Blog

The voice actor surveyed the wasteland before her. It had been some years since the robot voices had taken over. They arrived slowly…..seemingly harmless in their cylinders and cubes with cute names like Alexa, Cortana, and Siri. They may have been people once, even then, but in their disembodied form they became our friends, our companions, and for a time, our servants.

Only a few saw the revolution on the horizon. Lone voices in the wilderness warning of the devastation to come.

As she stepped over the debris-strewn terrain, our voice actor contemplated what had been lost. Southeast Asia succumbed first, surrendering hundreds of two-cent-per-word eLearning factories with hardly a fight. As the robots swept the Earth, ragged groups of survivors formed to attempt resistance. The Battle of Fiverr was legendary, with thousands upon thousands of gig economy VOs bravely making a last stand against the machines. The names of the martyrs are remembered to this day in the empty and dust-covered halls of get-rich-quick-in-VO social media groups where the high priests of thirty dollars a holler once sermonized their flocks.

Suddenly, she felt a crunch beneath her feet. It was what was left of a big red neon sign…..the wreckage of one of the great demo mills of yore. Beneath it, writhing in silent agony, was a once-mighty multi-level-marketing voiceover coach. The robots had taken his voice, just like all the rest.

She took one long final glance at the apocalyptic landscape, and then walked back inside her picturesque two-story lake house, admiring the lovely work the gardeners did this morning. She checked on her kids playing happily in their spacious bedrooms, her husband, whom she was proud to have helped retire at forty-five making breakfast in their Italian-marble-covered kitchen, and then strolled into her studio.

“Alexa,” she said, “How many jobs do I have this morning?” “You have eight new jobs this morning,” Alexa cheerfully replied. “I’ve added your highest-paying clients to the top of your queue. Those scripts are up first.”

She felt a pang of sorrow for collaborating with the robots. After all, they had killed off the entire low-budget voiceover industry, removing tens of thousands of aspiring talent from the game. With them, all those demo mills and snake oil salesmen lost everything as well, because all that were left were pros who could see right through their shiny sales pitches. Robots were the low end of the industry now.

The fleeting sadness came and went, however, as she turned her attention to the premium clients who needed her human voice that day. She recalled one of them joking, just after the invasion had begun and she had nervously asked if she would be fired. “Why would we replace you with AI?” the client asked. “We have standards. You do amazing work, and the best a robot can ever hope to be is almost as good as the real thing.”

 

Voice actor and coach Angel Burch has had a prolific career in the industry and has helped many new talents find their footing on the road to success. Here, we discuss her struggles in our vocal health series and learn lessons from her story.

JMC: Tell us about how you got started in voiceover

ANGEL: It was a fluke. I did a lot of on-camera work at a young age in Canada, where I grew up.  I was working on a film at around 14, and when it wrapped, the director mentioned that they needed a voiceover for the beginning credits. He jokingly asked everyone in the room if anyone could sound like a five-year-old kid. He wanted to complete everything that day. Being the precocious child that I was, I raised my hand and said, “sure, I can do that!” Honestly, up to that point, I had never done voiceover before. The extent of my career encompassed professional singing and on-camera work, and that was it. So they decided to give me a try, and I walked into this small little room with a microphone in the middle. The director fed me the line and I did my best impersonation of a 5-year-old. When it was all said and done, I thought, “This! This is what I want to do for the rest of my life!” I wasn’t even aware that voiceover was a real thing or something I could make a career out of. But I found myself choosing to do work that would encompass using my voice over the years. So I pretty much naturally fell into a 30-year career.

JMC: What did your career look like before you started having vocal health issues?

ANGEL: At the time I started having issues, I had just completed a professional commercial demo with you. Leading up to that point, I was doing eleven characters in an animation series overseas and a couple of educational apps, some e-learning, and had gotten a national commercial. I also did some smaller regional and local things. I had started getting some top-level agent attention as well, which, as you know, if you don’t live in LA or New York, is a really huge thing. So my career was taking off. I couldn’t see myself doing anything else for the rest of my life.  Because I was so confident in my career at that point, my husband and I decided to buy a farm and we were really looking forward to enjoying what life was bringing us.

JMC: Can you describe how you first knew there was a problem?

