BOSS Voces: Singing and VO

VO BOSS

Have you ever tried singing your audition copy? Anne & Pilar do! This week, your hosts will teach you how to let go in the booth and approach scripts using a musical edge. All copy has a distinct flow and requires proper pacing, a distinct rhythm, and hints of uniqueness that keep listeners interested. Get ready to listen, sing, and most importantly, break down copy like a #VOBOSS!

More at: https://voboss.com/singing-and-vo

Transcript

>> It’s time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry’s top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let’s welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.

Pilar: Hola, BOSS Voces. Bienvenidos al podcast con Anne Ganguzza y Pilar Uribe.

Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, along with a very special guest cohost Pilar Uribe. Hey, Pilar.

[Pilar humming]

Anne: Hey, I recognize that. Hey, is that this song? [song playing] Ugh, Pilar, I love, love, love this song. And you know what? Even if I didn't know what it meant, like, I feel like the title just says it all, "Attacks of Happiness." Like honestly, like that's just a joyful, happy song. You are so multi-talented -- again, I say the triple, quadruple, multilevel threat. I think there's a lot to be said about singing and musicality in voiceover. And I'd love to chat with you about that today.

Pilar: Yeah, it's funny because a lot of people think that singing and acting aren't connected or they say, oh, I can't sing. You don't have to be a singer to have a sense of musicality and incorporate that into your work.

Anne: Or a musician. We'll just say musician, right? I think there's so many parallels in voiceover.

Pilar: Absolutely. Because the thing is is that when you're given a script, whether it's 30 seconds, or it's, you know, an audiobook, or it's 10 pages of e-learning there's beats and there's rhythm to it.

Anne: Absolutely.

Pilar: You have to find that, you have to find the musicality of whatever it is that you're talking about.

Anne: Absolutely.

Pilar: And so it really doesn't matter what the, what the length is. You need to break it down and create beats and find the beats and find where there are the parts where you can slow down and speed up.

Anne: And the rhythm.

Pilar: And the tonality of it.

Anne: Well, you know, what's so interesting, and I teach conversational melody to my students, and what's so interesting -- yeah, what's so interesting --

Pilar: Oh, talk about that, that's so cool.

Anne: -- we don't -- thank you -- we don't ever really listen to our own conversation and break it down into melody, but all the time we're getting specs that say conversational or talk to us like it's your best friend. Right? And so, because we don't think about what we sound like melodically when we're talking conversationally, over the years, I've broken it down technically. But again, you can't spend too much time thinking about the technicality of it, but just know that we're organically thinking about what we're saying, right?

So that has everything to do with the pacing and the rhythm of how we talk, because I'm thinking of things to say in my brain. And then they come out my mouth, and when that happens, I'm thinking, okay, now I know what I'm going to say. Right? So I'm thinking, here's my rhythm and my length of what I'm going to say. And then I know what I'm saying. And ultimately, when it comes to important words that I want you to hear, I'm basically making those whole notes or holding the notes longer. So I really want you to listen to this. So I've really like emphasized that. And so that becomes part of a melody. It becomes part of music. If you read music, think of it as your whole note, and all the words that lead up to the important word as your half notes, your 16th notes, your 8th notes, whatever that is.

And then you also need to think about like, phrasing, right? Because I don't breathe in the middle of what I'm saying to you. I don't do this and then breathe and chop my phrases like this. I do this. I just -- all my words are kind of flowing along, and I'm creating a phrase or a thought or an idea in one breath. So it's similar to singing, right, and singing phrases because you don't stop and breathe in the middle of them all. You basically have one breath and you're like, hey, this is what I want to say to you. You're not going to go, hey, this is what I want to say to you. It's no, it's, it's really very different.

And I think what people might tend to not think about is when you're being conversational and believable, it's all about the pacing, all about the rhythm and the pacing, which makes it more believable. And if you're too consistent in anything that you do, right, in your melody, in your beat, in your rhythm, it becomes like white noise. And so that's where people tune you out, right? It becomes like a metronome.

Pilar: Yup.

Anne: And now I've heard that enough. And so I tune you out. So I think that rhythm and the melody is so, so important to the musicality. And like you were saying, I mean, it's almost like with voiceover, it is a song. Your script is a song.

Pilar: I love that you teach that. I think that that's awesome. And for those VO BOSSes who think, I don't know how to carry a tune, and I don't know about beats, if you've ever sat in a restaurant or a bar and you've tapped your foot to something, or you've been watching television and you're kind of like, you get into it, you're holding the beat. You are carrying the beat in your feet. So it's part of us. Anytime we hear music and any time something strikes us, and we, we start moving our shoulders, let's say, or we start moving our bodies or just our torsos, we are holding rhythm.

