Acting : Making your voice sound better on a voice-over by Lina Jones

The best way to improve is to find a voice acting coach that has a successful track record and can give you valuable feedback. If that's not practical for you, the next best thing is to record a demo and send it around to a group of people you know will give you honest feedback for what they don't like and then you decide which to notes to agree with. For instance, I'm sure if you posted an audio file on Stage 32, people would give you notes. All that said, why are you going into voice-acting if you don't like the sound of your voice? I'm probably misinterpreting this, but it almost sounds like you're asking if there's a way to get your voice to sound on a recording like it does in your head. Again, probably not your question, but if it is, the bad news is that you can't replicate that sound on an original recording. Hope that helps.

Everyone I know of hates the sound of their voice. It's natural - it's the cognitive dissonance between hearing it when you are in the business of actually creating the sound and listening to it when you have it played back at you. The only cure for that is repetitiveness - listen, listen and listen again. However, if you want to improve the quality of your voice, join a choir. Seriously - unless you sing like a bronchial corn-crake (but then that's not stopped either Tina Turner or Rod Stewart), you will learn techniques for breathing and all sorts of other good things. It all helps.

Thanks and its great advice I don't even have enough time to catch up with myself sometimes let alone take vocal lessons. The closest I have come to voice lessons are when me and some friends get together and do Karaoke once a month.

But Karaoke is not a choir. The point of a choir is that you will learn to project, you will learn to breathe properly, do vocal exercises, learn how to warm up and take care of your voice. Karaoke is fun, but it doesn't come with coaching.

Terry, Aren't you just a sweetheart! Thank you for your kind and encouraging words. I like it when folks don't take things sooooo seriously. Laugh often, Love much and Live well and always keep it on the positive tip. ;-)

I record my voice on a small recorder then I upload it to my computer and clean it up with a recording program. I save as mp3 or wav and it sounds great. I use to always sound funny with my mic connected to my computer. So.....its solved.

You can easily do as Heather suggested on an iPhone (probably an Android phone as well).

be careful though, using VO such as you are describing as an ACTUAL finished production piece using a recorder or I-pod and then transferring it ! the quality will tend to suffer and MAY not be usable for any commercial work!! The right way to do that would be through Pro software, the most affordable ones are Adobe Soundbooth or Audition. You should... If you want to alter your voice upon recording ) on the in-take get a VST plugging or compressor module that is hardware. If not recording you voice on a GOOD mic would also allow you to alter the voice post-recording through various VST effects in the software.. You should never record and re-record ... UNLESS you are trying to achieve the effect for a movie...of a very old vintage tape that has been found in the relics of a fire ...for example...then there are a multitude of ways a sound engineer can help as well. I hope this is not too forward and that I have captured the right gist of what the discussion was about, without putting my foot in my mouth!

Thanks for the great advise from you all, Heather love the profile pic!