[COMPLETE] Cyrus the Great by Jacob Abbott - dc

Solo or group recordings that are finished and fully available for listeners
deongines
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Joined: November 2nd, 2012, 4:14 pm
Location: Salt Lake City UT

Post by deongines »

Turning it over in your mind will not plough the field.
LCaulkins
Posts: 7438
Joined: October 6th, 2019, 10:22 am
Location: Colorado, USA

Post by LCaulkins »

Chapter 7 is PL OK :thumbs:

Loved the account of the camels-in-battle experiment.
~Lynette * -
Fancy some fun character recording? Small parts needed in these dramatic novels: Clouds of Witness | Ivanhoe (DR)
deongines
Posts: 2128
Joined: November 2nd, 2012, 4:14 pm
Location: Salt Lake City UT

Post by deongines »

Turning it over in your mind will not plough the field.
LCaulkins
Posts: 7438
Joined: October 6th, 2019, 10:22 am
Location: Colorado, USA

Post by LCaulkins »

Chapter 8 is PL OK :thumbs:

I had to go research the Hanging Gardens of Babylonia. I've heard periodically about them, but never looked in depth at them. Quite interesting. Did you already know that current belief is they were actually built by a different king than Nebuchadnezzar, in Nineveh (which the king called New Babylonia)?
~Lynette * -
Fancy some fun character recording? Small parts needed in these dramatic novels: Clouds of Witness | Ivanhoe (DR)
deongines
Posts: 2128
Joined: November 2nd, 2012, 4:14 pm
Location: Salt Lake City UT

Post by deongines »

Interesting. That's an example of what happens with these older public domain histories, they can be a bit out of date haha. In SLC we have about 8 inches of snow in the valley, the most we've had all season. Good day for Librivox!
Turning it over in your mind will not plough the field.
LCaulkins
Posts: 7438
Joined: October 6th, 2019, 10:22 am
Location: Colorado, USA

Post by LCaulkins »

Chapter 9 is PL OK :thumbs:

I like they way he has been interweaving the story of Cyrus with broader histories of the time, so you get a good picture of the entire region's history.
~Lynette * -
Fancy some fun character recording? Small parts needed in these dramatic novels: Clouds of Witness | Ivanhoe (DR)
deongines
Posts: 2128
Joined: November 2nd, 2012, 4:14 pm
Location: Salt Lake City UT

Post by deongines »

Turning it over in your mind will not plough the field.
LCaulkins
Posts: 7438
Joined: October 6th, 2019, 10:22 am
Location: Colorado, USA

Post by LCaulkins »

Ch. 10 is PL OK. :thumbs:

What a sad story :(

On the other hand - almost finished! Just two chapters.
~Lynette * -
Fancy some fun character recording? Small parts needed in these dramatic novels: Clouds of Witness | Ivanhoe (DR)
deongines
Posts: 2128
Joined: November 2nd, 2012, 4:14 pm
Location: Salt Lake City UT

Post by deongines »

Turning it over in your mind will not plough the field.
deongines
Posts: 2128
Joined: November 2nd, 2012, 4:14 pm
Location: Salt Lake City UT

Post by deongines »

Turning it over in your mind will not plough the field.
LCaulkins
Posts: 7438
Joined: October 6th, 2019, 10:22 am
Location: Colorado, USA

Post by LCaulkins »

Hi, Deon!

We are getting the snow now. It's so very pretty. A good 6 inches since bedtime, and continuing. We have a number of Ponderosas on our lot, and as I as listening to ch. 11, a Stellar Jay was having a party jumping from branch to branch of one, knocking the build-up down from the boughs. Too funny!!

Hey, there is nothing dramatically wrong with this section. There is just one punch-in edit that gives a great opportunity for you to play with the software effects.

The phrase, "a hard clog of earth," at 5:27-5:28.5 has a much different tone than the recording as a whole, and is spoken more slowly. At the moment, it is a wee bit distracting. But that can be fixed. Are you using Audacity? That's what I'm familiar with, so I'm going to share some things as if that's your software. If you're using a different program, maybe it has similar tools you can find.

First, zoom in on the track so that it's measuring by the half-second. Then highlight that phrase, including the spaces before and after. There are three things in the Effects menu that will be great with this phrase.

1 - Effects>Reverb - With the phrase highlighted, open this effect, and move the "Room Size" slider to something like 27. There are many other sliders, but I'm not adept at them. You can always play around with them, use the Preview to see how you like what happens, and make changes - nothing happens to the phrase until you click "OK". And you can always Control-Z afterward if you don't like what happened to the actual phrase, anyway. Assuming you did just the Room Size change, go on to these other options:

2 - Effects>Change Tempo - Keep the phrase and spaces highlighted (and note that this is not Change Speed, which affects the pitch as well; tempo will only affect the rate). In the Percent Change box, put 20, and click OK. Now it will match the rate of the sentence around it better. When I use this feature, I find it best to include the surrounding spaces, or weird things can happen.

3 - Effects>Change Pitch - a handy tool! With the phrase still highlighted, put 3 in the Percent Change box, and hit OK. Now your voice pitch will be closer to the pitch of the original sentence.

I love playing around with these features when I'm editing my recordings. The one I use MOST often is Amplify, either a positive number in the top box for louder, or negative for softer. But Fade In/Fade Out can be useful on word endings/beginnings when splicing a repeated phrase with an abrupt start on an unaccented word. I need to play more with other effects to learn what other tools might be useful to me.

Anyway, happy playing! Let me know if you fine tune that phrase's ambiance more to your liking inside its sentence, or if you decide to just let it stand how it is. Your call. :)
~Lynette * -
Fancy some fun character recording? Small parts needed in these dramatic novels: Clouds of Witness | Ivanhoe (DR)
deongines
Posts: 2128
Joined: November 2nd, 2012, 4:14 pm
Location: Salt Lake City UT

Post by deongines »

https://librivox.org/uploads/craigdav1/cyrusthegreat_11_abbott_128kb.mp3 27.08

Thanks for the input! It was very interesting to try out the different effects. I think this is a bit better. :D
Turning it over in your mind will not plough the field.
LCaulkins
Posts: 7438
Joined: October 6th, 2019, 10:22 am
Location: Colorado, USA

Post by LCaulkins »

Yeah, it's kinda fun to play around with things. :) I marked the chapter off for you - I'll proof the last one in the morning!

Oh - I forgot to mention, keep in mind that too much effects editing can make the recording sound super tinny - Noise Reduction can be particularly bad when overdone, making words difficult to discern behind what sounds like an invasion of metallic space monkeys on top of the reading. Generally, I stay under 12 with that, and only run it once. A little heater hum is preferable to space monkeys any day. :)
~Lynette * -
Fancy some fun character recording? Small parts needed in these dramatic novels: Clouds of Witness | Ivanhoe (DR)
LCaulkins
Posts: 7438
Joined: October 6th, 2019, 10:22 am
Location: Colorado, USA

Post by LCaulkins »

Chapter 12 is PL OK :thumbs:

And that's a wrap for Cyrus the Great! :clap:

Thanks for letting me DPL. It was an interesting foray into a corner of history/legend that I was unfamiliar with.

That death - as colorful as the life!
~Lynette * -
Fancy some fun character recording? Small parts needed in these dramatic novels: Clouds of Witness | Ivanhoe (DR)
craigdav1
LibriVox Admin Team
Posts: 30635
Joined: December 17th, 2011, 3:56 pm
Location: Chicago

Post by craigdav1 »

Just waiting for section 12 to be marked PL OK in the MW to make it official. Will be away from a computer for much of the day so I may not get to catalog this until late today or tomorrow.
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