Change your speech pattern from instinct to technique
You may not have noticed it, but when you put your jeans on, you start with the same leg every time. In the shower – if you are right handed, you probably pick up the soap with your right hand and wash (let’s say) your left shoulder first. You never think: This is boring, I’ve been doing it this way for years… today, it’s going to be left hand, right knee. Well, in the same way, we develop a speech pattern.
A speech pattern starts from the moment you speak your first word.
From then on we learn a language, an accent, speed, tone and an intricate way of arranging words in a sentence. These are influenced by our parents, friends and school. The trouble is that no school, university or college (even a stage school) teaches a technique for professional communication. Throughout the world and in every language, children are simply taught to string words together.
The problem is that when we read a voiceover script that is written by someone else, it’s obviously written in their speech pattern so we are taken out of our comfort zone. Communication is easier when chatting to a friend because in this case we are writing our own script as we go along and naturally it is in our own speech pattern.
To read someone else’s speech pattern professionally is called: ‘acting’ which is why actors train for two years. To become a professional actor or voiceover you need a technique so you can adapt to someone else’s speech pattern.
The Hudson Voice Technique for Voiceovers
The world’s only technique for professional verbal communication.
Created by Steve Hudson International award-winning voiceover artist and leading communication skills trainer.
"I only wish I had known about your Hudson Voice Technique while I was actually working for the BBC! I was a producer and presenter at the BBC World Service for ten years and what I know now (and practice) would have saved a lot of production time and made programmes more effective. During the course of that decade I must have produced thousands of programmes and presented many hundreds. A lot of them lacked one essential ingredient, which is supposed to be the lifeblood of every broadcaster – listenability. There was no formal training at the BBC and when guidance was offered it wasn’t a patch on the Hudson Voice Technique. I learned more about reading and broadcasting in two half-day sessions with you Steve, than I did in ten years at the BBC. Only now can I count myself a professional broadcaster and voiceover."
Hugo Fay.