Anne: Oh yeah. Rhythm and energy.

Pilar: Yeah. Rhythm and energy, absolutely. So when you are looking at a script, let's say a 30-second script, you have to figure out where that is. And by musicality, doesn't mean that I'm going to be talking like this. I'm no, it's not about --

Anne: And you don't want to be sing-song either.

Pilar: No, absolutely not.

Anne: Right? Exactly.

Pilar: But there is a rhythm. You know, if you listen to like a lot of the times, I, I love to listen to the Superbowl commercials, but I close my eyes, or I will look at a commercial and I'll turn the sound off because you will see the rhythm in the movement, as well as in the vocal quality of it. There's a very specific rhythm to certain products. And they're very, very aware of this. So as voice actors, we have to become aware of it as well, so we're not, as you said before, you know, we're not the same all the way through. Because it's really easy to get into that flow. And you're like, oh, this is really great. I'm in the flow. So I'm just going to keep talking the same way. And it's like, mm-mm, that's not the way we talk in real life.

Anne: Right, right. But I love how you brought up that there's to, any particular script or any particular commercial, if you listen, there's a musicality. And then there's something that they call sonic branding. Right? [McDonald's jingle] you know, that kind of thing, or "we got the meats, "that kind of thing where it becomes part of the brand, that melody, but you want your melody when you're voicing something to be something that draws the listener in. And that usually means something that is not consistent or musical in any kind of consistent pattern, because that then becomes predictable. And the last thing that we want to do is to become predictable in our voiceover acting.

Pilar: Yeah. It's really important to, when you're listening to voiceovers, because that's where you do the homework. That's when you find out, oh, what is it that these people are getting, you know, paid the big bucks, let's say for super bowl commercials, what is it that they have? And you'll find this little irregular heartbeats, shall we say? And you'll find little pieces of humor and little turns of a phrase, and it's not about copying it. It's about -- a big part of finding the musicality is also feeling it.

Anne: Yes. Agreed.

Pilar: You have to be able to kind of feel the rhythm because when we're sitting there and we're tapping our feet, if we're in a bar or we're in a restaurant, we're feeling the rhythm and we're like, oh, okay. "I'm having attacks of happiness." So, you know, you can sit there and you can find that rhythm. You can do that when you're speaking, but you have to find the rhythm.

Anne: I have to tell you, and we're talking like all areas of music that can help you in voice over, I have an app called Appcompanist. And actually that was introduced to me by my singing teacher. I do have a singing teacher, and what I love about singing. And even if I don't think, look, I'm not going to go out on the stage anytime soon and sing at the bar down the street. No, but it's all about being able to control, also warmup. I mean, singing is a great warmup for your voice, and also figure out where I can place my vocals. You know, there's a lot to be said for placing vocals in different places. And that becomes a way that we can explore our range as a voice actor and range in terms of pitch. But I don't think we should ever become like, oh, I just need to pitch up in this particular note for the rest of the copy. It just gives us a place to start from. And that is very, very helpful in getting different ranges in your vocal footprint.

Pilar: Yes, I totally get what you're saying. An image came to me as to, because obviously as we grow older, our voices get deeper, and I've found that I've found a deepness in my chest that I -- I was always up here talking here. I was sort of like up in my throat.

Anne: Yeah, me too.

Pilar: And then when I started concentrating on my chest, I have found different levels of my chest voice. So it's right here, and it's really, really intense.

Anne: And the cool thing is, is that it becomes a place where you feel where the sound is coming from, rather than trying to mimic or trying to like get to a particular note. It becomes, oh, I feel the vibration in my chest. So that's all I care about thinking about when I'm voicing this, just make sure that that voice is coming from my chest. Or, and I actually saw this -- Debbie Derryberry, who's a wonderful character actress, she has a TikTok channel, which she has quite a few followers. She just reached 1 million. But she talked about how she created some of her character voices.

And so one of them was like, she would actually be talking, say, okay, so she's a little bit younger. So now I feel like her voice is coming from her eyes. You know? And so, as she was saying it, she was pointing to the different places where her voice was coming out. And that really helps to change the pitch of the voice. And also she added the emotion and the feeling along with it, and that really created a believable character. It was really a fun thing to watch, but that is the idea of a vocal placement and how singing can help your voiceover to really evolve and expand your repertoire of characters.

