Growing Your Voice Over Business Through Accents with Toby Ricketts

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Hi there and welcome to Vox Talk, your weekly review from the world of voiceover. I'm your host, Stephanie Ciccarelli from Voices. Do you want to learn an accent? Joining us today from his studio deep in the New Zealand jungle is Toby Rickett. Toby has worked with the biggest brands all around the world, from Hollywood to London to Auckland, using a spectrum of accents to turn their creative vision into a reality and connect to a global audience. In addition to voicing, he also teaches voice talent. Toby owns and personally runs the New Zealand Voice Academy, based in Auckland, and is the Oceania territory controller for the online voiceover career platform Gravy for the Brain. Toby has previously joined us on Mission Audition, talking about accents, and we're excited to have him here with us on Vox Talk to continue the conversation. Welcome to the show, Toby.

Toby Ricketts:

My pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

It's always fun to have you on the show, Toby. It's just such a wealth of information, all the accents that you can do, and I know some of it is out of necessity living in New Zealand. But Toby, just how many accents can you do?

Toby Ricketts:

Well, it's a good question. I do five professional accents. So there's my normal New Zealand that I'm talking with now. And there's a little bit of Australian that sometimes creeps in. It's another accent that I can do. And then there's my British accent, which is probably my best selling accent on the web. Then there's the standard American that you need to do in order to do the most jobs on the web. And then there's a kind of little bit of everywhere global accent, which you can't really place, which is getting more and more popular, especially with corporates and stuff.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Right. The Accent from Nowhere, I think we called it before in the podcast we did together in Mission Audition, and it was so much fun just to talk through all that. And thank you for doing those accents as you demonstrated what they were. I think that's really fun for people. And obviously lots of people say, ‘oh, I can do lots of accents,’ but really they can only do so many professionally. So you're working in those five accents professionally?

Toby Ricketts:

Absolutely, yeah. I like to delineate definitely that I can do a bunch more accents because I'm a total accent nerd and I love listening to people's accents and trying to imitate them. But really, if you're going to perform and earn money in one of these accents, it needs to be topnotch. You need to be able to fool someone who lives in that country.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

That would be the test, eh? There's a little Canadian giveaway, the eh, but exactly. I guess you would have to be able to fool someone who lived there, and that is not easy. And so that was a question I did want to ask you, and you've walked right into it. But just how fluent should someone be? And how do you know? I guess if you don't have a native speaker you can bounce that off of, how would you know if you've actually reached that goal of mastering the accent?

Toby Ricketts:

Well, that is the big challenge with accents, is that it's one of those things that you can't see if you're right inside it. You do need that external view. Sometimes it will be working with a coach or someone who lives in that territory. So especially like, if someone from outside the US is working in the American accent, they want to find an American dialect coach, of which there are many. It gets harder with the sort of more niche accents. But I kind of like this idea that you can find voice over artists in another country and maybe kind of start penpals with them so you can actually, like, you know, work in each other's accents and like, find a buddy if you like, on the web. And then you can form a relationship with them, send them audio and say, like, ‘where's my accent slipping up?’ And they can do the same with you. So, like, I kind of thought of that idea the other day and thought, oh, we should set up a kind of a buddy system so we might look at something like that engagement for the brain, I think, because that's a worldwide thing and trying to sort of connect people across these accent lines so they can get better.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

That's really interesting to find a buddy. I really like that. And I was just thinking about earlier myself when I think you had asked me something about Canadian accents and I honestly couldn't think of anything other than we say ‘out and about.’ And that usually gives us away as soon as you hear the out and about or the ‘eh,’ as I kind of said earlier. But obviously when you pick a buddy, you want to make sure that they have the accent that you want to be mimicking. Because I know that sometimes I because I think we copy people a lot whenever we're near someone for a long time, even if they don't have our accent, we might pick things up. I might think, ‘oh, territory’ instead of ‘territory,’ because I've been listening to a lot of British people lately or I'll say things like that. Sometimes I wonder, do I really sound as Canadian or do sound more American? Because I'll say process instead of process. And it just boggles my mind because I don't know if I sound more like I come from the Midwest United States or if I sound like an actual Canadian. But as we were talking about just before we got on Toby, you said something interesting about how people from around the world might be able to tell that you are from Canada or the US. And also Australia, New Zealand. How does that work?

