Professional musicians can teach us a lot about how to do better voice overs. Guitarists, for example, study the greats by picking a song, listening to it over and over, singing it with and without the music, figuring it out on the guitar, writing it down in their...

Egads! What's that slurping noise? Have you ever listened to a recording of your voice and been bothered by the sound of your breathing? Those loud, annoying breaths have no place in a professional voice over and they have to go. You can mute and edit the breaths out...

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:...

Ever gotten laryngitis? In voice over, it's game over. The first thing you should do is see your doctor to make sure it's nothing serious. They'll probably tell you to head home, drink lots of fluids and stop talking for a day or so. Lots of things can make you...

Last month my boyfriend Richard and I took a somewhat impromptu 6-day trip to Paris. We swore we'd pack light and I'm proud to say we pulled it off-just a small carry-on and a backpack for each of us. We had an incredible time. What a pleasure to cruise through...

Back seat of a car. Under a comforter. In the closet. Sounds like a set up for the fulfillment of teenage lust, doesn't it. (7 minutes in heaven anyone?) But no, it's a lot less thrilling than that. These are just a few of the many cramped, isolated places where voice...

I love tea. How about you? I learned the hard way that certain teas and voice over don't mix. Black tea? The tannic acid in a good strong 'cuppa will close your throat like drinking sand. Add milk and that blobby green monster from the Mucinex commercials will take up...

Back when "Daydream Believer" was playing on every scratchy-sounding car radio, my parents gave me the songbook of The Monkees Greatest Hits and an upright piano to go along with it. They also hired a piano teacher with bad breath and a penchant for digging a pencil...

It's kind of a Catch-22. To get that rich, warm voice over voice everybody wants you have to stay relaxed… letting the tension flow from your body, your jaw like gauze, the muscles of your face like soft, malleable clay. But how can you stay relaxed if your new voice...

Ever hear the phrase "made by the loving hands of home?" People say it with a sarcastic twinge to refer to homemade items that are less than professional -like those ever-so-slightly lopsided business cards that are so easy to design on your home computer. Hey, I'm...