The Mic Guy: Adventures in Voiceover

Saturday’s second two-thirds of my “Colors of Your Voice” class rocked. We explored…

• Cool, centered blue.
• Joyful, childlike yellow.
• Seductive violet, whereby I channel my inner Barry White (oddly enough, white is not a color in the Thom Pinto vocal spectrum).
• Stark, forceful gray (or grey, if fancy is how you roll).
• Ominous, emotionless black.
• Silver, a formal crispness used to upscale certain of the other colors.

My revelation of the weekend was that blue affords my most natural shading for narrative reads. For many voice actors, green — off-the-cuff and spontaneous — is the appropriate narrative coloration. For me, though, “thinking blue” gives me that extra level of understatement and subtlety that I need to dial in for narration. If only I’d known that before my January narration class, I’ve have avoided a truckload of frustration.

Next time I’m faced with a narrative read, I’ll slam that sucker out of the park. Thank you, blue!

This weekend reminded me once again why the class/workshop environment at Voicetrax is such a kick. It was fun to reconnect with some of my fellow students from previous classes — including two of my favorites, whom I’ll now forever nickname Ms. Yellow and Mr. Black — and hear how their skills have progressed since last we worked together. I made some new friends whom I’ll look forward to seeing in other classes — or, better still for all of us, at auditions — in the future. Most invaluably, I benefited from hearing other actors’ reads (and yes, their struggles also) and the counsel they received.

That’s blue personified.

For the remainder of this month, I have a couple of private lessons lined up, the first of which is my third session with Sirenetta this Wednesday. In March, my class schedule cranks into full-bore mode through June.

I’m so ready.

This entry was posted on February 9, 2009 at 4:43 PM and is filed under Narration, Reflection, Voice acting, Voiceover, Voicetrax. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.