How has Voices.com helped you with your project needs?

I had never looked for voice talent online before. Voices.com was the first site I came across and while I may not be in a position to compare it with other sites I simply can't imagine how the service could be any better than the experience I had with Voices.com.

I found it easy to use, I got extremely fast responses from the voice talent who auditioned and most importantly I was delighted with the final work. A special mention I feel must go to our hired talent, Marian Hussey, who was not only professional and extremely easy to work with but genuinely enthusiastic about our project and 100% committed to getting it just right for us and to our satisfaction.

How did you select the talent?

How I came to work with Voices.com in looking for voice talent is a perfect example of how well I feel their site and service is run. When I first visited the site, having found it in a Google search, I browsed through different voices to see what the standard was like and if any of them were what I was looking for.

While no voice in particular jumped out at me I was suitably impressed with the standard on offer so I signed up and posted the details of our job. Our job was approved by Voices.com within two hours. Within ten minutes of it having been approved I began to receive auditions from voice talent and throughout the next 48 hours the auditions just kept coming in. And I'm sure they would have kept coming in after that except I closed the job early having already found the perfect talent for the job.

What challenges did you face using the Voices.com system to find talent?

I think our job posting may have been a little more unusual than the other jobs posted on Voices.com. We had been using a computer generated voice to deliver a short speech at the beginning of one of the songs on our new album. Unfortunately it would have cost us both time and money trying to clear the rights to use the voice which were owned by Apple. It was this, that lead me to Voices.com in a bid to find a voice actress who could deliver the same speech and sell it to us - a difficult prospect for the talent as we had become very accustomed to hearing the computer generated voice, in fact we had become quite fond of it. We were certain we were looking for a female voice and we felt that it should be delivered emotionally flat, in a neutral American accent. However the speech also contained a quote from Buddha so we also experimented with asking for it to be delivered alternatively in a Japanese accent, just to see if that worked. I loved this aspect of Voices.com - we were not 100% in what we were looking for but through the process of receiving many different performances and nuances in delivery, some robotic, some Japanese, some American - from listening to them all we very quickly began to understand what approach was working for us and what wasn't.

Our deadline was not too tight for this project; in fact I think I originally intended to leave the job open for a month. However within 2 days I had chosen who I wanted to do the job and after that it was a case of Marian waiting for me to review her work rather than me waiting for her to deliver it. Regarding the file format, we asked for it as 24 bit 48khz, and that's what was delivered to us.

How would you describe your overall experience with the site?

We received many responses to our Job in a very short space of time. And out of all those responses we had flagged about ten that we would have been very happy to work with.

The general standard of auditions was very high, and professional. The reason we chose Marian in the end was because she had gone one step further than all of the other auditions. Marian delivered 5 auditions to us, not only delivering it in our chosen 2 accents (Japanese and English) but delivering it in three other accents which she felt might work going on our job description. It was in fact one of these alternative accents that sold us. That and Marian's cover note (proposal) which was enthusiastic and open about working with us until we got a performance from her that we are 100% happy with.

A note on the amount of responses we received for our job posting: we received a lot of responses to our job posting and this was hugely beneficial to us. Through listening to them all it allowed us to further clarify what it was we were looking for and as such the method of auditioning voices at Voices.com was a valuable creative tool for us.

Once we decided we would like to work with Marian Hussey the rest of the process was a joy. We sent some additional instructions on how we would like her to deliver the piece, a day later she sent 4 performances of it back to us and that was that. We had what we were looking for. I can't imagine a more painless, hassle free method of finding voice talent.

About the Client

Music Type: Alternative / Folk Rock / Indie

THE GUGGENHEIM GROTTO are from Dublin, Ireland.
There are three of us: Mick Lynch, Kevin May and Shane Power. Our Debut Album '...Waltzing Alone' was released (in Ireland only) on September 9th 2005 through our own label, Shellac Records and was released in the U.S. & Canada, September 26th 2006 on UFO Music. Our new Album 'Happy The Man' is available now on CD in Ireland from www.guggenheimgrotto.com and iTunes.

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Project Details

Project ID: 9165
Project Title: Intro to Song 'Fee Da Da Dee' - North American or Japanese Accent
Category: Music Composition and Music Production
Language: English
Project Close Date: May 16, 2008
Selected Talent: Marian Hussey