Delivery Issues

I was recording myself telling some dad jokes as a test of my mic setup and making sure I had it optimized for recording. I’m going to be recording a LOT of VO (voice over) for next year’s projects.

Listening to myself was awful. In the beginning, I was going full announcer/radio voice, which sounded sort of artificial and actually a bit too polished. I’ve done a little VO for some instructional videos, and that voice was right for it, but for a podcast, and for other things, I needed to dial it back a bit and concentrate on the appropriate rhythm and tone.

To an extent, I realized that even when I’m just speaking as myself, I need to think of myself as playing a character. For each type of content, I need to create one or more characters. Announcer Greg I have down, but audiobook Greg? Casual video Greg? It occurs to me that these are different tones, different pitches, different cadences. Part of it, I think, is that when I lean in over a mic that’s 6 inches below my mouth and behind my keyboard, I’m craning my neck and I’m doing other things that tell my body “this is how you talk when you’re posed like this.”

Because I did radio in college, because I’ve done stand-up and improv, because I’ve done those instructional videos, and because I did a number of webinars and streams for Amazon, I thought “I’ve got this.” Drawing cartoons would require a lot of learning and work. Writing and producing music would require a lot of learning and work. Creating animated shorts would require a lot of learning and work. But voice acting? No problem.

Yes. Problem. Do I believe I have the ability to dial those in? Yes. Do I believe it will take some work? Also yes. Do I believe I’ve got a better head start on this than other skills? Yes, again.

But that’s the interesting part of this adventure and almost any of my grand ideas… it’s always harder than I thought it would be. So, instead of recording voiceovers this week, I’ll be studying voice acting to level up my technique.

No battle plan survives its first encounter with the enemy. Sadly, the enemy who changes my battle plans most often is a lady known as Reality.

Still, I’m here for it, and hoping to debut some of that voiceover work in February.