How do YOU manage to do different voices?

[tehnoobydude]

Hey everyone, I'm a pretty inexperienced voice actor who feels he should get out and impersonate more often but doesn't know how to do all those different voices! My voice is...unique. I mean it's not bad, but it's really different than other people and my voice never fits people like Son Goku, Light Yagami and Rin Okumura. I also want to be able to try to do voices like Piccolo and Vegeta. How do you do voices like those? I mean I try to do them but it never seems to come out right...do you think I might not be able to do it and move on to people I do fit or is there a way I can sound like them?

[Praxis678]

Not everyone can imitate a certain voice actor/character. For example I can do Perfect Cell, Johnny Bravo, Sephiroth, Goofy, Hank Hill, Beavis and Butthead, Arnold Swartzneggar, Majin Buu, Christopher Walken, etc etc. But I absolutely can't do Goku, Light Yagami, Piccolo and my Vegeta is meh at best.

I understand your want to do these characters but if you can't pull them off you should try for something that's more your zone. As for how I do these characters, it's a lot of throat and vocal chord flexing. The first thing you want to do to achieve a different voice is to try and change your pitch, after that start working on the accent. Example being Vegeta he has a low gruff tough guy voice. If you can't comfortably hit low/high then you probably shouldn't go for that character. And if you have a unique voice already try and use that to your advantage. Not everyone wants a imitator some producers love to hear a new breath of life into a character.

[XTREEMMAK]

Just wrote about this subject in another forum. Hope you find it useful

http://voiceactingalliance.com/board...ffering-voices.

[DeepAnimeGuy]

Not everyone can imitate a certain voice actor/character. For example I can do Perfect Cell, Johnny Bravo, Sephiroth, Goofy, Hank Hill, Beavis and Butthead, Arnold Swartzneggar, Majin Buu, Christopher Walken, etc etc. But I absolutely can't do Goku, Light Yagami, Piccolo and my Vegeta is meh at best.

I understand your want to do these characters but if you can't pull them off you should try for something that's more your zone. As for how I do these characters, it's a lot of throat and vocal chord flexing. The first thing you want to do to achieve a different voice is to try and change your pitch, after that start working on the accent. Example being Vegeta he has a low gruff tough guy voice. If you can't comfortably hit low/high then you probably shouldn't go for that character. And if you have a unique voice already try and use that to your advantage. Not everyone wants a imitator some producers love to hear a new breath of life into a character.

i totally agree with praxis, it's not for everyone if you know you cant do that type of voice dont try you dont want to strain your vocals. BUT if you know could do them but just need some help then what i usually do to get a deep gruff kind of voice i cant explain it when you speak normally u speak from your mouth but when i do low voices i speak from my throat, if that makes sense

[aldenorai]

Who says not being able to imitate other character voices is a BAD thing?

Why not just voice original characters?

[jpoopdog]

you listen to an actors natural voice, then a voice in a movie, e.g ray romano as manfred in ice age, youll see they never use their plain old natural voice. most often they will put a slight spin on it, make it sound closer to what the character might sound like, but rarely do they use a natural voice.

I want you to think about a pretty good actor, johnny dep. most all his characters might sound the same, but they barely resemble him allot of the time, and the actual character, behaviours, attitude and so on, is different, unique from the rest.

In my opinion, characterization and acting is 1 third of voice acting, the other 2 thirds are maintaining an alternate voice.
A slight difference between voices will make a much bigger impact if its a strong character with a different way of speaking, be it accent, attitude, ect.

Also , just throwing this in. recently i have found accents can assist in building new voices from the same tone.

[Labamba]

what i do is experiment.
i use one or 2 lines (i get bored with one)

specifically, i aim for med-high ranges because i have a harder time with high ranges.

this might not make much sense but its best i can describe lol.
for one, i plug my nose (not using my fingers) and when i say my line i can change the "whine" by how closed off my nose passage is
another i purely use my throat by closing off the air passage more or less to change my voice.
umm lets see, also diaphragm use too.


hope these tips help :p