Audio tutorial transcript ▫︎ finding your voice(over)

My name is Dan Joyce. I am a former actor, current urologist. So I studied acting and going to bathroom performance arts at NYU Tisch school of the arts and studied acting musical theater, and then Shakespeare performance at the Royal academy of dramatic art in London. After college spent some time acting about five years, ended up in a Broadway play and then shortly thereafter decided I wanted to be a penis doctor. So that's, that's where I'm coming from.

What's some of the advice that you have given me over the years when I've asked you for help with readings.

Yeah. I should start by a little bit of a caveat. So, you know, acting is not voiceover acting. And so my training is an actual. Voiceover acting really depends on what you're doing. , if you listen to different types of podcasts, you will hear different types of things that work in those contexts.

So if you're listening to, , this American life IRA glass has a very particular cadence that keeps us audience interested, you know, hi, I'm Ira Glass. You're on the stand. This American. All my sentences go up at the end. And I'm very matter of fact about how I talk. That's like his thing and it works or like the daily, he's like I'm Michael Barbaro.

You're listening to the daily, all his sentences go down. And so they're all the same. And it's engaging because you're like, I'm getting the news. Like This is triggering my ear in a way that's familiar and also lets me know what I'm getting. And if you listen to the newscasters on TV too, they talk in a very different cadence than you and I are talking.

Right. Acting isn't about any of that. I mentioned that caveat because I think being a good voiceover podcaster depends on what you're doing. And I think what we've done in talks about the past is more kind of fiction and reading fiction. To me, I think is a lot more conducive to acting because you're trying to make that reading believable.

You want to immerse your listener in that world, and you're trying to make the words that are coming out of your mouth authentic and believable and spontaneous. And that's basically what acting is. So the goal is to be truthful and make it sound spontaneous and not like you're reading off of a page.

One of the things we talk about actually is thinking about podcasting in terms of character, maybe not quite in the same way you do in acting, but you know, when you interview somebody, what you choose to highlight.

About them as a character, both in the way you ask questions and what you end up, keeping her cutting out in the interview. For example, I had a woman that I interviewed recently who had a lot of Spanglish, you know, she's Venezuelan American, and I intentionally kept those moments in there because it's this little insight into her as a character in her very particular way of talking.

You could argue that really any art is try and to solve the human condition. And in order to do that, you're trying to understand people's motivations and why they do what they do in life. So I agree. , the key to acting and making it being true and authentic is that you want to be in the moment.

So you're, not focused on anything, but being present there and available. And so you have to get your mind off of the words somehow. And there are a couple of different techniques there are a bajillion different approaches to how to act and how people do it, but the core, teachings all come from Stanislavski who then informed five or so different American teachers, in the Yiddish theater primarily.

Basically informed all of acting education in the U S right now. So a lot of it comes from that, but, the main thing is, is that when we talk in life, we talk in thoughts. We don't talk in sentences. So even what I just said was about three or four sentences long, but it all had one thought I was trying to convey one thought to you. And sometimes that thought ends in the middle of a sentence. Uh, just gave up on that, that I can go to something else. Now, you know, now I'm in a different thought than I was two seconds ago.

So that's step number one is to, go through your script or whatever it may be and break it up into thoughts. And the way we used to do that was we put little lines in the wording where we thought. Ended and the other began, the next thing is to understand why you're saying that thought.

every thought has a motivation and that motivation, isn't something that has anything to do with you. It has to do with whoever you're engaging with. So I'm talking to you right now, but there's something specific I want from you in everything. And so we call those actions in acting.

And so with every thought there's an accompanying action and those actions, the more active they are the better your acting is. So, you know, describing my thought to somebody is not a good action. That's Sort of redundant and not helpful, but pleading with someone is a very useful action. And that informs how you say anything ?

if you ask me how I'm doing, let's say, and I say, I'm fine. That was more, I was trying to reassure you How about, I want to make you go away. You asked me how I'm doing. I can say I'm fine. that's a totally different meaning of the same thought depending on what you want from the other person.

if you're thinking about those two things, it's pretty impossible to think about the actual text, because you're preoccupied with doing something in the moment that keeps you authentic. Those two things, in acting really make the audience believes your character, which is very important in voiceover though.

I think it really makes you interesting. you know, A lot of people when they read and if you just listen to this, you'll hear it. But when people read, they get into habits and it's because they're focusing on words and they're not. Being real. And so if you pull up something here, I think this is about bladder cancer, but I'll just read the way people read. So

Dr. Cannon began by emphasizing the three key components of trimodal therapy as practice to date. You'll notice that it was very kind of monotone and the end of the sentence, my inflection. That gets like really, really, really boring if you do that over and over and over and over again, which is how most people read.

If you listen to our conversation right now, even just in what I just said, my voice is all over the place. It goes low, it goes high. It goes different inflections. Shakespeare actually was smart to this and wrote an Arabic pentameter because it forces your voice to do that. And actually the British are really good at speaking in a way that is interesting because I think of Shakespeare.

So I am a contaminate. It makes you end on the upstroke of your intonation. So you can't do what I just did. And in the sentence down, you have to end the sentence. And everything you say is leading to something else. And, so you have that kind of like hanging um, the word. I mentioned all of that because there are different ways to think about what you're doing You can get out of the whole acting thought action. Although I think that's important to always do, but also just being in mind of how your. Allowing your voice to be natural also makes it

interesting.

Are you familiar with the term up speak?

Yeah. You know, up speak to me is more of like a vocal habit. what I just did is more of a vocal habit. You're waiting for what I'm saying next. Right? So the inflection of how you shape your thoughts. Can keep people on the edge of their seat and really make you want to hear what it is you have to say next.

