My friend and fellow voice talent Kevin Readdean serves as the narrator of the new audiobook Moonbane by Al Sarrantonio.

On his blog (to which I hope you will subscribe if you haven’t already) Kevin is hosting a giveaway of the audiobook he gives voice to.

Full details are available here; if you are of the mind to tweet this up, post his giveaway to Facebook, Google+ it or otherwise blog about it…that would be very kind of you on behalf of Kevin.

Thanks.

Chris Greene and Tess Spangler take instruction from Toni Silveri at The Western New York Voice Actors Workshop

Performance ruts are the bane of any actor: stage, television or voice.

Yet left to our own devices (and ultimately ALL of us are) we can mindlessly fall into these ruts… a kind of “sameness” in performance that hurts a script, a vocal tic that we ourselves don’t notice, a subtle elocution mistake…or anyone one of a myriad of other problems that a producer might not be bothered by, a client wouldn’t even notice but is stuff that we as performers are responsible (if only to ourselves) for avoiding or fixing.

You might say – ‘well if the producer or the client doesn’t care, why should I?’

My short answer is: because it’s your job as a voice over performer.

My longer answer is: if that’s you’re attitude about your voice over performances, this post and probably this blog are not for you.

Smart performers know that in addition to guts checks and their own eyes/ears, they need omniscient observers. Call them coaches, trainers or whatevers, be it individually or in a group, this resource helps keep performers honest.

My life schedule does not always allow for regular voice acting classes but when it does, I have a wonderful place to go.

The Western New York Voice Actors Workshop is an amazing resource in our area, similar to the many architectural, geological, artistic, historical and human treasures with have in our area (aside from civic pride, there are facts and history on each of those areas to back up the “treasure” claim).

The Workshop exists because of one person but is successful because of many. For me, this is how my journey with the workshop began and how the art of voice acting is reinforced for me.

Toni Silveri, who has held her weekly Workshop for many, many years prior to my involvement, hosted a local workshop starring Pat Fraley some years ago. That was the first time I met her (as well as Pat) and it was also about the time she was starting her voice talent agency, All Coast Talent. At the end of the Fraley seminar, she asked if she could sign me to her agency and I did.

But I didn’t immediately join her classes. Not sure why (probably time constraints) but eventually I did that too. As Robert Frost once wrote “…and that has made all the difference.”

So what’s the difference and why does it benefit me? I’ll gladly tell you but to what effect I don’t know because learning is a deeply personal and individual activity. How this class impacts me might cause a different reaction for you (not better, not worse, just different). You have to find what works for you.

For me, I need the omniscient listener…that’s Toni. Whether I am not delivering on a performance or whether she has a new idea to insert or whether she has just one minor note to give me – it registers. In my head it usually clicks and allows me to both do as she’s asked of me and also make a mental note to hold onto that nugget for another time. Her ability to crystallize her direction for a performer is a gift. By it, Toni is sharing the tools she’s collected over her years of performing and taking stage acting and voice acting classes. As just one example, I find it a bit more credible taking character voice direction from a former Smurf. Yup.

Also of great value are the insights I get from the fellow students. There is an important point to make here – while Toni can bring everyone together, (barring some sort of crazy extreme circumstances – holding a class outside when its -40F, etc.) it’s the students that create the learning environment. They/we do it by our professionalism, our abilities, our willingness to learn, our willingness to support each other and (the big x factor) our personalities. Presently, it’s a joyous mix and Toni is the mixologist.

I sort of feel at the end of a class like it restores my faith in voice acting. It’s not that I’d lost the faith but rather to be around people who understand such a niche area (ever try and talk about voice acting at a cocktail party – blank stares followed by the ever famous “oh, look at the time!”), who have “been there” (are there) and can speak the (albeit somewhat self-fish, poofy and sometimes a bit odd) language that a voice actor needs to hear to get an evocative performance (whether its a :10 second commercial or an hours long audio book) is very helpful to me.

As always, your mileage may vary.

Ultimately, wherever your place in the world, I hope this post incites you to seek out training, to find the individual or group instruction that helps make you a better, stronger performer in your art. Today I have mine and I am grateful for everything it gives me.

