Latest / The Scene Projects / Jodi Krangle on Voice Acting, Podcasting, and the Power of Sound

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Jodi Krangle on Voice Acting, Podcasting, and the Power of Sound · The Scene Projects

• 0:01
  Today's guest is award winning voice actor Jody Krangle, host of the audio branding podcast and
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  a pioneer in Sonic Identity.
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  From national ad campaigns to unforgettable narrations, Jody's voice moves audiences.
• 0:16
  Stay tuned.
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  This is gonna be a masterclass in sound.
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  This program is part of the Scene Projects podcast network.
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  Scene Project features interviews with independent musicians, comedians, and artists
• 0:33
  from across the Midwest.
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  Become part of our community and support local art wherever you are.
• 0:49
  Well, welcome in to another exciting episode of the scene.
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  I'm your host, Bubba Starts, and with me today is Jody Crangle.
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  Welcome to the show, Jody.
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  Thank you so much.
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  I was just enjoying the music.
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  Well, thank you.
• 1:00
  Thank you.
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  It it's nice to sneak a little bit of me into the show.
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  Sure.
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  Why not?
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  It's your show.
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  Yeah.
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  Well, I I try not to make it about me.
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  I I do plenty of that in my music career, and most people who know me, it's that out there.
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  And that's what's been nice about having a podcast, right, is that you get to not only
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  meet other people, but to highlight and to show, you know, your world to them.
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  Right?
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  Show your audience, something new and exciting.
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  And that's exactly what we're gonna do today.
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  So off the top here, I just like to kinda give you the floor and give us a little bit of
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  backstory, and then we'll talk about all the stuff that you're getting into now.
• 1:39
  Sure.
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  Backstory on me, I guess.
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  I've been a voice actor now since 02/2007, so I guess that's, like, I don't know, eighteen
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  years.
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  I wanna mumble that.
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  But yeah.
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  So the voice over industry has changed a lot since I started.
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  And, of course, there's a lot going on with technology right now and all of that.
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  But I'm trying to make sense of the fact that a lot of productions don't pay as much attention
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  to sound as they should because I'm often the last person they think to bring onto a project.
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  Or the last thing they think of is the sound design or the voice over or the music or
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  whatever it is that they bring onto their production, their video production.
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  I would hope that doesn't happen in radio or streaming radio because that's all there is.
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  So I really hope that isn't the case.
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  However, when it comes to video, often people really give a lot of precedence to the visuals
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  and forget about the the sound, which is part of the equation and which makes the visuals hit
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  all that much harder.
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  So I think it's really important for them both to be given as much due in the production.
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  And in order to combat that a little, I started a podcast in 2019 called the audio branding
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  podcast where I talk about the power of sound and how it influences us.
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  And that has to do with advertising, marketing, and branding, but it also has to do with our
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  daily lives.
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  Often, because it's everywhere, we just don't pay enough attention to the sound that's around
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  us and how it's affecting our lives.
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  So I talk to a whole bunch of people.
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  I talk to musicians.
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  I talk to public speakers.
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  I talk to communications experts.
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  I talk to advertisers and marketers and branders who deal in sound specifically.
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  And all sorts of people in healthcare who are concerned about this as well.
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  On and on.
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  That is so interesting.
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  And for someone like me who's grown up in sound, I've been a musician most of my life.
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  I I've sang since I could talk.
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  And I've always known that it's important, but it's surprising that in this era of, you know,
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  digital creators that it's not always taken seriously.
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  There's so much credence, like you said, given to the video quality, and everybody's rushing
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  out to buy the next camera.
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  And for me and I had already had it, but I had a nice microphone.
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  Right?
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  I I had a Shure s m seven b in the studio already.
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  So when it came time to, like, oh, you have a podcast.
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  And when you go to video, it's like, well, you already know that the sound quality is going to
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  be there.
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  And I think people would almost get a little offended if it wasn't because of my, you know,
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  twenty five year history in music.
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  Right?
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  It would be like, how are you gonna come out and have it be scratchy or or just what it is?
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  Now I'm also of the, of the mind that, you know, trying to start podcasters out that
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  things don't need to be perfect off the bat, that you can get out there and just start doing
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  things.
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  I think there's a paralysis sometimes by thinking that you have to be perfect.