Toby Ricketts:

Yes, it's a similar relationship. It's like Australia, New Zealand and Canada and the US. We've got a similar kind of relationship in terms of, like, there's a really big country with lots of people and then there's like a little country off to the side. Everyone just assumes that you're the same country because you're kind of a little one. So with the Australian and New Zealand accents, there's a very subtle shift that goes on. I'm just shifted into it now with Australian, like, it's just a little bit on the side there. And often when people try and do the Australia accent, they go all over the place and they're doing really big stuff like this, and Australians will be like, ‘oh, don't do that to me.’ And if people try to imitate the Canadian accent and it's like they do a caricature of the accent, if you like. So I feel like the shift that goes on between New Zealand and Australia is very much like the shift that goes on between American and Canadian. It's just a little tweak around the edges and, like, no one else in the world notices except the people from those two countries. And it's like daylight to them. They're just like, ‘wow, this is a totally different accent.’ And there's little stuff as well. Like you say, it's all the dialectical changes, like the ‘eh’ at the end of the sentence. And the same in New Zealand, we actually add ‘eh’ to the end of our sentences as well as kind of like a confirmation of, like, did you hear me? Do we agree? Are we on the same page? That kind of thing. Whereas if they don't tend to do that in Australia so it's kind of one of those dead giveaways, but those little dialectical shifts. And, like you say, process and process. And the big one that I slipped up with a long time in American, in standard American, was Bin versus Been. Oh, yeah. When you say, I've bin to the park, I've been to the park. And it's like the native speakers will pick that up instantly because they're like bean. What? Coffee bean? Baked beans. It stands out like crazy to them. And I've had a few experiences in the booth where I've been doing my standard American accent and getting all these things recorded and everything, and then suddenly the kind of say, ‘Hang on, hang on, hang on. Round here we don't say bean.’

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Oh, yeah.

Toby Ricketts:

I've literally had that from a client that said in that accent. So there's a lot of little things that you need to kind of get on top of. But to start with, if you're like learning an accent, just start with the big stuff. Go caricature. Find that feeling in your mouth and, you know, take it there, I think.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Brilliant idea. You know, just find something that feels comfortable. Like I'm just singing back to some singing days. It was always easier for me to sing in French or Italian than it was for me to sing in German. And when I sang in German, my jaw, my chin felt different. Like it just had a different feeling. Right. It's just a way of pronouncing the words, but everything else difference between a Romance language and a Germanic language, perhaps. But there was definitely something going on where it's like this felt German, for instance, or this feels like I'm the French, the more uvular and whatnot. Right?

Toby Ricketts:

Yeah, absolutely.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

That being said, so if you're living somewhere in the world, let's say you are a North American because a lot of people listening are in North America. But we do have some people all over the world and I want to say hello to our friends in Egypt. I know there are some of you listening today. But if you're from North America and you are an English speaker. Like how I am speaking right now. What would be the best accent for us to learn as like a second accent, if you will. Like if we're English in the first language. What is a way that or which accent might we gravitate to more than others and be able to do so because we're just more trained to speak that way.

Toby Ricketts:

