Trailer voices
Robot voice effects produce intelligible speech, but they won’t be mistaken for an actual human speaking. But what if your project needs an impactful, larger-than-life vocal with all the organic qualities of the human voice? Think movie trailers (“In a world…”), DJ name drops, radio show idents (Armin Van Buuren’s A State Of Trance is especially well-known for its booming intonations), and villains and heroes of film and game. These voices don’t sound like the work of a machine, yet they have a hyper-real, larger-than-life, superhuman quality. Are they real or aren’t they…?
Many such voices are largely the product of talented voice work professionals, and you might be surprised at how closely their recordings resemble the finished article. Luckily for us producers, we’ve got the power of plugins to help make up for our vocal shortfalls.
You still need to record a good source vocal, though, and for a voice like this, before recording you should consider not just the general pitch (ie, low or high) and ‘type’ of voice (rough or smooth, etc), but take into account the accent, the speed of delivery, clarity of pronunciation, the emphasis of particular words and so on.
If you feel self-conscious, think of it as doing an impersonation or playing a character – get into the zone and go nuts on the mic! Try getting super-close to your microphone to exploit the proximity effect, to add bass oomph. Keep making recordings until you get a few in the right ballpark, and only then begin processing – pitchshifting, multiband distortion/ compression, and fast modulations mixed in quietly can all help. In fact, we’ve prepared a tutorial showing you exactly this, and we’ve used only free plugins to get the job done!