Nicole Gose has done everything from voicing national and international commercial and radio spots, to voicing political campaigns, to mixing and producing jingles and scoring music for commercials, movies and theatrical plays.  She is the voice talent for The Musubi Murder audiobook, where she inhabits characters ranging from diplomatic inkeeper Mercedes Yamashiro to anarchist newsblogger Patrick Flanagan to outspoken biology professor Emma Leilani Kano’opomaika’i Nakamura.

And of course Nicole voices the first-person protagonist, Professor Molly Barda, the unwilling amateur sleuth who just wants to stay out of trouble until she gets tenure.

In Part II of this interview, we discuss the production of The Musubi Murder, popular misconceptions about Hawaii, and more!

The Musubi Murder 

Q: Did you find the character table with photos helpful? (If not that’s OK!)

A: Yes! I always find it easier to get into character when I know what the character I’ll be portraying looks like. You can really imagine how someone sounds when you see what they look like because you start making comparisons to that character with someone else that you may know of who sounds a certain way. You can also make assumptions as to what kind of a voice someone might have. For instance, if they’re smaller they may have a higher voice.

Character descriptions are also helpful because once you’ve established their physical form and develop the overall “genetics” of a character’s voice, you can then learn from the character description what kind of tone they may have, or how they may speak. If someone is more timid, they may speak softly or they may stutter and you can hear the lack of confidence in that person’s voice. If someone comes from a ‘school of hard knocks’ kind of background, you can imagine that they might sound tough, confident in their speech, and maybe aggressive.

Q: Which character was your favorite to narrate?

Ahh, I got rather attached to Pat and Emma. They make great sidekicks to Molly, and while Molly’s voice was right in my natural mid-range, Pat was in my lower register and Emma was in my higher. It was nice to be able to play around in the different ranges and have fun with that.

Q: Which character was the most challenging?

A: Not any one character in particular per se, but it was a little difficult at times juggling all of the different pidgin speaking characters because they can kind of blend in together.

Q: The Musubi Murder was your first audiobook. Would you do it again?

A: Definitely, although ideally, I would like to just narrate the story and not have to worry about listening back to it, editing and engineering the audio.

Hawaii

Q: Hawaii has had a high profile in the media lately–Hawaii 5-0 continues to be popular and the movie Aloha has stirred up some discussion. Before that, we had The Descendents, Dog the Bounty Hunter, and American Jungle. What do you think about the way Hawaii is portrayed versus what it’s really like to live here?

A: I think Hollywood likes portraying many of the “tropey” aspects of Hawaii and play up the fact that it’s an island setting, and very foreign and different from the rest of the country. But in reality, living there, or at least in Honolulu, was like living in almost any other mid-sized city. I’ve lived in Portland, Oregon for six years and have been living in Los Angeles for the past six months, and I’ve got to say that I’ve seen so many similarities between Los Angeles and Honolulu. The attitude in the people I’ve met is very similar, the traffic is about the same (but LA has more lanes so I actually prefer driving here!) and both cities are filled with skyscrapers. In movies about Hawaii, you rarely get to see that Honolulu has a thriving business community and city life. It isn’t all about Waikiki and tourism.

Q: What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions about living in Hawaii?

A: Going back to the last question, I think most people, when I tell them that I’m from Hawaii, they think of it as basically being America’s island playground, with nothing but endless days of relaxing on the beach.

The Nuts and Bolts

Q: Do you have a studio in your home?

A: Yes, it includes a nice Mac set up with huge monitor speakers and a recording booth I built in my closet.

Q: How did you learn the technical aspects of audio production?

A: I taught myself how to record and mix audio using Garageband a little over ten years ago when I was first recording myself singing and playing guitar and piano. I became much more skilled when I started charging people money to write songs for them.

Q: How many hours a day can you narrate? How do you keep your vocal cords in good condition?

A: I was narrating on average 3-5 chapters a day. I’m not sure how that translated into hours, because I would take breaks all of the time. I would record one chapter all at once, take a break, record another, and take another, longer break..So on and so forth. Taking many breaks is crucial to keeping your vocal cords in good condition. Thankfully, there weren’t really any screaming scenes, but when it comes to those, drinking tea and some herbal supplements like “nin jiom pei pa koa” is good.

Advice

Q: Do you have any advice for people who want to become audiobook narrators?