Absolutely. I feel like for North American talent or people with that kind of accent, there's accents that kind of have a similar rhotic are like the Irish accent has like that kind of r sound as well. Like the r an American as well. So like already there's a few similarities and it might be just tweaking those other things, like the kind of thing you get in Irish, which is that kind of nice, you know, poetry and music you get with the accent. There's less to learn there rather than going to South African or something like that. But it's very different from the Rs that you get in America. Pivoting to an accent that's kind of similar I feel like is quite is a lot easier, like to go from New Zealand to Australian. It's just those few little shifts to do that. So that might be something to go Irish, but then it depends why you want to learn the accent. If it is to try and get more work, then it's a good idea to see how much work is out there for different accents. And that's like what I did a number of years ago when I wanted to expand my sort of voice of a career. I was like, ‘Where is all this work? What do people want that are hiring the most voices?’ And overwhelmingly it was the North American accent. That is where most of the online casting happens. So it's a case of learning that really good standard American accent and then you've got the most shot at all of these jobs that are going there. And if you're already in North America, then it's kind of like, look at where the other niches are the biggest niches. It might be a slightly Spanish accent. Like English as a Second Language kind of Spanish, or it would be or maybe British or something like that. You could go for that. But, yeah, it's a case of what you want to achieve out of it. Because if it's another party accent, as I call them, a non professional accent, as a party accent, then the world is your oyster. Pick yourself a challenge or go for something close to home.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Right. You can be a collector of accents. I know some people are collectors of other people's voices, like they'll do impressions, that kind of thing, but it seems like we found our little conversation in the accent world. So I love that. It's definitely the Irish lilt. I think it's a lilt L-I-T- L-I-L-T sorry. And that's kind of where there's a Scottish brogue, which would be different and harder. Like, it was more of a different but, yeah, I think that that would be a nice accent. And I'm sure there's some work, definitely. But you hit the nail on the head. There's a lot of work for people with the North American kind of neutral accent on Voices. A lot of work actually goes that way. So when you're training people, I'm sure you have that in mind when you're thinking, well, what kind of work is available out in the market? And how can I help my students to learn these accents and do them really well? So they're competitive?

Toby Ricketts:

Yes, absolutely. And put them to use out there in the big wide world. Because, like I said, there are party accents and it's great to go to parties and show that you can do accents. It's always really entertaining. I've done a bunch on this podcast, like doing my Irish and there's a Scottish one as well. It comes out sometimes, but it's quite hard to establish those accents and really get into it. But are they useful? There's not many people that want me to go straight into Scottish, but at parties, great fun.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Oh, yeah. So you'll be the life of the party there, Toby. You bring all those accents and have a great time. So that's awesome. So I know that we were talking about earlier about how you are in New Zealand, but for those who don't know, you were actually born in England, right, and then you moved to Australia or to New Zealand, sorry.

Toby Ricketts:

Yeah. When I was 14 years old, I moved out here, right. At that crux point where you're going from your primary school to secondary school or high school, and there's lots of social pressure and so I basically conformed to the accent within about two weeks of arriving. So I got off the boat like, little English boy going to school and then so whenever I said something funny, the class would be like, ‘Did you hear what he said? He said something funny,’ as kids do. And so it was very much a conform or die situation. So I kind of learned the world I'm exaggerating, but that meant that I basically switched accents within about two weeks, and it would get honed every day I'd go to school. But when I spoke to my relatives back in England on the phone, I'd switch straight back into the British accent. And I didn't even realize I was doing it until my parents pointed it out. So I kind of always knew I had this ability to kind of switch and hear accents, because I think that's a big thing as well is that there's a spectrum where people sit on how much you even hear accents, because my sister, who came over exactly, saying, two years older than me, and she has not changed her accent one bit. She sounds like she just got off the boat yesterday, and she doesn't hear accents at all in anyone. Like, you can say, ‘oh, what do you think of the accent?’ And she's like, ‘What are you talking about?’ So the same way that I don't hear I don't hear lyrics and songs, I'm one of those people where I sit down to listen to a song, and I'm completely oblivious to what the lyrics are. I'm always listening just for the music, and then my partner has to point out what the lyrics are. I have to really concentrate to hear it. And some people, I think, are like that, that they experience the world through accents, and they hear every little detail like I do, and some just don't hear it at all. So figuring out where you are on that spectrum and how much, like, of an accent nerd you are, I think helps in terms of learning accents, like how easy it will be to adopt these accents.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Yes, you've got to have an ear for it, but also just the desire to do it. And it's kind of like, yes, you can pick them up probably easier than most people. There's definitely a skill to it and an innate ability, I would think, because it's hard to just pick up accents of all kinds. They're stylistically different. They're in a different placement in your face. There's different timing, even with or intonation depending on where you are in the world. Like, if you're speaking, you raise your tone, then all of sudden, the word changes, like ‘Whoa. How did that happen’ in some of the Asian languages? So you have to be thinking about that, I guess. And perhaps in the future we might tackle some of the actions that I am less familiar with and people working in English as a second language. But trying to get work in English is hard, I would imagine, unless there are jobs that are calling for that. So it's like just there's so much to talk about here. But when you do come from somewhere like a smaller country like New Zealand or you're South African or wherever you might be, but you speak English. You really do have to adopt and learn these other accents to be like, working in voiceover, I would think, is that right?

