“Gary Travers is the most incredible coach. He is patient, knowledgeable, and extremely talented. Not only will he show you how best to use your talent in the studio, he will also coach you on the business end of this ever evolving industry.”
"When I took the VO training with Gary Travers, I knew that I had made the right decision, Gary has many years of experience and is easy to talk to. The format of the class allows you to attain much knowledge and confidence. I would recommend Gary Travers 100% for VO training."
"I wanted to further my training as a voiceover artist and joined Gary Travers' class. Gary coaches with a professional, personalized touch."
"Gary's voiceover training workshop was first class and a wonderful experience. Gary is a true professional and his help and training were invaluable. The workshop was informative, fun and very hands on."
"Gary is a great teacher! He critiques, encourages, motivates, and taught me great tools to tackle each voiceover job. He's a great talent, as a voiceover artist and teacher."
"Working with Gary was an incredible experience. He helped me create my very first demo and I fell in love with the way it came out. He is very professional and made me feel very comfortable and confident in the studio!"
Gary’s been active in the voiceover (“VO”) realm for more than 30 years. In addition to doing VO work for a long list of clients, he’s also marketed other pro voice talents aboard his VoiceOver Miami and VO-USA.COM sites and former compact disc collections since 1995. And, more recently, he’s been teaching the voiceover craft to others.
Some of the recognized brands Gary’s voiced are IBM, Kraft Foods, “The Phil Donahue Show”, MSC Cruises, and Banana Boat Sun Care Lotion. He’s equally at home in front of a video camera, in spokesman roles for a variety of corporate and institutional clients such as Trade Station, Baptist Health and EverShield.
Here’s Gary’s current VO demo, showcasing a variety of genres and styles.
These are Gary’s voice talent marketing websites:
And here’s his personal site for voiceover work:
You’ll find varying philosophies and styles among voiceover teachers, just as you would among those who teach singing, playing a musical instrument, creative writing, and other interests. Gary’s own method is to first get you over the hurdle of thinking that voiceover is about how well you can read words aloud, or that it's focusing on your voice and whether it is ‘good’.
Voiceover is not about those things — it’s about being a believable one-to-one communicator. Simply talking to the listener. And doing it in a way that’s credible, whether SELLING (a commercial) or TELLING (everything that’s not a commercial). And that’s the key — you must sound like you’re talking and not reading. It’s a fact that nearly everyone who’s new to voiceover cannot initially read words off a page without SOUNDING like they’re reading. Their delivery is too careful, mechanical, needlessly formal, and sometimes even a bit sing-songy. Being a voice actor means getting past that and being real. Being just a person talking to someone else. And definitely NOT READING to them.
Once you clear that hurdle (it’s easier for some folks than others), the next step is to not only sound natural, but to be compelling, so that the listener feels what you feel. And to then start employing various vibes in your delivery, perhaps soft and soothing, firm and authoritative, whimsical and ironic, or any other tone that people might adopt in real life when speaking in a certain way to others. That’s when you begin to understand why voiceover is also referred to as ‘voice acting’.
Gary’s VOICEOVER BASICS also emphasizes the need to fully understand each script that you’re doing. Not just familiarize yourself with the words, but understand it. Grasp it from the writer’s perspective, as you then give voice to their work.
To achieve these things, Gary applies certain techniques when coaching — sort of his ‘tried-and-true bag of tricks’. He’ll be ready to deploy them to get you where you need to be when you take his VOICEOVER BASICS course. And he’ll tell you how to put together your exclusive personal collection of voiceover scripts (“copy”) for use during the training, which will be material for recording the tracks that go into your demo.
Another aspect of the course involves spending some time with Gary listening to really good pro voice actors of various genres, and analyzing with you what they’re doing that makes them so good. And still another is informing you along the way about the voiceover business itself, its nuts and bolts and its dollars and cents.
Last and certainly not least, Gary will supply the info to get you set up with home voiceover recording capability, which is both easy and inexpensive (at around $100). This is a requirement for the VOICEOVER BASICS course, and something that pretty much everyone doing VO these days must have.
To give you an idea of what the training sounds like, here’s some audio recorded during coaching sessions for some past students. These are from studio various sessions, but the back and forth between teacher and student is quite similar to when it’s on the phone.
And here are some finished demos that were produced at the end of the class for various students, and keep in mind that not a single one of these folks had any voiceover training or experience before the VOICEOVER BASICS course.
FEMALE STUDENTS
MALE STUDENTS
First things first...
Upon getting signed up for the VOICEOVER BASICS coaching, whether it will be In-Studio or By Telephone, Gary will help you with the following important two first steps.
One of them is acquiring a broadcast-quality, USB-connected microphone (ranging from $50-$100 on Amazon.com), plus finding and downloading the free audio recording software to facilitate recording voice tracks at home on your computer, tablet or laptop.
The other is creating for yourself a stack of voiceover scripts ('copy'), and Gary will tell you where to get these, and where not to. This copy will be used just by you, and will eventually be the source of the voiceovers heard on your demo.
Those are the first steps, and once completed, your coaching can be scheduled — as either In-Studio or By Telephone.
IN-STUDIO:
Phone coaching is very much a part of the In-Studio option, and each phone session is 45 minutes long. You and Gary will be on your phones' speakers, and you'll also be recording it on your end using your new mic and software. At the end of each phone session, Gary will give you a link to upload the recording to him so he can review it later. You should also review it, and do so more than once, as it's a great source of ongoing learning.