A: Read! Every day! Read out loud! Also, check out acx.com. It’s a free service for narrators. A lot of voiceover websites are “pay to play” which can work out for some people, but for most, it doesn’t. ACX does not charge a monthly fee to allow you to audition for books, so it’s a great place for someone to get their feet wet in the audiobook world.

I would also recommend for those interested to have taken a few voice over classes or acting classes in general. A huge part of voice acting is the acting part. That’s, really, well 99% of it. Audiobooks are no different. They’re often more acting, since you’d need to be able to portray all characters in a story.

Q: What skills are required to be a good audiobook narrator?

A: Have the patience and stamina to work on a long project. Be able to voice a number of different people. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to have a wide vocal range. With your natural vocal tone, you could still create hundreds of characters by adding some grit to your voice or adding some attitude or swagger, changing up the pacing of your words, and take on different personality traits. How would you say something if you were a perfectionist and “neat freak”? How would you say the same line if you were an out-of-work couch potato? If you are able to create many believable characters, I’d say that’s a great start.

Q: Do you have any advice for authors in hiring and working with audiobook narrators?

A: I had the pleasure of working with Frankie Bow for my first audiobook and it was awesome! I really appreciate her friendliness and positive attitude and feedback and certainly her patience and understanding! 😉 I would say that all authors looking to hire a narrator for their book should possess these qualities. It definitely made the job more enjoyable. [*blush* –ed.]

Q: What other projects are you working on now?

A: I just wrapped up a project where I lent my vocals to an amazing album called “All In” with DJ $crilla, and I’ve provided vocals for a few other albums that cannot be mentioned at this time. I’m also working on some other music projects and a bunch of commercial voiceovers and have been working on more videogames lately.

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Q: Where can readers follow you? 

A: You can find me at my website, hear me on SoundCloud and follow me on Twitter.

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BE THE FIRST TO LEARN ABOUT PROMOTIONS, EVENTS, AND NEW RELEASES:

THE MUSUBI MURDER August 2015 Amazon / B&N /Powell’s /Audible / iTunes

 

Nicole Gose has done everything from voicing national and international commercial and radio spots, to voicing political campaigns, to mixing and producing jingles and scoring music for commercials, movies and theatrical plays.  She is the voice talent for The Musubi Murder audiobook, where she inhabits characters ranging from diplomatic inkeeper Mercedes Yamashiro to anarchist newsblogger Patrick Flanagan to outspoken biology professor Emma Leilani Kano’opomaika’i Nakamura.

And of course Nicole voices the first-person protagonist, Professor Molly Barda, the unwilling amateur sleuth who just wants to stay out of trouble until she gets tenure.

Nicole’s narration has received praise from audiobook listeners:

Her Hawaiian and islander accents were soo good and fun, I hope to find some more books narrated by her.

She has the excellent ability to change her voice for each character…She even does male voices that you would swear were being voiced by a man.

The narrative was well done, in fact I often forgot that one woman was also providing the male voices for the audio. That’s a great narrator!

The narrator Nicole did a wonderful job with all of the characters and their different personalities and the different accents. She was very easy to listen to and I am looking forward to listening to more books by this narrator.

[Nicole] certainly is a talent. Her voice is very clear, she has good timing and tells a story well, this is so important. I loved the regional accents.

Fantastic narration.

I’ve had so many questions from audiobook listeners about my talented narrator, that I’m delighted to be able to share our interview! Here is part I of my interview with voice artist Nicole Gose.

Background:

Q: What got you into a career as a voice actor?

A: I had been working on some commercial music and jingles for clients a few years ago and sometimes I would get a request to add in a tag line like, “Call us at 1-800…” or, “For the best in the business, go to…” and I started seeking out commercial voice over opportunities after that. However, my desire to be a voice actor really came from many years before then, back when I was a kid watching cartoons. I always preferred animation to live action tv shows, and I had wanted to voice act for cartoons, but had always assumed that only a handful of people got the opportunity to do that and it was impossible to do what they did. And while that is somewhat correct to a certain extent, doing commercial voiceover and starting to do a little audiobook, animation and video game work has made it seem more attainable, so I’m going to keep at it!

Q: Did you always know that this was the career you wanted?

