New Narrator! I Love Dickens! And all kinds of other stuff!

Get to know your fellow readers and tell us a little about yourself
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BennyFifeAudio
Posts: 2
Joined: May 18th, 2018, 9:49 pm

Post by BennyFifeAudio »

Salutations!

I'm a Bibliophile Narrator with a penchant for character voices. Growing up, Jim Henson and Mel Blanc were a couple of my biggest heroes. My first experience reading for an audience was the book rendition of The Empire Strikes Back in my 8th grade speech class. I read the scene where Darth Vader reveals that he is in fact Luke's Father. I read it complete with a can to do Darth Vader's voice properly. When I met my wife in 2000, we started reading books aloud together and have since read everything from Harry Potter to Jane Eyre aloud together. As we started raising our children, this grew into a family ritual every night. My 5 kids each have a name from a book we love & we take turns picking what book I read. Timothy Zahn is one of our favorite contemporary authors & Charles Dickens is my favorite deceased author. Generally, I'm the one who reads because I "do the voices."
I'm always trying out new dialects. I love reading Sci-fi because I can give different alien species and different humans very diverse accents including but not limited to British, Cockney, Australian, German, Russian, African, Southern US, South African, Indian, Eastern European and more. I've also experimented with augmenting my performances with props for echoes, placing objects in my mouth to create a less human sound, and so on.
I love storytelling & I love making stories come alive.
Some of my favorite books I've read aloud to my children include:
The Lord of the Rings
Timothy Zahn's Conquerors series
The Chronicles of Narnia
A Christmas Carol
Jane Eyre
Seven Years in Tibet
The Lost Prince
The Little Prince
A Little Princess
Curdie and the Princess
Harry Potter
And There Was Light by Jacques Lusseyran
The Hero's Guide to Saving your Kingdom series

I also performed a solo vocal part in "Agincourt Hymn" by Dan Bukvich, a piece for wind band, when I was in college. After the concert the composer complimented me on my performance.

I have also sung and directed choirs & had voice lessons from Paul Harms, whose boss was once Placido Domingo.

I recently finished my first 2 audiobooks for Audible. You can see (hear) them here: https://www.audible.com/search?searchNarrator=Benjamin+Fife&ref=a_pd_Kids_C_c1_narrator_1&pf_rd_p=a2b4fbf4-be6b-4626-a4a8-a4ef876f050c&pf_rd_r=CPCZ5HKSY12HRCKSN6G2&

I still have free codes for both books. :clap: Contact me if you want to use one of them & review them for me bennyfifeaudio@gmail.com :D

Glad to be here. I especially want to do some Charles Dickens & George MacDonald.
TriciaG
LibriVox Admin Team
Posts: 60576
Joined: June 15th, 2008, 10:30 pm
Location: Toronto, ON (but Minnesotan to age 32)

Post by TriciaG »

Welcome! Great to have you on board. 8-)

Please do the 1-minute test - it's not an audition, but a "mic check" to make sure your settings are as we require. After that, feel free to jump into any of the projects in the Readers Wanted sections of the forum. Or since you're already an old hat at recording, you could probably do a solo pretty soon after getting a feel for how we do things around here. :)
Serial novel: The Wandering Jew
Medieval England meets Civil War Americans: Centuries Apart
Humor: My Lady Nicotine
BennyFifeAudio
Posts: 2
Joined: May 18th, 2018, 9:49 pm

Post by BennyFifeAudio »

Where do I go to do said 'mic check?'
TriciaG
LibriVox Admin Team
Posts: 60576
Joined: June 15th, 2008, 10:30 pm
Location: Toronto, ON (but Minnesotan to age 32)

Post by TriciaG »

A link to instructions were in your welcome email, but you can also use this link: https://wiki.librivox.org/index.php?title=1-Minute_Test
Serial novel: The Wandering Jew
Medieval England meets Civil War Americans: Centuries Apart
Humor: My Lady Nicotine
Elizabby
Posts: 9209
Joined: April 1st, 2011, 5:36 pm
Location: Kelsingra

Post by Elizabby »

Once you've done the 1 min test, I think you would be amazing in the Dramatic Works forum! Come and do voices with us! :9:
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