Acting : Practice Methods, etc. by Laura Pirard

I am a curious one today :) But how will I learn if I don't ask, right? My previous question dealt with vocal care. Now I'm curious about how and what some of you more established voice actors practice. As a beginning voice actor, I feel I'm still looking for a sense of direction when I practice. In a few weeks, I'll be going through my very first voice-over "lesson" - a 9AM to 4 PM seminar focusing what VO work really means, getting the most out of my voice, home studio equipment, choosing which genres I work best in (all culminating in recording a demo reel). This is gonna be a crash course for me, so I'm practicing some copy to bring with me into the seminar, which I'll ultimately use for my demo reel. But I feel a little lost! Practicing isn't new to me; I've done it for nearly two decades as a trombonist and a decade as a composer. But what I'm getting a little hung up on is how to practice different genres. It's more straightforward in music - classical, modern and romantic music all have stylistic aspects that define them, and any other musician can listen to someone play and recognize the genre by the style, regardless (almost) of who's performing. But with the voice, my concept of "professional" or "nerdy" or "tough" may sound totally fine to me and be completely off target compared to what someone else believes it to be...or am I missing something? Granted, I'm still learning, and I've got a lot more listening to do to help me figure this out, but is there a general sound particular genres have that I just need to learn to mold my voice into? One more thing, and then I'll stop crafting a novel here :) How does one go about finding a coach specifically for voice acting? It seems easy enough to find acting coaches, but not specifically for voice-over work alone. Or would it be best to just go with an acting coach anyway? I may want to focus on voice-over work, but I'm still an actor, right? Thanks for bearing with me, everyone :) I'm just very eager to learn all I can; I feel like a bit of a latecomer to the work I've decided I want to do, and I need to catch up!