A: I’ve always been involved in some kind of creative pursuit for as long as I can remember. When I was a little kid, I used to write a lot of stories and illustrate them. I taught myself how to play piano when I was six and have been composing songs since then as well as singing and acting since around the same time. For the longest time my plan was to become an actress. It was a lot of fun to play and become other characters. However, when I was a little older (around 16) I had decided that I would get more into music and I started a band around then, and began my quest to pursue music. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I decided that I also wanted to get into voice acting, and I rediscovered my love of acting and the theatre. Now I’m kind of pursuing two careers at the same time, but it’s funny how much crossover the two fields have. I’m finding that many people in Los Angeles work in both areas, especially the people behind the scenes, and having multiple skill-sets is very important down in this ultra-competitive city in this incredibly competitive field.

Working as a voice artist

Q: Aside from the Musubi Murder, what was your favorite voiceover job?

A: I usually do a bunch of commercials, training videos and IVR (the automated voice that you hear when you call your cable company and yell at because it’s not directing you properly..Yeah, that’s me) but I’ve been starting to do games and animation lately, and the most fun I’ve had was doing a live session as a playable character for a MMORPG. I had to say my character’s lines, and then I had to make a bunch of fighting noises, then followed by dying noises and screams. That was a lot of fun. I’ve since done more video games after that with more fighting and dying noises. I had a session where I needed to voice six different playable characters, and all of them needed to have their own unique set of attack and dying noises. It was a bit of a challenge, but I was able to come up with their own fighting sounds based on their voice pitch and personality.

Q: What’s a typical day like for you? 

A: On the days that I’m feeling productive, I like to record around seven to ten auditions for voiceover work. If I have any outstanding projects, I like to spend time working on that. If I’m not working in the studio, I’m interning at a voiceover recording and production studio and learning the ropes there while networking. And if I’m not doing that, I’m spending time with my colleagues in the field or meeting new ones and networking. A huge part of this business is networking, and I’ve found that people here do like to help, and I’ve been doing the same for others.

Audiobooks

Q: What led you to consider narrating audiobooks?

A: I started listening to audiobooks around four or five years ago when I wanted to prepare for a 20 hour road trip from Portland to Los Angeles and didn’t want to get bored. I thought that it would be cool to narrate audiobooks as well, but again, didn’t know how to get into it. A few years later I went to a voiceover seminar and spoke to another voice actor who said that she narrated audiobooks through acx.com and suggested that I do the same.

Q: What aspects of audiobook narration do you find the most challenging?

A: The most difficult part is probably keeping up the energy throughout the long recording sessions. Generally for shorter voiceover projects like commercials, the final recording part is only on average about 15-30 seconds long, and while I find myself recording about 5-10 takes for these projects, I can generally do them all in a row while keeping that same high energy. For audiobook recordings, I will often read several pages at a time, and will take mini pauses throughout to take a breather and re-build that energy so that certain paragraphs don’t sound like they’ve fallen flat, compared to others.

Q: Do you read the entire book first, before you begin recording, or do you prefer to be surprised along with the reader/listener?

A: I feel that it’s ideal to read the entire book first so that you can get a good understanding of the characters you’re portraying, but when you do not have much time to do so, you’ve just got to make do. So in this case, I would often just read a page or two before going in to record, mostly so that I would feel prepared for recording that little bit, just as I do before I record any other script.

Q: How do you decide how to voice a character? What is your process for determining the voice for any given character?

A: When figuring out a character’s personality and how they might sound, I go straight to the dialogue. There’s a lot to be gleaned from the words that they use and the phrasing they choose. Sometimes the author will add details like “speaks with a southern drawl” which will inform me to give them that type of accent, but the rest of it is personality. Just about anyone can do some sort of southern accent, but for there to be believability, we need to be able to feel that it comes from a real person, and…this is a little method actory, but if you go into the headspace of someone who would say something with a certain phrasing, you can imagine how they might say other things and the type of personality they would have that would lead them to say those things and do the actions they do. For minor characters, sometimes it’s just a matter of thinking, “Hmm, this scene has a lot of lower voices… I’m going to make this character who only appears in these few pages have a high voice”.

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Q: Where can readers follow you? 

A: You can find me at my website, hear me on SoundCloud and follow me on Twitter.

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BE THE FIRST TO LEARN ABOUT PROMOTIONS, EVENTS, AND NEW RELEASES:

THE MUSUBI MURDER August 2015 Amazon / B&N /Powell’s /Audible / iTunes