How to sound ‘authentic’

Recently I've started teaching and coaching professional and semi-professional voiceover artists, via an online community for the voice industry called Gravy for the Brain.

It's a very specific kind of accent and speech coaching, because of course voiceover - it all its many forms from audiobooks, adverts, video games and kids' cartoons, to corporate 'please press 1' answerphone messages - is trying to achieve a highly specific task, depending on the medium.

The work I do on accent reduction, elocution and confident speaking dovetails perfectly with the needs of contemporary voiceover professionals, because the key thing my clients and clients in the voice industry are looking for is AUTHENTICITY.

'We want an authentic voice'

The buzzword in the voiceover industry is 'authentic'. Businesses and organisations that commission voice content are turning away from the bland and stilted 'announcer' voice that we're all used to.

My work on confident speaking and accent reduction revolves around authenticity.

The typical person who books in for one of my free 1-hour online taster sessions is not a professional performers, actor, or voice artist. She's someone who wants to feel more confident and have more of an impact on others when she speaks, but still be true to who she is - to still sound authentic.

And it turns out that a lot of the features of authentic speaking and authentic British RP accents that we analyse and practise in a one-to-one course, are the sort of things that pro voiceover talent has to learn - or unlearn - in order to achieve a more authentic delivery in voiceover.

'The next station is - Westminster'

Fun fact: most of the London Underground announcements were recorded by a real person, Emma Clarke - way back in 1999!

Clearly London Underground is operating a ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ policy here. But my voiceover colleagues tell me that nobody wants this kind of voice for their projects anymore. They want an 'authentic' sound instead. What's changed?

‘Authentic’? AI voices are sophisticated but there’s strong demand for ‘real’ voices

Two big factors have influenced this trend:

1. AI voices: the explosion in AI technologies means anyone can use an AI voice (or use their own voice as the basis for a customised AI voice), to create a synthetic voiceover. It's obviously cheaper and more straightforward than a real human voice, but does still have that artificial quality. So producers of voice content who want to use real humans with real voices want a voice that doesn't sound like an AI!

2. The massive popularity of user-generated online content, especially on social platforms like Instagram and Tiktok, means that people all over the world have got used to hearing non-professional voiceover - content creators and influencers with no professional voice background, voicing or narrating their own videos. In the same way that social media creators connect very directly with their audience, audiences now want and expect voices that don't sound too slick, or too polished, or too 'fake' - voices that just sound like 'real people'.

So I've been working with voiceover artists on those very specific detailed features of real human speech (in a British RP accent, and in a General American accent) that distinguish an 'announcer' voice from a 'real' voice.

EXAMPLE: joined-up speaking

In the later stages of a course, once we've got to grips with the vowel and consonant sounds that are the building blocks of any accent, we look at some of the fine detail of how native speakers actually speak.

What do I mean by this? Well, there's a common misconception that in order to speak 'clearly', you have to pronounce every sound carefully and crisply.

So in a simple phrase like

'I spoke to the postman and then shut the door'

you'd clearly pronounce the 't' in 'postman' and 'shut', right? You'd clearly pronounce the 'p' in 'spoke', wouldn't you?

Actually, no. Native speakers in a British 'Received Pronunciation' accent, like the Tube announcer in the clip above - and even those capable of precise and distinct articulation, like professional voiceover artists - do NOT pronounce every single sound precisely and distinctly.

An RP accent is actually pretty careless - but 'carefully careless'. It prizes clarity but not at the expense of ease and flow, especially when you're simply trying to express a thought.

So a typical RP speaker would sound like this:

'I sboke t'the pos'man 'n then shu' the door'

It's too difficult to pronounce the 'p's and 't's and still maintain a sense of flow. So the accent takes a few shortcuts.

It's these kind of shortcuts that make the difference between an over-precise, robotic-sounding delivery, and an authentic human sound.

Listen again to the Tube announcer - even she isn't pronouncing the 't' in 'next' when she says 'the next station is...'. It's more like 'nex' station'.

When we're self-conscious about our speaking - or striving for an authoritative and 'confident' sound in a voiceover - we can tend to overdo the precision, and sound stiff and awkward.

So, ironically, I'm often encouraging clients, trainees, and now voiceover artists, to work a lot harder at working less hard!

What modern voiceover artists and the sort of people I work with one-to-one have in common, is that they want to sound authentic.

In voiceover, the brief is often to sound like the listener's trusted friend, not like a traditional authority figure.

In their professional lives and their general lives, my clients want to sound like themselves, not like they're 'putting on' any kind of accent or fake voice.

So whether you want to sound authentically you for its own sake, or to help sell washing powder/ read audiobooks/record answerphone messages, I can help!

If you feel like you're working hard but it's not getting easier, maybe you're focusing on the wrong things. Maybe we need to redirect your energies slightly, or refocus your thoughts away from 'getting everything right'. Get in touch and book a free 1-hour online taster session with me, we can get to know each other and I can listen to you properly and see what needs to change.

Thanks for reading - see you next time