5 Tips for Recording Voice-Overs

The voice-over industry can be tough to break into, but there are a few ways you can stand out as a great voice-over artist. Here’s a list of tips to check out before you record your first voice-over:

1. Find a quiet room. Professional voice actors often convert a room in their home into a recording studio that’s completely free of background noise. If you do not have a dedicated recording space and limited space, consider recording in your closet. There will be fewer distractions, and recording in a smaller room will produce less reverberation or echo. A microphone can pick up many unwanted sounds, so ensure the space is as soundproof as possible using foam or thick blankets and sealing the gap under the door.

2. Do vocal warmups. An essential part of preparing for a voice-over job or voiceover audition is warming up your voice through voice exercises. Vocal warm-ups and breathing exercises are a useful tool to prepare for any performance, but they are especially useful when preparing to do voice-over work. Warming up your voice and practicing enunciation can ease you into a “recording voice” with the appropriate breath support and clarity for audio recording.

3. Enunciate. Voice-over artists must enunciate clearly. The audience needs to understand what the speaker is saying, whether visuals will accompany the recording or not. Clarity is critical when delivering information or lines of dialogue.

4. Watch your pacing. Pacing is key for every type of voice-over recording. Voice-over artists need to know how fast or slow to deliver information so that audiences don’t get lost or bored while listening. Take note of how fast or slow you speak in everyday conversation. For example, if you’re a fast speaker, practice reading slower but still naturally. If you read at a slow pace, increase the speed you read by small increments until you find the best pace for the project that still feels natural.

5. Use quality equipment. If you’re serving as your own audio engineer in a home studio, use the best equipment you can obtain because it can affect how your entire performance sounds. Post-production software can only edit your sound so much, so aside from a small, quiet room, your equipment needs to be as quality as possible. You don’t need to purchase pricey equipment, as there is a lot of quality recording equipment available for those on a budget.