on the tape, and the neighbors phone, and the kids getting off the bus out front, and you'll start to say "Man, I wish I could find a place that was more quiet to record." You might not realize it at that point, but you have just uttered a very expensive phrase. Quiet place to record= Studio.

Next thing you know you've commandeered the hallway closet, ran an extension cord, your tape deck, microphone, and a lamp into it, set up a small desk inside it, screwed a mattress to the door, taken all of the towels and stuffed them into the crack between the floor and the door, and sat back on your makeshift milk-crate stool, put on your headphones, turned on your mic, and sat quietly listening to yourself breath for a moment, in your new "Studio."

So now it's quiet, and you get that piece of Hershey's Chocolate Syrup copy you transcribed from the back of the bottle. You clear your throat, and in your best James Earl Jones, read your copy fifteen times, until you realize that you're dizzy because there isn't any air in your new "Studio".

So you grab your new voiceover tape and run to the home stereo, turn it up to 11, and press play. At first you say "Wow! Man that sounds good!" Then after a moment, you stop and say, "Wait a minute, it sounds like I'm reading in a closet." That would be because you are.

So you run to the Internet and start searching madly for a solution, even though you don't really know what you are looking for. You finally come across a web page for soundproofing, and it has the solution sitting right there. "Wow! Hey great! There's the solution to my prob..." and you stop short, because you just saw the price at the end of the sentence.

So now you are running around madly grabbing old blankets, comforters, pillows, carpet, and egg cartons. You nail and staple them all over the closet, grab your Hershey's copy, and go back in for another battle with carbon dioxide, only to find that now your studio only sounds like less of a closet. You run to the computer sweating, mad and frustrated because your career is on the line, you sit down, type Google into your browser, and just as you hit the enter button, you, my friend, are hooked.

The studio bug has bitten you.

The studio bug bites us all to some extent. It starts out like the story above, and leads all sorts of places. It can be fun, it can be exciting, and it WILL be expensive. Maybe a studio isn't the right choice for everyone. It takes quite a bit of technical experience to do it right. Doing it right should be your one and only goal if you decide to build a studio.

If you think a studio is for you, one thing you could use throughout the process is a partner. We can help you from the ground floor up when it comes to your studio concept, design, and construction. We can tell you what to buy, what not to buy, and how to make it all fit inside your budget. If you decide to "break ground" on your new home studio, you need to ask yourself one very important question first; "Am I going to do it right?"

If you have the time, budget, and patience, you will. We can be there to help you along the way. Information on MineWurx Consultation services can be found here...

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Are there voice over schools?

No.. Not really. You will find a few places that use the term "Voice Over School" or "Voice Over Academy" in ways that are supposed lend some credibility, but it's a facade really. There are no classromms that can teach this stuff and you aren't going to find a Professor of voice over. Think of them more as places that offer voice over training, or at least claim to. Whether they do or not is anyone's guess.

There are broadcasting schools that will lightly touch on voice over technique, and may have a few workshops dedicated to voice over application in radio, but there aren't long programs specific to it. If you are considering broadcast school as a way to get into voice over, think again. Voice over talent don't come from radio stations. See our article on Auditioning for Voice Actors here.

You will always see correspondence classes offered on the Internet and by telephone. They are usually done in a group method, in a hotel room or over the phone and seldom one-on-one. No matter what you do or buy into - just realize that these classes are usually introductory in nature, wont get you very far as a beginner talent, and ultimately won't serve much more than a little information (which you could probably find for free) and will leave you out in the cold most of the time when it comes to enhancing your career possibilities.

There are advanced workshops out there for advanced talent, and they are exactly that, for advanced talent. You shouldn't sign up for them or waste your time with them as a beginner. We offer online voice over training which is live, one-on-one training via the internet where you are connected with us and recieve your training in real time. It is the same high resolution voice over coaching we offer to in studio clients and is unlike any other available on the net. Please consider it before signing up for some weekend workshop or seminar.

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How much money will I make in Voiceover?

