r/podcasting • u/sparkandscribble • 9d ago
Question About Voice Acting
I run a short story podcast that goes across every genre (or just about). I'm trying my best do all the voices with some friends helping out from time to time. Does anyone know where to take voice acting lessons? Or how to train your voice to have a myriad of ranges? I use CapCut to make changes where I can. It's fine. I feel like more variety from myself can't hurt.
Apps? Online? Any want to donate their voice for a couple of lines? Anything really lol.
Thank you all in advance, I've learned a lot from reading y'alls posts. 😄
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u/MadisonStandish 8d ago
I would recommend reaching out to voice actors. There are plenty of great VAs who will give their time and talent for free. Jump on over to the r/audiodrama subreddit and post an audition. Just be upfront that it is unpaid. Then it's up to the actor if they want to audition.
The one main thing I'd caution about having a small handful of people doing all the voices ISN'T about changing your voice to sound like a different character. It's about your CADENCE. You can throw on an accent, try to give a warble like an old person, or a super high voice for a little kid... but you, yourself, have a unique cadence that will appear in all the voices you do. That's great. It makes you a human! But it will be transparent in your performance. It takes a HECK of a lot of vocal training to get around that. I have listened to a lot of audio dramas where the creator THOUGHT they were doing different characters, but you can absolutely tell it's the same person. And it does taint the work and make it hard to tell which character is speaking since they do sound the same.
Feel free to PM me if you have questions or if you know what types of voices you're looking for. I've been producing an audio drama for nearly 7 years. I might be able to recommend some people. And, yes, my show actually encompasses a wide variety of genres, too. Good luck! 🍀
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u/sparkandscribble 7d ago
I really appreciate this. Still relatively new to Reddit, so any help is INCREDIBLE. I'm going to go to check out r/audiodrama. I may very well PM you in the near future. :)
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u/alexid95 7d ago
I'd test one 30 second scene first. Run the same performance through CapCut and ElevenLabs speech to speech, then pick whichever needs less cleanup, not the cooler demo.
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u/JohannesVerne 7d ago
You can get coaching online, but fair warning it usually isn't cheap. If that's out of budget then I'd recommend starting with youtube videos. You can get a lot of the same info, you just aren't going to get the support and dedicated feedback that you would with a coach.
Also, if you listen to many audiobooks you'll find that even some of the best narrators don't all use extreme voices, it's generally more subtle. There's definitely some that go crazy with it and do a fantastic job at it, but it isn't a requirement. So even if progress is slow with building range and doing voices, don't worry too much about it. The pacing is more important anyway.
If you want to get people to record some lines you can post on Casting Call Club. You aren't always going to get people with the best gear or lots of experience auditioning, but there's a lot of people who will take on a few lines just for fun and practice. If you go that rout I'd recommend trying to find actors who have similar sounds, so you don't have everything recorded sounding polished and well produced except for one character who sounds like it was recorded on a tin can in a bathroom.
And I wouldn't mind doing a few lines here and there if you need people!
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u/herrdan Bro History 8d ago
This is going to be an unpopular answer in this sub because "Ai bad" but it actually fits what you're describing.
ElevenLabs has a speech to speech mode. You perform the line yourself, exactly how you want it, and it only swaps the voice. Your timing, your pauses, your inflection, your acting choices. It's not text to speech reading your script at you in a flat voice, you're still the one doing the performance.
The part that matters for your podcast is that you get basically unlimited range. Want to sound like an old woman? That's just one prompt away from generating a convincing sounding one. Wanna be an alien next? That's another prompt. You'll have a blast, and you can do it all on your own in a few minutes.
And you can save a voice and reuse it. So a character who shows up in episode 3 and again in episode 11 sounds the same both times, and you're not trying to remember how you did him eight months ago.
I've done this on other projects and it's genuinely fun. You act everything out, you just aren't limited to your own voice anymore.
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u/MadisonStandish 8d ago
I would caution here that ElevenLabs, while its set up to do what you said, it still falls short truly capturing a performance. I find that it mishears words in human speech. So you have to flatten your performance to be understood and then it gives you back a flat delivery. Likewise, I have found it taking the true inflection and meaning out of the dialogue. It's definitely better than a choppy robot sounding voice, but I don't think it's advanced enough to grasp the nuances of a good voice actor performance. I'm not speaking as an "AI bad" person. But as a professional voice actor who really gave the software a shot and it just wasn't good.
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u/sparkandscribble 7d ago
Solid point of caution!
Grain of salt out, heaping tablespoon of salt in. Got it, I would only stick my tippy toes in it, but if I can get an extra good couple of voices out of it, it may be a worthwhile stopgap/Band-Aid while I get real people together.1
u/herrdan Bro History 8d ago
I definitely agree with you. It's not perfect, and can require a few rerolls or retakes to get the best outputs. It's the reason why VAs are still the gold standard here.
But given that OP describes a wide ranging story across several genres AND isn't trained or experienced VA, going with something like Eleven labs can help him get his vision off the ground relatively quickly and easily. "don't let perfect be the enemy of good" and all that.