So you can use that to keep people engaged is my point. Whereas I think up speak is more like things people do to try to make themselves sound a certain way. So even those vocal habits. Aren't bad. If they're a choice, if you're doing it unwittingly, it's probably going to be bad because it's a habit that you don't have control over. But if you use it as a choice, then it can be something very powerful and informing about who you are and what you want from others.

I want to shift gears a little bit for a minute and ask you about breath support.

I find for myself when I'm recording voiceover, that if I'm having a section, maybe where I find my. Gravitating toward a lot of vocal fry. I mean, I just did it right. You could hear it, but if I'm finding that a certain sentence seems to kind of bring me to that vocal fry , place, almost always the answer I found is more breast support. Like If I take a big belly breath you know, really speak with diaphragm support, almost always I can get rid of whatever that little thing is that my voice is going to, that I don't want it to do in that moment.

What have you learned about breast support? Why is it important? What can it do for you and how do people improve it? Whether or not this is something they're familiar with.

or it's brand new to them.

I would say probably 50% of my acting classes and I'm talking straight acting so no singing or dedicated to voice. Classes and those voice classes were primarily about breast support and, you know, diction and stuff like that too, but more breast support. And there's countless number of books dedicated to voice and speech in acting.

So it's not an easy answer to, solve. I would say. When you're nervous, most people breathe shallow. And so being aware of that is really important. And then also going back to speaking thoughts, it's really hard not to breathe and speak a thought. If you know what you're going to say in a thought your body automatically takes the breath, it needs to finish that thought.

And so just by. Taking into account the entire thought you're, forcing your body to breathe more and breathe appropriately. I think you can get through a thought and not breathe as well. So you still have to be mindful of it. And it's, a skill and a habit. I think you develop over time, the more you do it, but.

When you're talking in life, you never get out of breath. Right. And that's because you know what you're going to say, and you know what you need to get through to the ending . the whole thought speaking is kind of supportive. One thing you can do is actually take a class, take a voice and speech class for actors .

And you won't even have to do it religiously going once would probably be enough to give you an idea of the kind of things you need to do. But you know, actors warm up their voice. They warm up their voice by going through ranges in their voice. By sustaining open vowels for a long period of time. a lot of voice training is that it starting with simple things that get your diaphragm engaged to sustain breath.

We used to lay on the floor and go uh, and do that until you couldn't do it anymore. And that would be how you got your diaphragm engaged and then opening. Henry the fifth would be a passage that we would all then recite and you'd recite it in thoughts. And you'd be very mindful about addiction and breast support.

It wasn't about acting at all. But that said, I mean, even in those classes, I do those exercises and I'm not sure, like, hope I got better, but it's still really hard. It's not something you really improve that quickly. And it's not something you improve at easily on your own.

And some people are gifted. Some people have great voices. And if you have a great voice, you should realize that and use it to your advantage. There's nothing you can do to get those voices. You have to acknowledge that. That's okay. It doesn't mean you're not interesting. It just means you have to find different.

I was at a panel one time with a bunch of voice actors. Several of them were voices that had been in the toy story movies. And I remember one of them. Making some comment about IRA, glass, how they like didn't think that he had a great voice. And I mean, it was interesting because to me I'm like, oh, I have a glass.

I love Irish glass. I love his voice. But I think the point they were making is you can be a great podcast or, and not have this like naturally amazing voice. For

sure. That's why I started mentioning those two guys. Is that like Michael Barbaro? He does everything wrong that you teach somebody to do when you're talking about.

And nobody cares. Nobody cares because they're not really listening to the daily to listen to Michael Barbaro. They hear him and they recognize that, oh, I'm listening to the right thing. And that's all they need. Like they don't need anybody engaging them with their vocal talents. Whereas if you listened to Harry Potter, audio book,

that guy is awesome because he does all the things you're supposed to do and he keeps you engaged and he has characters that he is developed. He speaks in thoughts. He does everything. you'd want somebody reading fiction to do

Overall, the best thing you can do is start listening to people and really hearing what they're doing.

It's always shocking to me how somebody will watch a movie and just say that's a good movie. Without thinking about things, like why did somebody write that movie? Or why did Daniel Day Lewis decide to have a mustache in that movie? Or why did this person walk in this certain way?

We were just watching the special on Hulu about Russia and Ukraine. And if you watch Putin walk, it's fascinating. Like he intentionally walks that way. I guarantee it as everybody does everybody on some level chooses to do things and everything's a choice. And so if you start picking up on these things, you can really tell a lot about.

who people are, what they want. And also you can use that to inform your own work.

It goes a little bit to what you're trying to accomplish in your podcast.

If you want a voice that is reliable and consistent, and that people come to expecting like IRA glass,

it's not anything you would teach somebody, but something about it is intelligent and engaging in a way that is consistent, reliable. And so it's easy to like, but you can't teach somebody to be IRA glass. And so maybe, that's the takeaway is that figure out what it is you do uniquely and that people like, and you can harness that, but I wouldn't give up on the techniques that you can use to really keep people engaged and listening and sounding truthful and authentic.

In addition to that, and I'd be surprised if Ira Glass, even those people who have those podcasts voice, aren't doing that on some level. Also, they're trying to keep it interesting, even though they have . Voice people just happen to like,

And I think, realizing that everything's a choice and understanding that you can listen to somebody who's a terrible speaker.

And try to understand why they're terrible speaker and probably learn just as much from that as anything I'm saying. speakers are everywhere and just listen to a few Ted talks and you'll see a bajillion different ways people engage their audience, and none of those are necessarily wrong.

You can not have any training and just naturally do some of those things and keep people engaged. But most of the time, I think people are pretty intentional about it, who are good at it in make it look effortless and like they're not making choices. And then they're not doing all the hard work behind the scenes, but in reality, they probably.