Tuesday VO Tech Tip: Performance Thoughts – De-Genericize

Starting back when I wired up my first Heathkit receiver, voices coming in over the airwaves held a deep fascination. Between that and various subsequent devices over the years, I listened to a lot of radio growing up. We had many great regional stations at a time when music was going a myriad of different directions, curated and punctuated by an impressive array of hosts who brought their singular style and voice to the showxs. They were storytellers, arbiters of taste, prospectors for the new sounds that took effort to find. They knew their stuff and seemed to have a relationship with those of us listening.

Alongside those trailblazers toiled a more generic set of voices, leaning into the style but not the substance of their work. That gave rise to a caricature which stays with us to this day – the dreaded “announcer/DJ” approach which sounds overtly fake, possibly put on, and definitely more tone than content. There’s just that sound we all recognize when we hear it, and like a brisk rattle when we’re out hiking, we intuitively know to stay away from it.

As most new voice actors hear in their first workshop, that overly-hyped and stylized sound is just not what producers or agents are looking for these days. The very recognizable aspect of an “announcery” read makes it a clear approach to avoid.

Technically, that quality of sound is achieved by working close to the microphone, emphasizing the proximity effect, combined with significant dynamic compression to push the voice forward by limiting the dynamic range and boosting the volume. That’s one of the main reasons why I encourage folks to be careful with those tools. It’s easy to lean into them a bit too much and distract listener’s focus. We hear the music more than the message.

For the past few years, project specs have begun encouraging us not to “sound like a voice actor…” Which always strikes me as kind of odd, since that’s who they are hiring. Regardless, that request points to another listener perception which has grown over the years. Just as the “announcery” moniker is the generic version of a radio voice, maybe we can think of “sounding like a voice actor” as the generic approach to what we do.

The challenge to us, then, is to be more specific. Rely less upon imitative approaches. Bring our own distinct perspective when we step behind the microphone. De-genericize our choices and continue to refine our uniqueness.

Have you tested your studio’s audio quality to make sure it meets professional standards? For a free review of your vocal recordings, please use the upload tool on my Audio Review page.

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