Only Chris spoke in his real voice, which is a damn shame- he stumbled over the sillier ones. I basically tried to do an impersonation of the announcer from The Simpsons (at the RACETRACK Racetrack racetrack) and pitch my voice as far down as it could go and speak in Midwestern Newscaster Voice, and Ken yelled in a ridiculous faux-German accent, and his voice is way deeper than mine normally- the decades of chain-smoking will do that. How'd we do? Rode NTK, smashed with I forget what. These were the takes we chose. Our drummer felt he couldn't top this, so no ad for him. He did a big long interview though, which works.

Eric radio voice: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/Garda%20Commercial%201.mp3
Chris radio voice: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/Garda%20Commercial%202.mp3
Ken radio voice: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/Garda%20Commercial%203.mp3

That's a pretty accurate representation of what Chris actually sounds like, albeit with super radio compression. He just spoke his lines. Ken and I are joke voices, but we thought they worked. The one we used of his is more overtly silly where mine we chose because it actually sounds like radio-voice.

There's actually a trick to this. To do it right you have to be very singsong-y. You can't be at all monotone. And it doesn't matter if you have a particularly deep voice or not as long as you can act like it and hit some low notes and work the mic. It's all about playing the character. Soooo much of getting that sound is retarded unnatural EQ, too. The outtakes from this are pretty humorous when we break character.

Your radio voice is just about 100% correct.

There are a couple ways to do it really. One is like you are saying, kind of "doing it", like an affectation, but also, some announcers really do sound exactly like that with no EQ. This one band i recorded, the bass player completely had the announcer voice via genetics, and every time he speaks on outtakes or in between songs it sounds like there is a play-by-play guy on the session. The closer he gets to the mic, the more 'announcer-y' it sounds.

Probably because of my dad messing with some radio stuff in the 80s-90s, i have found this stuff fascinating for a while. And you are totally right that it has more to do with cadence than with any specific vocal quality. Though, there is a combination of radio cadence AND that specific vocal quality, that makes the classic Don LaFontaine Movie Announcer Voice thing work, which is pretty much what your clip has going on in full force here.

Pretty fantastic.

Yeah you pretty much nailed 'that voice'