Whether it’s Time constraints or a lack of budget or you just can’t find people to voice characters in your drama, sometimes you just have to play more than one character.

Today, I’m going to show you how I did it, for Piper’s Podcast.

So I played two larger roles in Piper’s Podcast and two much smaller roles. The only reason I was able to pull it off was that one of those roles was what I call a filler character who only had one line and was in the background of a scene so no one is really paying attention to him.

That being said, I want to take a look at what I did to differentiate the voices of the three other characters who are in the foreground of the scenes their in.

- Voice One: Rudy -

For the character of Rudy, I cheated. Kind of. I first came across my ability to do this voice when I was recording scratch tracks for Buttercup. I wanted to make sure that I could identify the scratch tracks audibly so I slapped a pitch shifter on the track and lo and behold it didn’t sound all that bad.

Now the key to doing this voice for me, is to focus on texture and cadence when recording the dialogue and let the pitch shifter take care of lowering my voice after the fact.

You can use whatever pitch shifting software you like to try this but keep in mind that probably eight times out of ten the results aren’t incredibly believable.

I used the free version of Graillon 2 from Auburn Sounds

When using the pitch shifter to lower my voice, one think I noticed is that the low mids really build up so I always cut them with an EQ just to balance the tone out more.

After that’s done, it’s processing as usual.

“The low mids really build up so I always cut them with an EQ just to balance the tone out more.”

- Voice Two: Tow Truck Driver -

Just about anyone can talk through their nose, and that’s the basis for this characters voice. I simply spoke through my nose, pretended I had some dip in my mouth, (Don’t worry I don’t use tobacco products), and spoke with the best southern drawl I could. And that’s the character.

- Voice Three: Vince -

Now Vince was by far, the most involved character I got to play for Piper’s Podcast. So I reserved my regular voice for him.

The first time we see Vince in Piper’s Podcast, he wants to come across as a friendly customer, so that’s how I played him.

The next time we see Vince he’s revealed as the stories villain, so for that, I lowered my tone, and tried to sound as cold and slightly smug as possible.

The point of using the pitch shifter for Rudy and talking through my nose with a southern drawl for the tow truck driver was to differentiate those characters from my normal voice as much as possible. If I hadn’t been able to differentiate those voices enough, I wouldn’t have played them. But as it is, I think it worked decently.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time.

Doing Multiple Voices For Piper's Podcast