1. What is e-learning and why is it good for kids? 

   Children’s e-learning refers to the use of electronic technology, such as online courses, educational games, videos, and interactive apps, to deliver educational content to children. E-learning has emerged as an effective and popular way to teach kids in recent years. AI writing assistants offer numerous benefits and advantages, from increased speed, efficiency to high-quality content.

   Firstly, e-learning provides children with a flexible and personalized learning experience. Children can learn at their own pace and choose the topics that interest them, which can make learning more engaging and enjoyable. This can lead to increased motivation and a deeper understanding of the subject matter.

   Secondly, Complementing students’ normal studies with e-learning can be an effective method of extending their knowledge and honing their skills. Children can use e-learning resources to reinforce what they have learned in the classroom, and to explore topics that may not be covered in depth in the classroom. This can help children to develop a more comprehensive understanding of a subject and to build on their knowledge and skills.

   Thirdly, e-learning can be an excellent way to introduce children to new and exciting ideas. With the use of videos, animations, and interactive apps, e-learning can bring abstract concepts to life, making them more accessible and easier to understand. This can foster a love of knowledge in children and encourage them to explore the wonders of their environment. It also makes them more inquisitive and encourages creative thinking.

   Finally, e-learning can be an excellent way to promote digital literacy and technology skills in children. In today’s digital age, it’s essential that children develop the skills they need to use technology effectively and safely. E-learning can provide children with a safe and controlled environment in which to develop these skills, preparing them for success in the digital world.

   What does voiceover add to e-learning?

   Voiceover is essential in the e-learning space because it can greatly enhance the learning experience for students. Here are some reasons why voiceover is so important in e-learning:

   1. Accessibility: Voiceover can make learning accessible to all students, regardless of their reading ability or language proficiency. Students who have difficulty reading or who are not fluent in the language can benefit from hearing the content spoken aloud.

   2. Clarity: Voiceover can help to clarify complex concepts and ideas. Hearing the content spoken aloud can help students to better understand the material and retain the information.

   3. Engagement: Voiceover can engage students and capture their attention. A well-done voiceover can make the learning experience more interesting and enjoyable, encouraging students to stay focused and motivated.

   4. Personalization: Voiceover can provide a more personalized learning experience. Students can choose the language and voice that best suits their learning style and preferences.

   5. Consistency: Voiceover can ensure consistency in the delivery of the content. A consistent voice and tone can help students to better follow the flow of the material and make connections between different concepts.

Cosher Recording Studios is expanding our roster and seeking talented voice over artists for paid work opportunities. All languages and accents are welcome, with a focus on African languages and American and British accents. If you’re excited about the prospect of working with us, keep reading.

Cosher Recording Studios is a full-scale music and audio post-production facility, offering a wide range of sound-related services, including voice over recording, original and stock music composition, dubbing, editing, and final mixing. We strive to provide clients with a diverse database of talented and affordable voice over artists, and we want you to be a part of it!

Our voice over projects are diverse, ranging from internal corporate scripts to large-scale e-learning projects, dubbing, and all types of commercial work, such as radio ads and animated brand videos for digital purposes.

As a non-exclusive voice agency, you are free to work with other sources as well. Our goal is to continually expand our voice talent database, so if you have a unique language or accent, don’t hesitate to reach out. Some of the accents and languages we’re interested in include English, Afrikaans, isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sesotho, Sepedi, Tsonga, Setswana, Spanish, Portuguese (African and European), Italian, Arabic, American, British, Australian, and African accents.

In previous blogs we’ve spoken about the importance of voice over for corporate and brand identity and touched on the areas that it can really help businesses grow, both internally and in terms of creating leads, that are interested in your product or service. But what about actually backing that up?

Well, we recently did a deep dive into the internet of things and found a few stats that are worth looking at when looking at voiceover more seriously for targeted ads and internal campaigns. . 

Customer Research 

According to the web hosting at voicearchive.com, there are customer studios that have brought some interesting things to the fore in the last few years, especially given the volatile world markets post COVID19. This info was taken from Millward-Brown’s study on voiceover which stated this; “When supported by voiceover, the message was taken out at much higher levels”. 

The results were quite astounding, actually, with 44% engagement with an ad using voiceover versus 17% without. That’s a marked improvement!

Why Does it Matter?

Here’s what’s actually really interesting about the study done. When voice over is used in a context, people may enjoy the ad as much as they would with just visuals and music, however, (and here’s the kicker) they understood far more than they would with a purely visual ad. 