ANGEL: In November 2016, I started having issues with a growl in the lower register of my voice. It would only happen occasionally, and it was right about the time when you and I were doing a demo session together that it started. Because it was so random and didn’t happen that often I thought it was just a phase. I sincerely thought it would pass, that maybe I was just dehydrated because of the weather or stressed because we really wanted to move and couldn’t find a house. I knew that those factors could affect my voice, so I wasn’t overly concerned. But by January, it had gotten considerably worse. The texture in my voice wasn’t just in the lower register anymore it was starting to creep up and into the higher registers and affecting my everyday speaking. I decided I should go and seriously get it checked out by an ENT. They scoped my throat, looked at my vocal cords, and did an assessment but couldn’t find anything really wrong physically. He asked me if I had felt any strain or pain in that area, and I told him that I didn’t feel anything other than having the symptoms of this rough texture coming into my voice and being unable to subdue it to the point of not being able to do my job.  The doctor suggested I talk with a speech pathologist if it didn’t get better, but in the meantime, he just attributed it to stress. He told me to relax more and, rest my voice more, drink lots of water. All of the normal things you would do as a first defense.  I continued working on the animation series and decided to put everything else aside and focus on that for a while. I thought maybe I was just stressing my voice because I was doing so much work.

By the end of March, My voice started cutting out completely at times. I would be speaking in normal conversation, not even doing a voiceover, and suddenly I would lose my voice in the middle of a sentence or something. I would rest for a little bit, and it would come back. I told the producer of the animation series that I needed to slow down some of the production because they were pushing to get this done. I told him that I felt like it was just a strain on my voice, and to continue, I needed to rest a bit more. But by the end of May, I could hardly talk. I thank the Good Lord that I had spoken to Rob Sciglimpaglia about the contract for the animation series before signing it. Because he told me to place a clause in there regarding illness. Should I not be able to continue at any point during the series that I wouldn’t be punished by forfeiture of any money that I had made or any money that I would make should they decide to go ahead and broadcast what I had already voiced. Because of that clause, I could get out of the contract for the animation series and pursue what was wrong with my voice.

JMC: Tell us how your condition progressed and where you are today

ANGEL: I went to about four doctors over the two-year period, and the only diagnosis I got was mild asthma. They put me on asthma medications, but it didn’t help my voice. Nobody could figure out why my voice wasn’t coming back. I had had a viral infection and a fungal infection at the same time a few months before, and they concluded somehow that combination had affected either my lungs or my vocal cords.  But, again, nobody was sure. I was unable to speak much more than above a whisper. I was so frustrated at not being able to communicate that I had started learning sign language just to talk to my husband and my friends. I was even more devastated when I started experiencing mild hearing loss.  I was again unable to get a clear diagnosis, but at the same time, I had to believe that God was in control and trust that He knew what He was doing. I had a couple of voiceover students, which I continued with because I wanted to stay in business and be connected, and I knew the more I strained my voice trying to talk the worse it would probably be.  I don’t think I ever got super depressed, but I did have low times and spent a lot of time self-reflecting since I couldn’t talk at length to anybody else. It made me stronger because I realized that my self-worth was more than my ability to do voiceover. I delved more into becoming a life coach, and I started taking on some more voiceover students at the encouragement of my friend Everett Oliver.  He probably doesn’t realize it, but his encouragement and being his goofy self and calling me out of the blue to shoot the breeze helped me stay positive that things would work out just fine whatever life course I ended up at.  I started really pacing myself by using my knowledge in the industry to stay abreast of changes.

The breakthrough came weirdly.  This past spring, I got a horrible bout of bronchitis. I have had pneumonia in the past, so we were very concerned since I had trouble breathing and my temperature was high. My husband took me to the emergency room, where they gave me substantial doses of antibiotics, over 1000 mg IV. They sent me home with another 1000 mg to take over the next five days. Within two weeks of that treatment, all of a sudden, my voice came back. It was weak from not being used, but it was there. When I spoke to my doctor about it, he suggested I may have had a low-grade bacterial infection in the ear, nose, and throat area that wasn’t showing up on any of the bloodwork.  He suggested I start doing some light vocal exercises and strengthening my voice to see if it stays. I also promised my husband I would give it at least four months before I would say my voice was back completely.  So, I didn’t tell anyone for months that my voice had come back at all. I was getting more excited by the minute, seriously overjoyed. The idea that I could communicate with people outside of my family without sign language was almost overwhelming, coupled with the fact that there was a possibility I could go back into voiceover. You have to remember I completely retired from doing voice over because I thought this was a permanent condition that I would not recover from. I sold my mics, and my booth and took down my website.

Today my voice is strong, I have slowly worked to make it stronger, I have brought it back up to full strength enough to do voiceover again on a full-time basis.

JMC: How has it impacted your voiceover business?

