American voice artists seem to have a different approach to voiceover work when compared with voice talent in the UK. For a start US VOs seem much more likely to believe in the importance of regularly attending voice training sessions throughout their career. Often it seems that they will have a mentor to help them develop further too.  In addition quite a number seem to offer voice training themselves to help aspiring voiceovers get started.  There are also quite a few who regularly post video blogs on-line.

Because I’m interested in all aspects of voiceover work I often check out some of these videos to see if I can pick up anything new.  Although I don’t attend training courses myself I do believe that you can always learn new things that will improve your work.

One guy I’ve watched quite a few times is Bill DeWees and I’ve just watched a couple more of his videos. One video suggested that Craig’s List is a great place to pick up new voiceover clients – I certainly hadn’t thought of that one.

In another video he extolls the virtues of reading audio books and brandishes a pretty impressive cheque (at around 10:15 in the video) for over $900 in royalties from the sale of 6 books that he’d recorded.  I’m certainly interested to know what kind of books he’s been reading – needless to say he doesn’t share that detail.

He also has videos with general tips to improve your voice-over performance. One of these I personally don’t agree with (though I know many radio presenters who would agree with it) is where he claims that a particular brand of coffee (seemingly drunk by the bucketful in the video) is the secret to his voice over success.
For me water is the only drink I have on hand when recording – sometimes with lemon juice in it to help stop the “clicking” dry mouth sounds.

However one of Bill’s tips I did like was in a video I watched where I was expecting not to like it. It’s called “How Can a Mouthful of Peanut Butter Help the Voice Actor?”  The idea was so bizarre: I just thought that there was no way that a mouthful of claggy, sticky, peanut butter could help.  Well of course it can’t!
But what Bill does is use it as an idea to warm up your mouth muscles by imagining you’ve got a mouthful of peanut butter and you need to use your tongue to remove it from your teeth and all parts of your mouth as quickly as possible.

He claims it loosens up your tongue and warms up the mouth – maybe – but it’s worth watching just for the face he pulls (at .50 secs) as he demonstrates it.