[Tutorial] Voice Acting Tutorials

[Ibsen's Ghost]

After collecting together a bunch of stuff that I've been saying to people on these forums and others, I thought I'd compile a series of short tutorials and tips for any budding voice actors. They are each split into different categories.

General VA Tips

The first thing I would say is to make sure you've got good recording equipment. There are often too many 'clunks' going on when you first start recording so you'll need to test a few things in order to get rid of any unwanted acoustics.

Firstly, I use a totally free to download and use program called 'Audacity' and my headset is a standard one from 'Emkay', although if you can get hold of Shure or Sennheiser then it should be worth it, at least for any extensive work.

Secondly, don’t dance around, record on a bus or next to open windows where workmen are drilling holes into the walls of your house as their mates conduct lorry rallies outside! One voice actor I knew actually did record some lines on a bus and then wondered why those lines were rejected.

Thirdly, make sure you have a 'pop-guard' on your mike. Most mikes use foam, but some of them are so well constructed that they really don't need them, whilst other VAs I've worked with have made do with some fabric stretched over the top. This is often something like an old set of tights. It cuts down on the odd acoustic sounds.

Fourthly, try to soften your 'p' and 't' sounds in order to avoid the 'popping' effect whilst keeping your mouth and lips a fair distance away from the device without it actually badly affecting the volume.

Fifthly, this may help if you are recording a special type of voice that is not entirely your normal speaking voice. I often get compliments on my Scottish accent when I’m not Scottish even in the slightest! For the Scottish accent, I often think of a few random phrases from the Scottish TV program 'Taggart' and say them with conviction in order to shoe-horn myself back in the right sound. Some people’s files lack conviction and strength of character. Besides getting to know the character better by knowing what they look like, reading their lines and even playing the mod to find out how they act, you could try this: look for a ‘signature line’ that typifies your character and that you know you are pleased with. Then try repeating that line to remind you of the basic cadences of that character’s voice. That normally triggers the rest of the expressions and quirks that you’ll need to make it appear consistent and convincing.

Sixthly, try cutting your next line into more natural speech patterns by repeating something in the chosen voice that leads up to the point where you're saying your line, then click record or cut out the chosen segment. Alternatively, you could think of how the event pans out in real-time before your line comes up. This is useful because a lot of VAs are not made aware of the context of their lines, which makes our task doubly difficult. This should help things to flow and, again, aid the consistency.

Number Seven: The only other thing, really, is simple in principle but always the hardest thing in practice and that is to occupy the role. I find that knowing and finding out about your character as much as possible always helps. It’s much more tough a job than having another actor to play off so that you can read their cues. If you don't know much, you have to do the guesswork yourself e.g. for the line that one voice actress did, the line went: "That ship belongs to my husband, that's why we don't have to work." For Oblivion work, don’t worry too much about over-acting because a lot of the generic voices are cheesy anyway but more importantly, a lot of people don’t like dull acting, even if you do think it’s not dull, just subtle. In a case of not-knowing the character or context, seek out the nearest and best emotional stimulus and the most natural voice pattern and try a few patterns over in your head first. Consequently, the first part for this line might have a noticeable hint of pride whilst the second part might be quite smug.

Number Eight: Remember effects such as pregnant pauses, gasps, emphasizing certain words (you can spend ages emphasizing different sections of a line!) and other verbal phenomena. Used sparingly, they can go a long way towards getting you the desired effect.

What people don't realise about VA work is that some people think it's so easy. It's not. Sometimes you have to be sat (or stood, if it helps) at your desk acting out the whole thing. Many is the time when I've been caught with my pants down (so to speak) hunched over the microphone, trying to sneer into the monitor whilst barking my angry combat lines as spit flies. So my last suggestion is to find solitude and silence whenever possible where you can isolate yourself.

And experiment. It all helps!

Special Voices

Additionally to this, I would say that, if you're just starting, then go for your most natural voice pattern. Don't go for a 'Khajiit' effect, for example, from the outset because it's difficult to do whilst acting at the same time. For Khajiits you have to master the exhalation, the accent and the deep growls and then apply it to the line.

For character acting, some long-term advice would be to listen to people who speak well or have a distinctive voice and then to mimic them. You can even practice if you have spare time. I used to get youtube videos of 'Ma'iq the Liar' when I started doing Khajiits which helped to give me an idea of where I wanted to go with it. Once you've got a basic handle on an advanced voice like this, you have to take the voice in the direction you want it to go rather than struggling too hard to directly copy the voice. In the end, it's you doing the voice and everyone has limitations so take the other person's cue rather than trying to imitate them perfectly. And that goes for most voices, not just Khajiit and other ‘special effect’ types.

The Khajiit Voice

Since I began voice acting for Oblivion, my Khajiit voice has been the one that has been most consistently praised and appreciated. From what I have been told myself about the voice that I use, along with what I have noticed about the voice when performing it, I would carefully consider practicing the following exercises before you start:

a) Get some attachments from me called 'Get a rasp on!' and test out your voice using a normal and a raspy exhalation. This is probably going to be the hardest challenge of the lot so you may wish to start one of the other practices first. The best I can describe it is that it sort of closes up at the back of the throat and therefore produces a sort of 'growl'. When recording whilst using the rasp, I find that the demands on your lungs or throat, depending on whether you're going for a more Argonian or more Khajiit sound, can be quite high. The stronger rasp is almost certain to affect your throat, at least until you've managed to somehow wrestle the texture of the voice under control.

