The Excellent Voice of Peter Yearsley

Sandra · Post by **Sandra** » June 24th, 2006, 1:24 pm

EXCELLENT!!! I am greatly enjoying "Ghost Stories of an Antiquary" by Montague Rhodes James. Peter Yearsley has the ideal voice for such a project. Thank you, thank you, thank you... What a treat!

Peter Why · Post by **Peter Why** » June 24th, 2006, 2:06 pm

Sandra,

Thank you very much for the compliment; I enjoyed reading them, although some of the stories had a lot of speaking parts, which were difficult to separate.

... and now a word from our sponsor: if you enjoyed this work, you might also enjoy ... The King In Yellow ... which is the collection that I've enjoyed most reading so far.

Peter

LibraryLady · Post by **LibraryLady** » June 24th, 2006, 6:18 pm

I love listening to the poetry he has recorded. Dig around in the collections and see what you can find!

Starlite · Post by **Starlite** » June 24th, 2006, 6:23 pm

Yes he does have a great reading voice. I have been proof listening "Secret Chambers" for him and its a pleasure to listen. ( I think I could listen to him read the phone directory)

*wonders what he sounds like when not reading*

kri · Post by **kri** » June 24th, 2006, 6:28 pm

Wouldn't that be interesting to have a voice chat with some of the volunteers here? You could get an idea of what we all sound like normally. I imagine it would be quite wierd.

Starlite · Post by **Starlite** » June 24th, 2006, 6:36 pm

kri wrote:Wouldn't that be interesting to have a voice chat with some of the volunteers here? You could get an idea of what we all sound like normally. I imagine it would be quite wierd.

LOL We ALL have microphones And probably headsets!!!

Peter Why · Post by **Peter Why** » June 24th, 2006, 6:50 pm

I read somewhere recently that the final barrier that's crossed in the development of a good actor was when the part he or she is speaking can't be differentiated from real conversation. I suspect most (all?) of us here are definitely on the reading side of that line.

The only way you'd find out what I sound like for real would be in conversation. It might be worth leaving the recorder going in the background some time when we're living our ordinary lives and catching our usual voices. But anyway we all talk differently to the different people we encounter. At work, I don't particularly like answering the phone, as it cuts my train of thought, and breaks the flow of what I'm doing ... so, apparently I've developed a really intimidating way of speaking when I first pick the phone up.

.. oh and you have the difference between face-to-face conversation and telephone conversation. Lots more silence is allowed face to face.

I enjoyed reading short poems; I think they're the best, or at least most immediate, way to colour the voice with emotion (though I've never seen them used as a conduit for anger?). Frances Stillman in her "Poet's Manual and Rhyming Dictionary" said that she didn't know of any good poems about science (though Zelazny wrote a lovely one about mathematics in Doorways in the Sand) ... and as far as I can tell, there are no good erotic poems - plenty about sex, but too clumsy and crude. Odd.

I like haiku, but they need a good translator to act properly in English.

Peter

kri · Post by **kri** » June 24th, 2006, 6:52 pm

I'm determined now to find a poem about anger. Hmm..

Peter Why · Post by **Peter Why** » June 24th, 2006, 6:54 pm

In "The White Goddess", Robert Graves said that the way to tell good poetry is whether it lifts the hairs on the back of your neck.

Peter

Starlite · Post by **Starlite** » June 24th, 2006, 6:55 pm

Peter Why wrote: The only way you'd find out what I sound like for real would be in conversation. It might be worth leaving the recorder going in the background some time when we're living our ordinary lives and catching our usual voices.
Peter

I've caught a few "NON" reading voices in some of the outtakes so far. Lots of grunts and groans too LOL

kri · Post by **kri** » June 24th, 2006, 7:02 pm

Starlite wrote:
Peter Why wrote: The only way you'd find out what I sound like for real would be in conversation. It might be worth leaving the recorder going in the background some time when we're living our ordinary lives and catching our usual voices.
Peter
I've caught a few "NON" reading voices in some of the outtakes so far. Lots of grunts and groans too LOL

And a raspberry.

Sandra · Post by **Sandra** » June 25th, 2006, 12:52 am

Peter wrote:

I enjoyed reading short poems; I think they're the best, or at least most immediate, way to colour the voice with emotion (though I've never seen them used as a conduit for anger?).

An interesting poem by Neil Harding McAlister addresses the topic of anger. It is not public domain, so I won't reproduce it here, but it may be viewed on the web:

http://www.durham.net/~neilmac/anger.htm

I can relate ...

Thanks for the suggestion, Peter. I shall give Chambers' "The King in Yellow" a long listen.

It's impossible for me to resist a good story.

Peter Why · Post by **Peter Why** » June 25th, 2006, 1:09 am

"Anger" is an unusual little poem; it doesn't actually trigger the feeling itself, though. A well-written sad poem, or a poem about the perception of beauty (in a person, a sunset or whatever), or about love and affection, can bring at least a taste of the emotion welling up in the reader.

Even the short Zelazny poem, which starts ...

Lobachevsky alone has looked on Beaty bare,
She curves in here, she curves in here. She curves out there.
Her parallel clefts come together to tease
in un-callipygianous-wise;

has a flavour of the devout (?) mathematician's feeling ... which came over best for me in a TV film called "Fermat's Last Theorum", where you could see the love of the mathematician who solved it for his life work .. and see him in tears when he described how a friend had pointed out an error in his first "solution".

Perhaps it's only love and the sadness of the ending of love that can be transmitted in this way?

Peter

earthcalling · Post by **earthcalling** » June 25th, 2006, 1:33 am

kri wrote:Wouldn't that be interesting to have a voice chat with some of the volunteers here? You could get an idea of what we all sound like normally. I imagine it would be quite wierd.

Gesine, Anita and I used Skype for a conference call on MC training. There we all were, sat at our desks where we usually record, talking three-way through our mics and headsets.

Thinks... Perhaps we could think how to make more of this... After all, we've all got the kit. And the software is free. (www.skype.com). Would be good for collaborative projects, exchanging notes, drama etc...

David

Sandra · Post by **Sandra** » June 25th, 2006, 3:15 am

Peter Why wrote:...has a flavour of the devout (?) mathematician's feeling ... which came over best for me in a TV film called "Fermat's Last Theorum", where you could see the love of the mathematician who solved it for his life work .. and see him in tears when he described how a friend had pointed out an error in his first "solution".

Perhaps it's only love and the sadness of the ending of love that can be transmitted in this way?

Peter

My father was a devout theoretical mathematician who loved poetry. He found eloquence in things such as the contiuum hypothesis, not to mention the works of Godel on incompleteness (now there's a subject for poetry).

Would it be too obscure to present mathematical masterpieces on LibriVox? Public domain stuff, of course...

Heaven knows who could tackle such a project. Definitely not Yours Truly, I'm afraid. But somebody out there could, and enjoy it as well.