Discover the art of performing impersonation

How to make your voice similar to celebrities?

I have been observing the art of impersonation since 1991 and I used to mimic like famous bollywood actor Mr Amitabh Bachcan, I did not realize that practising a few dialogues of Mr Bachchan helped me understand that I learned his style and behaviour until 1999

Impersonation is an amazing form of art, it is also called as Mimicry. And earlier my perception of learning this art was impossible to learn. and I thought we can't learn this art and it is God-given.

My point of view on learning impersonation has changed in 2014 and I found that anyone can learn the art of impersonation.

Did you notice how people change their voices in just a few seconds?

Persistent practice and observation play a key role

I believe that anyone can learn this art with some dedication and techniques. But It still has some limitations.

It works with an individual's voice timbre. If you have a deep voice texture, you tend to impersonate voices in lower scales and you will face challenges in copying high vocal ranges.

The first step to copying someone's voice is to Identify your voice or vocal range.

Step 1

Once you identify where your voice stands,

Is it on the lower scale or Higher scale?

Let me clarify here, Higher scale means - a thin voice quality, and

Lower scale means; a deep or heavy bass voice.

It takes some time to observe or analyze your voice by recording yourself regularly. Here aim is to get to know your voice register.

Step 2

Once you get to know your vocal range. Start practising the dialogues of the celebrities which is close to your vocal range. I observed that this step works like magic, because from here things will be pretty simple for you if you get it correctly. The day you found a target celebrity voice as your Aim.

Just start making notes and pick famous dialogues from his/her movies.

Initially, let's make the dialogues short and simple. It is good for your practice if you start with a one-liner or just a few words.

Step 3

Catch the facial expressions and Jaw movements.

Here a deep observation is required to pick the facial expressions like,Jaw contraction, lip movement, and eyebrow contractions.

when people speak with jaw contraction, and with different ways of lip movement a different type of voice comes out according to the person's mannerisms and style.

Here is the catch; observe the personality, and how a person delivers his dialogue or understands his/her voice texture.

Step 4

Consistent observation

Keep watching and observing every day for at least 15 minutes this will help your mind learn the style and mannerisms. Initially, you will notice that you are not able to copy the voice and style. But once you start practising for some time regularly you will feel that you can learn someone's else voice. It is easy and doable.

This will also help you out in making general characters.

let's say an old man's voice, a drunken man's voice, or a kid's voice.

The Kid's voice impression can be picked on a higher scale.

Similarly,the Old man's voice can be picked on a lower scale.

A drunken man's voice style , is quite common and easy, it is very easy to speak like a drunken man; you have to speak with a slow tempo with little fumbling in the speech,

I enjoyed performing impersonations of my collegues and family members and that's how you can learn the art of impersonation.

I have been into mimicry and voice acting professionally for the last 15 years.

If you have any queries or questions please send across via the comment section.