Toby Ricketts:

Pretty much. I mean, if you want to make a full time living out of it as an online voiceover artist, it is getting easier in other countries as the kind of online voice marketplaces spread and video production companies kind of realize that there's an online alternative where lots of people hang out. But in the meantime, I not only like the challenge of working with different accents, but the fact that you get to meet all these people from around the world and do this work in these different markets, it keeps it very fresh and exciting as well. I love hearing about what's going on in these different countries and like I say, the North American is the key market to get because on Voices.com, I think it's about 80% of the work there is cast in a North American accent. Yeah, so I think that would be the best option is to go with the North American and then branch out into sort of specific accent. I mean, I also say a North American accent. Like if you say an American accent, you're talking about a collection of accents. You're talking about hundreds of different dialectical and differences from East Coast to West Coast, the middle to north to south and then all the counties and small places within that. There is of course with the big accents, these kind of the big countries, the big markets, there is always the standard accent. Like in America, it's GenAM or the standard American, which is the sort of voice of broadcasting in England, it's RP, it's called received, the pronunciation which the BBC has always sort of used. And you'll find that there is like a standard for broadcasting in certain countries. And so it's good to watch TV from that country, figure out how they're speaking in adverts and it's not too diverse and try and nail those accents before you get into the sort of really specific nitty gritty about different areas. But that's also really fun.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Yeah, well, the neutral or the standard accents are definitely the ones that you would want to learn first because there's far more opportunity, frankly, in trying to do work in those accents. I think I seem to recall there being a saying that if you were in the middle of London, in London, England, and you were to hear the church bells tolling in different parts of the street in the neighborhoods, you would have different accents wherever those church bells were. And so you could you'd have like your Cockney and have any number of different things that are happening out there and perhaps I don't know if that's still as true now as it was then, where you did have that kind of thing. But you just have to be aware of the opportunities out there, but also think, like, what do I want to do? What do I enjoy doing? Because if you were to book an audiobook or something like that, you'd have to do this action for like 12 hours. Can I get through this? Do I like it. Does it hurt my face? I mean, honestly, right? Because that's one of the things that when I would sing in different languages, in a given language, it would affect my face differently. And it's like, oh, I know I'm doing the pronunciation right because something is hurting in my face. That's how I would know. I don't know if that's the best way to know, obviously there are diction coaches and that kind of thing, even tell you if you're on the right track. But it just seems to me that there's a ton of opportunity for people, North American in general, that kind of accent, that sounding like you from North America's, great. I know the British accent is very popular too. I would think there's a lot more work in the British accent than there is in, say, Aussie accents or the Kiwi accent. But like you were saying earlier, that the accent, I guess it is the most bookable for you so far as that's concerned, was like, I guess the British accent. Was that right? You said that you do really well with earning in that category, would you say?

Toby Ricketts:

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like the British is my most authentic voice, maybe because I was born there, because I've got sort of ties back to that. And I found that there was kind of a really rich seam of work in that British accent with a certain kind of gravitas, a certain kind of character that I brought to the read that wasn't may be represented as well as other sort of characters, if you like, in the market, because everyone thinks that there's character voicing and then there's voiceover commercial voicing. And it's not exactly a spectrum. Every voiceover is a character, it just depends what you're playing. Even if it's a straight voiceover, quote, unquote, there's a character element to it about how much gravitas you do, how much prosody, all this stuff going on behind the scenes that kind of gives the listener the cues for what kind of character this is. Who's telling me this information, and do I believe them? So, like, I feel like the accent is kind of one of those foundations you can build that kind of character on. And again, this gives you so much flexibility in the marketplace if you can kind of start to build these straight voiceover characters. Once you've got your authentic voice down, and this is like how I talk, this is me talking, then start to branch out and thinking, how could I modify myself? What would I sound like if I was this person or born in this country or aiming at this market. And so accent is a big part of that. And then once you start adding the layers of prosody and pace and all of those other things that we bring to voiceover, you can start to get a really unique flavor that isn't represented necessarily in the marketplace. And I think it's just trying different things until you hit that nice seam of voice work in that character that everyone wants but isn't served that well by the market.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Wow, that's insightful. And I didn't tell you about this question because I just thought of it now, but it occurred to me that I'm not sure if anyone maybe is a listener there remembers hearing the episode we recently did with James Poulter from Vixen Labs. But we are talking about AI and voice and how there's like AI technology for voices becoming so good that they can actually take someone's voice and make them speak languages they don't actually speak.