This is a very popular question... Let's see if I can address it like this, and we hope you don't find it too harsh. If you are looking to do voiceovers to make money, you're barking up the wrong tree and need to pursue another career. That is if you are looking to make money quickly. There is no "Get rich quick scheme" when it comes to voiceovers.

We get calls all the time from people who may be tired of their current occupation, and they figure "Ah, I guess I'll go give them voiceovers a try and see what I can make." WRONG... If you need money, this is the wrong choice. If you like money, then keep reading. A union talent can make upwards of $700 dollars an hour on the right job. Now bear in mind that those jobs don't come around every day, but they do come around. Non-union talents can plug away at $500 to $1000 a day. Those numbers are kind of pulled out of the air, but the right three jobs in a day can make for a great day.

I think the best way to answer this question is this. If you have some investment income and you want to invest it in yourself, and pursue this career, and are willing to put the work into it that is needed, this is probably the gig for you. If you just want to try to make a few bucks, there are a lot of other things you could be doing with your time and money. Voiceovers are for the committed. Not for fly by night earners.

On average most new voice over talent, who are trained and have a good demo, are still going to have to work at it for a while to really see any sizeable income from it.

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Where can I find available jobs?

This is certainly the one question we would all like to know the answer of. Every now and then we have been asked if we were hiring for voice over, or knew where someone could get a job in voice over. To this we've answered:"It doesn't really work like that." There are no "Jobs" in voice over like you would think of a job where there is an office, a water cooler, and people milling around. Voice over is a highly specialized performance art, which is practiced in private studios much like acting or theater, and in most markets, voice work is auditioned for much like acting jobs would be.

There are announcers in the business that may work in an office like environment, but that too is probably coming to an end. With out marketing yourself by getting your demo into the hands of the people who hire voice talent, you will find it quite difficult to find the jobs that do come up. Television and radio are mission critical operations with around the clock, 24/7 production going on. There are commercials and narration being recorded every day, and somewhere, someone is working in voice over. The trick is to get your demo heard by the right people, and then hopefully get you shot at an audition for one of the jobs....

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How do I market myself?

There are several approaches to marketing, which many people take. There are stories of voice talents mailing their demo to producers already cued up in a tape player. The producers were welcome to keep the tape player if they wanted, but to "please call" if they didn't want the player, and the talent would come pick it up. This seems brilliant. We would have been impressed.. Not only did it open opportunities for dialog, but also might have gotten him a literal "foot in the door" so he could further hand out demos or any other marketing material.. Seems cute, but we couldn't recommend it. It's expensive enough mailing out copies of your demo as it is. Some people mail their demo to everyone they can think of. The union provides lists of producers who hire voice talent. The shot gun method of scattering your tape to every known entity on the planet is not only expensive, its not that effective. Many of the people signed to the talent agreement to hire union talent, may have only signed it once to hire for one job. A lot of your demos will come back to you for bad addresses, some might make it to the right person, some if not a lot of them might get "tossed into the round file" never to be heard from again. So it is best to target yourself to specific clients. One method:

Calling a perspective client and asking them if they hire voice talent.If there answer is yes, asking if you can mail them a copy of your demo.If the answer is yes, mailing it and giving it a week to get there. Then calling back to ask if they have received it...

(and here is the key) Ask them nothing else.. Don't ask them to critique it. Don't ask if they like it. Don't ask them anything of the sort.. You don't want to put someone in an uncomfortable situation by forcing him or her into sharing their opinion with you. You might hear something you don't want to hear. Also, many of these tapes or CD's will sit in a wall for a long time before they are listened to. Though we don't hire voice talent, we get tapes from time to time and may not listen to them until a few months later.

After a while you can send a business card or promotional flyer to the same client who took your tape, just to let them know you are still there.. If the don't ever call you, than It can mean a few things.. Most likely, they haven't had a need for your voice. Or they didn't like you for one reason or another. There are a lot of people out there with really good voices, that just aren't appropriate for a certain type of spot and don't fit the roll. There are also a lot of people with good voices who lack the proper training and experience, who impatiently push themselves to put out a demo before they are ready. Producers easily pick this up and the tape will find its way to the trash. This would certainly not be a way to market yourself. Save your money. Get the right training. Cut your teeth in a very small market. Take lessons as long as you can afford them. Then, when you and your coach think you are ready. Cut your demo and begin to shop it around...