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  But as long as you're improving and showing improvement, I think there's a lot of,
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  especially in the podcasting world at least, there's a lot of grace given.
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  Right?
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  Because nobody's listening at first anyway.
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  So it doesn't it doesn't matter who necessarily hears it.
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  And anybody who becomes a fan and goes back to the beginning and maybe, you know, hears, oh
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  oh, this is they got a new mic now or they got, you know, a new piece of equipment can do that.
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  But when you're talking about working with professionals who are putting out commercials,
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  whether it be on terrestrial radio or into the digital spaces or TV, you have to have a
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  professional sound.
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  And not just in the quality, but also in the quality of the person doing it, of the actual
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  performance, I'll say, of whatever that voice, you know, happens to be.
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  Yeah.
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  Of course.
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  And I will say actually that the mic that I'm using right now is a very inexpensive mic that
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  you can get probably anywhere for less than a $100.
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  But it is a USB condenser mic.
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  It is not a dynamic mic.
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  So that's kind of where my sensibility comes because I am very concentrated on the nuances
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  of the human voice.
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  I'm a singer also.
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  I've been a singer since I could talk as well.
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  So that's kind of where I come from in all of this.
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  Sound has always been a thing for me.
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  My family is very musical and I grew up with all of that.
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  So condenser mics for me make for a better end product and less muffled, if you will.
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  But you do need to have the right environment and you need to be close enough to your mic.
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  That is the big difference.
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  I think a lot of people who try to use condenser mics like the YETI or whatever that
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  is, they make the mistake of leaving it in Omni so that it records the whole room, which you
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  don't need.
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  You just need cardioid, which is right to your face.
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  Right?
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  And and then they're not close enough to their mics.
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  Because if you're not close enough to your mic, you're gonna hear all all of the reverberations
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  of the room around you.
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  So number one, that's a big thing.
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  My booth as a voice actor, which is right behind me, has a Sennheiser four sixteen in it,
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  which is a $1,200 mic.
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  That is a condenser mic also.
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  My podcast sounds good because of, you know, doing the best I can before post production,
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  but also I have an editor and a video editor and an audio editor who helps me in post
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  production.
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  So that helps a lot.
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  But when it comes to voiceover, I cannot be messing with $100 mics.
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  And singing is a completely different thing.
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  Like I have a TLM 103 for singing.
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  That's a wide condenser as opposed to a, what they call a shotgun, which is it looks very
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  much like a tube.
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  It's one of the mics that you would have on a boom pole on a film set.
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  So it it when you're close enough, it gives you this really wonderful proximity effect that is
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  really great for advertising and marketing and branding, which is where most of my work sits.
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  You get into the weeds on your podcast, don't you?
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  I do.
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  I definitely do.
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  Yeah.
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  And a lot of well, actually, most of what I like to talk about is the importance of sound
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  for advertising and marketing and branding because that's where my livelihood sits.
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  Know, I'm often the person they hire for a lot of this stuff.
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  So I want to make sure that they understand not necessarily the people that I have on because
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  the people I have on, I'm preaching to the choir.
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  They already know this.
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  I'm having them on the podcast because their end client needs to realize this.
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  Right?
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  So it's not about the ad agencies.
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  It's talking to the ad agencies and the people who work there and explaining to the people
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  that work with them why what they do and what I do is important to that end client's end
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  result, to the dollars they're going to make.
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  You know, I want it to be a dollars and cents thing.
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  Like, this is just you know, if you're not paying attention to it, you're leaving money on
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  the table.
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  Totally.
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  So it seems like and I've talked to a few voice over actors and actresses over the years.
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  But it it seems like an industry that if you're good, it's easy to stick around.
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  But how did you get into the voice acting, business?
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  Is it something that you fell into, or was it something that you were pursuing, you know,
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  while you're maybe trying to play music or doing different things in the space and just
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  kinda like, hey.
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  I'm good at this, and I'm gonna be able to to stick with it.
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  Well, my route to voice over was roundabout and over and under and very strange ways to get
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  there.
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  I like I said, I've been singing all my life.
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  One of the things I was doing early on was writing songs.
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  And so I had a songwriting resource online called The Muse's Muse, which was available
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  from 1995 until about 2016.
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  So it was a pretty huge website with a very bustling message board and a radio show and a
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  whole bunch of article writers and columnists and a regular newsletter and all of this stuff
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  that was going on with it.
