So I’m recording Other People’s Heroes as an audio book. You may have heard about it. I’ve been working for a few months now on developing different character voices, and while I’ll never be Mel Blanc, I think I’ve got at least enough versatility that you’ll know who is saying what when you’re listening. That in mind, I’ve learned a few rules about character voices.
1. Not everybody can do a “gravelly” voice.
2. When your default “female” voice is to just go higher, you’ve gotta find other ways to distinguish them from each other.
3. Seriously, if you can’t do “gravelly,” stop trying. There’s no shame in it and you’re just going to hurt your throat.
4. Stupid characters are really fun to record.
5. Dammit, why did you give two major characters gravelly pitch characteristics? You can’t even do one without reaching for the honey and lemon? Are you a moron?
6. If your book is in first person, it really helps if the main character just speaks with your default voice.
7. Fine, then, ruin your throat! SEE IF I CARE!
8. Theatre training in accents can be a big help.
9. At least have a bottle of water with you when you record, idiot.
Evertime Realms 
I would love to record something like that, I spend hours reading bedtime stories to my kids, and they never want Mom to do it… because she doesn’t do the “cool voices” like Dad does! You will be a great dad if you keep practicing! 🙂
Accents and variations on tone / pitch / resonance can only go so far, and sometimes people need… other things to help them achieve greater range. Slowing speech for certain characters can give their words more emphasis, while speeding up readings for others (a-la Six in Blossom) can emphasize their haste in speaking. Even the great and unquestionable talent of Orson Welles wasn’t immune to moments of WTF-ery – his Irish accent in Lady From Shanghai is legendary for all the wrong reasons.
Here’s something which nobody seems brave enough to mention, but is important in understanding why we sound the way we do – the tone and pitch is directly related to how tight the vocal cords are. Let that sink in for a moment whilst you try and work out how to use the information to your advantage… Had any ideas yet?
Okay, so it’s highly unorthodox, but I’ll suggest it anyway. Using alcohol or grass to relax the vocal chords, thus deepening the natural tone of voice, can give a character enough vocal difference to stand out amongst the other voices. This is only really useful on multi-layered recordings, but it is something which is useful to remember if needed. Uh… I didn’t suggest this, if anyone asks, m’kay?
I’ll also throw in a massive recommendation for voice-changing software, because the algorithms have come on in leaps and bounds since the horrible metallic vocoders first appeared. There’s a few I like, though they are all ridiculously expensive, and better suited to professional and semi-professional use than for fun recordings. The free software is probably just as good, though I have yet to put them through their paces. Post production FX can also work wonders.
Just my two cents…
All good advice there. My post was by no means intended to be comprehensive. Hadn’t thought about voice-changing software, though. What sort of free stuff is available?
I haven’t explored the free stuff in any depth, but there is one (no idea which one) that is meant to be able to chance the pitch sufficiently that it can fool listeners into believing that the speaker is female. Despite the claims, I always feel that there is something lost in the real-time digital alterations. It’s not that processing power is at a premium any more, yet the software available seems to cling to tiny amounts of power as being “better.”
Typing “free audio software” only brings up endless promotions for paid utilities, so this is probably something which needs more thorough examination at some point. How many layers you’re using is also part of the puzzle – the more layers you have to play with, the more tweaking you can get away with.
Are you doing any Foley work? You might be able to use FX overlay to change some voices – a word of warning for that, though: Too much distortion and you will lose source fidelity to the degree which makes whatever was audible completely inaudible. There’s a cool Dalek voice-changer which can be hard-modded to produce different sounds. Much fun to be had with those, but cracking them open is only advised if you know what you’re looking at when you get it open.
And I definitely do NOT know what I’m looking at… 😀
No Foley work planned. This is going to be more of a straight-up reading, although I’m trying to make it as entertaining as possible.