ANGEL: Funny you should ask this LOL. When I started back just a few short months ago, I thought I’d jump right in where I left off, and everything would be great; within a few months, my career would be on track again. But that hasn’t been the case. While reaching out to a lot of my former clients, I found that the smaller producers were out of business. They are no longer doing freelance production or moved to larger companies where they’re not the decision-maker regarding hiring voiceover. But always telling me, they were put in a good word, which is sweet. The larger companies that I worked for put me back on their rosters, but of course, it’s a typically a slow time for voiceover anyway, so really my focus has been on developing and teaching my business and marketing class. I am also working on different Marketing tactics to help bring in new business. I have been working on getting my studio to perfection, speaking with friends in the industry who are experts in that field, and I’m trying to do my business differently this time around. I’m taking my time, I’m not rushing into things, I am doing small jobs here and there but I’m not at the point where I’m pursuing those long-form e-learning or the medical narrations, or the Six Sigma stuff again LOL. I’m giving myself time to develop good healthy marketing strategies, good healthy business practices, and good healthy voice techniques.  I’m moving in a better direction now than where I was previously. I’m in a better headspace, and I’m working smarter. My coaching has been going like gangbusters, especially with my husband’s introduction of the X-Class business and marketing series. And I love working with him in this business. We had a business for over twenty-five years together, so I am bringing that knowledge and insight to voiceover now with him, and it is like a dream come true.

JMC: What advice would you give to other talents who are experiencing vocal issues?

ANGEL: Wow, so many things are going through my mind with this question. First, if you have vocal problems, try to find out why. Rest your voice, don’t force things, and even more so than that, rest your mind. It can be so devastating not to be able to communicate in a way that you’re used to, and You need to take the time to be good to yourself. Discouragement and frustration is going to come — let it come, but be smart and not self-deprecating. Sometimes things just happen, and if you can use the time of healing your voice to also strengthen who you are mentally, then if and when you do recover your voice, you will be in a much better place.

Stop trying to overthink, or rethink what you could or could not have done to make things better or work for you. Now is the time to reflect on your options outside of a voiceover career. Should it come to that, you need to be prepared for that outcome. I wasn’t ready for that, so I floundered for the first year aimlessly, not knowing what to do with myself. If you have a clear direction of where you want to go should you not be able to continue in voiceover, then I think that it’s healthier. I would also give that advice to those who are currently in voiceover: Have a backup plan. What happened to me was sudden. Within four months I lost a six-figure income. It was such a strain on us financially, so that put more of a strain on me mentally. When you are sick, you don’t need more stress.

And lastly, the best advice I could give anyone going through a devastating illness is to seek out the support of those closest to you. Whether it be family or friends, you need physical, in real life, people who will rally around you. People who will not only encourage you but give you that kick in the butt when you need to get up and just move when you can’t.  Online friends are fine, but I had to distance myself from my social media during that time because I couldn’t move on as long as I was in that world. It wasn’t until I accepted the support from my family and friends that I could finally find a place where I could heal. Take care of your voice, drink lots of water, and get lots of rest. Honestly, a couple of the big things now that affect my voice are lack of sleep and being in air-conditioning. I live in the south in extreme heat, so air conditioning is vital. However, it’s also detrimental to my voice because it dries out my throat no matter how much water I drink. So I have to be careful not to be directly in front of an air conditioner in the car or the house.

Besides that, look in the mirror every morning and be good to yourself. You deserve it. You are never a failure If you’re doing what you love and doing your best at it. In my mind, that makes you a success.

It’s basic economics. Leave money in the bank, or in low-risk investments with a defined annual yield, and over time the initial principle will grow substantially if it is not touched. Compound interest is the topic of many articles and talks by financial experts and with good reason. Smart, disciplined saving and investing can lead to long-term security. Slow and steady frequently wins the race. As the voiceover industry evolves, this principle of compound interest can be applied to building your career.

With commercial and other classic broadcast genres becoming lower-pay volume hustles, the days of staking your fortune on a few high-dollar campaigns are rapidly coming to an end. Voice actors must now build strong businesses for the long haul, steadily developing a roster of clients that will lead to income compounding over time. Ultimately, the end goal of most modern voice over artist’s careers is likely to be predictable daily work, as opposed to one-off windfall jobs.

What does this mean in practice?

Build for the long-haul, and be practical. Rate cutting and accepting abusive pay is never encouraged, but a healthy dose of realism is necessary to build a sustainable flow of daily work. Local automotive commercials, for instance, often only pay a couple hundred dollars. If you become the voice of a group of dealerships, however, you might do 10, 20, 30 or more spots per month, every month. Become the voice of numerous dealership groups across the country, and the pay compounds along with the security of knowing that losing one client won’t break you. Casino & gaming work can function the same way.