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What is the voice over demo process like and how long does it take?

This will vary from place to place. Some demos were cut and produced in a few hours, and sound like it. Some demos, made by very slick producers can have a great sound, and will take more time to get that sound. With digital editing so widely affordable these days, the time in post has been shaved quite a bit. We usually take about four hours on average to go through final copy selection and recording. Then depending on how busy it is, around a week to get the final master out. On the talent side of things you basically have to be prepared to spend an hour or two on each day (we usually do two sessions) on your feet reading with a lot of focus and intensity. It can get quite exhausting by the end if you're really fired up going into it. You just need to be prepared and realize that you need your happy face on.. A lot of people when they're doing it for the first time get nervous.. Though it's easy to say, there's no reason to be. The process is about you, not whether or not someone is judging you. Going into a demo session, let alone any session locked up tighter than a mountain bike on Broadway won't do anyone any good. Just relax. It'll all be fine.

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How long should my voice over demo be?

We cut a long form demo, and a demo short or New York Short, as we like to call them.

The long form demo is in the neighborhood of 2:45 to 3:00 and the short is 1:00 to 1:25 minutes in length. The ideal demo for people on the go is just under a minute.. Larger markets tend to not have time to listen to a long demo. But if they do have the time to really sit down and listen to a talent, we like to give them the option by putting both tracks on the same demo, with the short to run first.

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What should be on the voice over demo? Commercials? Narration? Both?

As far as the content of the scripts, they should be versatile and best display your individual talents. You need to avoid controversial material, or anything that might be considered unpleasant. If you have ability in both commercial and narration reading then by all means put them both on your demo. Don't just throw a different category on your demo in an attempt to pad or fill it. If you don't specialize in it, or haven't trained for it, just don't do it. Stick to what you are good at. You will be in competition with many of the top talents in the industry. In order to compete, stick to what you do best. Sorry for the sports analogy, but there is a reason the running back is a running back and not a wide receiver. He's a running back because that is what he excels at...

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Where can I get my CDs printed and duplicated?

We've used a local studio in the past that provides printing and duplication work.. Most of the time you can call around to any of the studios in your area and they'll be able to tell you.. There are many Internet sites, which you can find at Google under "CD duplication manufacturing". As always, shop prices and let the buyer beware. Some offer design service, some do not. And a few have utilities to assist you in doing your own design work. Some sites are geared to data duplication and printing and may not be the best choice, while others are geared towards musicians. These can be a better choice, but usually don't offer a discount on your run until you order a thousand or more. A thousand demo CDs is WAY too many...

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What kind of home studio equipment do I need to do voice over?

It depends on what you want to do in the industry. If you follow current trends in the industry, then a home studio is an absolute must. Does this mean you need a production studio like ours? No.. But you will need these basic items in order to work from home:

Mac or PC with a processor over 400 MHz, FTP software, 50 MB of server space, editing software, sound card capable of multi-track/full duplex operation, some sort of mixer or microphone preamp, a quality microphone, and a quiet place in which to do the recording. This setup will allow you to cut audio for phone systems and some other small productions. It wont get you set to work on larger, higher quality productions, where audio quality is more of a concern. To work in that arena, it takes a great deal more investment, space and material. Also many of the higher end productions are produced in pro studios, so you'll have to be available to go to those locations to record.

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What recording software should I buy?

There are quite a few out there. Many are more powerful than you will need for typical work. Most popular: Adobe Audition, Pro Tools Le (which comes with a product called M-box). Sony owns Sound Forge, which is a capable editor. Audition is probably the easiest to use when it comes to first timers. The opposite end of that spectrum would be ProTools, which might as well be written in Greek if you are not familiar with audio production. Each has its advantages and disadvantages...

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When I encode my audio, what is the best format?

