"Make it sound natural" is simultaneously the most common direction I receive and the least useful one. I've heard it in sessions for Coca-Cola, for small e-learning companies, for regional car dealerships, for global tech brands. Everyone says it. Almost no one means the same thing by it.
The direction contains a real desire — the client wants something — but the words themselves communicate nothing actionable. It's like telling a chef to make the food taste good. Yes, obviously. But what does that actually mean for the next take?
The Problem With Natural
Here's what clients think they're saying: don't be fake, don't be over the top, don't sound like you're reading.
Here's what the voice over artist hears: do something different from what I just did, but I won't tell you what.
A 2019 study from the University of Glasgow's Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology found that listeners form impressions of a speaker's personality within 400 milliseconds of hearing their voice. Four hundred milliseconds. That's faster than conscious thought. So when someone says a voice sounds "natural" or "unnatural," they're responding to something real — but they usually can't articulate what triggered the response.
The professional voice over artist has spent years understanding these micro-signals. The client hasn't. And that's fine — they don't need to. But it means "make it sound natural" is a description of a feeling, not a direction that can be executed.
What You Probably Actually Mean
When clients say natural, they usually mean one of these five things:
Conversational pacing. They want it to sound like someone talking, not someone announcing. This is specific. This I can do something with.
Less formal register. The script was written in corporate-speak and they want it to feel like a human would actually say those words. (This is often a script problem, not a delivery problem — but that's a different article.)
Reduced emphasis. The previous take had too many stressed words, making it sound like every sentence was a headline. They want flatter dynamics.
More breath. They want to hear the person breathing, pausing, existing as a physical human being rather than a machine outputting perfect audio.
Not 1950s announcer voice. This is the big one. According to research from Veritonic, overly polished "announcer" voices test 23% lower for trust metrics than conversational deliveries across most commercial categories. Clients have absorbed this instinctively even if they haven't read the data. They know the old-school radio voice doesn't work anymore. But they DO want someone who speaks well, who has control, who sounds professional. They want a voice over artist who doesn't sound like a voice over artist from 1955. That's reasonable. It's also wildly different from wanting someone who sounds like they're just talking.
A Direction That Actually Helps
Compare these two pieces of feedback:
"Make it sound more natural."
"Can we try it with more pauses between the phrases? Let the sentences breathe a little, like you're thinking about what you're saying rather than reading it."
The first one leaves me guessing. The second one gives me something concrete to do on the next take.
Have you ever received feedback at work that was so vague you had to guess what the person wanted? And then when you guessed wrong, they said "no, that's not what I meant" without actually clarifying? That's what "make it sound natural" does to a voice over session.
The First Take Problem
Here's the irony nobody talks about: after 50 takes trying to find "natural," the client almost always picks the first one.
I'm not exaggerating. It happens constantly. The first take is usually the most natural interpretation because it's the artist's instinctive response to the material before they start second-guessing everything. Once you start micro-adjusting based on vague feedback, you lose the spontaneity that made the first take work.
This doesn't mean first takes are sacred. Sometimes direction genuinely improves performance. But when the direction is "be more natural" and the result after 45 minutes is selecting take one, something went wrong in the process. The session burned time and money because the client couldn't articulate what they actually wanted changed.
What Good Direction Sounds Like
The best creative directors I've worked with — and after 20+ years I've worked with a lot — share a specific habit: they describe what they hear in the take before describing what they want changed.
"That felt energetic but almost like you're selling me something. Can we try it where you sound like you're letting me in on something instead?"
"I heard a lot of certainty in that read. What if we added some warmth, like you're genuinely glad to be sharing this information?"
"The pacing felt rushed in the middle section — around 'transforming how businesses connect.' Can we slow down there specifically?"
These directions work because they identify the actual element that triggered the "unnatural" feeling and provide a concrete alternative. The voice over artist can execute on that. We can do something with specificity.
The Cultural Layer in Spanish
When directing Spanish voice over, "natural" becomes even more complicated because natural to whom?
A Colombian accent sounds natural to Colombians and potentially off-putting to Mexicans. A Rioplatense cadence sounds natural to Argentines and Uruguayans and foreign to everyone else. According to the Pew Research Center, the U.S. Hispanic population reached 65.2 million in 2022, representing people with roots in more than 20 different countries. Each of those countries has different speech patterns, different rhythms, different ideas about what sounds conversational versus formal.
This is exactly why I recommend neutral Spanish for almost every project targeting a pan-Latino audience. Neutral Spanish isn't natural to anyone's kitchen table conversation — that's the point. It's constructed specifically to avoid triggering regional associations that would feel wrong to part of your audience.
So when you say "make it sound natural" for a Spanish voice over going to the U.S. Latino market, you're asking for something that might actively work against you. You might want accessible, warm, trustworthy, conversational — all achievable in neutral Spanish. But "natural" in the sense of "sounds like how people really talk at home" would require picking a specific region's accent, which immediately alienates everyone from competing regions.
The Script Is Often the Problem
Sometimes the voice over artist can't sound natural because the script won't allow it.
Spanish translated directly from English runs about 30% longer. That means either the delivery gets compressed and rushed, or the timing to picture doesn't work. Neither sounds natural. If you want natural delivery, the script needs to be adapted, not just translated — cut down to fit the same time signature while preserving meaning.
Other times, the script contains corporate language no human would ever say out loud. "Our synergistic approach leverages customer-centric solutions" doesn't sound natural in any voice because it doesn't sound natural as language. The voice over artist can't fix a writing problem through delivery alone.
Give Me Something to Work With
The professional voice over artist wants to deliver what you're imagining. That's the job. We're at the service of the project, not pursuing our own artistic vision. But "make it sound natural" doesn't tell me what you're imagining — it tells me you're not happy without telling me why.
Try instead: slower pacing, more intimate, less hard sell, friendlier, more authoritative, less corporate, warmer, cooler, more confident, let the words land, pause before the brand name, emphasize the benefit not the feature. Any of these give me a direction I can actually follow.
And if you're not sure what you want? That's fine too. Just say that. "Something felt off but I can't put my finger on it — can we try three different approaches and see which one feels right?" That's honest, and it gives me permission to offer options rather than guess.
The voice over artist knows more about voice than you do. That's not arrogance — you know more about your brand than I do. But let me use what I know by telling me something specific, or by letting me guide you through options until we find what works.
Need a Spanish voice over for your next project? Get in touch and I'll get back to you within the hour.