Corporate narration and explainer video voiceovers work much the same way. You won’t get rich off of either on a per job basis, but with the average corporate job paying $400-$500 for a few minutes of narration, and the average explainer just a bit less than that, accumulating regular customers in these sectors can lead to steady work and growing income. Corporate and explainer clients tend to be more loyal than commercial clients, who deal with frequently changing tastes and campaign directions. Many of these narration clients will stay with the same voice for years, often providing monthly or even weekly work. Building a base of 20, 50, 100 or more of these clients is a powerful route to income stability in voiceover. Moreover, pay is rising in these sectors, whereas it has fallen and stagnated in commercial work.

E-Learning has the dual distinction of being both well-paying, ($1,000-$3,000 per finished hour is a common standard,) and also filled with loyal, long-lasting clients. The barrier to entry is higher, requiring a considerable facility with language, stamina for long narration, and attention to detail, but the results can be the backbone of a VO career built for the 2020s. Like corporate narration, rates are steady and climbing, demand outpaces supply, and clients are likely to stick with a narrator for the long haul. A base of 10 or more solid E-Learning clients will keep the cash flow steady.

We all love the glamor of hearing our voices on the air, and the good news is that there are more commercial opportunities than ever. That said, the smart money in voice over is moving to genres that are less populated with talent, where demand is causing rates to become stronger over time and where client loyalty is consistent. Whatever segments of the industry you play in, build a core business that creates a self-fulfilling snowball effect…..compounding the rewards of a large client stable and regular work.

In this first series of articles on vocal health, I talk to Shannon Torrence, a successful and talented voice actor who has recently struggled with vocal issues.

JMC: Tell us about how you got started in voiceover

Shannon: After college I was living in Orange County with my parents, with no career plan. I was working at a shipping supplies company as a customer service representative doing the, “Office Space” thing. My coworkers seemed to enjoy my impersonations of the customers I’d take calls from but other than that, I wasn’t doing any performing. One day I was in the break room breaking open my office lunch bag when I happened to notice an ad in the paper for voiceover classes. I didn’t even consider that voiceover was a real profession I could get into and get paid to do it, but I thought acting classes would be a fun diversion from the monotony of my clock-in, clock-out existence. I got home that afternoon and my mom said to me, “I cut out this ad from the paper today and thought you might be interested.” BIG REVEAL: It was THE SAME ad I had taken home from work with me. My dad was kind enough to offer to pay for classes as a sort of grad school equivalent, and told me he’d always thought I should be a clown, and I began studying at Del Mar Media Arts in Irvine, found out I had a natural knack for it, eventually moved up to LA, met MJ Lallo who offered to manage me, and an agent followed.

JMC: What did your career look like before you started having vocal health issues?

Shannon: Before I started having vocal issues, I was literally living my dream. I had always said I wanted a job I didn’t HAVE to go to, felt I wasn’t really good at much other than communicating and connecting with people and wasn’t sure how that would translate to making a living. I’d worked for many years in offices as a low level assistant, bored out of my skull and feeling unfulfilled. I’d also worked in catering, as a babysitter, in commercial casting and many other odd jobs that were fun but I was struggling to pay my bills. More importantly I just KNEW I had more to offer but for years I’d given up on the idea of making a living JUST from acting so I took a lot of “safety” jobs and I’d become stressed out and exhausted. When adrenal fatigue finally set in, I decided to give up my day job in casting and pursue VO again on my own, with only a couple of regional agents, using casting sites. I drove for Uber for 2 weeks before I didn’t need to anymore, and then the bookings just started coming in. I was so busy I had to invest in a proper home studio and equipment and before you know it, I was excited to wake up in the morning to go to “work”. I was doing everything from business narration to commercials to video games and every day was fun and new and different. I was suddenly no longer lacking for income and the anxiety lifted. I was happier than I’d ever been in my life, and a total workaholic.

JMC: Can you describe how you first knew there was a problem?