The first two phone sessions will be before the first studio session, and these should really be around 5 to 7 days apart.
Now for the studio...
Each studio class will have a minimum of three students, and a max of five.
There are two studio sessions you’ll attend, on two different days. These usually start at 10 a.m.
Session 1, is three hours, and you'll be there with the other students.
This session is for getting you acquainted with the studio environment and learning how a recording session goes. And of course, doing some initial recordings of your scripts.
Before any recording is done, you and the others will listen to a playback of some top pro voiceover talents in action, and after each one, Gary will ask the students to offer their thoughts on that talent’s sound, and what sort of feeling or attitude he or she is conveying. This is to help you understand different VO styles, and how being believable is so important.
Then, you and the others will each take a turn in the voice booth doing takes on some of your copy. You’ll be getting comments and direction from Gary in your headphones after each take. Each student's turn might be only 10-15 minutes at a time, which means that each student will have a turn in the voice booth at least twice, maybe three times, at this session.
At the end of this studio session, within 24 hours you’ll get an email from Gary with a link for downloading your own voice tracks from your time in the booth. Included in this audio will be Gary’s comments and directions to you, just as you heard it in your headphones in the booth. You should then listen back to this initial studio work and further learn from it.
Next will be the third and fourth phone sessions, ideally about 5 days apart. They'll work just like the first two, with you recording it on your end and then uploading to Gary.
Shortly afterward comes your final studio session. It will be just you, solo, with no other students present, for two hours. And this is the one where we’ll get the final takes to use in your demo.
At the end of this second studio session, just like the first, within 24 hours you’ll get an email from Gary with a link for downloading your voice tracks. Included in this audio will be Gary’s comments and directions to you, just as you heard them in your headphones in the booth
Then, in about 2 to 3 weeks after that final studio session, you’ill receive from Gary a fully-produced 60-second voiceover demo, with short segments of some of your best reads, all edited tightly together with various music backgrounds. You’ll also receive a second audio file that Gary refers to as your ‘library’, and this is the longer version of the demo, at two or even three minutes in length, and not edited down to the demo’s 60 seconds. It may also contain produced material that didn’t make the final cut for the demo.
You'll now have the training, the home recording capability, copies of the raw audio from your two studio sessions, your fully produced 60-second pro demo, plus the longer produced pieces in the library MP3. And, you’ll be able to reach out to Gary at no extra cost for up to one full year with any questions you might have or feedback you desire.
To summarize the In-Studio option:
● Two studio sessions on separate days, a total of 5 hours.
● Four 45-minute phone coaching sessions, a total of 3 hours.
● Your own custom collection of practice voiceover copy.
● A fully-produced 60-second pro voiceover demo,
● Additional produced material in the extra ‘library’ audio.
● One year of free support.
● A copy of Gary's "Business Aspects of Doing Voiceovers".
This option is $780, with a third due at sign-up ($260), a third due when the demo is delivered ($260), and the final third due 30 days after that ($260). Alternatively, it can be paid one-half at sign-up ($390) and one-half when the demo is delivered ($390).
BY PHONE:
First things first...
Acquire a broadcast-quality, USB-connected microphone (ranging from $50-$100 on Amazon.com), plus find and download the free audio recording software to facilitate recording voice tracks at home on your computer, tablet or laptop.
And create for yourself a stack of voiceover scripts (“copy”), and Gary will tell you where to get these and where not to. This copy will be used just by you, and will eventually be the source of the voiceovers heard on your demo.
And now the sessions...
There are six phone coaching sessions, each 40 minutes long, and there should be about 5 to 7 days between them.
You and Gary will be on your phones' speakers, and you'll also be recording it on your end using your new mic and software. At the end of each phone session, Gary will give you a link to upload the recording to him so he can review it later. You should also review it, and do so more than once. It's a source of ongoing learning.
Then, in about 2 to 3 weeks after that final studio session, you’ill receive from Gary a fully-produced 60-second voiceover demo, with short segments of some of your best reads, all edited tightly together with various music backgrounds. You’ll also receive a second audio file that Gary refers to as your ‘library’, and this is the longer version of the demo, at two or even three minutes in length, and not edited down to the demo’s 60 seconds. It may also contain produced material that didn’t make the final cut for the demo.At this point you'll have the training, the home recording capability, copies of the raw audio from your six phone sessions, your fully produced 60-second pro demo, plus the longer produced pieces in the library MP3. Plus, you’ll be able to reach out to Gary at no extra cost for up to one full year with any questions you might have or feedback you desire.
To summarize the By Phone option:
● Six 45-minute phone coaching sessions, 4.5 hours total.
● Your own custom collection of practice voiceover copy.
● A fully-produced 60-second pro voiceover demo,
● Additional produced material in the extra ‘library’ audio.
● One year of free support.
● A copy of Gary's "Business Aspects of Doing Voiceovers".
This option is $480, with a third due at sign-up ($160), a third due when the demo is delivered ($160), and the final third due 30 days after that ($160). Alternatively, it can be paid one-half at sign-up ($240) and one-half when the demo is delivered ($240).
ALL THE INFORMATION ABOVE IS CURRENT AS OF AUGUST 10, 2023