I was tagged by LibriVox ductapeguy, Sean McGaughey, and while I’ve done my time as Meme-Servant and moved on … I thought I could spin this one on-theme, so … here goes.
* The most common background noise you may hear in my recordings is that of seagulls — their piercing shrieks go straight through double-glazing and my sound-dampener. Luckily for me, I love the sound.
* The modern book I would most like to read is The Hungry Cloud by Tom Ingram. it has cult-status amongst those of us who’ve read it — it is a formidably good fantasy story for older children. Sadly out of print and apparently unheard of by anyone who didn’t read it, I’d still love to meet its author and say thankyou.
* My microphone is a Samson C01U. It was probably the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought in pursuit of a hobby.
* I’ve contributed 293 audio-files to LibriVox, MCed 75 projects past and present, and recorded in 4 languages (mostly briefly and badly, though!) In addition to that, I’ve hosted 15 LV community podcasts.
* I have 3 solos on the go at the moment and am about to start a 4th (but will work on finishing up the others once it’s begun.)
* I like getting feedback. It’s fun knowing who’s listening to what, and which bits they’ve enjoyed or have reservations about.
At this point I’m s’posed to tag on to another six people, but I’m just going to leave it open to anyone who’s not done this meme in a while, and is in the mood … if you-who-are-reading fancy a go, the rules are below, and feel free to drop a comment here with a link to your own post.
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on the blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.
It’s been quiet on the cataloguing front in the last few weeks … I eased back on the editing I was doing, having acquired (happily-intermittant!) tendinitis in my mousing arm, which is little better with a trackball and heaps of anti-inflamatories, as yet. And I’m in the middle of lots of projects, none of which are anywhere near the catalogue stage. There’ll be a flurry in another few weeks, I’m sure.
So, the only two new entries are the Compare and Contrast of a chunk of Mill’s Subjection of Women and a little poem by Tennyson — The Miller’s Daughter. Mill I recorded a while back, and it fell due during the below-mentioned behemoth, so Starlite kindly edited it for me. I look forward to hearing the whole piece, because I start towards the end of Chapter 3, where Mill asks, and then answers, the question:
No production in philosophy, science, or art, entitled to the first rank, has been the work of a woman. Is there any mode of accounting for this, without supposing that women are naturally incapable of producing them?
(20:22min, 9.7MB)
As for Tennyson, I did that by way of a warm-up for a Lamda Grade 6 exam in the Speaking of Verse and Prose. Haven’t had any exam results back yet, though it was fun to do and I think it went well. The poem is in the catalogue as part of a Weekly Poetry set, and was also fun to do. One odd note — not how many women recorded it … but how many apologised for recording it. It is Tennyson being rather stalker-ly, but still. The non-gendering of any text is one of the nicest things about LibriVox. Sure, generally the major parts of plays are cast “appropriately”, and I think we’ve done a very tiny number of books with gendered casting for some reason or another — but the very vast majority of projects are run on the “you want it? you read it” basis. And even those that have been voice-cast would be open to another version being made with a very different voice. So much more fun than someone saying “sorry, you don’t sound old/young/masculine/feminine/english/welsh/canadian/australian enough” — and that being the end of the story.
LibriVox loves Shakespeare, but getting his plays recorded has always been a very major undertaking. We have now only four completed as collaborative works, and one recorded as a solo. A fair number more are underway, but the task of cat-herding all the parts and bits and files and readers and pronunciations is unlike any other at LibriVox.
Laurie Anne did a MARVELLOUS job project managing this from the initial idea … starting the project on 21st April … marshalling a proof-listener, Brian, to check every file as it came in … and dropping me a note “hey, wouldn’t it be fun if you edited this?” I can’t quite imagine what I was thinking when I agreed to … and I can’t admit how long this actually took to edit. Een though I only did 4 out of 5 acts in the end (Laurie Anne did the fourth, I just ran out of time and energy.) But, lordy, it sounds great as an ensemble piece! And it has 440 downloads in 2 days. And I’m completely sure Will would approve.
A bunch of us LibriVoxers have been meeting periodically in London to record various works together, and the longest running of those has recently been catalogued. 17 chapters of recycled British folklore and gossip from the very dear T.F. Thistleton-Dyer have been amusing, bemusing and plain boring a dozen of us for a year now … we’ve ploughed through a chapter or three at every meeting. I shan’t be TOO hard on the fellow, because ridiculous though most of the stories are, they are at least split into lots of sub-sections, often with guest speaking voices, and we’ve had a lot of fun fooling around with those. I have the dubious honour of being the only LVer to have participated in every chapter, and I’m pretty sure that entitles me to my own straitjacket with TF-TD woz ‘ere on the back.