Pilar: Absolutely. One of the things that I do, and I, I need to do it more often, but it happens more when I'm stuck. I'm looking at a piece of copy, and I'm like, ah, I don't know what to do with this. I start singing it. I sing the whole thing.

Anne: Oh, interesting.

Pilar: Yeah. So if you've got "plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is," you know, that kind of a thing, or so I will do the reverse, if I'm hearing a song. So for example, this is a script that I did a couple of years ago. "When it comes to finding quality care for your kids, you can't make any compromises. [sings] When it comes to finding quality care for your kids, you can't make any compromises." Just something as simple as that will completely change, if you go through the entire script, it'll completely change the way you thought something could be.

'Cause here's the thing that I found about voice. I've always seen my voice is kind of like a race horse. And sometimes it just shoots out of the stable, and it's like, I don't know where it's going because it's like completely wild. And I have to rein it in. But sometimes I need to give it like a little push. So I'll sing my copy. And it's like, when a dog turns around three times and then settles himself down -- my cat, my cat does the same thing, of course, because she copied my dog when he was alive -- but it's kind of like, if you don't know where to go with something and then you kind of distract, you distract it.

Anne: I think it leads obviously to a different melody when you voice it. And possibly, I think it leads you to thinking about it in different emotions.

Pilar: Exactly, exactly.

Anne: Which I'm always like, if you want to create you know the ABC takes, which I think everybody in the world just goes, this is take one. This is take two. This is take three. Right? And all they do is change the first note. Right. So if you think about that, that's so predictable. And we really need our takes to be completely unique and different. So I love that you lead with singing it because that can lead you to a different sound. And then that sound can lead you to a different emotion, and that can lead you to a different place in your imagination. So that really takes you almost into a different scene and a different reaction to the scene, which then gives you a completely different take. Bam.

Pilar: And also -- exactly. Because the thing is, you're looking at the script, but you -- myself, I don't know what -- I may read the script, but I don't really know what it's about because I've spent exactly 30 seconds on it. You know, a copywriter has spent days or even weeks on it.

Anne: Which is why we should all spend a little bit more than 30 seconds.

Pilar: Exactly. It's my job to become familiar with it. So if I don't really know, let's say about care.com. Care.com... "Care.com understands this better than anyone." Well, do they really understand it better than anyone?

Anne: What do they understand?

Pilar: Exactly. They know that you want to find someone great who can bond with your kids and take care of them. And then if I do different things, if I go to different places, so let's say I'm stuck with this. And I'll, "when it comes to finding quality care for your kids, you can't make any compromises." I'm not going to do that for the actual thing, but that'll bring me somewhere and I'll go, oh, that's really interesting. I did it sort of like an older person like this and Care.com -- "when it comes to finding quality care for your kids" -- that just gave it a whole different range. I mean, I don't know how different, but I felt it different when I went back and I did it quickly just as an example, because I got to a different place.

Anne: Yeah. I get that. Here's a thought, you know, it's so funny that you say you sing it because a lot of times when I come in my studio getting ready to do an audition, I'm singing because I'm like, "hello, and here I am," you know, "I'm in the booth now." And so I'll just start singing it and I'll sing my script. It's so funny that you said that. And I consider that a little bit of a warmup, but here's a thought. What if we just started singing script while we then did a quick Google search and went to the website? Because I think then again, I think there's a visual branding that you get from that company that can tell you how they want to portray themselves to the customer. And I think that would help a lot in terms of giving you a different scene, a visual plus your singing, and then go back to the copy and see what happens.

Pilar: And there's a big part of this that -- I can only speak for myself. But when I'm looking at a script for the first time, I have a built-in skeptic, and I have the adult that has to do her homework, and she has to get the audition done. And what I do when I sing, and I also do exactly what you just said, which is I look at the copy and I'm sort of distracting myself. It's almost like I'm fooling the adult part of me so I can kind of say, okay, it's time for you to take a step back and then let the child enter and play with this script.

Anne: Absolutely.

Pilar: That gives it more flavors too, because if you're looking at it with the eyes of an adult, like, okay, I have to break this down, and I have to do this, which is important. Breaking down the script is really important and finding the beats, but it's also being able to say, okay, let's put the adult aside for a second and let's just play with it. Let's sing, let's be goofy. Let's put on a boa and the -- you know, that's why I talk about using props in the booth when I'm doing auditions, and let's be a diva. And I have a teacher who a lot of the times I'll be doing characters, and then he'll have me go way, way off on a tangent and give me just, just to go completely over the top. And then he's like, okay, now go right into the character straight.