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  And I was doing SEO and Internet marketing order to promote that website on a dime because
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  I had no money.
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  And what I learned promoting that website made me able to go out and do that for other
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  clients.
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  So that was my original foray into what I was going to do when I went out on my own.
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  And I did that from 1995 until 02/2007.
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  And I was super bored by the time 2007 came around because Google was it.
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  That was when Google became the only search engine that mattered.
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  And I was so bored.
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  So what happens for me when I get bored is I learn to do other things.
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  And in nineteen ninety five-ninety six, had volunteered my time at the CNIB, which is the
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  Canadian National Institute for the Blind, reading articles from magazines onto reel to
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  reel tape at the time.
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  And I loved it.
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  I loved it.
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  I thought it was the most fantastic and fun thing ever, and I liked the tech almost as much
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  as I liked the voicing.
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  Because I'm kind of left and right brained, as you can probably tell.
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  I love computers.
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  I love the Internet.
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  I'm like, I've been on that for, you know, I'm an OG.
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  So, when it came to the tech of being a voice actor, that didn't scare me either.
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  So, in 02/2007, when I that bored, I decided, Okay, time to hang out the shingle and see what
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  happens.
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  And I made a lot of mistakes along the way.
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  One of them was that coaching was not as prevalent those days as it is now or as easy to
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  get.
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  Right now, you can look on the internet or ask ChatGPT, and you can find, I don't know, 10
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  voice over coaches in your area or online.
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  You you don't have to be local to do coaching.
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  You can do it all over the place, and you can have people make demos for you from all over
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  the world.
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  And, yeah, just when I was starting, it wasn't as easy to get a coach.
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  So because I didn't have that coaching, I kind of had to learn on the job.
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  And you make mistakes when you do that.
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  So yeah, learning the hard way seems to be the way that I did this.
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  But I mean, after eighteen plus years, I'm pretty confident.
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  I've made all the mistakes.
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  I know how to do the best job I can for my clients and get them a product that they're
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  gonna be very proud to use in a quick and efficient manner without them having to have
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  much bother.
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  It's a quick and simple process.
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  And, yeah, I love it.
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  And I love being part of their audio brand.
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  Yeah.
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  And I'm sure you have a lot of repeat customers because once you kinda become that voice, I I
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  mean, in in much the way that, you know, James Earl Jones was kinda the voice of my childhood
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  because of his voice loop.
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  I had his chops.
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  Yeah.
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  My goodness.
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  If everyone was calling me to do, you know, that kind of stuff or something particular,
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  yeah, I mean, yeah, he's pretty awesome.
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  Yeah.
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  But you you've become that for, I'm sure, a lot smaller brands.
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  Right?
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  Maybe you're not the voice of Vader and Mufasa, but you are, you know, you are the voice of
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  these brands.
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  And and I love that you take such a pride in that and understanding that you are the
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  spokesperson.
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  Whether you're on camera or not, it's your voice and and the, emotions that you're able to
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  convey in that that is selling their brand inside of that marketing.
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  And I don't know that all people that work in this space have that.
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  You know?
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  A lot of people, it may just be a a means to an end, and they're not really putting that, you
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  know, that kind of effort into it, whether it's on the technical side or in the delivery and
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  performance side.
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  I would love for you to share a little bit of what kind of the process is, say, for a a
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  thirty second commercial and and someone brings you now do they have a script for you already
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  written, or are you doing, you know, full sale and or is it just kind of reading it and and
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  going in the booth and performing?
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  I don't write the script, thankfully.
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  Well, would cost them a lot more, I would imagine,
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  probably read would.
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  Yes.
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  Yeah.
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  But they have most of the people that work with me have copywriters on their own end.
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  So they're doing their bit on their end to make sure that I have what I need to get them what
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  they need.
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  And I need to know I have a lot of returning clients.
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  So when I'm working with a returning client, that thirty second spot that they've sent me, I
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  know what their sound is.
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  I know whether they want warm and compassionate and hopeful or if they want perky and happy and
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  excitement.
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  There's a different kind of read for, say, a casino than there is for a hospital, right?
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  So, it depends on what it is that they're doing.
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  And usually, that's, I know from working with the client beforehand or from them telling me
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  and letting me see previous spots of theirs, that can certainly help.