Male Voice Talent Bob Souer

No but he plays Him in an audiobook. (Ba-dum-bump!)

About four years ago my friend, fellow traveler and sometimes dining companion Bob Souer was booked to narrate entire Bible in the “New King James” version.

Let me repeat: the entire Bible – all 700,000 plus words of it. It’s now been released.

Personally, I’ve always felt there was a bit of divine intervention in the booking because you’ll not find a more kind, Christian man with greater voice over talent than Bob.

If you or someone in your family enjoys absorbing Scripture, this would be an awesome gift, written by some awesome people and presented by an awesome guy.

My friend John Florian runs Voice Over Xtra which is one of the top (if not the top) news sources for all things voice over. He is also a proud member of MCA-I which, as a international board member and chair of the membership committee, makes me doubly happy.

I mention John because he sent me an email advising that he will be hosting a seminar on November 7, 2009 in New York City entitled Mastering Audiobook Narration. This workshop will be led by master narrator Alan Sklar (also an MCA-I member, by the way).

John says Alan is the industry’s “go-to” narrator for dramatic fiction and clear, informative business, medical and educational books. All this time I thought I was that guy! Crap!

Anyway, Voice Over Xtra is presenting Alan’s workshop which will take place at Shetler Studios, Studio 1 244 West 54th Street, 12th floor from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on November 7th. There are some spots available so if you’d like more details you can call 203-459-8834 or just sign up here.

With thanks to David Houston’s blog for the head-ups, major kudos to male voice talent Joe Rodriguez for a terrific audio book debut in the book Ten Mile River. The link features and audio cut of Joe’s work which I thought was really terrific…great character voices! Please take a listen.

I remember Joe writing about this session, his first audio book, on his blog a while back and recall that he was a bit nervous.

No nerves in the performance I heard. All I heard was a great story from a guy who’s developing into a great storyteller.

And should you need a great male Spanish Voice Talent, well there’s a guy name Joe on the International Voice Talent’s page that I could direct you to…

Whether it was just another excuse for a party (which I am totally on board with) or a very clever way to garner publicity (a practice to which I also subscribe) the folks at the audio-book department at Hachette now have my undivided attention and respect.

It was reported in our little downstate paper that Hachette Audio a division of Hachette Book Group USA held a party or more apropos a wake for the cassette tape.

A wake for the cassette tape.

The premise of course is that the cassette tape was long the staple of the audio book industry. Technology today has evolved to compact discs and MP3 files for audio books and other media to the point where you’d be hard pressed to find a cassette player in many households like there used to be.

I love the simplicity of the idea, its creativity and the ease of implementation. Whether it was just for the party or for the publicity I care not. I like the way they think so now I want to be a voice talent working with the party animals at Hachette’s audio-book department.

I’ll bring the pretzels.

A unique title (not) because “my commercial voice over demo” sounded weird to me. Better I speak of myself in the third person like all the self-important pro athletes (not all just some). Mmmm, maybe not.

Anyway, this new voice talent demo was long over due and joins the political commercial demo, audiobook demo and the radio imaging demo as recently re-done.

Got some more work to do on the narration and character voice demos now.

More to come. Let me know what you think (good or bad). I’d rather you be honest. Enjoy

LISTEN HERE!
Download audio file (Peter_OConnell_Commercial_Demo_080713.mp3)

Although I attend all too infrequently so that I can be at home with the growing fam, I am allowed back in to study occassionally with the great teacher and my friend Toni Silveri of The Voice Actor Workshop here in town.

Quick plug: Toni is bringing into Buffalo her long-time friend Pat Fraley on August 16-17 for two classes. The Saturday workshop “The Silly, The Serious and The Subtle” character voice class is full but there are a few spots left for the class I am attending on Recording Audio Books. Contact Toni through All Coast Talent to reserve your spot.

WHY ARE YOU IN A WORKSHOP?!

I was talking with my friend Amy Snively yesterday. She’s a marvelous voice talent in Los Angeles that you’ve probably heard on network shows as a promo voice or as a narrator (her commercial work is cool too). In a wonderfully wide ranging conversation she hit on a theme that that people have brought before me many times: why do you (me) attend voice over classes?

