It's an interesting and demanding art to do voices. I have been told so many times that I have a distinctive voice, but of course, I don't hear my own voice as others do, so I don't know.
Originally I had a block about appearing in a musical. I went to a voice teacher for a while, but that did no good. My range is about one and a half notes. I ended up talking the musical numbers, which was revolutionary at the time. The lyrics are extremely intricate. They move along like a precisely acted scene. If you miss a word - heaven help you - the orchestra rattles past like an express train, and you've got to run like the devil to catch up.
Lilliet Berne, La Generale, newly returned to Paris after a year spent away, the Falcon soprano whose voice was so delicate it was rumored she endangered it even by speaking, her silences as famous as her performances.
In my career, I have done more than a thousand voice-overs in commercials, cartoons, and radio shows, so I'm very familiar of my voice capabilities and its range.
Contrary to the norm, as my technique improved my voice became higher.
You can't sing baritone when you're a soprano.
I couldn't even sing when I started.
I never want to know the range of my voice. It has to be impulsive, and I don't want to kill the mystery.
The male singers who had the same range I did, when I was growing up, didn't do much for me. But put on Nina Simone, Carmen McRae or Nancy Wilson, and I'd be in seventh heaven. Female vocalists just did more with their voices, and that's why I paid more attention to them.
I absolutely adore singing, and I hope I'll always be able to sing, but you can grow more and challenge yourself more as an actor.
To be honest, until I started dubbing, I didn't realize the amount of work of a dubbing artiste puts in. Especially the artistes that dub for villains. They really stretch their vocal cords to a different dimension.
One of the things I learned in animation is that you never, ever want to start doing a voice that you can't sustain for four straight hours.
The voice gets to the soul of a person more than any other instrument. Because it's the voice. It sings talks, it cries, it laughs, it squeals, it barks, it shouts it whispers, There is no other instrument that can do that. We're born with it.
With voice acting it just matters what your voice can do. There are some things that I won't get over other people because my register isn't as deep as other people. So if someone wants a deep, dark, brooding villain voice then they are probably not going to pick me.
I remember when that Kelis song 'Milkshake' came out, and just how extreme it seemed in terms of that really high triangle part and then the really low subs and then her voice in the middle.
I remember at the age of, and I'll say this, 10 and a half, 11, I had a natural boy soprano.
Colossus' voice is not much different than mine, as Tim loved my natural color and range of voice, so we kept it and worked more on the Russian accent. The best note I received was to be authentic.
If I had any talent that God could give me, I would be a great diva.
Everybody has their limitations and hence, we need to look for a range of voices more than the quality of singing in our local talent.
I know I'm no Whitney Houston.
I had a hole in my voice. I still do. We call it a hole, but it's an area in the voice where it's air. And my classical teachers were just so frustrated with me because I would have these deep, low notes that were really strong, and the higher register was strong, but right in the middle area, it was really hard.
In animation, there's silly things I get to do with my voice. I get to have a wider range, so my voice gets to dance more than it does on camera.
I decided that I wanted to be a voice on every animated cartoon in the history of the world - even shows that haven't been on the air for a very long time, that's going to be harder to pull off.
It's fun to use all of my range; there are so many different colors and textures that come out, revealing different parts of my voice. I know what my voice is capable of, and I try to fit it to each song, evoke a mood.