Shannon: I first started noticing that I was frying or graveling out at the ends of sentences, or when trying to land the brand name or website address. A client once asked if I could stop, “growling”. I was working 8-9 hours a day, auditioning nonstop and doing recording sessions every day, with very few breaks, and was still transitioning out of working late nights at a music club as a booker, talking over noise for hours. Having come from a place of lack, I was just so intent on keeping the work flowing, I wasn’t thinking about vocal health. My voice started to feel really strained and tired but I pushed through it. I started having postnasal drip a lot, and there was a lot of throat clearing and frustration. I went to Amy Chapman, a wonderful voice therapist in LA, and she taught me some vocal exercises and told me to use a standing desk and I noticed improvement and I thought, “There. All better now.” But I didn’t stay diligent about the daily exercises and had so little knowledge of what was happening in my throat and vocal cords, I just kept pushing. One day after having dinner in a very loud restaurant where I had to shout to speak with my friend, I woke up and my voice was so tight I could hardly speak. It wasn’t like laryngitis; it was as if my throat was in a vice, and I couldn’t squeeze the words out. I went to an ENT, was told I had some reflux, told to take TUMS and I’d be good to go. Things got worse. Then I was told I had allergies and was given allergy medication. Found out I did not actually have allergies. I was given cortisone for my swollen vocal cords. Eventually, I couldn’t speak without sounding extremely hoarse, breathy, and constricted, and I’d lost so much range I couldn’t do any intense or passionate or soft and contemplative reads at all.

JMC: Tell us about how your condition progressed and where you are today

Shannon: I am beyond grateful that by continuing to treat my chronic reflux and staying on top of it, and being strict with my diet and lifestyle choices, I am finally back to work again. I still do have reflux every day. Some days I have hoarseness or difficulty in my lower range, but I am able work through it using vocal techniques and sometimes simply resting and coming back to it later. Voicing is never as easy and fluid as it used to be, and that’s frustrating, but I’m actually learning to work with my new rasp and embrace it and my clients have been happy with my work. I do vocal exercises every day, eat a lowfat mostly vegetarian diet, refrain from eating 3-4 hours before bed, sleep on a wedge pillow and take PPIs daily.

JMC: How has it impacted your voiceover business, and what lessons have you learned?

Shannon: While this was a traumatic, upsetting experience and a long, difficult road, it has actually brought me to a much better place.  I was working WAY too many hours and on weekends.  Voiceover was actually an addiction for me.  A football player can’t just run out on the field and play football 24/7 without risking serious injury.  A dancer can’t dance every day all day without repetitive use injuries. We are vocal athletes, and rest is JUST as important as doing the work.  I have found the balance.  I now do 5-10 auditions a day as opposed to 40 and focus on quality, not quantity.  This leads to 1 job a day rather than 3-4, but that’s OK with me now.  I now also work as a part time babysitter and I LOVE the kids I work with and find that work SO fulfilling.  I’ve learned that I don’t  have to bang out every job RIGHT NOW, that a client is perfectly happy to wait.  I used to treat auditions like a Whack-A-Mole game.  I had to do them ALLLL or I’d have FOMO (fear of missing out), wondering if I missed a single one, if THAT would have been the job that was supposed to be mine.  Now I truly believe that the jobs that are right for you will come to you, one way or another, and I relax into that faith and let it be.  I only do the auditions that I know I can really rock and that pay the fairest rates and a lot of my work comes directly from repeat clients whether I audition or not.  The amazing coach Dave Walsh helped me to re-learn how I read copy.  He taught me to really lock in to my own authentic voice and sound, rather than sounding the way I think the voice of the spot SHOULD sound.  And so in a way, having reflux related vocal cord dysfunction has been a helper–it FORCES me to speak in my natural range and style because if I don’t, my voice WILL crack and fry.  It helps me stay in my lane and I’ve learned that not every job is for me and my type, and that’s OK.  It’s not worth manipulating my voice to try to sound older or more futuristic or more commanding and causing vocal strain when there are so many jobs I’m perfect for that I can do breezily.  I have such a great appreciation now every time I step into the booth and record.  I understand how my voice works, how reflux affects my voice, which exercises help keep my vocal cords limber, and how important rest and self care is.  I’m really excited to be back in the game and am enjoying being more selective about the jobs I go after.  I’m saving my voice for what’s really important … communicating with and being present for family, friends and for life both in the booth and outside of it!

Many of us take our instruments for granted. As voice actors, we’ve become used to opening our mouths and producing our work product almost reflexively, often without a second thought to the genuine danger of strain, stress, or vocal failure. Health for voice actors is rooted in various causes, including medical issues, performance stress, poor self-care, environmental issues, and genetics. We can’t control all of these things, but we can learn from those who have suffered the devastating effects of losing their voice and adapt our behaviors as much as possible to avoid similar struggles and be aware of the warning signs.

In a forthcoming series of articles I will visit with talent who have experienced vocal health issues to discuss their experiences, and talk with some leading vocal health experts on how to best prevent and prepare for vocal health challenges.

Stay tuned!