We lost a great voice last week.

The ventriloquist Jimmy Nelson, whom you might remember as the voice of the doggie dummy Farfel from the vintage Nestle’s Quick commercials, died at age 90.

In the commercials, Nelson’s human dummy Jimmy O’Day sings the famous jingle: “N-E-S-T-L-E-S, Nestlé’s makes the very best,” and Farfel added, “Chaw-klit!” snapping his mouth shut with a distinctive clap at the final syllable.

Nelson and his dummies made over a hundred of those commercials between 1956-1966. The jingle became famous worldwide.We lost a great voice last week.

The ventriloquist Jimmy Nelson, whom you might remember as the voice of the doggie dummy Farfel from the vintage Nestle’s Quick commercials, died at age 90.

Nelson and his dummies made over a hundred of those commercials between 1956-1966. The jingle became famous worldwide.

And while those old commercials are charming, a lot has changed in advertising since then. The old-time announcer sound is long gone, replaced by a more natural, conversational sound.

Even though sounding like yourself in a voice over should be easy to do, many people struggle with getting the announcer-sound out of your voice.

In this week’s Inside Voice Over video training blog I’ve got some great tips to help you sound more conversational in all your voice overs.

Jimmy and Farfel

Jimmy Nelson, Danny and Humphrey sing Ragg Mop on the Ed Sullivan TV show in 1950.

The topic this week is how to sound more conversational doing a voice over so you don’t have that dreaded announcer sound. You want to sound like a real person. I’ve got a bunch of tips.

The first tip is to make sure you know who you are and who you’re talking to and you can really visualize that other person on the other side of the script. The next tip, and this is huge, is to imagine what their response to you would be. I call this the secret dialogue technique. So no matter what you say, how are they responding? Now you got to make this up and you can actually write those words in between the lines, but it’s almost as if you’re listening for their response as you read. That is a powerful technique that’s going to really make you sound natural.

The next tip is to work without headphones or only keep one ear on when you record. If you have to listen to a director, for example, that way you’re not listening to yourself, but you can put your focus outside yourself on that invisible other person that you’re talking to. And finally, discover the events in the script. So when you have a script, you know how it’s going to end. You know all of the points, but the other person doesn’t. So as you read along, discover it with them. Those are my tips for sounding more conversational. Try them out and let me know how you do.

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

PS. I’ll be coaching and mentoring a very small group of voice over beginners and emerging talent at my Mic To Money Bootcamp December 7-9, 2019. Learn my Perfect Performance techniques, the Mic To Money Marketing Framework and get a home studio Tech Check .Click or call: https://greatvoice.com/bootcamp-1 talent@greatvoice.com or 800-333-8108.