If you find yourself out of breath and wanting more rasp, then try splitting up the recordings into separate clusters of commas and sentences if needs be. If you use Audacity software it can be quite easy to do this and then fit them together neatly. It doesn't actually take that long to do but it can be a pain if you're doing a lot so try to get as many good ones in one go as possible. If you can't figure out how to do this with Audacity, just ask.

b) Roll your r's from time to time when recording the lines. Too much of this is, again, very demanding, slows the line down and makes it sound fake. So keep it to a few when there are lots of r's in the sentence and you can fill up the others with a sort of 'fake' version which is similar because you open your mouth, rather than using your lips, a little wider than normal but without using the tongue.

People learning Spanish are, I hear, often faced with this dilemma so go check out guides like this one: http://www.akumaltips.com/spanish-tips/h...l-your-rs/

c) Try to fit a light accent in there and work on getting it right - Spanish or Italianesque or something else that sound similar to your ear. Try to use your own judgement on this one because I think this may be a case of what suits you best and what you're most comfortable /familiar with. Give the accent a go using normal speech, without the other Khajiit 'effects', and that you can both perform and that comes closest to how you hear the Khajiit voice yourself.

d) Picture the character. Adopt a posture if needs be (sometimes it can be a little Fagin-like for the more roguish Khajiit) or try repeating a line that you know sounded best on your previous practice. This can be a line from MA'IQ THE LIAR (there are samples on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFhnRQ_EoDo ) but I always tend to use the line on my first youtube vid (for my first ever Khajiit attempt): "Really? So nice to meet you. My name is Tumyr, resident Paleontologist." You can hear this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2aQlHqHigM

Instead of posture, you may wish to use your imagination to get yourself thinking about how this would best sound. Mimicking is easy for some but hard for others, so, again, it always helps to be able to find your own footing with the voice. For me, I might imagine a cross between Watto (from 'The Phantom Menace' - a comparison that Leo Gura made when he heard it) and Shere Khan (from 'The Jungle Book').

Try practicing those four effects and then gradually combining them together and you should see some sort of improvement. I hope that helps.

Using Audacity

The following advice is mainly intended for those people using ‘Audacity’ software and recording using ‘special voices’.

Take some time to record a line and then look around at what options you can do with it. Remember that clicking on the part just beneath where it says ‘audio track’ (aka the body) will highlight the recording you’ve made so that any modifications you do will only apply to it.

For each bar you can click on the down arrow and name it besides adjusting it’s format and so on. Elsewhere, you’ve got a volume and Left-Right speaker adjuster.

The line just above that shows you how many seconds the recording is in.

Above that, you can do things like cut, copy, paste and undo besides one of my more often used facilities ‘trim outside selection’ which I’ll go over a bit later. Then you can adjust what you see in the bar window by using zoom and so on.

Above that are two slider bars for the output volume and input volume. The input volume can be very important for people with quiet voices as when it is cranked up, you get a louder sound coming through, but be wary of any resulting additional ‘noise’.

Above that, the main buttons are self-explanatory except perhaps ‘skip back to the start’ at the leftmost side. The selection of six tools to the left of these main buttons are also very important, at least to me! The only two I really use with any degree of consistency at all is the selection tool (top left) and the time shift tool (middle bottom). When your recording is long, the slider bar at the bottom of the Audacity program can be moved to go to any point in your recording. With selection chosen, you can select a start point or click and drag to select a desired area. This is essential for functions such as ‘trim outside selection’, which does exactly what it says, and menu bar commands such as ‘Edit-Split’ and ‘Edit-Duplicate’.

The time shift tool will allow you to click on a recording and drag it along so that you can line up separate recordings into a sequence. This can be essential for when you did a great recording in the first part and a terrible one towards the end. It helps you to splice together recordings in order to get the perfect file.

Don’t forget the ‘effects’ part of the menu bar!!! It can be crucial towards good editing. ‘Normalise’ gives your recording a nice healthy look which sounds right and where you can clearly see how your voice rises and dips. ‘Noise removal’ can help with noisy files but take care not to crank it up too much or you’ll get a weird sonic whine creeping in. ‘Change speed/tempo’ can be useful, but the one that grabs most attention is ‘Change pitch’ which helps you to alter your voice effectively in a natural way.

With a recording selected by clicking on the body, you can save this recording bar alone by going to ‘File-Save Selection as’. Otherwise, save with one of the other options, including saving the whole project if you wish to keep all of the recordings together.

‘Audacity’ is good quality and genuinely user-friendly without any gimmicky features that might otherwise get in the way. Please feel free to explore its other effects but these are the ones that I find most useful during recording and editing for voice files.

Thanks for reading, folks. I hope this helps people around here. If you do find these tutorials useful and wish to show your appreciation then it would be nice if you could give me a little 'kudos' vote when you next come across me at TesNexus, which is where I spend the rest of my 'Oblivion time' when I'm not over here.

And finally, please feel free to add your own tips and techniques to this thread besides any remarks about what is already written here, constructive criticism included.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Here's the attachment for my Khajiit tutorial.