Voiceover: We Are Session Players – Tuesday VO Tech Tip

Voice actors often try to bring a unique, personal sound to their audio. I regularly get asked about boutique preamps and processing tricks to make audio stand out. While there may be an appropriate time to do so, once we can reliably deliver audio at a usable quality level, those additional sonic accents may be a less worthwhile goal. 

The more specifically we tune our tone with electronics or effects, the more likely it will call attention to itself. The more the tone calls attention to itself, it will draw focus away from the story or the universe in which it exists. 

Taking the “session player” approach – serve the project

It might be helpful to take an idea from working session musicians. To work on a variety of projects, a session musician must fit within the parameters of their project.

Their key skill in the studio is bringing the right balance of tone and inspiration to the session. They may be more of a background player in one instance, while another may call for them to be a driving force in the musical narrative. This is especially true for the sonic palette they choose to use.

This presents two potentially conflicting ideas:

• The first is that we need to “have a unique sound”
• The second is that we frequently need to “fit into the mix”

That suggests there is always a bit of a balance to be found between those two ideas. Do we actually know which of these are more important to any given client?

There’s unlikely to be a consistent answer. These two forces will tend to compete with one another. 

Our tasks as voice actors delivering audio to a client

Delivering a final production audio certainly requires us to be more attentive to creating a more polished result. In that case, we’re likely supplying the completed end product to our clients. They will generally drop it into their project (or we will upload it in the case of ACX projects) without further enhancements. 

With other types of projects, the task is to provide a clean, consistent, yet otherwise unpolished recording of our performance. That pushes us closer to the Hippocratic ideal of “First, do no harm…” In our case, that means little background noise, no reflections, and conservative recording levels will cover us. 

Quality sound from your voiceover recording setup is the foundation

Those intrinsically build on one another. Great sound always builds on a solid foundation of space, mic technique, and Input Gain awareness. How much polishing we might be required to do relies upon the needs of our client. If we don’t understand that, it’s impossible to know exactly what we’re supposed to deliver. I’ve mentioned this idea before and it reinforces the notion that we’re part of a larger process. 

There are many times that a souped-up, fully produced sound is absolutely the wrong approach. The less we do to our audio, the more options we allow for the person who will work with it next. 

That takes pressure off of us to invest in made-to-order preamps and ridiculously expensive microphones. Certainly, projects exist where that does matter. While it might limit the types of projects you can accept during any given evolution of your home studio, that’s something to build toward, not solve before you submit even your first audition. As long as the end result is usable in terms of what the client expects, then you’ve covered your requirements. Sometimes, that’s just a brilliant clean, raw take.

All of these ideas reinforce the need to cultivate a variety of discrete skills as a voice actor. Though we rarely need all of them at the same time, at least some benefit us in each VO session. Ultimately, we are running our own creative services business, and when we’re able to solve challenges for our clients, we give them another reason to work with us.

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