Friday, November 10, 2006

As Usual, I'm The Last One To Follow A Trend

Darn! I should've thought of this earlier: Podcasting.

Anyhow... I have now made my first recorded reading of a short story, "See", (in shaky English)and donated it to the science-fiction podcast site Variant Frequencies.

As soon as the story is up, I'll post a link.

Advice to anyone who wants to record a story-reading:
--------------------------------

1. Are you sure you want to do this? Do you speak like Fran Drescher? Then don't.

2. Find a reasonably quiet space to work in. Wailing babies, low-flying aircraft and humming refrigerators may impede on sound quality.

3. Use the free sound-mixing program Audacity. You may have to edit out a lot of "err"s, "umm"s and stammers to produce a passable recording. (I did.)

4. Have plenty of free memory space on your PC, because these sound files gobble memory something fierce.

5. Use a real microphone, and wrap a sock around it to limit breathing noise.

6. Use the "Normalize" option in Audacity to improve the quality of the final recording.

7. Compress the finished WAV file to MP3 (there are some free utilities available for this online)...

8. ...then, if you've got the nerve, share the MP3 file with one of the many podcasting websites out there.
-------------------------------


I could make some more audio recordings of my short stories, but I'm not sure which ones are suitable. Any suggestions?

Actually, I feel really really awkward every time I do a reading in my "serious voice." I'm much more relaxed when I record a goofy spoof, like "Gollum's Love Theme"...

No comments: