Professional Singer Advice || Expert Voice Coach Explains

November 27, 2021November 22, 2025

What does voice acting involve? Can I start doing voice over work?

I’m a professional vocal coach and singing teacher. The core of my work is about building, improving and fixing issues people have in their voices.

From that point, the primary and highest demanding application of this is for singers and performers using their voice in song. This involves using their voice over the widest range, at the most extreme intensities, often in sub-optimal situations where their performance needs to be dead-on first time.

Other applications of a well-built voice involve acting on stage, on television, voice-over work, stage speaking, professional speaking/voice use, etc. Many of my clients are even school teachers looking to maintain their voice. This is very much a classic example of a professional voice user – it just so happens voice training overlaps very well with their love of singing.

Voice acting interest

I’ve been getting a lot of interest lately in voice-over work and voice acting. I have had the odd client who goes down this road, but the majority of my client-base falls into the above camp. It seems that many are considering a career-change or even a side-gig in voice acting, so I wanted to pull together some pointers on what it is and what is involved. I will also briefly clarify the difference between a voice over coach and a vocal coach like myself.

What is voice acting?

“Voice acting is the art of performing voice-overs to present a character or provide information to an audience.”

Do you watch “Peppa Pig”, “The Simpsons”, or even listen to radio shows like “The Archers”? If you do, the people providing the voice track for each of the characters are professional voice actors. Their bodies are not seen on-screen, so they are required to provide all the emotional intensity and meaning for the scene purely through using their voices. Voices need to be intelligible and of an appropriate character for the given project.

Projects can be extremely diverse. Radio shows, podcasts, animated films, cartoons, educational videos, pre-recorded corporate training, explanations within software, TV or radio advertisements, jingles, TV/radio segues, etc. These can all can involve the use of one/multiple voice actors. Because of the diverse range of possible voice acting avenues, you can understand why there is no “one size fits all” definition for what makes a good voice for voice acting.

The skills and vocal attributes required for each of these options are very different, and often even very experienced stage and TV actors struggle to get into the world of voice acting due to such diverse demands.

Very often the same voice actor will provide the voices for multiple characters, manipulating their voice to deliver highly specific impressions for each character. For example, in the cartoon “Family Guy”, the creator Seth MacFarlane provides the voices for dozens of the characters on the show, including 3 out of the 6 main characters.

How do voice actors get picked?

Really, it comes down to the right actor for the right role. Just like in films, people have manners and behaviours that lead them to become well-known for delivering a certain type of character well. They know their domain and work at mastering it – they become typecast.

Consider this example: a high-end whisky company is looking to create an advert for their special single malt. The nature of the product and the branding means they are looking for a crisp, smooth, deep sounding male voice for their luxury whisky advert.

This means they are definitely NOT going to pick the chirpy, squawky teenage girl voice actor that can deliver 1000 different variations of that voice. They’ll likely take the Morgan Freeman sound-alike over the Nancy Cartwright sound-alike (the voice of Bart Simpson).

An alternate voice acting situation

In contrast, what about a TV production company is creating a new kids cartoon? They are looking for a voice actor that can provide multiple lead teenage girl roles plus supporting characters? Such a voice actor would also need to make them sound distinct and memorable. You can bet someone like Nancy Cartwright is going to get the call-back.

With so many diverse projects that can exist, no one voice can do it all, and that’s OK! That’s perfect for everyone to find and cultivate their own niche.

Many voice actors list samples of their work on voice acting directories online, such as Voiceovers.co.uk. Prospective clients can then audition clips of the voices listed on such directories and narrow down their choices to a few actors they think will fit the bill. It’s very much like an audition process for actors or singers.

What is involved in being a voice actor?

As many voice acting roles are in some way commercial/corporate, even short projects are exacting. This is because serious money is typically riding on it.

Consider a car advert: typically 30–60 seconds long, with maybe 10 seconds of total voice-over in there, often stating mostly technical details. But that 10 seconds is meant to sell thousands of those cars. That’s a big deal.

Commercial success

The sound of the voice is meant to drip desirability all over the vehicle. It has to paint an image in the listener’s mind that makes them want to go check out that car. The voice and tone also has to match the brand, and be relatable to the target market. That’s a LOT riding on just 10 seconds of someone’s voice.

As such, projects don’t just require you to have the right voice, they need you to understand the commercial objectives of the client, and merge all those needs into a convincing performance. After all, we are talking about voice acting.

A voice actor needs to develop the ability to create different characters, to be able to manipulate/modulate their voice to imitate different people, and alter the shades in your voice to give the client exactly what they want. This is something that solid voice training helps instill, and is something that a good vocal coach AND good voice over coach can provide insight into.