The question is usually meant in a complimentary way (I think) as if to say you’re very talented and knowledgeable about all things voice. You should be teaching not studying.

Well I do teach (if you can call it that, compared to the scores of more thoughtful tutors in our industry) but I am so knowledgeable about voice and about life that I know just how much I don’t know. You may have to read that again to grasp the intent. The point is: there is always something more to learn. Our brains may have a finite capacity for knowledge but I’m pretty sure I’m still only using a ¼ of the tank in my cranium. So I need to keep filling.

GROUP OR SOLO?

Amy wanted me to consider private coaching as all of my learning as been in a group environment when it comes to voice over. She and many of my peers have accomplished great things in this format. I probably should try private coaching to actually compare but my inner-sense (and certainly experience) tells me I learn more in a group setting. Your mileage may vary as we all learn in different ways (best to check under your own hood for directions on preference.)

Maybe I’ll change my mind after I try the private route.

It could be that I “think” I prefer the group setting because of the solitary nature of our business; the chance to interact and work with peers helps renew my joy for voice over. “There are others like me, I am not a freak!” (Or at least the other freaks are very nice and I enjoy their company.)

But I think it’s getting input and direction from my respected teachers and insight from my fellow students that helps me improve so much in both my performance and my mental game. I will grant you that in a workshop setting, you would have to respect and value the opinion of your fellow students for this to be applicable and if you didn’t get a good group at the outset, you’re pooched). There are nuggets of voice over and performance gold all around in a great VO group class.

HIDDEN TALENTS REVEALED

There is always some epiphany I come away with when I study with Toni and the rest of the class who are by and large some of the most talent and under credited voice talents I have worked with in twenty-five years. Their talents and mine are always magnified under Toni’s tutelage.

Last night I was encouraged to use a narrator voice that to my ear sounded awfully but the class went nuts over it!

That to me is just one great example of why voice talents need to study: we as voice artists cannot rely constantly on our own ears to ensure our performances nor can we rely on the clients’ ears. Why?

Our ears are too used to and accepting of our own VO quirks and short cuts that can (long term) hamper our performance. And clients are not professional voice talents; they’ve hired you because you sound great to them so even if you know you offered a slightly flawed performance, they may love it. Well great, the check cleared and the client’s happy but should that in itself be enough? If you are a true voice professional, I say no.

VOICE 2008 AND OTHER WORKSHOPS

As we approach VOICE 2008 in Los Angeles in early August, there’s a lot of talk now about voice training. That event will bring together voice talents from around the world with some tremendous teachers – it’s a group learning setting where I know I would learn lots but I am not going. Why?

Cost? Not really as I have airline mileage points and hotel stay points that make travel a minor cost issue and certainly the show is not cost prohibitive. But as I told Amy ultimately the time and travel commitment is – I have to justify to myself taking a lot of time away from my children and my wife to pursue my professional education. And I’ve already done a lot of training this year.

Deb Munroe who is based out of Vancouver, B.C., came into Toronto a few months back to hold an advanced training of her Mic & Me Workshop. It was a two day event but I came up for only one day. What a fireball of energy Deb is! She’s a very focused teacher who helped me further my “everyman” persona is a great way. She’s a charmer and a go-getter who really helped everyone with their VO needs. You’ll see her at VOICE. Please tell her I said hi.

Stevie Vallance presented her Tooned In Workshop on character voices also in Toronto this summer. She is a multi-talent performer, a three-time Emmy nominee and one-time Emmy Award winner who continues to excel in the animation field, having served as a voice actor and voice director on many network cartoon shows. That was a wonderful vocal work out where I again was introduced to some new talent while also working with old friends.

Combine that with Fraley’s workshop coming up in August and that’s plenty of workshops for me. Though I would love the networking I would do in LA, its very unlikely that I’ll attend….this year.

What have been your training experiences this year and how did they go? Planning on any workshops and what are your goals for the workshops? Let me know.

Thanks for reading.

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Voice over actor and teacher Pat Fraley teaches his seminars around the country when he’s not working on a voice project in LA. If you’ve been in voice over for anytime, you’ve likely heard of Fraley’s classes and how wildly popular they are.