Anne: Yeah, yeah, you do the wild take and then completely over the top, then bring it down. Yeah. That's an excellent piece of advice too. And by going over the top, you can be singing, right? Again, I feel like just taking yourself out of that like metronome of here's, what it should sound like, and then getting yourself off of that melody, whatever it takes, singing, to get yourself off of that melody. There's so many people that have, they come into the booth with a melody in their head because they've heard it for years, a particular announcery way. This is different.

What you need to do is to, again, make it that authentic believable and take it to a different note, really. I have a blog that I wrote that's called Perfectly Imperfect and the voice artist is one of my favorite doing this corporate piece, which is about two minutes long, talking about how technology should be made for all of us, right? She's a beautiful voice, but it's imperfect. It cracks, it splits. It's a little raspy. And she ends up talking on notes that we wouldn't anticipate, meaning she's very much in the scene, very much talking and thinking as she's talking. And it leads her to these notes in the copy, which are beautiful and so unique that it makes me listen. And I think that that is where we want to strive to be. Like, we can't just say the words in a melody that is like, we've already rehearsed it. We already know the ending of the story.

We have to work in that melody that surprises us, that as we discover what's happening, it's evident in our melody. It's evident in our emotion. And I think that a lot of times, that melody doesn't have to be all over the map. You don't have to be an opera singer. We don't have to be singing scales that are crazy. It can be, again, very nuanced. In our conversational melodies, we don't really, if you're talking about music, we don't really go thirds. Right?

We aren't talking about this because we're not that excited all the time, right? Or maybe we're only excited for a few, a few words, which in case you can advance that third. You're almost never going between a C and a C sharp, right, or a C and a D in conversational melody, a C and a D. I didn't say C and a D! I said, C and a D. If you're musical, you're hearing that C and a D, I went up just a touch. And so musically, you're not creating crazy riffs or crazy splits, unless maybe you're a character. Right? And you have a more dynamic personality. So I think that the musicality changes with the character, changes with the emotion.

Pilar: Yes, absolutely. One of the things that I think is so important is to recognize, because I struggle with this. When I look at the copy and the reason why I'll go out and sing it is because my first instinct is to play it safe. It's like, I'm going to be a good little girl and read the specs. And I'm going to follow the specs to the letter. And I'm going to do my little homework and do my beats and everything. And there's a moment where you have to just get out of that box.

Anne: Be the naughty girl.

Pilar: Yeah.

Anne: You've got to be the naughty girl.

Pilar: Oh Anne, now we got some, we got a little insight in here to Anne Ganguzza's private life. VO BOSSes, take note.

Anne: Oh my goodness. But isn't that what they tell us all the time?

Pilar: Absolutely.

Anne: You've got to catch the casting director's ear who has just listened to the same melody 200 times. Think about it.

Pilar: Exactly. Exactly. So they're looking for the raspy.

Anne: What does that melody that they expect? They're looking for the unexpected. Yeah.

Pilar: They're looking for the imperfect. So when you hear something, this is something that's really important in acting that I learned many years ago, you do your beats, you do your homework, you rehearse it, you rehearse it. But then when you do actually do the copy for a take, you're allowing the words to speak as if it's for the first time. So you're acting for the first time, because you know, the one thing that I hear when I'm in workshops is, you know, people they're reading the script, and it's like, you cannot read the script.

Anne: Yeah, absolutely.

Pilar: You, you can read the script when it's the first time. That's awesome. It's great. But if you're going to do that for an audition, you better have a whole world behind it. So it's like, and that's where employing something like music comes into it. I mean, this is something that someone else me in doing promos. It really helps to have something like a song in the back. So for example, I'll take my headphones off, and I'll put my iPhone headphones in so it doesn't bleed, and I'll be listening to music on my phone. And then I'll just listen to a piece of music that is going to help me out for this particular audition. And that will kind of get me into the rhythm of it. And that, it's just really funny, 'cause I'll listen to when I first read it and then I'll listen to it the second time around, and I'll be like, oh my God, this is a completely differently read. It's the funniest thing.

Anne: It's completely different. I love that for a tip because you know, it's funny. I remember like, and sometimes I'll do this. I'll do an example of here's why, if you're just simply yourself telling a story and you're focused on that, that melody fits any kind of music underneath you. You could have something strong and dramatic, or you can have something that's quiet. And just look, I'm talking to you from the heart, and you could have swells of music when you're just like, I'm talking from the heart and then you could be dramatic and loud underneath you, that fits. And it also fits with a calm piano piece.