Toby Ricketts:

Wow.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

I know, it's crazy. And so I'm just wondering if that same idea or the concept were to be applied to accents. And if your voice, because of the AI algorithm or whatever, is able to learn how to have that voice speak in other accents, like, what would the things be, Toby, that the AI would get wrong? I would love to know this. What would it not know it should do to be authentic when trying to take a voice and make it do an accent?

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Yeah, well, I think what you definitely get, and we get this with New Zealand all the time because we've got these really strange little, like we have these vowel shifts, they're called. So instead of the sharp thing you sew with a pin, we'd say a pin, a pin, a pin, like that. So it really flattens, all these vowels. And so when you talk about pegs to hang out your washing with, we say pegs, which sounds like pigs, which is a completely different word. So especially for short words where there's only one vowel in some accents, you change the vowel, you change the word. So it's got to be contextual because often, like, I transcribe a lot of the interviews and stuff I do on my VO Life interview channel and it often gets all of these things wrong. So I have to manually go through and change all of these things of whether they've actually changed a word because of that subtle vowel shift. But I think you're right. And I did a little bit of research for this episode and there is an AI startup which is actually for call centers because a lot of them are based on the sort of Indian subcontinent in Southeast Asia. And the accent thing can be difficult for people to understand sometimes. So they've got this real time plugin which can sit between the caller and the person listening and change the accent so it's more so it suits the person listening a little bit better.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Wow, that is wild. Yes, because I thought, well, this technology is definitely happening, it's going places. But there are certain nuances, just like there are, like, with the spoken word, with accents, with language, with culture, with any number of different things that the AI will not pick up on because it can't know all of that. Whereas human beings. As we are. I know we are. Would say that we have this wealth of knowledge that we can pull on. Be it an experience we've had or how we grew up. The country we live in. Its history. The way we interact with others. Whatever. Just so much more that we have at our disposal for inserting into how to say something or even how to present or how to phrase in an accent. Because I'm sure there are ways of phrasing, like turning a phrase when you speak with an accent, that would just fall completely flat if you don't do them correctly.

Toby Ricketts:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's a certain amount of error correction that goes on from the listening as well. You know, language is entirely contextual, so, you know, you can start a sentence and think it's going one way, but then it changes due to one word or something, even just the way we speak, like, are we asking a question or are we asking a question? The question versus statement thing is very big. AI is definitely not there yet in terms of picking up really contextually what people are talking about and then modifying what it thinks you're saying in those kind of things. But I think the way we've seen AI image creation go and the neural networks are using for that, where it's entirely contextual, I feel like in five to ten years that is going to apply itself into the voiceover space as well and I will suddenly get really good at this kind of stuff, which is a bit scary, but it is coming. So we just have to sort of ride that wave and see what happens.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Right? And while we're doing that, we had better sharpen up our accents. So, Toby, I know you are a teacher, but you also know of likely some resources that you could point us toward for accent development. So if someone's just trying to figure all this out today and they're like, oh my gosh, Toby Ricketts has completely inspired me, I'm going to go learn something. Where do you recommend they go?