Well there’s a wonderful, well-known voice actress and teacher in Western New York named Toni Silveri who has worked with and been friends with Pat for many years. That friendship coupled with their mutual professional respect and the Buffalo Niagara region’s storied broadcasting/voice over history has encouraged Pat to visit Buffalo numerous times with his wonderful always sold out classes.

This summer, Pat Fraley is coming to Buffalo again. Saturday, August 16th and Sunday, August 17th, 2008, Fraley will be presenting a two day workshop on The Silly, The Serious and The Subtle.

Download the Fraley Voice Class brochure here.

The classes will allow voice talents to hone their skills at creating and delivering character voice performances for the specific demands of the top three mediums: animation, interactive gaming and audio books (audio books will actually get a full day master class available only to VO professionals).

Class sizes are limited and are already filling up fast so contact Toni via email: tonisilveri at g mail dot com (figure it out).

Full disclosure: Toni is my voice coach and one of my agents (All Coast Talent is one of the few agencies that actually works at getting voice talents work). I have also studied with Pat before.

I am attending his August session and paying full boat because I know what a great teaching environment Toni establishes and what a great teacher Pat is. I have no stake in this presentation whatsoever except as a repeat student.

If you are a voice talent in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Fort Erie, St. Catherines, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Erie, Bradford, Cleveland and all points in between, I suggest you reserve one of the very limited spots for this voice talent training weekend.

If you miss because you’re slow to respond then shame on you. Get in touch with Toni today.

Thanks for reading.

If you really like this post (of course we hope you do), please feel free to bookmark and or promote it by clicking the buttons below on your preferred services.

I like reading books, but I don’t do it a lot (it’s the time thing).

When it comes to book reading for my own entertainment, I am not a huge novel fan (except when someone’s paying my to produce an audio book of their novel…then I jump in feet first!) Unless the writing or a character really grabs me very early on, I lose interest.

I’m more of a biography guy. Reading about the lives of people whom I find interesting is more entertaining to me. I also enjoy certain business books as well.

But like many high schools students, I had to read the late Kurt Vonnegut, specifically Slaughterhouse-Five. I didn’t like the book and thought the story poorly told (but he’s sold more than a few copies so what do I know?). Part of the process of learning in school is accumulating a list of likes and don’t likes so I slogged through it.

And I get that Vonnegut is talented, sharp and witty. And through some of his interviews, he also struck my as a bit of a pain in the ass (something I have never been accused of being!;)

But courtesy of Tim Ferris’ blog today, I had the chance to read part of Vonnegut’s final interview (originally in US Airways Magazine of all places…and who knew they bothered to put that mostly advertorial rag on line?)

In that interview, Vonnegut brilliantly summarized a thought I have had for sometime regarding our society’s scary and growing dependence on the electronic media (of which, I admit, I help foster with my business). What made his quote brilliant to me was that he said it and I only thought it.

If you want people to know you’re brilliant, you’ve got to show them the evidence. Here’s Vonnegut’s Exhibit A:

Q: We live in a very visual world today. Do words have any power left?

Vonnegut: I was at a symposium some years back with my friends Joseph Heller and William Styron, both dead now, and we were talking about the death of the novel and the death of poetry, and Styron pointed out that the novel has always been an elitist art form. It’s an art form for very few people, because only a few can read very well. I’ve said that to open a novel is to arrive in a music hall and be handed a viola. You have to perform. [Laughs.] To stare at horizontal lines of phonetic symbols and Arabic numbers and to be able to put a show on in your head, it requires the reader to perform. If you can do it, you can go whaling in the South Pacific with Herman Melville, or you can watch Madame Bovary make a mess of her life in Paris. With pictures and movies, all you have to do is sit there and look at them and it happens to you.

Other than soap and water, we shouldn’t let other things we experience , like electronic communication, simply wash over us. Our brains and those of our children become sedentary and nothing good can come from that.

We shouldn’t let things just “happen” to us. We’ve been given the gift of thoughtful participation and I think we all should use it alot more!

Make it a novel or a biography, but read a book…right after you’re done reading with your children.