I'm seriously thinking about doing vent. I've been playing with voices and have a couple that seem to be easy to do for me. How does one decide if the voice is right for your partner. Obviously you don't use an "old man" voice if your partner is a little boy, or a female voice for a male character. I'm looking at buying Vern from Axtel for my first partner, but I don't know if the voice I've been practicing with will work with the bird. Am I worrying too much about an exact match? Does an audience create "expectations" of what should come from the character based on what the character is, i.e. animal, human, other?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

I have heard Steve do his Vern voice and it's great. It seems perfect for Vern, but it wasn't perfect for me. I do a completely different voice and it is also perfect for Vern. The audience has no idea of what kind of voice the puppet has until he speaks. Try the voice you like. It will probably work.

I suggest you first have to find out what vent voices you can do and match it with the right puppet and not the other way around. Ask for your friends advices on this matter. Print some pictures of the puppets and let them choose while listening to your vent voices.

I think that vern fit with a lot of sort of voice, but it's not the case of a lot of puppets....
so it's important to find his voice before choosing the puppet. I sold or gave a lot of puppets(that I bought because they are funny) because they don't fit with my voices.

Thank you all for the thoughts. I've purchased Vern and am axniously awaiting his arrival. Since I can do a few voices, I'll try them all to see what fits.

I think you are worrying too much about an exact match. I don't think any puppet has one perfect voice that works for it. The audiences matches the voice with the puppet after seeing the puppet and hearing it talk, you create the match; it doesn't exist before that.

There are possibly occasions where a voice doesn't match a puppet but even voices that shouldn't match could work and actually be quite comical i.e. a tramp with an upper-class accent or a cheetah that talks very slowly.

Good luck with Vern,

George