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  Often they'll give me the music beforehand which, oh my god.
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  I mean, you're a musician too.
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  You know how much that can inform exactly how you're going to approach script.
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  Wait.
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  And how much it could totally tank it if you didn't have it.
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  You delivered your performance thinking it was one way, then they put a song that doesn't
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  match that intensity or or whatever.
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  You know?
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  You you come out with a happy and you have you're, you know, talking over a dirge and,
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  like, oh, we missed on this.
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  You know?
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  Yeah.
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  I I don't that doesn't happen often, actually, even if I don't get the music because the
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  client is they're pretty well aware of what their brand is.
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  And I know what their brand is, and, you know, it's gonna it'll come out in the wash.
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  So does it typically take, you know, a a long time for things to develop between you and I
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  know most of your work nowadays is probably repeat customers.
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  But for a new client, is it several conversations back and forth and maybe a couple
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  of iterations?
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  Or do you have it down to where it's pretty much you walk in, you're able to kinda rail it
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  out there, send them back, and they're happy?
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  I can get it pretty close to what they were envisioning in their head pretty quickly.
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  So, yeah, I mean, eighteen years, that's a little bit of knowledge on how to approach
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  this.
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  So, yeah.
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  I mean, it's different for every client, and every client has their own level of pickiness.
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  And I'm fully prepared to work with them on that and make sure that they get an ending
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  product that they're super proud of and happy to use.
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  So yeah, it is a certain period of adjustment.
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  Often what will happen is when I'm first working with a client, they'll direct me live
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  for a little bit.
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  And then after I've dialed in exactly how they want it to sound, the future things they ask me
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  to voice for them, they don't need to be on the line for.
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  Right.
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  So
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  So it ends up saving them a ton of time as well to just be like, nope.
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  Jody's a professional.
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  We're gonna send it to her.
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  She knows what we want, and it's a done deal.
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  Yep.
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  Send it, and I can get it back in, like, less than a half an hour usually.
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  Right.
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  Well, that's fantastic, and it and it keeps you, you know, from getting bored.
• 18:11
  Oh, definitely.
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  That's why I really love the way that I have made my career in the sense that right now I
• 18:20
  don't really do anything that's over five minutes of finished audio.
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  So I don't do long form narration.
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  I don't do e learning.
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  I typically am in the advertising, marketing, branding, corporate narration space.
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  And what that means for me is that there are no fires.
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  So if someone needs a repeat of a line, or something was sent to me by mistake, and this
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  script has changed, or if I mispronounced a word, God forbid, or, you know, or like
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  something changed and they just need me to redo something, or I need to do it faster because it
• 18:55
  needs to fit video in this particular segment, you know, then then I can do that.
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  And it takes ten minutes.
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  It doesn't take a day.
• 19:05
  Right.
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  Well, I would be remiss if we didn't talk about, you know, AI's role in the space now as
• 19:12
  they continue to train these AI sound models on our voices.
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  And, obviously, you've put a ton of work out there.
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  Are you at all worried about, you know, your voice kind of being gobbled up out there in the
• 19:27
  diaspora and just having a a million AI Jodys out there that are that are taking money and
• 19:35
  clients away from you?
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  Well, first of all, I don't think I am as popular as James Earl Jones, so no one is
• 19:44
  specifically going out to make a Jody clone.
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  However, it is something to be very cautious about, definitely.
• 19:53
  And consent is key.
• 19:54
  I wouldn't mind having an AI Jody, but I am the one who will give the consent to whether or not
• 20:01
  that's going to be used on whatever it's going to be used.
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  So as long as consent is given, I'm fine with it.
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  But when it comes right down to it, whatever they're making on AI right now, it's hollow.
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  I I don't I I don't know how else to put that.
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  There's no spirit there.
• 20:19
  Do I think that's a great way to put it actually, and I'm definitely stealing that
• 20:23
  because, we've said soulless, I I think is kind of how but I think hollow is actually an even
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  better definition because, by definition, this has no soul.
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  Right?
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  It is a machine, and it's a very smart machine, and they're very capable machines.
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  But at the end of the day, that's all that it is.
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  It it can't convey all the emotions of a human and small inflections, and it just doesn't it
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  doesn't understand that yet.
