How to get over the sound of your voice! - Stop being so self critical!

Voice acting is hard enough without you criticizing yourself all the time. Knock it off!! In this video Gabby talks about how to get over yourself and learn to love your voice.

How to get over the sound of your voice! - Stop being so self critical! - 5:05

Learning to love your voice and learning how to get over yourself at the exact same time: that's the subject of today's video. Let's get started.

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of The Gift of Gab. So today, I'm answering some listener questions off of the YouTube channel, various things that you guys have written in. Today's question comes from Christiana and I kind of love this one, so I'm just gonna read it. She wrote, "You know, I feel like when I record I get a few takes that sort of sound right and then I keep recording some more and then I start to think that I sound really cheesy and lame and I'm not sure I'm getting it and then, you combine that with some mouth noise and before I know it, I think everything is atrocious and it sucks and I just want to give up and all it a day. Gabby do you have any words of wisdom?" Yeah, I do. Um... get over yourself! Oh my god.

So guys, this is the most disparaging thing that any actor, any performer can do to themselves, right? First of all, knock it off. It's perfectly, perfectly normal for a student, as someone who is learning this industry, to feel like you're getting worse before you're getting better. If you were perfect already, you wouldn't need to practice. If you were already amazing at this then there wouldn't be any kind of a challenge. You've got to practice some self-compassion, some self-love, and give yourself a break and recognize that you are learning and you are growing.

If you're early in your voiceover career, struggling with a particular genre, totally normal. Hating everything you record all the time, normal. What I want you to do is start separating your problem areas. Start to categorize the issues that you're having. Is it an issue with the business of voiceover? Is it an issue with the technical side of things and recording? Or is it purely a performance problem that you're having? But keep issues in areas separate. Meaning, don't start stressing out about mouth noise or something that's happening in the technical composition of your recording, if your focus in that moment is on performance and your acting skills. Keep them separate. You're one person, you can multitask, sure, but how many things can you master at one time?

Your expectations probably need to be altered, meaning, stop expecting to be perfect right now. Knock it off! It's not the time for this, because this takes time, and there is one teacher you absolutely cannot substitute. The teacher known as time, and that comes in the form of practice.

Another thing to keep in mind: every time you self-critique and listen back to your own recording, I want you to identify three things that you did really, really well that you are proud of, as well as three things that need work. That's one of the ways you're gonna start being a little kinder to yourself in this process.

And lastly, f***ing relax, ok? Seriously... we're not curing cancer here kids, it's voiceover. Nothing we do is that serious or is that dire. Give yourself a break. For instance, if you're working with a coach, understand that your coach's expectation is not for you to come to us at the beginning of a lesson with an absolutely perfect, flawless performance. Then why would you need us, right? That's not the goal. I don't want to hear you do something amazingly perfect because then, how do I help? How do I help you to grow? How do I help you achieve something new? I can't. You want to bring your coach your worst - not your best. When you're working with coaches, bring your issues, bring them the things that you're struggling with and having problems with, that's how they help you.

Aside from that, guys, normalizing the sound of your voice is getting used to it. It's all about exposure. You've got to hear yourself constantly, you have to record yourself and play yourself back until you basically become numb to the sound of your own voice. That's how you're going to get used to it. That's how you're going to get over it.

704-674-8294 / GabrielleNistico.com / gabby@voiceovervixen.com

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