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>
Obviously not so boring I won’t blog about it. But, in common with all my podcasts, there’s more of other people’s voices than my own, so it’s prolly not that bad. And I edited out all the more alarming noises that are consequent on my having a low-level sniffle. Somehow, despite being thrown together on a shoestring and a number of begging letters — it’s longer than last week’s.
I can’t imagine anyone’ll listen to it, though, not with Stephen Fry entering the podcasting fray just yesterday. Well, his are podgrams, of course. I’m just listening to him now. LibriWhat … ?
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.
Posted by Cori on November 8th, 2007 — Posted in Podcasts - LV
This was a very random idea on Saturday morning, just before a very busy day offline commenced. “Hey, no-one’s gotten dibs on this week’s podcast. What could I do … hmm … ah, I know: something with crazy sci-fi sound effects.” By that evening, I had some support for it … by Sunday morning I had 4 interviewees lined up … and the audio parts for all 6 people was downloaded ready for editing by Monday evening. It took until Wednesday night to work out how to fit Holst in … and actually, the way that turned out was plain serendipity.
Though, GOODNESS, do these things take a long time to put together! 28 mins of audio = the larger part of several hours of tinkering about with it.
And SFFaudio are among the first people to hear and comment on it — which is particularly nice, since I gave them a good plug for the lovely work they do in reviewing and promoting our recordings (in amongst many other people’s, of course.)
Probably not so exciting to non-LV listeners, since this one is celebrating approaching 1000 titles in the Librivox catalogue. When I got dibs on the date for this podcast, a few weeks ago, I thought we’d easily hit the nice round number, but no, we’re still 11 off. Gah, frankly. Still, it’s got some great contributions, and — out of 34 mins of audio, less than 4 mins of that is me. I don’t know how that happened, I thought I recorded quite a bit. It also amazes me how long it can take to do a simple bit of copy&paste … this represents about 6hrs work, and that’s actual editing — there was another hour of planning, at least that of organising, and then there’s the time of the recording voices too … hope it sounds good for all that!
Podcast - A LibriVox community show … of which there is one each week, and for which we were a bit short of hosts a fortnight ago, so, I thought, ‘I have a fortnight, why not!’
Dozens of messages to hand-picked readers and 12 days later, and I have a folder on my computer with oodles of funny snippets, and a very imminent deadline — which I beat. Ha! A podcast, for the uninitiated, is a geek-glamour phrase for online radioshow, and can be music, news, chat or me burbling earnestly away, punctuated by goodwilled contributors. It’s an mp3 file, so if you’ve ever downloaded any other audio I’ve linked, you can listen to it in the same way. If you happen to have an iPod, you’ll have a moral obligation to use that to listen with.
The podcast’s aimed at LibriVoxers present and potential, and lists some of the ways readings can suck, and what you-the-reader might do to avoid that hideous fate (bearing in mind LV is NOT a professional outfit and WILL accept almost any file, provided it’s basically audible and provably public domain. (But hey, it’s free. Come and do better if you like.) So this is mostly ironic, in a not-actually-very-ironic-at-all sort of way.) Feedback’s been mostly good so far, with some interesting negatives pointed out. More welcome :)