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Demo trends are changing all the time. Do people who listen to your demo just want to hear your voice and the clarity of your sound? Or do they want to hear what you sound like in an actual spot?
Demo trends are changing all the time...
Okay? So I get a lot of questions about whether there should be music or no music on your demos, especially because I have voice actors who want to be able to say, this is my audio from my home studio. And typically audio from the home studio, they're not producing, uh, an entire spot with music and sound effects, and I totally understand that. However, I think for a demo, which is truly a demonstration of your skills and capabilities, I will opt for more of the package of what your voice will sound like in a real world situation.
So, for example, what will my voice sound like in a real commercial? Real commercials have music and sound effects. What will my voice sound like in a medical narration? Sometimes in medical narration, actually a lot of the time, you may not have any music or sound effects in it. For me, when I'm producing demos, I like to produce a package, a marketing package that showcases your voice in a realistic light, but also puts it in situations that are going to seem realistic. So for commercial demo, I'm probably going to put music and sound effects.
Now, even in a medical demo, I will put in music and sound effects depending on the spot, right? So there's different spots in your demos, and depending on who the audience it is intended for, I will put music behind that or not. Sometimes when it is a technical read, and I want to really showcase your voice with nothing else to distract from it, I will have absolutely no music underneath it. And that will just completely showcase your voice and your voice only in being able to deal with those hard-to-pronounce words. Also, in e-learning, I'll have maybe, uh, a portion of that, uh, a spot on that or a dialogue, or maybe even what I like to call transition spots, which are very similar to instructional press next, to continue. Uh, I'll have those which don't have any music underneath them. And again, that showcases that your voice can handle and can sound great with absolutely no sound effects or music underneath it.
But for the rest of the production, I'm going to put music behind it, if there's a possibility that there will be music behind, uh, the actual spot. And there are music and sound effects behind certain e-learning spots. There is music and sound effects under corporate narration for sure. And again, you can take a look at any of these examples. You can just, you know, Google is your friend. Go ahead and Google examples of e-learning, Google examples of corporate narration, Google examples of, you know, commercial spots. And you're gonna find that a lot of them do have music and sound effects, and sometimes it varies. Sometimes there's a lot of music or different sound effects, and sometimes there's just very low background music. For the purposes of a demo, I will typically put music under the majority of it, and then also leave music out from the spots that will really showcase just your voice. But as a total package, I think a combination of both music and no music really is the perfect combination.
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Keep on rocking your business like a #VOBOSS
About Anne:
Anne Ganguzza is a professional voice actor and award-winning director and producer who works with students to develop their voiceover and business skills - including voice over Coaching and Genre-based Demo Production. She specializes in conversational Commercial & Narration styles, including Corporate, eLearning, Technology, and On-Hold Messaging. Located in Orange County, California, Anne offers private coaching and mentoring services to students via ipDTL and Zoom.
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