If you’ve been playing around with a microphone listening to the sound of your voice, you might feel that something’s not quite right with the way you’re reading the script.

Your recorded voice doesn’t sound at all like the voice you thought you were hearing inside your head and this can be quite disconcerting.

For example, you may think your voice sounds nasal, whiny, younger, older or just plain not like yourself. Seem familiar?

This, my friend, is the disparity phenomenon.

It happens because you’ve spent your whole life listening to your voice inside your head where the sound is distorted by the bones of your skull. Your recorded voice doesn’t have the same distortion so that’s why it sounds so different.

It would be one thing if you liked the sound of your recorded voice.

Problem is, many beginners don’t. They start picking their voice apart like an insecure teenager scrutinizing their body and this is not at all good for your voice acting or your self-confidence.

So what do you do? It’s easy. You turn to my Perfect Performance voice acting method to get yourself back on track.

I’ll do a quick run through of my method for you in this week’s Inside Voice Over video training blog. Watch the short video here and then be sure to leave me a comment. I always love to hear what’s on your mind.

We’re going to talk this week about the four pillars of voice over success. In fact, this is the start of a four week series. So let’s get going with pillar number one. It all starts, of course, with your performance skills, and let’s break it down because that first pillar actually has three parts. The first part is relationship. You see, this is where people get hung up, right from the start. When they begin to do voice overs, what are they listening to? Their own voice. They’re playing to themselves. They’re creating a feedback loop. So the first pillar of voice over success is to completely get yourself out of the picture. It’s relationship. Who are you talking to? Who’s that one person? Very specific. You should know them so intimately. You should smell their cologne and you should be able to tell me their name, what they look like, all of that stuff. Then you need to figure out who am I in relationship to that person. Am I a friend? Am I a professional that they’re talking to?

The next piece of the pillar. The second part is where are we when we’re having this conversation? The conversation, of course, is in the copy, the story that you’re telling about the product or service that you’re advertising. Where are you? Am I in the bedroom? Am I out on the street? Am I in a store? Am I inside that person’s head? That’s valid too. And then finally, the third piece of the pillar is what we call the moment before or the mumble in. Why are we even having this conversation about this product or service in the first place? You need to make that up so that the first line of the script, the first word you say is actually a continuation of a story that you’ve made up, a reason why you’re even having this conversation with me. I hope that makes sense. Once you nail this, you’re going to be well on your way to performing good voice over. And I’m Susan Berkley. We’ll have the second piece of the pillar next week.

Watch this week’s short training video Here Now

After you watch the video be sure to leave a comment. I always love to hear from you so I can support you as you grow your voice over career.

To your voice over success,

Susan Berkley
Founder, The Great Voice Company

P.S. Ready to get started? The first step is a professional voice consultation with our talent advisor. He’ll listen to you read some scripts and do a thorough assessment of your baseline potential with specific recommendations about where to go from here. To take the first step, click here now