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  Maybe one day it it will, but I I think there's always gonna be a human element to performance
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  or, you know, whether it's in the, you know, music space or in the voice over space, and
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  you're gonna get what you pay for.
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  If you want to cheap out and to use, you know, a cheap voice model, then you're going to get
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  what you're going to get.
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  Yeah.
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  And but when you have that human, and I think you can attest to that, that you're connecting
• 21:14
  with people.
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  People know at this point whether it's an AI voice or not, I think.
• 21:19
  Maybe not all.
• 21:20
  May you can trick some people, but it's it's getting, it's getting harder to tell probably.
• 21:26
  But I think there's that human element is always going to be there.
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  And when you're working with brands, that I think we all kinda crave that as well.
• 21:34
  I hate talking to the machine.
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  I I'm not good at having that conversation.
• 21:39
  So I would much rather just go, hey, Jody.
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  This is what I'm looking for.
• 21:42
  This is the feeling that I wanted to have, and, I'll see you in ten minutes.
• 21:46
  Well yeah.
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  And and what tends to happen even when you're using an AI voice is that it takes you three
• 21:51
  hours to program it into something that's approximately human.
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  Right?
• 21:56
  I can do that in ten minutes, and you didn't need to, like, you saved a few bucks.
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  But here's the kicker also.
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  If you're talking audio branding, and you're talking about making a genuine human connection
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  with the people who are experiencing your brand, and you want to make that genuine
• 22:15
  connection.
• 22:16
  If you use AI and people find out that you used AI, they're going to feel like they were lied
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  to.
• 22:23
  I mean, that's the bottom line.
• 22:24
  When you find out that something was made by an algorithm as opposed to actually someone put
• 22:31
  some thought into some human creation and creativity, what does that do to your thoughts
• 22:37
  on the brand?
• 22:38
  It just makes you think, oh my god.
• 22:41
  Can I trust them?
• 22:42
  Because they're lying to me now.
• 22:44
  What what kind of connection yeah.
• 22:46
  If you wanna connection with computers, go ahead.
• 22:50
  But you wanna connect with humans.
• 22:53
  So, you know and and I'm not saying that AI voices are are absolutely trash, and there's no
• 23:01
  use for them.
• 23:02
  There certainly is.
• 23:03
  There are there are things that humans cannot keep up with at the very least.
• 23:08
  You know?
• 23:08
  So I just think it's it's something to use with caution, and it's something to be very
• 23:13
  transparent about.
• 23:16
  And I think you touched on something there that people are we're very aware of it now, where
• 23:22
  even two years ago, we really weren't.
• 23:23
  And it wasn't as powerful as it is now.
• 23:26
  But I think also what you said was that people want that human connection.
• 23:31
  And if you're going to just overuse it and now we use AI in a lot things.
• 23:35
  A lot of our editing and and stuff like that that I don't have the time to do nor do I have
• 23:40
  the money to pay another human being to do, we use it in that fashion, but we don't use it to
• 23:45
  in any of our creation necessarily.
• 23:48
  Right?
• 23:48
  And but I've heard some of the creations that friends of mine have made using AI to create
• 23:54
  songs.
• 23:55
  And it's kinda like you said where it takes them a really long time of talking to this
• 24:00
  machine to get that through where I can write a song in five minutes.
• 24:04
  Like, if I've been struck by inspiration
• 24:06
  Mhmm.
• 24:07
  It just comes out and before you know it, it's done.
• 24:09
  Now is that recorded and, you know, ready to release?
• 24:12
  No.
• 24:13
  But the creation of it didn't take that long at all, Where sometimes the creation of something
• 24:19
  can take a very long time when when you're dealing with these machines because they just
• 24:24
  don't get it.
• 24:25
  They can only work with what you're able to give them.
• 24:28
  And Oh, yeah.
• 24:28
  I think that's something that a lot of people kind of forget about.
• 24:32
  It's why I admire people who are creating music using AI that are songwriters but maybe don't
• 24:38
  or not even wouldn't even consider themselves a songwriter.
• 24:41
  But they have a feeling.
• 24:42
  And they have this feeling, and they have to get it out somehow.
• 24:45
  And they're not necessarily trying to, you know, be commercially successful with that.
• 24:50
  They're just trying to express themselves.
• 24:53
  That's where I think it's really cool.
• 24:55
  Because right now and you know this like I do.
