We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Andrew Frankel. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Andrew below.

Alright, Andrew thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

Good accents, like good acting, come from close observation. Traveling helps, but I’ve been fortunate to live in a city that draws voices from all over the United States and all over the world. I listen and watch people very carefully when they speak.

I also studied acoustics and the physics of sound in college, which plays heavily into my approach to teaching accents—and I always stress to my students that absolutely any accent they want to learn is physically possible.

Andrew , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a voice actor first and foremost, but I got my start working in recording studios as an audio engineer. I’d get to watch the best of the best do the work I aspired to do, but also learned a lot about what casting directors need from voice actors in a session—and that’s utility.

Countless times I watched actors finish their lines and the director would say, ” we have some other characters we’d like you to play, do you do any accents or other voices?” and countless times I watched people say “No, not really” or bluff through the session with a voice that was replaced by the next actor to enter the session. The ones who could handle SAG’s “three-voice per episode maximum” always got called back for more. The ones who didn’t were rarely seen again.

I engineered for all kinds of VO classes too and would hear the teachers talk about how important it is to have an arsenal of accents, but “I don’t know where you’d learn them.”

As someone who has been perfecting accents for the pure fun of it since I was a little kid, I realized there was a need for someone to teach actors an essential skill. That’s when I developed my “5 Accents in Six weeks” course. What makes it a unique class is that I tailor it to the individual needs of my students, always guided by the question “Which accents are going to get you more work?” It’s a trip around the world designed to make you more bookable.

My approach takes into account the physics, the history and culture behind a voice, and most importantly the ACTING! We work to craft nuanced characters with voices that tell a story.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Encourage risk and give them the opportunity to play. I always make sure my students know up front that they are welcome to try anything—and this unfailingly leads to great discoveries. When we play it too safe, we limit our creativity, and it stops being fun. Generally, if you’re having fun discovering what you can do, you’re doing it right.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

A lot of people do “accent challenges” on instagram, but my page @accentmancoaching started to grow when I realized there was no one tackling the idea of vocal affectations—vocal fry, slack jaw, up-speak etc.

When I started making reels breaking down these speech patterns that everyone knows about but usually doesn’t know what to call them or how to use them to create characters, people started finding me and discovering how many variables there are when it comes to changing your voice. People like to be able to label and define things they recognize, and find value in posts that educate them.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.accentmancoaching.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/accentmancoaching

Image Credits
Andrew Frankel “Accent Man”