Voiceover has become so important that even giants like Youtube have begun using a global strategy of voice-only ads, meaning that if you aren’t on this trend you may miss out. If you watch TikTok videos and see how many use the standard apple voiceover, then you will know how much more effective videos are that use actual human voice, meaning the need for voice over is growing significantly.

Part one – Starting Out

“Anyone can be a voice-over artist right?”

The number of times we’ve all heard this must be staggering, and it comes from the misunderstanding that voice-over is something anyone can easily pick up. Although the barriers to entry are not that high, the truth is somewhat different from this. 

Voiceover, like any other job, is exactly that, a real-world, real-life job, and it starts by understanding what the industry is actually all about. 

There are a few important things to understand when starting out, they include the voice types, knowing where your voice is best suited, understanding what the purpose of different voice scripts are trying to do, and knowing what your personal goal is within the industry. 

The Voice Industry

What voice artists are doing in a nutshell, is putting an idea forward with their voice. Whether that be something someone needs to buy, listen to, learn, or just enjoy. Voice-over work spans so many topics and industries that there’s almost nothing that you won’t find online or hear on TV and radio that doesn’t have some form of voice-over. 

So what is the voice industry actually composed of? That’s pretty simple, the voice industry is divided into artist, engineer (or sound recordist), the client and the intended listener. Each has their own roles to play. Here’s a basic breakdown of each 

• Voice artists – These are the people doing the acting, the voice you hear telling you what you need to know. Each artist has a specific skill set like character acting or accent work, and will often specialise in one field that their voice is best suited to, like corporate voice overs or hard sell radio ads.

• Engineers – These guys are the people who record what’s happening behind the mic. Knowing how sound works as an engineer is also useful as an artist, as it can help you find range and frequencies in your voice that you can play with or change. 

• The client – changes from job to job. It could be a major film company, or a small business, either way, this is quite obviously where the jobs come from. 

• The listener – Every company you work with will have an audience they are trying to reach, and with every voiceover you do, you will find that this changes. Small businesses might want you to do a short 30-second radio ad in order to attract people who they’d like to make aware of their products or services. Larger corporations can easily use an artist for the same reason, but often also use voiceover for in-house training modules or corporate information. A large company that does films, games or TV could use a voice artist for a documentary or as a character in an animated show. The list is endless. 

Basically, the entire point of the voice industry is to make sure that anyone out in the world can easily receive a message, in whatever format that needs to be. 

Next, we take a look at some voice over types. 

Voice Types – What They are, and Why they’re Essential.

Soft sell, hard sell, conversational, if you’ve been in the booth before or ever looked up what voice-over is all about, you will have heard these terms. Each voice type is in a way, a type of marketing, and also involves a bit of psychology too. 

Let’s look at the common ones we listed above (although please be aware, these aren’t the only ones by any means, just 3 very common ones), hard sell, soft sell and conversational. 

In the beginning, hard sell was the way to go, it sounded direct and pointed, think of those old-school 90’s car sales ads or ads for kitchen products from well-known shopping stores like Wal-Mart or Game. The ads were in your face, loud, energetic and often quite irritating when we look back at them. This was marketing directly to everyone, and for a while, it held strong. 

In the early 2000s however, we started to see a shift. People began to see themselves being marketed to, and the awareness that ads were trying to push someone to buy something started to create a feeling of resentment towards these types of ads. 

Enter the soft sell, which is exactly what you’d expect it to be. Here we had ads which were much more personal. It also enabled companies to speak about things which were longer term, like finances and medical services. The psychology was simple – if we deliver something soft and completely different to the hard sell, it will create the opposite reaction! This is pretty much exactly what happened. 

But in time, even these became somewhat watered down, and right now, they are almost exclusively used for longer or more emotionally charged ads, although they are still used. 

Somewhere in the middle, people wanted to be spoken to like, well, people. And so the idea of the conversational ad came about. What it is even today, is the ad type that makes it feel like an audience hearing the message is listening to a friend or family member. It’s a relatable voice type that anyone can get behind because it’s not something that sounds like it’s advertising anything to you.

Okay, so why the history lesson? Well, in order to understand what to do behind the microphone it’s often helpful to understand what voice types actually DO and what they’re FOR. 

When we say voice type we’re talking about how the voice actually sounds. Remember how I spoke about hard sell being loud and energetic? 

As a voice artist starting out, you need to watch ads, listen to the radio, and research voice types so that you can understand what they are and how they work. Every voice type sells something different, even if what you’re selling is an idea or a narrative (like a kid’s story), you have to get the listener to buy into what you’re saying.

