Puppet voices

[Stryder Wolfe]

if you want another good source of interesting voices, I recommend the Beast Wars cartoon. Especailly when you consider that Silverbolt, Waspinator, Rattrap and Dinobot are all voiced by one person (Scott McNeil). In any case, that show had one of the best group of voice actors ever, IMO, especially in their 2nd season

 

[Drtooth]

Stryder, you know who my favorite Scott McNeil character is? Sr. Hasbeena on Mucha Lucha! I have a picture of him on my Locker at art school!

 

[Beauregard]

I ahve the same problem. I have a puppet called Super Gran and she sounds just like Piggy. Also I have a boy puppet who sounds like kerm.

 

[Hays]

Y'know, back when I was auditioning, I found that a good place to start with was vocal positioning.

Basically, in college, we did a lot of Kristen Linklater voice work where you learn the best place to put your voice for acting.

Then I just did it over, all wrong. You come up with the seeds for interesting characters when you put your voice in your nose, or the back of your throat, or your sinuses.

I also used to look at the puppet I was performing and tried to make my face look as much like the puppet as I could - how you hold your face is the single biggest determinant in what your voice sounds like.

Hope this helps. It did get me at least one job.

 

[Joggy]

Many of my voices come from Muppets... The most Muppety is Randalph. His personality and voice are a true Jim Henson's. Like a Rowlf.

My leader, Nergil, sounds like Kermit, but with a little more open throat, making it sound like a cross between Boober and Frank Oz. His sidekick Edward is a cross between Floyd Pepper and Rizzo. Marlene the Cat, my diva, has the exact same voice as Miss Mousey (a voice I'm very proud of!), but with a cute kid accent.

What really helps is practicing different heights with your voice. Thanks to a lot of practice I can do both high and low voices. The easiest is to use your own voice and make it just a little higher. I use this for a boy character named Max, who is the lead character of my shows for children. His voice is a little higher than mine, and when he's panicked or energetic he speaks higher and faster. That gives him a lot of energy. For the Dutch people among us: this way he sounds like the Dutch Wembley Fraggle.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Muley's voice is my voice, slightly-higher pitched and nasal, but sounds like ME on tape...go figure.

Other voices are my voice changed somewhat with a gruffness for Buford the Dog, or REALLY nasal for Roy Duck (none of the attitude or spitting as with other ducks).

I realize that my voices for Muppets characters aren't dead on anyhow, so I use them when I have to. Like, I steal Floyd's for my Rocky Robin, or Kermit's nephew Robin's voice for Kelsey.

But, it's my voice doing their voice, so...keep doing your thing. Change it up some and it won't sound so much like Grover!

FOZ

 

[CaptCrouton]

Hey, I was just at a puppet festival in Grand Rapids this past weekend. I took a puppet voice workshop and the instructor, a ventriloquist, taught a real simple methodology of creating voices.
She gave a few different kinds of voices to experiment with. Since you can't hear me, I added little notes to explain what she meant (from my perspective)

Nasal (as if you have a cold)
Gutteral (think Wolfman Jack)
Falsetto
Dopey (Bullwinkle Moose)
Whisper (Kinda like Marilyn Monroe with lots of air)
Melodic (hard to explain, but if you speak with an Italian accent and your voice kind of fluctuates, that's sing-songy)

Anyway, the point was to mix and match one or two, then change your voice pitch, speed, intonations, volume, etc, to create a larger voice library.

While I certainly can't reiterate the whole session here, I wanted to share a bit. It really was a great festival and alot of fun.

 

[fluffmuppet]

pshyaaa......
I am starting to realise how many voice imitations I can do but I find it sort of difficult to make my own voices sometimes, but I try!
Here's some of the voices I can do anyway...

-Janice
-Swedish Chef
-Kermit (sorta, hehe)
-the redhead baby from "Bobby Benson & the all baby band"

(non-muppet)
-Ms. Swan from Mad TV (REALLY well)
-Stuart AND his mom from Mad TV
-Ryo-ohki from Tenchi Muyo (anime)
-Sailor Chibi Moon (Rini) from SailorMoon
-E.T.
-a strange sounding Yoda, lol...

My mommy calls me a human tape recorder, hehehe!
::gets fwapped::

Thats all I can think of at the moment, but you know when you hang around Muppet fanantics or whatever, when you can do the voices, you can play along to the monologues from the show or movie and its just a hoot!

 

[Sir Didymus]

I can Imitate Tutter pretty good. I used to be able to Jim's Kermit really good, but now it just sounds like a miserable fish! LOL!


Jake

 

[Super Scooter]

One of my characters used to sound like Dr. Teeth, and I didn't want that, so I fiddled with his voice a little, and now he sounds like a cross between Dr. Teeth and Link. Sounds pretty good, different enough, but it's hard to get to that register without hurting yourself!