Have voice, will try using it
Awkwardly attending a Voiceover conference and manifesting some work
“You can only grow if you’re willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.”
I keep reading that quote to myself because I’m trying something new this weekend, which has me excited, but also feeling awkward and uncomfortable.
I’m attending a Voiceover conference. It’s specifically called That’s Voiceover Expo, organized by the Society of Voice Artists and Sciences, and I’m told it’s one of the best in the country.
My primary job is talking for a living, so I guess this is a natural side endeavor. But doing play-by-play announcing of a live baseball game feels like a different galaxy that being a Voiceover actor.
The list of panelists looks like some of the best Voiceover talents in the world. I’m imagining hundreds of attendees, blessed with incredible voices, distinctive character in their voices, and the ability to do multiple characters on demand. And then me in the corner saying, “here’s the 2-2 pitch.”
When I told my dentist about attending this conference, we started discussing different types of voices for different situations. He suggested that I start smoking cigars every night. [I think he was only half kidding.]
Truth is, I’ve always been insecure about my voice. It’s changed quite a bit over the last 30 years, even in the last decade, and I’ve worked really hard to improve it. I’m proud of the changes, although I suspect most changes are the result of getting older.
It’s a bizarre juxtaposition when you’re lucky enough to do your dream job, yet you’re still self-conscious at the instrument that is your livelihood.
The day that I usually get most nervous is when I host the Albuquerque Isotopes awards ceremony on the field before a game. It’s nerve wracking because thousands of people can actually see me talking. Normally, I’m just a faceless voice coming through their speakers. It’s also nerve wracking because there’s just enough of a delay that it’s really easy to start talking faster, and then slower, to try “catching up” to your voice.
The good thing about my voice insecurity is the way it motivates me: don’t be lazy; arrive early; practice and practice; research everything; listen to others; talk to others; research even more; be casual and conversational; share your joy for the sport.
I always wanted to do play-by-play, primarily baseball. My first job out of college was broadcasting about 20 games for a now-defunct minor league baseball team in Watertown, NY.
I thought I was on my way to a lengthy broadcasting career, but couldn’t find another job the next season. Instead, I started working part-time for The Oakland Tribune and just kept getting promoted, eventually covering Major League Baseball. The next thing I knew, it was 10 years later, and one day I went into a panic that I never gave myself a better chance to do my ultimate goal, and I didn’t want to sit on my deathbed with regret that I gave up on it too soon.
The truth is, my voice wasn’t very good in my early-20s and I probably didn’t have the self-confidence needed to speak effectively into a microphone, let alone adding a camera to the experience.
The 10 years as a print reporter delayed my first career choice, but it eventually made me better at the technical aspects of my job. But no matter how much you know the sport and can describe the sport in an entertaining fashion, your voice is still critical.
It’s a funny thing about voices and what people think of your voice.
For people who don’t work in the industry, they’ll hear my voice and compliment me. They’ll say it makes sense I talk for a living because I have a good voice.
For people who do work in the industry, they know better. It’s mostly clean and I enunciate well. It’s not as high pitched as it used to be, but that still surfaces more than I’d like. I get excited easily and my excited voice should be deeper and slower. I definitely talk too fast at times.
When I worked on the Dodgers pre and postgame shows, our engineer/producer Josh Cumming blatantly told me it’s a shame that I don’t have a better voice because that’s holding me back. It was a blow to the ego, but I appreciated his honesty to say what others probably thought.
Which brings me to Joe Castiglione.
Yesterday, the Baseball Hall of Fame announced that Castiglione is the 2024 recipient of the Ford Frick Award for broadcasting excellence. Castiglione has broadcasted Red Sox games since 1983 – forty-one years! – and he’s absolutely deserving of the honor.
As the news broke, my friend Jesse Goldberg-Strassler texted the following: “he's such a great example of not needing a great voice to get and stick in a position.”
That’s true and that’s inspiring. Castiglione doesn’t have a deep baritone voice. It’s not silky smooth. It’s scratchy, nasally, and high pitched. I found this article from 2004 where a Boston Herald columnists admitted that Castiglione’s voice drove him nuts initially, but grew to like him.