It’s interesting to record with other people around … I feel like I made fewer mistakes with people listening to me (the editors of these chapters may disagree!) And it’s quite sociable, too, gives an instant and limitless source of conversation in wondering at the lengths of TF’s literary poaching.
Probably the least expected of all the chapters is the one collecting stories of Dead Hands - linked below for your listening pleasure:
This takes my total catalogued recording time up over 61 hours, which is nice, because, what with struggling to finish an old solo project, putting in long-ago claimed chapters, and editing the Midsummer Night’s Dream behemoth, it feels like I’ve not been doing much “real” recording.
Another gem catalogued recently was the splendid essay by Agnes Repplier, (1855-1950), titled “A Short Defence of Villains”, in which she argues that Modern Literature is impoverished somewhat by a lack of really good moustache-twirling villains for its heroes and heroines to quest against. You’ll need quite a good background in the literature of her time to make sense of all the references, but it’s a lovely piece regardless.
The Water-babies by Charles Kingsley has had, according to the archive.org ticker, 10,148 downloads! Hoorah! Now, admittedly, their counter has good days and bad weeks, and it also counts any file as a download … so that could be 600 people downloading all 17 files separately, or it could be 10,000 people downloading the zip file once each. Plus, many LV books are available via BitTorrents, other audio download sites, and on eBay. So it’s an entirely arbitrary milestone, but it’s my milestone and I’m proud of it anyway!
My other solos are pootling along in reasonable form. Love and Freindship by Jane Austen, has been downloaded 4,891 times — as it has only 3 parts, that’s a minimum of 1690 downloaders. Rather cool! Dear Gertrude, released only a month later, is lagging the set with just 1,735 downloads of its three files / zip collection. This does not surprise me in the least … while it was storming fun to read, I can’t imagine listening to it unless I was contemplating a spectacular mashup in words, music and visuals. (I *hope* someone does that soon, it HAS the potential!) Nesbit’s Unlikely Tales has had 2,858 downloads in 3 months … which is actually rather less than I thought. Mathilda, the Mary Shelley novella is romping along with 2,375 downloads in six weeks - much more than I thought. It IS interesting to know what people want to hear.
I conclude from all this that I do not have even *slightly* popular taste in solo-project books. That said, collaboratively, I am a part of Jane Eyre, which is LibriVox’s top downloaded archive.org book at 391,407 times. (Boggling Big Number.) There’s a “sneeze and you’ll miss me” contribution to Oliver Twist, 181,604 downloads. The other Austen’s I have contributed chapters to clock in at 120,446 for Mansfield Park, 88,659 times for Northanger Abbey (and Persuasion’s 36,591 isn’t in the Top 50!) Unexpectedly, Reviews, by Oscar Wilde is my other entry in the Top 50 with 74,963 downloads. That has 99 files, though, and it’s the sort of thing I’d expect people to pick at, rather than dousing themselves in the whole lot. (Yes, it’s Oscar, and Yes, he does have some droll moments, but nothing in the sections I read (3 or 4?) has stuck with me as über-quotable.)
Still. If it were all about the numbers, I’d be pirating Potter. If it were all about the fame, I guess a solo recording of Jane Eyre would be a solid bet. Since it is, in fact, all about the Posterity, and I strongly believe in the right of all of my authors to audio representation for Posterity … we’re all good. Plus, this shows very decent credentials as a team player, which is nice. So, hmm, what under-loved specimen of literature will I pick on next?
This week’s community podcast is themed from the forum thread for “One book a week in 2008″. (I’ve only read 12 so far — I think I’m behind?) There was a bit of discussion there about whether listening to a book was the same as reading it. Of course, it comes down to definitions. If the aim is to take possession of a story, then for sure, reading, listening, Braille or graphic novels all work as methods for an author to communicate with other folks. As snobby as some book groups may be about “those who listen” as compared to “those who read”, there’s usually little difference at the end of the day in the speed of the book-discussion going off on a huge and permanent tangent.
Books expand one’s vocabulary — visual has the advantage of teaching the brain spelling, while audio conveys a version of the pronunciation. (Please do not try to pronounce “isthmus” as I do, though, it just ain’t right.)
Paper books are traditionally more sensual than audiobooks, they allow for cosying under blankets, torchlit exploration, the physical response of scent and touch bibliophiles get walking into an old library or second-hand book shop and running their hand over book spines. However, audiobooks have had a recent boost in this area, thanks to the ol’ iPod, which gets owners in a sleek, elegant design froth in no time flat. Steampunking an iPod would seem to be the ultimate win.