VOICE OVER COACH:

There are dedicated voice over coaches that help people cultivate their unique sound, and provide technical tricks to help their voices become more like the sound their intended market is likely to want. Voices.com provides many courses and sources of advice on how to get started in this regard.

If you are wanting help to specifically become a voice-over artist or voice actor, you should seek to find a dedicated voice over coach.

VOCAL COACH (FOR VOCAL HEALTH AND MAINTENANCE): Manipulating your voice on a regular basis can cause severe physiological damage to the voice when done for prolonged periods. This is no different than singers who employ more extreme manipulations of their voice to deliver their art, and end up with nodules, granulomas, voice loss, etc. Vocal flexibility does take time to develop in voices.

Commercial demands can wreak havoc on a voice, and fixing and training voices to keep up with the demands of their chosen outlet is my domain. While there is overlap with a voice-over coach, our intended scopes are quite different.

Technical Considerations

Most professional voice actors have their own personal recording setup with high quality microphones and editing software. They will have tweaked and learned how to use their setup perfectly for their voice to get the perfect takes. There will need to be acoustic treatment and other pro setup aspects dealt with as well. This is to ensure that the audio track generated by the voice actor is a perfectly produced product ready to be slotted straight into a bigger project.

In some cases a voice actor may go into a specialist studio/setup provided by the client, e.g. recording for a TV or radio show, or they may be able to hire a recording studio. However, for many smaller scale and shorter projects, or projects demanding a fast turnaround time, having 24/7 access to your own recording setup that is perfectly dialled in for you is essential.

Conclusion

If you are looking to get into voice acting, I’d suggest checking out Voices.com to start with. They have a wealth of information on what is involved, how to get started. They also provide voice over specific training courses, which you can check out on their website.

If you want to hear some examples of professional voice actors doing their characters and craft well, I’d suggest looking for voice acting directories with clips, like Voiceovers.co.uk.

Please note, I am not sponsored or affiliated with either of these sites in any way. I am simply referring you to websites that I have found to provide a great illustration into the world of voice acting.

If you are a budding voice actor, best of luck to you!

June 27, 2021February 22, 2026

Sounding your best: Optimising songs for your voice

There’s a quote attributed (incorrectly) to Albert Einstein:

“If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live the rest of its life thinking it’s stupid.”

While Einstein appears not to have been the one to coin this phrase, and while this quote can often be misapplied, the underlying sentiment is an important one when it comes to getting the best out of your voice.

Make sure the song itself is not leading your voice astray

When we sing songs we are judging both our version of the song, but also our voice. Which means that if the song doesn’t best suit our voice, we will forever be disappointed in what we can do.

Perfect song choice is so case-by-case that it’s hard to give generalised advice, so I won’t try to. However, almost any song can be adjusted to work better in someone’s particular voice. Often the difference between sounding awful, decent, or even great, is just down to key choice. Even subtle key change can radically transform how the song feels to sing.

But a key that’s too high/too low (often by even just one semitone), will often leave us disheartened and frustrated by how “off” our voices feel and sound. This is especially true for those who sing in bands, where key choice is imposed upon them. And very often in bands, other musicians simply don’t appreciate how critically important key choice is can be. Continue reading “Sounding your best: Optimising songs for your voice”

March 7, 2021December 18, 2025

Book Recommendations: Three (More) Great Books I’d Recommend Reading

A few months ago I recommended five of my favourite books. IIt was one of my most popular articles, with many emailing to say how helpful they found it. Ergo, I thought it worth providing a few more book recommendations. One I’ve read since that post was written, one I’d read many years ago, and another I’ve been revisiting of late.

I’ve given a brief summary of each book to whet your appetite, and also given a short suggestion of who each book may be relevant to. They are all good though, so please do pick up a copy of any/all!

1. The Courage to be Disliked
by Ichiro Kishimi (Author), Fumitake Koga

A musician I’m aware of recommended this book in a talk about his struggles with mental health. It’s an excellent book. Written in the form of a dialogue between a student and a philosopher, it explores the psychology of Alfred Adler. Alder was a contemporary with Freud who took issue with Freud’s approach of laying people’s behaviour wholly at the feet of past experiences, labelled ‘traumas’. Adler felt that this theory that traumas were primarily responsible for how people turned out in their adulthood didn’t hold water, when it was apparent that different people who had similar upbringings or earlier “traumas” could end up living wholly different lives. There must have been something more to all of this than just past experiences being responsible for people’s final behaviours. This is what led Adler to make a split from Freud and his group.