"I'm used to it," Castiglione said of the criticism of his voice. "I've lived with that throughout my career. People have mentioned it, written about it. If that's the only thing negative, I'll accept it. ... I compensate by describing the play as vividly and as accurately as I can. The ball is only in play eight or nine minutes out of three hours. It doesn't take much effort to be descriptive in that time."
I appreciate Castiglione’s perspective. The best thing about his voice is that it’s distinctive. You only need a few seconds to know it’s him.
Castiglione went to Yale and grew up a Yankees fan. But he just sounds like a blue-collar New England guy and what a Red Sox announcer should sound like. Maybe when you last 41 years in a job, your voice just becomes the de facto soundtrack of an entire region.
I’ve never met Castiglione, but I greatly admire what he does away from the ballpark. He teaches sports broadcasting at Northeastern University and MLB play-by-play announcers Don Orsillo and Uri Berenguer are among his prized former pupils.
The people I admire most are those who are doing the job and teaching others how to do the job.
On my “Where Ya At?” podcast for SDSU’s School of Journalism and Media Stadium, alum Jamie Ballard told the story about how she was in a Journalism class, breaking news happened, and the professor spent the rest of the class juggling working on the story and also teaching the class simultaneously. I thought that was so rad, the ultimate in showing students what it truly means to be a working journalist.
As part of this weekend’s conference, I’ll listen as working voiceover artists provide a wide range of advice about getting jobs, setting up a home studio, using their voice, changing their voice. At least I think so. That’s why I’m going. I really haven’t the foggiest clue what to expect. I’m just going to be a sponge.
There will also be a live competition among finalists to get a regular voiceover job and agent representation. Watching that will be the highlight for me and I can’t fathom the amount of mom’s spaghetti nervousness for the contestants.
This entire post, and especially this final part, feels awkward. I prefer to keep my side projects a secret until they are completed because if it fails I don’t want people to know. But this time, I’m throwing it into the universe to see if we can manifest this into reality.
My goal is to supplement my income with Voiceover work, whether it’s a 30-second commercial or an entire book, a corporate instructional video, a video on kitchen tips and hacks, or the start of a podcast. Anything, really.
I’ve slowly been dipping my toes into the Voiceover industry for a couple years. Most notably, I narrated the audiobook of my own true crime, “Murder In Pleasanton.” I actually had to audition to get that job. Seriously. Do you realize how stressful it is when you talk for a living and you have to audition to narrate your own book?
I’ve recorded a radio commercial for my friend’s campaign to become Judge and she won. I voiced a radio commercial for Outback Steakhouse, although that was because I was the salesperson who negotiated the deal for the Isotopes. Here are links if you’re curious.
Really, I’ve just reached the point where I’m tired of listening to myself say I should try it. It’s time to actually get dedicated to doing it. Another reason I decided to post this is I want the public accountability of my friends asking, “what’s up with that Voiceover thing you were trying?”
I recently got my first real Voiceover gig. I say real because I auditioned for it on Voices.com against close to 100 others. The person hiring did not know me. It wasn’t a favor to anyone. It wasn’t a huge job and didn’t pay much. But that wasn’t the point. It was a real Voiceover gig and it was one of the most thrilling moments of my career.
So I’m going to throw this out to my readers: If you have a project – any project – that needs a Voiceover artist, use me.
If you say that you found me from this post, then pay me whatever you can afford, even if your budget is nothing. Yes, I’ll voiceover your project for free. I need the practice and want to build up my portfolio. If you have do have some dollars to pay me, or some free product to spare, send me whatever you think is fair.
I can’t promise how long this offer will last and I can’t narrate an entire book for free. But contact me and we’ll work out something.
In the meantime, I’ll be learning all weekend at this conference. I’ll be the awkward guy in the back reminding himself that if Joe Castiglione can reach the pinnacle of baseball broadcasting excellence, then I can this Voiceover thing.