Audiobooks suffer much more from “out of sight, out of mind” — I don’t rifle my hard drive of a Sunday afternoon trying to decide what to listen to, in the same way that I peruse my bookshelves. And there’s the unspoken horror of obsolescence (you have a generation 1 iPod, darlink, how retro!) in the hardware and format (MP3s have been going strong since at least 1991, but … how much longer will they last? And how good will they sound shifted into whatever replaces them?) Plus, literacy isn’t grokking the story of Don Quixote … it’s being able to understand how to complete an accident report form or fill in a bank account application.
I’m a firm both-ist. Losing either format would cut down on the richness of my world. Have been thinking about this for a while, and there’s a bit of a waffle in this ‘ere podcast. It hardly even begins to get into the nuances … what about (dubious) learning preferences for visual, audio or kinetic (wonder if that last is the act of LibriVoxing a book — certainly reading the text aloud is a pretty amazing method of consuming it.) I tried not to produce an Audiobook Party Political Broadcast, or the preface of a book (simultaneous publication in paper and MP3, please). Dunno how successful I was. Rest assured, the other people contributing sound great!
I went absolutely nuts in this week’s comunity podcast and talked for at least 3 minutes! And sang (for about 10 seconds in total, fear not.) Plus I also used the 148yr old voice recording that’s been doing the rounds this week, and commissioned a great interview — chocoholic talking to ExEmGe (LibriVox’s ‘golden voice’.)
<thinking out loud> It’s a shame, in a way, that my first podcast ever was so lavish and fun and planned weeks in advance … it means that subsequent, normal ones are feeling like a bit of a comedown. I think there’s only so much “goodness, we’re all amazing, let’s do more” that listeners can take, but still. I do have a couple of fun ideas that I need to muster time and energy to put into action, and I have lots of neat interviews lined up, which is prolly my favourite thing to listen to, out of all the things that can be in a podcast. But … none of that’s as glamorous as “Sucking at reading audiobooks - and how not to!”. Admittedly, most of the glam came from how funny it is to hear people doing it so terribly wrong. But still. It enticed several new people to start reading, and that’s a very neat thing indeed. And something I’d like to do again, if only I could work out how. <still thinking>
I updated my Hear Me page and associated spreadsheet today and can proudly announce – I have reached 50 hours of recorded contributions to the public domain! 50 hours and 16 mins, to be precise, (which I need to be with all that Pi in there.)
Think I might start counting the podcasts, too … okay, they don’t have that much of my voice in them, but it’s still audio I’m slaving over, and (incredibly) they do take longer than my own recordings.
Talking of podcasts, here’s my seventh: with super toe-tapping music this week, and an interview with the LibriVox “voice of Mark Twain”, John Greenman. Not that I DID the interview, I commissioned it. It’s called Delegation, you know. *wink*
My editions of the LibriVox Community Podcast are getting shorter. This week’s is 11min, 11secs, and I didn’t even do that deliberately. That’s just how it came out once I’d slapped a bit of Tchaichovsky’s Romeo & Juliet around a bunch of great contributions from kind volunteers and people I mugged as they wandered through the forums.
From my posting here, it might seem like all I’ve been doing is podcasts recently (and I’m down for next week, too) but I have been working on my two sekrit solo books, and of course, thinking about other possibilities. This is helped by the fact that I think my reading’s improved in the last week or so. The last file I sent off to Mandarine for editing, came back with only a few rereads needed (compared to the usual hefty list) — and the unedited file was some minutes shorter than the previous chapter’s, even though they had about the same number of words.
I don’t think that’s down to me reading faster … but the opposite! I’m reading slower and making fewer mistakes as a result. The source of this wonder? Watching Scott Brick read. Apparently I am such a visual learner that I can pick up something of audio technique by watching someone else’s lips move. A more simply-written text, that I audio-edited myself, showed the same improvement … slower & more thoughtful where appropriate, and YAY fewer mistakes! I’m down from a 1:7 production ratio (7hrs of work to give 1hr of audio) to mebbe 1:6 and it might even get to 1:5 if I prepare the text properly first (aka. read it.) Whoooosh!
So, when I said, never again, not that LibriVox community podcast, for lo, it doth take bloomin’ hours to put together … I guess I meant, never again for at least three months.
This week’s LV podcast is a wonder of brevity, being under 14 minutes long … somehow into that time I’ve fitted twelve different voices, two pieces of music and a sound effect, which go to make up adverts for five new projects, one new forum thread and a newly-released project. The brevity didn’t extend to the production process, of course, but it IS actually rather a lot of fun pillaging archive.org for suitable bits and bobs which are in the public domain and therefore fair game for my use.
Something which I’m thrilled about but no-one else will care a jot — I put this entire podcast online by myself. Okay, it’s true I followed great instructions. To the letter. But still, in jargon terms, I had ownership of the entire process from inception to aural completion. Pretty cool. And I still don’t own an iPod.