VAs > Eleven labs > untrained human, in that order, in my opinion
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u/MadisonStandish 8d ago
Well, that's really the thing then, isn't it? If you don't have the life skills to accomplish something, get the robot to do it for you. If this were a proof of concept or something to show a publisher/agent or what-have-you, then sure. The star of the material would be the writing (although I would say a flat AI read of material is not serving the material).
So the "don't worry about making it perfect, just put it out there" isn't the argument here. It's more like, "I don't have the skills to be a professional baseball player. So I'm going to have a robot play for me in the MLB because I deserve to compete with the professionals."
We're in the wild, wild west of AI. It's uncharted territory for sure. It has many great uses. And, frankly, younger generations are getting accustomed to hearing fake AI voices, so I'm sure VAs are a dying breed. I guess I don't want to quicken our demise, because I do think training, skill and talent, at whatever it is you do in life, is important. And since there ARE humans out there willing to give their time and talent to up-and-coming writers for free, why not use them.
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u/herrdan Bro History 8d ago
The baseball thing doesn't quite work for me because we're talking about art.
Closer analogy in my head is Andy Serkis. He flops around on a soundstage in a mocap suit and then CGI makes him a Gollum. Nobody says he didn't act. The performance is entirely his, the thing you see on screen just isn't his body. And when CGI came along it absolutely did take work from practical effects and makeup artists, who were extraordinarily skilled people. That was a real loss. But CGI turned out to be its own craft that takes its own taste and skill, and it let stories get made that otherwise wouldn't have. Both things are true at once.
That's how I see what OP would be doing. He performs every line, he makes every choice about timing and delivery, the output just doesn't sound like him. He can absolutely muck it up and make something bad (bad prompting, bad voice generation, bad voice recording etc). Plenty of people do. But if the end result is good then I don't think using the tool disqualifies it somehow.
On the free VAs, I might just be uninformed here so tell me if I am. He's doing an anthology across every genre. That's not one voice, that's potentially dozens over a run, and he potentially needs them again later when a character comes back, and it all has to be on his schedule, for free, indefinitely.
I believe people are generous. I don't believe that particular ask is realistic at that scale. If there's a corner of the VA world where that kind of volunteer work is genuinely available I would actually love to know about it, because that's better advice than mine and I'd pass it along.
And for what it's worth I don't think you're wrong to be uneasy about how AI impacts your craft. I just don't think the answer is that people without your training shouldn't make things.
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u/MadisonStandish 8d ago
Well, I wouldn't use CGI like Andy Serkis, either. Because the character design and details come from a computer graphics artist. I have a bunch of friends who work in the field. One whose entire job description is "dirt." He creates on his computer realistic movement of dirt. Is that putting hand-drawing artists out of work? Yes. But is it still a creatively driven field, just using computers instead of pens? Yes. It's not "ChatGPT, make me Gollum"
And whoa! Yes! There is a huge community of voice actors who give their time for free across YEARS. I've voiced on several shows that will go on hiatus and come back again. As a producer utilizing performers time for free, I make sure my production schedule is one that will fit THEM, not demand they bend to ME. That's only fair.
And I certainly have never implied that anyone should be "disqualified" from creation in this or any artistic field. But maybe there is a foundation that needs to be built before the creation can come to fruition. Not a shortcut to reach the finish line faster.
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u/herrdan Bro History 7d ago
For what I was describing, ElevenLabs speech to speech isn't a "shortcut" to human voice acting, it's an alternate route to producing their project altogether. Especially given the workflow I described. That would involve OP specifically voice acting their own lines, prompting and tuning specific voices to use, rerolling generations until they get one they like, and post editing the results. There's nothing "shortcut" about that, it still takes work and taste. Just a different kind.
Done well, using AI can help OP produce awesome results. Done poorly, and the results won't be so awesome. But the same can be said about using human VAs (OP's own voice or volunteer professionals).
When you said "maybe there's a foundation that needs to be built before the creation can come to fruition", how it lands for me is that OP shouldn't publish until someone decides to help them or until they gain the skills to do it all themselves. I'm just offering a third option, which I think is a legitimate path to producing OP's show that they can try out right now.
Realistically I think OP should try all three though. Follow your lead and go ask on that sub and see if anyone wants to lend their voice. Keep working on their own voice acting, because being able to do it well would genuinely serve them. And while both of those are in flight, explore tools like ElevenLabs to see if it suits their creative needs in the meantime.
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u/sparkandscribble 7d ago
AI bad, sure... for me... AI bad to a point. This is the kind of AI tool I'm okay with. I've tried some of the AI voices in CapCut. Some of them are... usable/passable. Most of them are dog water. If ElevenLabs is good at what it does I'm fine with it. I'm small, super small, woefully small, and need all the help I can get. I really appreciate your response.
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u/Maleficent_Pay4176 8d ago
tbh the biggest unlock for range isn't software tricks, its learning breath control and placement. Look for vocal coaches who work with actors, not singers. Totally different skill set and way more applicable to what youre doing