The purpose of this post is to explain how I examine, and attempt to overcome, one of my personal challenges.
As this is my senior speech project, the matter of completing adequate work hours is of the utmost importance to address. One of my project advisors has agreed with me that one-hundred fifty hours will be a sufficient amount of work hours... But there are several problems with how I approach fulfilling my time commitment. One is wanting to be honest with my time usage - not declaring that I have worked longer than I really have.
Of course, I believe that both of my advisors are more interested in the quality of my work than with, for example, if it takes me thirty minutes or an hour to read through a story.
As previously posted, I have decided to do the entire "Empty House" collection, and I am fully aware that, with the initial reading of the stories, researching details, practicing reading the tales aloud, recording, editing, and posting, each story will probably take at least 5 hours to complete. Still, I worry about the hours. I realize that I should focus more on the work and let the hours take care of themselves.
As far as time concerns go, creating blog posts will also eat up a significant amount of time.
Part of the reason that I have concerns is that I, personally, want to hold myself to the highest work quality possible... now, my concern is that I will not be able to get the entire collection done before the school year is over... I have a habit of not being able to properly gauge how long activities will take me. It is very possible that I may need as much as two-hundred hours to complete the project to my personal satisfaction.
Showing posts with label Algernon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Algernon. Show all posts
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Finding More Stories to Record
As I mentioned in my last post, I started with "Entrance and Exit" because I already knew the story. But, then, after thoroughly enjoying the reading of that story, I decided to look for other stories by Algernon Blackwood. I admire, first of all, the chance to delve into the literary structure and discipline that goes with his writing... I had several terrific English teachers growing up, and I know that I am fairly competent with the written expression of my language, but I am often thrilled to discover something that I did not know. For example...
The coloring of an infinitive
What I discovered upon one of my readings solidified something that I had begun to realize before: that, in "standard English," one is not supposed to insert an adverb into the middle of an infinitive. I realized this by noticing, in the first sentence of the sixth paragraph of a story by Blackwood called "The Dance of Death," how he wrote, "The spontaneous jollity natural to a boy and girl dance served, however, to emphasize vividly the contrast of his own mood..." Notice the phrase that I italicized (it is not italicized in the story). In English, a trouble that we sometimes have is that our infinitives - to go, to run, to stop, to love, etc. - consist of two words, and that we often insert our adverbs into the middle of those phrases - to boldly go, to quickly run, to abruptly stop, to madly love. Of course, there are practicality issues... Who really cares if people do it or not? The answer to this could be a resounding "just English teachers." :) "The meaning is still there" would be a solid argument against such language harping. But, whether or not a person chooses to follow this prim practice, a writer could certainly use this device of "proper" English to give his or her writing a rustic or noble feel. But, I digress...
Making a decision
The point is that, through perusing some more Blackwood stories, and knowing that the LibriVox message thread manager wanted more ghost stories, I decided to record an entire collection, a full ten stories, by Blackwood, and send them in to the LibriVox catalog.
I settled on this particular collection after I printed off and read four Blackwood stories. (It is also worth noting that, for some reason, many of the stories on horrormasters.com, the location where I found "Entrance and Exit," are unprintable. This would be understandable if the stories were under copyright, but many are under public domain! So, if a story is on Gutenberg, one can just copy and paste the text and print from a word processing program or from the Gutenberg page itself.) I especially liked (See, I did the adverb insertion thing, too! I find that amusing to notice. :) ) "A Haunted Island" and "The Empty House." Since those two stories were of the same collection, I gave birth to a brainchild... Why not just do the whole collection?
For your convenience, the full collection, "The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories," is available on Gutenberg.org.
The first story that I will tackle is "A Haunted Island" because I enjoy its thriller qualities, which I will describe in detail when I present another post with my full analysis.
The coloring of an infinitive
What I discovered upon one of my readings solidified something that I had begun to realize before: that, in "standard English," one is not supposed to insert an adverb into the middle of an infinitive. I realized this by noticing, in the first sentence of the sixth paragraph of a story by Blackwood called "The Dance of Death," how he wrote, "The spontaneous jollity natural to a boy and girl dance served, however, to emphasize vividly the contrast of his own mood..." Notice the phrase that I italicized (it is not italicized in the story). In English, a trouble that we sometimes have is that our infinitives - to go, to run, to stop, to love, etc. - consist of two words, and that we often insert our adverbs into the middle of those phrases - to boldly go, to quickly run, to abruptly stop, to madly love. Of course, there are practicality issues... Who really cares if people do it or not? The answer to this could be a resounding "just English teachers." :) "The meaning is still there" would be a solid argument against such language harping. But, whether or not a person chooses to follow this prim practice, a writer could certainly use this device of "proper" English to give his or her writing a rustic or noble feel. But, I digress...
Making a decision
The point is that, through perusing some more Blackwood stories, and knowing that the LibriVox message thread manager wanted more ghost stories, I decided to record an entire collection, a full ten stories, by Blackwood, and send them in to the LibriVox catalog.
I settled on this particular collection after I printed off and read four Blackwood stories. (It is also worth noting that, for some reason, many of the stories on horrormasters.com, the location where I found "Entrance and Exit," are unprintable. This would be understandable if the stories were under copyright, but many are under public domain! So, if a story is on Gutenberg, one can just copy and paste the text and print from a word processing program or from the Gutenberg page itself.) I especially liked (See, I did the adverb insertion thing, too! I find that amusing to notice. :) ) "A Haunted Island" and "The Empty House." Since those two stories were of the same collection, I gave birth to a brainchild... Why not just do the whole collection?
For your convenience, the full collection, "The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories," is available on Gutenberg.org.
