Making the "radio voice" ...

Greetings from Bosnia!

I just found this forum via google (of course!). I am so eager to find out how one can "make" this "zeus voice", you know, the "radio voice" that's been in use for so long. I tried to find some sort of software especially made for this purpose, but was out of luck.

Any hints would be appreciated.
Thankful in advance..

ps. sorry for my BAD English.

Your english is fine - don't worry about that. What's puzzling me slightly is that I have no idea what a 'zeus voice' is. Are you talking about a specific effect, or just the general way that voices get treated on the radio?

Your english is fine - don't worry about that. What's puzzling me slightly is that I have no idea what a 'zeus voice' is. Are you talking about a specific effect, or just the general way that voices get treated on the radio?

Thanks for this fast reply!

I was talking about, well, any type of "paranormal" voice, like those used in movie previews, "schwartzeneger" type voices :p But, well, any type of voiceover that is being used by most radio stations would work.

That's what I'm after...

Thanks, once again.

Often, people with naturally deep voices are used, and virtually all of these promos are done by close-micing. Also, using Audition you can lower the pitch of a voice without slowing it down appreciably, and that will make it sound naturally deeper. There is a distinct limit to how far you can go with that, though. But I think that mostly, it's down to the talent of the voice-over artiste - there are some people who get booked for this all the time. And a bit of compression and reverb helps too!

The voice to are talking about comes from naturally deep pipes, and the control to use them properly.  Audition can help a little, but most of it has to come from your vocal cords.

Zeus is a voice over artist, based in Florida I think.  Typical American station voice sound, deep, punchy, with an attitude.  Audition will not make you sound like Zeus.  Want to sound like Zeus?  Chain smoke unfiltered cigarettes for 20 years.  Drink bar shots, repeatedly and straight up.  Don't sleep.  Ever.  Add lots of fat to your diet.  Take voice lessons to learn to work with your lower registers in your voice range.  Buy the biggest water resistant condenser mic you can and learn to work it so close you might as well swallow it.

I'm not saying Zeus is a nicoteen addicted, alchol fueled, fat insomniac ... though he might be.   What I am saying is that if you don't have "it" naturally, you have to just about kill yourself to get there.  Audition won't have any affect, it just records the results.

Zeus is a voice over artist, based in Florida I think.  Typical American station voice sound, deep, punchy, with an attitude.

Ah. Found the demos. That's a voice underneath all those effects, sure enough. If you have a naturally deep voice, practice a lot, and get really close to a mic you might get some of the way there, I suppose.

I'm not so sure about the smoking, shots, whatever - his voice, although distinctive, doesn't sound that abused....

Hi digital, there are other fantasy applications for this Zeus voice. An over-the-top Zeus voice, like the ones you hear in films and cartoons for instance can be achieved with plugins, and you don't have to have a deep voice to do it. The Waves DX set of plugins even has a preset to get the Star Trek Borg "Resistence is futile" voice e.g. There is a stand-alone software called Voice Changer http://www.audio4fun.com/recording-studio.htm which has presets for this Zeus voice. The Sound Blaster audio cards also come with microphone plugins that can do this Zeus voice or a robot voice in real time.

....darn...here I thought you needed professional quality equipment and a good voice to start with!  I better go buy myself a Soundblaster!.

Alternatively to all this technology, you can find yourself a properly trained voice artist (Enn Reitel springs to mind) who can actually sound the way you want him to WITHOUT heavy processing.

Sorry for the cynical old git moment.  I'll go put on my cardigan and drink my cocoa now.

Bob

I can help you get close. Go to a concert. Yell your head off. Smoke a few lucky strike no filters.  3 shots of Crown Royal.

Buy the biggest water resistant condenser mic you can and learn to work it so close you might as well swallow it.

add

a bit of compression and reverb

 

Age of Mythology!    (Speaking of Zeus...) Wish I had more time to play that... heck, some time to play it!

Anyway, yeah I recognize that voice, but who's the guy who does virtually every movie/TV show plug? I'm not sure if he is the actor Miguel Ferrer, but he sounds a lot like him, though exaggeratedly so, per the particular movie promo. You know who I mean?

Maybe it's the little guy with the hairy nose in your avatar, that guy gets around  

On the subject of deep radio voices, or as we call them in the UK "dark brown" voices, where is the deepness in the voice coming from? I have this type of voice, I've had it since I was around 20. And yes, as Radiokenny was saying, the more you use it the deeper it gets. Long ago I learned that you can warm up your voice by singing or reading a paper out loud. I always do these vocal exercises before recording imaging. I always find that hyper-ventilating, breathing in and out quickly for a few seconds really makes my voice deep, perfect just before recording, but I suppose hyper-ventilating is not recommended. But my question to the doctors here is, what is it that people with deep voices have, that people without deep voices don't have? Is it bigger lungs, a larger diaphragm...?

I mentioned before in another thread James Alburger's book 'The Art of Voice Acting' (Focal Press ISBN 0-240-804340-X), and although it doesn't mention 'dark brown' voices specifically, it does have an extremely detailed chapter (Ch. 6) called 'Taking care of your voice'. Out of all of the affordable books containing info specifically about voicing, this one seems to have more than all the rest put together! It has 12 exercises, and about 20 useful tips. Might be worth a read for anybody who's curious about this...