The Ups and Downs of a Spanish Voice Over Artist: the blog begins
I’ve spent twenty years talking to myself in a padded room. And even though I sometimes can hardly believe it… they actually pay me for it! But don’t get too excited: nothing here is given away. Everything that leaves my studio goes through the till.
That room is called a recording studio, what I do inside it is called voice over, and I’ve named this blog “The Ups and Downs of a Spanish Voice Over Artist” because that’s exactly what this job is: a mix of glorious moments and disasters that only become funny once they’re over. Oh, and because I’m a fan of Francisco de Quevedo, the Spanish Golden Age satirist, and I wanted to pay my humble tribute to his “Gracias y desgracias…”
Anyway, back to the point. You may be wondering: what does it feel like to hear your own voice coming out of the TV while you’re doing the dishes? Why can a voice artist repeat the same line forty times only for take two to be the keeper? What goes through the mind of someone announcing “Great Wall Chinese Restaurant, quality and tradition” with the same solemnity as a Dior perfume? Well, that’s precisely what this blog is about.
The ups
The ups of this job are many, and not all of them are suitable for daytime broadcast. There’s the joy of your voice travelling to places you’ve never been: a supermarket loudspeaker in the Canary Islands, a museum in Galicia, the headphones of someone listening to an audiobook at two in the morning. There’s the joy of impossible briefs that somehow work out, of clients who become almost family, and the supreme joy: waking up on a Monday actually wanting to go to work. After twenty years of doing the same thing… or not. Because routine is one word that simply doesn’t exist in a voice artist’s vocabulary. Every day is a different adventure. And money can’t buy that.
This is also where the favours I want to do for you come in, in case you ever commission a voice over: the kind of advice that saves money, time and headaches. How to send a script, what to ask of a voice, why your phone number won’t fit in a twenty-second radio spot. Things nobody tells you until you’ve already paid the rookie tax.
The downs
And then there are the downs, which are the salt of this blog. Sessions that started badly and ended worse. Scripts with traps hidden like landmines. Advertising fads that steamroll common sense. And the fashionable disaster of our times: machines that claim to speak like me but still haven’t learnt the most important thing I do when I work. And it’s not done with my voice. It’s putting heart and common sense into everything I do and everything I say. Oh… and breathing. AIs aren’t exactly overflowing with air either.
You learn more from the downs than from the ups, which is why I plan to tell them without anaesthesia. My own, of course. My clients’ downs are protected by professional secrecy and by mercy.
What will you find here every fortnight?
A new article every other Monday, in three languages (Spanish, Catalan and English, because I’m from Barcelona and I like making life difficult for myself), always on one of these themes: advice for anyone hiring a voice, the secrets of advertising scripts, the backstage of the trade, the eternal fight between human and artificial voices, and studio stories that sound made up, but are more real than the social security bill that hits me at the end of every month.
If you want to know who’s talking to you, the about me page has the official biography, awards included. The unofficial one you’ll discover here, article by article. And if you just need a voice for your project and introductions bore you, go straight to contact: quote within 24 hours, zero small talk.
Make yourself comfortable, turn up the volume and come in. The red light is already on.