The first story that I will tackle is "A Haunted Island" because I enjoy its thriller qualities, which I will describe in detail when I present another post with my full analysis.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Recording Process & The First Draft
I have discovered that, in life, it's good to start with something you know and build from that. With that in mind, I decided that the easiest thing to do when I start recording for the LibriVox project would be to start with a story on which I had already worked. So, I settled on "Entrance and Exit" by Algernon Blackwood. This is a short thriller...about a 12-minute read out loud.
Since the LibriVox project is done of public domain material, it is important to ensure that the book, document, or story that one wishes to read is in the public domain. So, I had to make sure that "Entrance and Exit was in the public domain. So, one of my project advisors helped me to find that the story was, indeed, in the public domain, as it was published in 1914.
You can find the full text here: "Entrance and Exit" by Algernon Blackwood .
My process for the first recording was as follows:
1. Warming up.
If I recall correctly, on my way over to the recording lab in the Fine Arts building of my campus, I warmed up my voice. This was of vast importance, and not just because I was a bit congested that day! In anything that a person does involving the voice, it is of the utmost importance to warm up the voice. Through six years of choral singing experience, I have found that my voice feels best when I warm up my head voice and falsetto voice first. This accomplishes two things for me: a) since it is impossible to produce a strong or clear tone in head voice with tension, it gets me thinking about proper relaxation and b) it gets me to think of using a great deal of my vocal range. Using a greater vocal range, I believe, enhances my performance.
2. Test for voice quality
After opening up the program and checking the microphone status - it is important to make sure that the sound is going into the microphone and not into the computer's internal microphone...sound quality is much, much better through the external mic. - I ran a couple of test files. I feel that it's important to listen to how I sound before I begin recording...this way, I can check how the microphone is picking me up.
3. Microphone height
For the testing process, I said something simple into the microphone, adjusting the microphone to four different levels...low, medium, a little high, and really high. I do not remember what I said for the test, but it is immaterial. The point is that I said the same thing at each height. After recording these tests, I listened to the four samples and found that I liked the sound quality best at "medium" and at "a litte high." Upon reflection, I wonder if I might want to use the different speaking qualities at different levels of microphone height to give different types of characterization. It is also important to note that I am not holding the microphone with my hand. It is on a headset.
4. The LibriVox Introduction Most supervisors for the submission of recordings ask that the LibriVox introduction be given before every reading. It is to be read as follows:
[Chapter Number] of [book title]. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org.
If one wishes, he or she can add:
recorded by [reader's name/name of choice for recording]
Finally:
[Book name], by [author], translated by [translator name], chapter [number.]
It almost goes without saying that short stories such as "Entrance and Exit" do not need the chapter number read because they have no chapter; also, if the work is read in its original language, no translator name will be necessary.
5. Record the Work!
When these simple steps have been accomplished, it is now time to read the story. I paused a few seconds, as LibriVox recommends, and then began!
The First Draft
Without further ado, I present the first draft of "Entrance and Exit." At this point, I do not know how to import audio files into blogger, so I used Windows Movie Maker to create a simple video using the LibriVox logo as a graphic.
Low Quality
High Quality
Since the LibriVox project is done of public domain material, it is important to ensure that the book, document, or story that one wishes to read is in the public domain. So, I had to make sure that "Entrance and Exit was in the public domain. So, one of my project advisors helped me to find that the story was, indeed, in the public domain, as it was published in 1914.
You can find the full text here: "Entrance and Exit" by Algernon Blackwood .
My process for the first recording was as follows:
1. Warming up.
If I recall correctly, on my way over to the recording lab in the Fine Arts building of my campus, I warmed up my voice. This was of vast importance, and not just because I was a bit congested that day! In anything that a person does involving the voice, it is of the utmost importance to warm up the voice. Through six years of choral singing experience, I have found that my voice feels best when I warm up my head voice and falsetto voice first. This accomplishes two things for me: a) since it is impossible to produce a strong or clear tone in head voice with tension, it gets me thinking about proper relaxation and b) it gets me to think of using a great deal of my vocal range. Using a greater vocal range, I believe, enhances my performance.
2. Test for voice quality
After opening up the program and checking the microphone status - it is important to make sure that the sound is going into the microphone and not into the computer's internal microphone...sound quality is much, much better through the external mic. - I ran a couple of test files. I feel that it's important to listen to how I sound before I begin recording...this way, I can check how the microphone is picking me up.
3. Microphone height
For the testing process, I said something simple into the microphone, adjusting the microphone to four different levels...low, medium, a little high, and really high. I do not remember what I said for the test, but it is immaterial. The point is that I said the same thing at each height. After recording these tests, I listened to the four samples and found that I liked the sound quality best at "medium" and at "a litte high." Upon reflection, I wonder if I might want to use the different speaking qualities at different levels of microphone height to give different types of characterization. It is also important to note that I am not holding the microphone with my hand. It is on a headset.
4. The LibriVox Introduction Most supervisors for the submission of recordings ask that the LibriVox introduction be given before every reading. It is to be read as follows:
[Chapter Number] of [book title]. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org.
If one wishes, he or she can add:
recorded by [reader's name/name of choice for recording]
Finally:
[Book name], by [author], translated by [translator name], chapter [number.]
It almost goes without saying that short stories such as "Entrance and Exit" do not need the chapter number read because they have no chapter; also, if the work is read in its original language, no translator name will be necessary.
5. Record the Work!
When these simple steps have been accomplished, it is now time to read the story. I paused a few seconds, as LibriVox recommends, and then began!
The First Draft
Without further ado, I present the first draft of "Entrance and Exit." At this point, I do not know how to import audio files into blogger, so I used Windows Movie Maker to create a simple video using the LibriVox logo as a graphic.
Low Quality
High Quality
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