And it's so interesting when I do that example, I'll actually put different music underneath a very conversational voice and show how it really works. So that authentic, real sound, that melody goes with any type of music. And I think that's why it's really requested quite a bit. Not only for that reason, because you can put any kind of music or maybe visuals with it, because it works, because you're telling the story. But also just because it's effective.

Like if you're fighting with the other elements of the piece, which would be music and visuals, then you're fighting, and that is not effective in engaging your audience, plus it sells, right? That's like the bottom line. Most people want that, because a real authentic person is going to sell more than an announcer or somebody that's mimicking or somebody that doesn't sound believable. And so therefore you have to understand that melody of being engaged in a conversation without really trying to follow any other type of melody or mimicking a melody. I love the talk about music today.

Pilar: The one thing that I will say, especially for the people out there who don't sing, don't censor yourself. Even if you're off key, it doesn't matter. You're in your booth, you're in a safe place.

Anne: That's right.

Pilar: Sometimes, 'cause I have a, I have a really good ear, so I can always hear when I'm just a little bit off or when I hear any other singer, that's like literally like a sharp over or a sharp or a flat under, and I can hear it. And it's like, unh, but the important thing is, if you're on a roll and you're going at it in the booth, don't stop yourself. Follow through on that idea, even if you're not really sure where it's going. A lot of the times as voiceover actors, we want to get it perfect, and we don't let ourselves go through the entire phrase of that. So if you feel like I'm not really where it's going, keep going, because your voice, again, your voice is like a race horse. You have to keep going with it even if it might not be going in the exactly the direction that you imagined, don't stop yourself because you may find some great nuggets.

Anne: Yeah, let it, let it flow.

Pilar: Yeah. You may find some great nuggets in there.

Anne: Yeah. Let it flow. And what's so interesting is I'm going to say --

Pilar: "Let it flow. Let it flow." I just had to bring that in.

Anne: As we round out the end of this episode is try then, and this is a hard one. So understand your melody, let it evolve. Let it come out of you naturally without trying to listen to it. Because once you try to listen to the melody, as you're speaking it or voicing it, you then distract yourself from telling that story. And it's, it's another layer of your brain that doesn't need to be invoked with listening to what you sound like. Because when you listen to what you sound like, then you're listening to what you sound like. And you're not concentrated on letting the music flow out of you, letting the script flow out of you. And that's such a tough thing to grasp.

And I want BOSSes out there to know, this does not happen overnight. This is something that all of us as actors, we work on this and hone our craft for years. We're constantly honing our craft. So I know there's so many people out there, they get very frustrated. And when you're building an ear, like you said, you have an ear, and that's could be a whole other podcast. Like how do you build your ear? It is not an overnight thing. Building your ear takes time. And it's very difficult to detach yourself while still hearing yourself. As I was just saying, don't listen to your melody; just let it evolve and let it flow out of you. And that's a tough thing to do. And while you're developing your ear, all of a sudden you can hear all sorts of weird things. And you're like, I don't even know what I'm listening to anymore. That's the person who does 15 consecutive auditions in a row. By the 15th, you don't even know what you're listening to anymore. It's then become a repetitive rut.

Pilar: Yeah, no, absolutely. And, and something really to keep in mind is that there's only room for one role in the booth. You cannot be the actor, the director, and the critic all at once.

Anne: Yeah. That's an excellent point.

PIlar: When you're doing the piece or, you know, beforehand, you can direct yourself, and then you have to let go, put that one to the side, the director role to the side, do the piece, stop, and then edit, but really try not to do it mid-sentence because you're just, it's like, that's like the death of creativity.

Anne: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Wow. What a cool episode. Thank you, Pilar. This is so interesting.

Pilar: Yeah, it was, it was great. And I learned a lot from you too. It's like, now I want to take your conversational melody course.

Anne: Thank you. I took piano when I was younger and I did sing a little bit to the point where I think that's where I base a lot of where my voice and my words come out. I mean, everything's a melody, right?

Pilar: Yep. Absolutely. Everything is a melody.

Anne: That being said, I'd like to give a huge shout-out to our sponsor ipDTL that allows us to explore our melodies with friends and peers and coworkers near and far. You can find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing week. and we'll see you next week. Bye.

Pilar: "Ciao, bella mia."

>> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.