Hal Lublin’s name should sound fairly familiar to pretty much anyone who has enjoyed a few podcasts in the last five years. Lublin has lent his considerable voice acting talents to such memorable titles as The Venture Bros, The Thrilling Adventure Hour, Welcome to Nightvale and We Got This – With Mark and Hal. If you have listened to even one of these much beloved titles, you have heard Hal Lublin’s voice.

You may recognize him (if your’re a Nightvale listener) as the voice of Steve Carlsberg, whom we all know is the WORST. Over his career, he has played many varying and diverse characters, creating them for the listener with just the talent of his voice. At Dragon Con 2016, Lublin and fellow podcasting actor Cecil Baldwin (THE Cecil of Welcome to Nightvale) took some questions and offered some tips for newcomers interested in starting out in podcasting and voice over work;

•  GET DECENT EQUIPMENT. Make sure it sounds good.
• Don’t be afraid to edit, which means when you’re recording, don’t be afraid to say whatever and fix it later on, those are just some basics. There are a lot of podcast posting services, I use Libsyn for a podcast I do with mark Gagliardi called “We Got This.”

  

• And then for voice acting, I would say start with acting classes, and I would suggest a few improv classes as well.  It’s good to have a background in acting ability, learning  how that translates to mic work, the ability to breakdown a script, make character choices and convey all of that through a microphone seems a lot easier than it actually is. There’s a reason why there are a small number of people that do a large number of jobs and it’s because they’ve spent time learning how to do that. So if you want to do voice acting specifically, podcasting can be a great way to develop some of those skills. Find a voice over class, find some on-line, learn how to break down scripts, learn proper mic technique, learn different styles, learn what you sound like and how to own that. Learn how to do impressions of people that don’t sound like you depending on their characters. Those are some of the bedrocks of voice acting, do it with your whole body too, make sure you’re not just sitting at a mic.

  

• On doing distinct characters in different podcasts: that’s just doing it over and over again, thats just learning it. We were doing The Thrilling Adventure Hour for 10 years live, some voices were loud, some voices were quiet. You just learn how to work around the mic and do it with other people, when to improvise, how to improvise.  I got it by just doing it but I also took classes on how to do voice over and that has informed a lot of what I did after. What works for you might not work for somebody else, so it’s important to find out what works for you.

Aggressors if you’re considering trying your hand (or vocal chords, actually) at podcasting, make sure you keep these tips in mind!