Picture a training session in 2019, a few hundred employees in a room, the CEO speaking for a few hours on company ethos, or perhaps managers having a chat with people on the floor. This kind of meeting is one which has been happening less and less over the years.

The world has changed a lot since 2020. More than ever we’re seeing companies that are working remotely, and people who are communicating between themselves and their clients online. CEO’s have less time to come in and talk to people because they’re working to rebuild and recoup losses of the last 2 years. 

In this environment of online sharing and communication for corporate and businesses, 2 things have become very apparent. The first thing is that people are having to create brand awareness through different means.  Traditional marketing is becoming increasingly electronic. The second is that in order to communicate internal information, we’re having to reach out with more video based content and tutorials than ever before. 

This is where voice over is swiftly becoming an integral part of the day to day operations of companies and brands all across the world. Because fundamentally, the purpose of voice over is communication and Internally we know that voice overs can update, inform and teach employees company ethos, as well as giving them a sense of the brand’s strategies.

As things have changed to a more remote working environment, more and more apps have come about which require training, and if your company is based in multiple countries, you may find that you have people in different time zones. This means that a Zoom or Teams meeting isn’t always possible. Even in a situation where you operate in one time zone, physical meetings aren’t always convenient, so having a video or recorded audio you can send to clients or employees becomes the remedy. They can watch and listen without the need to physically come in to dial in at 3am in the morning.

Whether or not you are aware of it, voice-over is something which you will hear all over the place. Whether it’s a radio Ad, an e-book or even background voice in a film or series, or even if you’re just calling a corporation, it’s likely someone’s recorded voice has been part of your day. 

Corporate voice-over (a type of voice-over sales delivery) conjures up thoughts of people in suits in corner offices and high rise buildings, but voice-over FOR the corporate world is different.

What does corporate Voice-Over mean though? There a number of ways in which a company may use voice-over beyond advertising. Voice-over recordings for corporates can span many different internal processes which occur, or services being offered by a company, big corporation or small enterprise.

In-house training is one of the big uses of corporate voice-over. This could take the form of e-learning books or explainer videos where you could be using a mix of narration or conversational styles of voice-over recording. Internal corporate voice-over focusses within the company itself, these recordings can be released to staff about changes to company processes and policy, new product lines which are being added to company offerings, or any other in house operations which are either changing or need to be discussed throughout the company. One of the main reasons an internal video with voice-over is used is so that there is no need for lengthy meetings which take up time and resources.

External corporate voice-overs focusses on video or audio which has been created for public consumption. This can be in the form of ads for radio or TV, or it can be in the form of longer-form videos or audio that could be used at conventions or shows, either highlighting a specific product or the company as a whole. Product-specific videos often make their way to places online such as YouTube ads as well.

An explainer video can also be used externally, to show new clients how to use a specific product or service that you have created.

Some advice for Corporates looking to do Voice-Over Recording – Should you be a company or business looking to do corporate voice-over recording for any reason, be it advertising or internal, there are a few things to consider in terms of the way you go about looking for artists, choosing script etc.

There are some skills which tend to remain in the background where the entertainment industry is concerned. People like drummers and bass players in music, special effects crews and focus pullers in film… There are many professions which don’t really get talked about too much.  One of the most versatile types of these people is the voice over artist.

Voice-over is often overlooked as a career choice because we rarely actually get to see the people behind the voices we hear on the radio, in TV ads, in films (especially animated) and other media types which contain snippets of the human voice.

Voice over recording is actually a very specific skill set, and as with anything, it requires some time to hone the skill needed to be a voice actor.

What is Voice Over Recording?

The dictionary description of a voice-over (or VO for short) is literally – “the voice of an unseen narrator speaking (as in a motion picture or television commercial)”. Voice-over refers to any recording of a person’s spoken voice not seen, used in media. It could be an ad on the radio, an ad on TV, a background voice in a film (or a voice recorder after filming is done on a film set), a language change to a film or it could be done live such as in United Nations meetings.

Types of Voice Over

There are a few different, main types of voice-over which you will find across the spectrum and these are as follows:

Narration – Narration is one of the most common VO types and refers to the recording of audio information such as an audiobook. It commonly comprises of either a single reader or multiple readers dictating an actual book or article, which is going to be loaded onto the internet to be sold or used as an audio-based copy of a hard copy item. It is also often used for educational e-learning purposes such as a university or school lectures and classes. Narration for e-learning is sometimes done for companies wanting to impart information on employees without the need for long meetings and introductory classes, either for the purpose of teaching or informing about a new product line or introducing new members to the company culture.