What you need
- An abcVoiceover account: sign in with Google or Microsoft, and enter your invite code the first time.
- A microphone: a USB mic is ideal, but a headset or your phone works. See choosing a microphone.
- A quiet room with soft furnishings, and about ten minutes.
Step by step
- Create a project. A project holds a cast of voices and the scripts they read. Name it after what you're making, or just "My voice" while you experiment.
- Make a script in the project, and open it. The cast of voices sits at the top of the script page.
- Add a voice and name it. Use your name, or the part you'll play, like
Narrator. A name can be up to 60 characters, but it can't contain a colon, because pasted scripts use one to say who speaks each line. - Record in the browser. Press Record in browser and allow the microphone. Wait a beat, read the passage below at your natural pace, then press Stop Recording. Play it back, and if it's clean, press Use this recording. If you'd rather record in another app, choose Upload a .wav instead.
- Pick a style and a language. Start with Balanced, and set the language you'll write in. Fast draft gives quicker takes in English, once your clip is at least 5 seconds long.
- Generate three test lines (there's a test script below) and listen on headphones.
A passage to record
Read it the way you'd actually talk, not the way you'd read aloud in class:
I'd been meaning to do this for weeks, so here goes. It's a quiet evening, the kettle's on, and I've finally got ten minutes to myself. Let's see how it sounds.
A test script
Paste these as three lines. Each one tests something different: a plain statement, a question and some energy.
The meeting has moved to Thursday at three, in the usual room.
Did you remember to bring the notes from last week?
I can't believe it actually worked!Does it sound like you?
Probably less than you'd expect, at first, and that's normal. You hear your own voice partly through the bones of your head, which makes it sound deeper and fuller to you than it does to anyone else. A recording of you sounds a little strange to you, and so does a clone. Ask someone who knows your voice well: they're the better judge.
What's worth fixing:
- Echo, hiss or hum in the takes: they came from the room. Re-record somewhere softer and closer to the mic. See reducing background noise.
- Flat or sleepy delivery: the clone copies your energy. Record again with a little more life, or try the Expressive style.
- Too fast or too slow: the clone follows your pace. Record at the pace you want every line to have.
Improving it later
You can replace a voice's clip whenever you like. Lines you've already saved keep the take they had, made with the old clip, so a new recording never changes finished work; only new takes use it. Try two or three samples in different moods and keep the one that suits the project best.
Using your voice in more than one project
Each project has its own cast. To use your voice in another project, press Download clip on the voice, then add a voice to the other project and upload that WAV file. The same clip gives the same voice everywhere.
Your voice stays yours
Your recording is used to make your takes, on the voice server the abcVoiceover team runs. It isn't sent to an outside AI company or used to train models, and you can delete the voice, the project or your whole account at any time. The same rules mean nobody else may clone your voice without your permission. See the privacy policy.