Anytime you encode .wav or .aiff audio into any other type of format, chances are you are compressing the audio. Compression of audio in general terms means you are removing something from it in order to make it smaller. When you remove a single sample of audio, you begin to affect the sound quality of it. Your ears would never know the single sample was missing, but when you begin to remove hundreds of thousands or millions of them, the fidelity of the recorded sound begins to suffer.

This is exactly what you are doing when you take a .wav and compress it to an mp3. So why does everyone want mp3? Mp3 (short for Moving Picture Experts Group, Audio Layer III) was developed at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany. It is an encoding technology that in the simplest of terms, looks for the quietest portions of the sound path, and removes them, thereby removing bits that aren't integral to the over all production, enabling the audio to be compressed at a rate of 10:1 to 14:1, taking a 32 MB song and reducing it to 3 MB with little "noticeable" loss of fidelity. For the full treatment on the technology, try www.howstuffworks.com.

When you are mixing voice, sound effects and simple music tracks, not too many people are going to notice any difference. Just think of how many people are walking around with mp3 players these days. But through the right set of studio monitors, the loss is quite apparent. Also affecting the sound is the rate of compression. 320kbps 44,100Hz, being the highest rate available for mp3 compression, provides the least amount of compression (4.4:1) and therefore the least amount of loss and the best sounding audio. 20kbps 11025Hz being the lowest rate provides the most compression (70.6:1), squashing your audio into a little pile. If you compressed your tracks this much, they would have a post compression quality similar to the Bings and Bongs your computer makes when you click on icons.

The excepted standard for most transfer applications is 128kbps 44,100, though studios will ask for less compression (larger files and longer transfer times) in order to get better sound quality. The human voice needs nowhere near the amount of bandwidth as say an orchestra, so the need for a broad, high-resolution recording for commercial purposes just isn't there. Over all, a recording which has never been compressed will sound better than one that has, but every ear has it's own specifics and depending what the intended use of the audio is, some may be happy with the sound of most compressed audio...

Adobe Audition offers 3 different types of mp3 compression:

MP3 - Constant Bit rate. This is the standard form of mp3 encoding, which applies a constant bit rate across the encoded audio.

MP3 - Variable Bit rate. This is an algorithm, which applies a larger bit depth to more complex audio (music) and a smaller bit depth to less complex audio (voice).

MP3 Pro - An encoding algorithm that inserts a bit of information in the compressed audio which tells the codec on the decoding side to recreate the portion of audio which was lost during the compression process. Further reading at www.mp3pro.com

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What kind of Audio Player should I make my demos play in?

When you put your demos on your web site, you'll have a few options as far as media encoding when it comes to what player they can be listened to with. Our advice.. Don't put anything but mp3 files up. If you encode your audio to Real Player (.ram) or Windows Media (.wma), what you have done is made your demos somewhat proprietary in the sense that: If the listener doesn't have one of those players, they cant listen to your work without going out and down loading one. Then installing it on their machine only to have it take over all of their listening and audio preferences, and maybe making them mad. This in turn will make them not like you. Just put your demos up online in mp3 format. All the players play them.. End of story.

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What about E-mail? Do I need an E-mail program?

Some sort of contact management software is needed. More importantly, you are going to need an unlimited E-mail account. Many of the "hotbots, yahoos and cybermail" services will bounce large files if they are mailed to you. If a client wanted to send you some music to mix into spot, you are going to need a mail account that can handle it. If you have web space, most control panels will let you set the container limit for your inbox.

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I see FTP everywhere. What is it? Why do I need it?

FTP stands for "File Transfer Protocol". It is a utility that allows you to write files to a server, very quickly. Large audio files take forever to upload when you send them by E-mail, but with FTP, you can upload 90 MB files at rates near 388 to 412kbps. So it makes a big difference in speed. You might not NEED it, but if you hate to wait, and you don't want you clients to wait it's a must. Also, with most FTP programs, you can add and wipe data to and from a server with great speed. With some web based or HTML based FTP apps, you have to do things one at a time. You can transfer your whole hard drive at once to a server via FTP. Two, which come to mind, are Cute FTP and WSFtp.. We use WSFtp..

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