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You can use music theory and musical ideas to help improve your spoken word voiceover. In this video, Anne talks about how you can apply some simple musical techniques to your next VO job or audition.
You don't have to sing, but you are musical.
Hey everyone today. I wanna talk to you about the musicality of your voice and why it's important.
So what do I mean about the musicality of your voice? Well, essentially when we speak, I like to consider my voice a musical instrument. So even though I'm speaking words, and I'm not singing, my voice is still musical in the way that I speak. Let's consider that your voice or my voice right now is just my conversational, Hey, I'm Anne. This is my conversational middle "C". So for my musicians, it's my conversational middle "C". And so when I'm just having a conversation, my voice inflects up and down and up and down.
I also have a rhythm when I want to complete a sentence or speak an idea to you. I am not necessarily breathing in the middle of that. I am telling you the idea all at once, and I'm not necessarily breathing in the middle of it. And as I tell you this idea, my inflection goes up and down.
Also, the words that I wanna emphasize, my words that are important are inflected upward, but they're not inflicted upward a whole lot. They're just a little bit, so let's say from a C to a C sharp, or maybe a C to a D. And those are the words that are important to the conversation. So I've kind of elevated them up so that your ear can hear them better. Now, the other thing that I've done is I've changed the rhythm of it. I've also kept that word longer in your ear, kept that word right longer in your ear.
So I've extended or lengthened the note. So consider it a whole note or a note that's been held for multiple beats, and that will also be an emphasis. So, it stays longer in your ear. So when I talk, I'm going to make sure that I inflect the upward on those words that are important, and I'm also going to lengthen them or hold them longer a lot of times.
And when we have a script, those are words that we haven't thought of as I'm speaking to you right now, I have ideas in my brain and they're coming out of my mouth. And so I have an idea of what I'm going to say. When we're looking at the copy on a piece of paper, We're not necessarily familiar with those words.
We didn't think of those words. Somebody else wrote those words for us. Now we have to take those words and make them sound as if they're organically coming from our brains. A couple of techniques to do that, obviously as an actor is to give yourself a character, place yourself in a scene, and kind of understand what the storyline is before you start to tell it.
Then when you tell it, if you wanna tell it in an authentic and believable way, consider the musicality of the notes when you are speaking. To understand what are the important words in that copy with those important words you wanna make sure they're elevated. They're inflicted upward just a little bit, and you wanna make sure that they stay in the ear of your listener a little bit longer.
You know, it's the first time they hear those words. And so they can absorb the information or the copy that you're relaying to them. When you are speaking the script or voicing the script, and you're communicating those words to your listener, they are musical. And again, if we are musicians or we're singers, we know we have musicality of our voice. We have inflection, which is notes that go from C to D, C to E maybe C to F if we're excited. We have beats and rhythm and that's the pacing. Those are whole notes, half notes. Quarter notes, 16th notes, whatever they are, and that is what I consider to be the musicality of your voice.
And it's very important because that musicality is going to help you authentically relay the words on the page.
Thanks for reading!
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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