Log in Sign up

Track 1 · Starting out · Read 4 of 8

Things a voice over beginner can do NOW to get started

4 minute read First published November 2015 Refreshed September 2026

A young man standing by a bookshelf reading aloud from a hardback book in the morning light

No coach booked yet. No studio. No demo. That's fine. There's a surprising amount you can do this week that costs little or nothing, and every bit of it makes the expensive parts later go better.

This week's list

  • Get the basicsComputer, a respectable microphone, free software.
  • Ten minutes of vocal work, dailyBreathing, humming, lip trills, then read aloud.
  • Listen and mimicAds, documentaries, games, the phone menu.
  • Record yourself and play it backFix one thing at a time.
  • Build a knowledge baseTraining near you, communities, working actors' demos.
  • Look after the instrumentWater, sleep, and the habits that have to go.

Get the basics

You can't practise without something to practise on. To start, you need a computer, a microphone and recording software. None of it has to be fancy yet. The microphone that came with your headset is not it, but a respectable entry level condenser or a decent USB mic will get you recording, and you can step up when your ears tell you to. (When you're ready to spend properly, read USB or XLR first.)

For software, your computer probably has something built in. Skip it. Audacity is free, runs on anything and is more than enough to record, cut and export a clean file. Reaper costs very little and is what a lot of working actors use. Save the paid suites and the pop filters, shields and stands for when you know what you're missing.

Vocal exercises

Start getting your voice ready for the work it's about to do. Plan a short daily routine: breathing exercises, a few minutes of humming and lip trills, and then reading. Read aloud. Books, newspapers, the back of the cereal box. Read long, awkward words until they stop tripping you. Do tongue twisters. Do it every day, because you're building two things at once: the muscles, and the language.

Listen and mimic

Pay attention to voice overs in the wild. Television and radio ads, documentaries, games, the voice on the phone menu. Notice the different styles and how much range sits inside "conversational". When you hear one that's really good, record it and try to match it. Not to copy the person, but to learn how many ways there are to say the same line, and which ones your voice does naturally.

Listen to yourself

Now record yourself and play it back. Most people hate this at first. Do it anyway. The fastest way to improve is knowing exactly what you're good at and exactly where you wobble, and the only honest source of that information is the playback. Be a fair critic. Note the mouth noise, the rushed ending, the flat middle sentence. Then fix one thing at a time.

Build a knowledge base

Go online with a purpose. Find training and workshops near you, and the good ones held online. Find the voice over news sites and communities and join them. Look at the profiles and demos on the professional casting sites, this one included, and listen closely to what working actors sound like. Study a few established actors' websites: how they present themselves, what their demos do in the first five seconds.

Be choosy about who you learn from. Read and listen to established actors and reputable sites, because you'll pick up habits from whatever you consume, and bad habits are much slower to lose than good ones are to gain.

Two drills for today

Reading aloud is the exercise. These two make it count.

Ten minutes, two drills

  1. The three-way readTake one sentence from any ad. Read it as a friend telling you a secret, then as someone who's slightly bored, then as someone who's genuinely delighted. Same words, three people. Record all three and listen for which one sounds most like a person and least like a "voice".
  2. The cold readOpen any book at random, press record, and read a paragraph you've never seen, aloud, first time, without stopping. Then read it again. The gap between take one and take two is exactly the skill an audition tests, and it closes with practice.
Warm up first: a minute of humming, a minute of lip trills, and three tongue twisters said slowly, then fast. "Red leather, yellow leather" still works.

Take care of your voice

The day you decide to be a voice actor is the day you decide to look after your voice. If you have habits that work against it, now's the time: the smoking, the heavy drinking, the shouting, the diet that's mostly reflux. And pick up the new ones. More water, some exercise, proper sleep. Caring for your voice goes into all of it.

End of read 4 of 19