Instead, Adler focused on the idea that past experiences being labelled as trauma/definitive experiences was down to each individual, and the meaning each person assigned to each experience. Those who wanted to wallow in past hardships and construe present hardships as extensions thereof, would do so, but those who wanted to grow and develop would do so in spite of difficult past circumstances. It was ultimately down to the individual to strive towards a constructive goal, rather than find excuses that made them exempt from blame. This in turn leads to Adler’s core philosophy that “all problems are interpersonal relationship problems“.

As this is written in the form of a dialogue, very strong opposing views and very difficult hypotheticals are posed for/against, which makes for a robust exploration of this topic.

Who is this for?
If you’re someone that is often pre-occupied with what others think of them (I know I fall victim to this all too often), or someone who finds themselves justifying present problems as beyond your control and down to someone else/past grievances, I would strongly recommend picking up a copy of this book. I can’t guarantee it will solve any such problems, but I’m confident it can help you cast them in a new light. Continue reading “Book Recommendations: Three (More) Great Books I’d Recommend Reading”

January 24, 2021January 28, 2026

Vocal Quality: Developing and Respecting Vocal Headroom

I’ve talked before about this idea of vocal tessitura. This is a very nuanced concept, so please have a read of that article. This week I wanted to talk about vocal headroom.

Here is the summarised definition of tessitura from that other article:

“Tessitura asks “how comfortable are you” in certain regions of your voice, and where should we place songs so that:
a) the melody of a song is in the best spot in your voice; and
b) the opportunity to style and riff/ornament above that melody is still open to you (while still remaining comfortable).”

What is vocal headroom?

Let’s start with this definition of tessitura. While reading it, let’s also think about how this can apply to us as we are figuring out a song.

Tessitura instructs us to optimise the key of a song such that you:
a) sound great on the original melody in that key without straining, and yet also
b) have melodic space above that original melody such that you can extrapolate or ornament the original melody as you see fit.

The emboldened elements outline the key take-aways for identifying and respecting your own vocal headroom. Continue reading “Vocal Quality: Developing and Respecting Vocal Headroom”

November 22, 2019January 1, 2026

Why vocal problems so regularly derail careers

Something I encounter a lot is the phenomenon of the vocal professional who ‘all of a sudden’ finds themselves having voice problems.

Here’s what normally happens…

At first, the issues are usually shrugged off. Errors are discounted as “just one of those gigs” to others, but inwardly they are a little apprehensive as to why their voice was misbehaving or feeling so off.

Then the issue worsens

Usually in both in severity and frequency. The odd gig starts to get cancelled, and it takes the singer longer and longer to “recover” from one gig for the next one.

Shortly afterwards, the inexorable public announcement follows – typically on their Facebook page – along the following lines… Continue reading “Why vocal problems so regularly derail careers”

June 15, 2019July 5, 2025

The Difference Between Amateurs and Pros

“Amateurs practise until they get it right, a professional until he can’t do it wrong.”

Extract from “Psychology for Musicians” by Percy C. Buck, circa 1944.

I’ve talked before about the importance of putting in the reps. To be honest, I feel like I should have multiple articles devoted to this very topic. That way I can can illustrate the importance of repetition, by writing repetitiously about it! Continue reading “The Difference Between Amateurs and Pros”

June 24, 2018December 17, 2025

Live vs Recorded – Our own double standards

As I’ve mentioned recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the recording realm and inherently comparing live vs recorded vocals. I have pretty good pitch, but even I notice how unforgiving it is to hear your own recorded vocal back. We might only be talking about just one or two notes in a 3 minute difficult performance that are off, but they can completely change the perception of a vocal take being good vs bad.

Here’s a basic test for you to see what I mean. Here is a clip of an incredibly consistent and incredible live singer – Peabo Bryson. I go on about him because he is excellent. He is often held up by recording engineers and producers as being a “one take wonder”, where he can just record a single take and it’s basically perfect. Continue reading “Live vs Recorded – Our own double standards”

May 27, 2018January 1, 2026

Epic voices you’ve (likely) never heard of

I was watching an interview a little while ago, with a famous fight trainer. The interviewer asked him who the most dangerous/incredible fighter he’d ever seen was, and he told this story about a guy called Steve Rusk.

Steve was just an outdoors-y kind of guy in the US (hunting, fishing, etc), but he’d come in and train with the fight trainer’s top world-class fighters. And Steve would utterly destroy them. He was just THAT physical and that good… but he never had the desire to be known across the world, he just liked training and being good at that. It was it’s own reward.

In the same way, there are some INSANE singers out there that you will (very likely) never have heard of… and I thought I’d share a few of my absolute favourites on here. All of these are bootleg recordings to help capture how good these guys are live. Enjoy! Continue reading “Epic voices you’ve (likely) never heard of”

Category: Professional Singer Advice

Practical Advice for Professional and Aspiring Singers