• 24:57
  Nobody's making money in the music business anyway.
• 24:59
  Oh, yeah.
• 25:00
  Right?
• 25:00
  So so what do I care if there's another person out here that's doing it?
• 25:04
  They can't take a guitar out around a campfire Yeah.
• 25:07
  Go entertain their friends and have that human connection.
• 25:09
  Right?
• 25:10
  They'll never they'll never know that feeling.
• 25:12
  And to me, that's kind of that's everything that music ever was.
• 25:16
  So Yeah.
• 25:17
  There's a reason why I'm in voice over and not music.
• 25:23
  So that much I will say.
• 25:25
  But I will also say that algorithms are approximating what they think a human is.
• 25:32
  They're not actually human.
• 25:34
  They don't understand humans.
• 25:37
  There's no understanding there.
• 25:38
  They're approximating what they're given as far as data and putting it into an algorithm and
• 25:45
  making it sound like something they think sounds like a human being.
• 25:49
  And that's what it is.
• 25:51
  We're not talking about genuine intelligence here, right?
• 25:57
  You know, so so I I I just, you know, I I caution people to not make this thing into more
• 26:06
  of a human thing than it is because it's not.
• 26:10
  And, also, the people who are using AI voices to do their voice over work, they're never
• 26:16
  going to be the ones that have hired me.
• 26:18
  That's not work I lost out on.
• 26:21
  That's work I never had.
• 26:23
  So I'm not worried about it.
• 26:25
  Those people were looking for an affordable option and not looking for the connection in
• 26:30
  the first place.
• 26:31
  So Yeah.
• 26:32
  I imagine Or
• 26:32
  or they couldn't afford a voice over, which I understand.
• 26:36
  You know?
• 26:36
  There's entry level stuff.
• 26:38
  Right?
• 26:40
  It does democratize a lot of the creation of things.
• 26:45
  And that's I don't think that's a horrible thing.
• 26:48
  But hopefully, when they get more recognized or they're they have more of a budget or, you
• 26:55
  know, they they give this some more thought.
• 26:58
  Maybe they do actually go hire a human.
• 27:01
  And whether that's me or someone else, you know, irrelevant, but maybe that's what they
• 27:07
  do.
• 27:08
  I don't know.
• 27:10
  I would I wouldn't let you get off of here without recounting, the little bit of voice
• 27:16
  over work that I did.
• 27:17
  So I I was living in Mexico for a year, and I had gotten a job at a place called Book Mart,
• 27:24
  and they needed someone to read the English parts.
• 27:27
  So I got to go in and read some of the chapters of their books and to know that right now there
• 27:35
  are children in Mexico and around the Spanish speaking world that are learning English from
• 27:41
  listening to my voice, I think that's really cool.
• 27:44
  And I wish I would have gotten more time to do it.
• 27:47
  It was one of the best paying jobs I ever found in Mexico, which I mean by American money
• 27:51
  standards.
• 27:52
  It wasn't very much at all, but it was such a thrill to do that and to think about the
• 27:58
  implications that it had.
• 28:00
  And now to be a podcaster with, you know, over 300 episodes that we've recorded and a thousand
• 28:05
  uploads on YouTube that we have so many people that are hearing, you know, my voice and the
• 28:12
  voice of my friends and new friends like you, Jody.
• 28:15
  And that's all going into a massive archive.
• 28:18
  And whether they you're using that to train the next, you know, AI Bubba's and Jody's, more
• 28:24
  power to them.
• 28:25
  But I I think it's really cool what what you've done for brands and what you continue to do.
• 28:31
  Where can people find out more about you, about your podcast, and, where can some of these
• 28:36
  businesses find you to contract you for some work possibly?
• 28:39
  Sure.
• 28:40
  You can reach me on my voice over website at voiceoversandvocals.com.
• 28:46
  And the podcast is at audiobrandingpodcast.com.
• 28:51
  We have over 300 episodes at this point as well.
• 28:55
  I think there's almost 300 and I want to say we're approaching three ten ish.
• 29:03
  I know I'm editing three hundred and thirteen and fourteen right now.
• 29:09
  Awesome.
• 29:10
  Well, Jody, thanks so much for coming on to the show today and giving me a little bit of your
• 29:14
  time, and thank you for being part of the scene.
• 29:17
  Thanks so much.