Posted by Cori on October 22nd, 2009 — Posted in * My Recordings, About LibriVoxing, About Recording Audio, Drama and Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Solos
This month, I have catalogued a book, some collaborative contributions, and — finally, more pirates!
I’ve been working on my solo recording of Anna Sewell’s “Autobiography of a Horse”, Black Beauty, all summer, as its short chapters and positive attitude were a pleasant change from the intense modern non-fiction book I was recording for Audible (not yet released.) Black Beauty was catalogued at the start of the month, and is averaging 30 downloads a day, which isn’t bad going for a book which has previously been recorded for LibriVox.
Listen to Chapter 1 here:
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5:03min (128kbps)
Then there was a poem which I found for the LibriVox Weekly Poetry reading. This is more of a challenge than you’d think; finding a shortish poem, by an author who died more than 70 years ago (to maximise the countries in which their work is in the public domain) and which is in some way interesting for multiple readers to try recording, and hopefully, that then has differences in the interpretations that’ll appeal to listeners. Down the Bayou by Mary Ashley Townsend fits many of these criteria, to my mind. I did find I had to check I knew how to say “bayou” correctly, but once I’d done that, I was away! (Along with 11 others. :)
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1:15min (128kbps)
There are three other poems, pending cataloguing … that should happen shortly, since both collections are nearly full. I’ve not read poetry for a while, so it’s been really nice to come back to it.
And finally, lady pirates! Yes, my long-ago-read chapter on the “Adventures And Heroism Of Mary Read” has now been entered into the catalogue, and you can hear it as part of The Pirates Own Book by Charles Ellms (Authentic Narratives of the Most Celebrated Sea Robbers)! Or here:
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10:04min (128kbps)
I have a few other things very close to finishing … this will have been a super-productive month, all in all!
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Posted by Cori on June 20th, 2008 — Posted in * My Recordings, About LibriVoxing, About Recording Audio, Non-Fiction
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:
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(10:54, 5.2MB)
http://librivox.org/strange-pages-from-family-papers-by-t-f-thiselton-dyer/
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.
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(21:03, 10.1MB)
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Posted by Cori on March 8th, 2008 — Posted in * My Recordings, About Recording Audio, Book Reviews, Fiction, Solos
My latest solo work is finished. I post-processed Mathilda, by Mary Shelley, for Project Gutenberg (that is, smoothed the proofread pages into a single document, both plaintext and HTML) so was very familiar with it (and with Mary’s quirky spelling which I tried to keep intact in the final work.) I actually started reading this about a year ago, and recorded the second half of it last month — but I really wasn’t happy with the shift in quality, since I’d upgraded my microphone in the intervening time, and learnt to be a bit more patient in reading speed. So, here we go … a mournful tragedy:
http://librivox.org/mathilda-by-mary-shelley/
Two things to note — although this story is about an incestuous relationship, it’s not salacious. If it were a musical, it’d be seriously Emo. Or, my grandmother could have listened to it without her hair curling. Second, anytime Mary writes “I will be brief”, you can be sure she’s about to be anything BUT brief. The runtime is somehow only 4hrs, though.
Audio for Chapter 1:
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Posted by Cori on August 12th, 2007 — Posted in * My Recordings, About LibriVoxing, About Recording Audio, Fiction
http://librivox.org/winesburg-ohio-by-sherwood-anderson/ (Chapter 23)
Usually, I just read and record the chapter text. This is the first piece I’ve spent a lot of time with beforehand, thinking about it. Which, I think, might mean this is on the unfamiliar side of reading vs. performing, one of the common differences between LV audiobooks and other publishers’. (As mentioned here on the LV samples page, which I look at from time to time, simply because it stars my first ever LV recording. Ego much?)
What I hope is that Elizabeth Willard comes through clearly, and there’s not obvious Cori hanging around catching the listener’s attention. I couldn’t have done it any other way (without even more performance angst), and the only thing I regret is the hideous sound cleaning process I used. Oh well, die and learn.
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