Toby Ricketts:

Well, like we were talking about, if you can't find a buddy somewhere in the world and you really want to learn an accent from SubSaharan Africa or something, something really obscure, there's this website called Dialectsarchive.com and it's basically a massive recording of all these people from around the world reading the same script which has been compiled over the. Years. So dialectsarchive.com is fantastic. Of course, YouTube is a massive resource. There's so much content on there, more than you could ever watch in 100 lifetimes. There are some great channels. There was a channel called Accents with Amy, which was really good. Amy Walker, and she is an absolute yeah, she's an absolute genius when it comes to accents and very entertaining to watch her stuff. Erik Singer did a series with Wired all about accents and different dialects, etc. For so that's another good place to start on YouTube, is looking up Erik Singer. I've actually taken the liberty of putting together like a resources page for listeners on Vox here today. So we'll put that link in the description, but it's also on my website, TobyRickettsVoiceover.com/vox. And there's PDFs there. I've included a thing called Lexical sets, which are basically where you've got the same vowel sounds. And let me just load it up here. You've got the same vowel sounds and you can practice accents really easily. Sorry, I thought I'd had it loaded here, but I don't. That's okay. Yeah. So these Lexical sets will let you really practice accents incredibly well. And we've also on that sorry. Also we have a script which includes all the different vowel sounds so that you can actually practice a script that goes through all the different vowel sounds when you're learning a new accent so that you are able to practice that accent and get those vowel sounds just right. So, yeah.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

That's amazing. Toby, thank you so much for those resources. And we will be linking to them in the show notes. And if there are any celebrities that you think are actually really great at doing an accent just because they've worked hard, can you give us an example of someone who's really good at doing accents?

Toby Ricketts:

Yes, I mean, there's a few individual performances, definitely, which I think, like, show the level of detail they've gone into. Brad Pitt did a great job in the Guy Ritchie film where he plays this Irish, like, boxing coach, and he just does such a good job on the accent and the dialect. You basically can't understand him because he's doing the accent so well. Like those Gaelic accents, Scottish especially, becomes a different language at some point where you can't actually understand what they're saying. And he does a fantastic job in that. And then there's other sort of American British performers who transitioned just seamlessly between the two. Like Gillian Anderson. There's a video on YouTube of her seamlessly going between her British and American accents. And the key to accent is it should absolutely sound effortless and natural. Like, it should just appear that the person is becoming that accent. It lives there all the time. And that's what those movie stars do when they're doing this performance. It is effortless.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Effortless. And that's where that whole idea of being fluent comes in. If you had to, you could just on a dime do the accent and it wouldn't fall out. I know there are movies out there, we won't name them, but where actors will come in and out of their accent and it's like painful, but you're just like, oh, the dialect coach is probably crying in a corner somewhere. But anyway, I'm just thinking, like, as I was sitting there watching all of this happen, there's so many examples out there and you're absolutely right, there are some that are just really great ones that you should absolutely go to dialectsarchive.com to hear native speakers. The actors that you've mentioned in those roles that they've played, I'm sure someone, if they've seen the film, they probably know exactly what you're talking about. But, Toby, like, I want to ask you now, so if someone wants to follow up with you, how do they learn more about what you're doing and what story and how can they get a hold of you?

Toby Ricketts:

Sure thing. I mean, my professional voiceover site is at TobyRickettsVoiceover.com. You can hear samples and ads I've done in all those different kinds of accents and a little bit more about the training and what I do. As we mentioned at the start, I'm also a territory controller and sort of chief of Oceania for Gravy for the Brain, which is like a worldwide online voiceover career platform. You can learn any kind of stuff. And also, if you happen to be in Oceania and want to do an in-person course, I run the New Zealand Voice Academy, which also has resources on it for people to learn how to do accents as well as do voiceovers and perform anything like that as well. So, yeah, thank you.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Fabulous. I love it. And I always love talking to Toby. You were just such a joy. So, thank you, Toby.

Toby Ricketts:

No problem at all. Thank you very much for having me on the show.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

And that's the way we saw the world through the lens of Voiceover this week. Thank you so much for listening and enjoying this episode with us on Accents and how to Learn. Our special guest today was Toby Ricketts from the wilds, the jungles of New Zealand. For those of you who are not in New Zealand, I want you to know that you can study with Toby, too. You don't have to live there, you don't have to be in Auckland. So, as he had mentioned, you can go to his website. We've got a bunch of links there in the show notes for you to enjoy and to learn these accents, get some good resources. And I think that's our show for today. So for Voices, I'm Stephanie Ciccarelli. Our producer is Geoff Bremner. You've been listening to Vox Talk. Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next week.