What Was Your First Ever Recording?

Post by **icequeen** » August 12th, 2016, 8:00 pm

My first recording ever for LV was Book 3 of Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. That was a fun book!

commonsparrow3 · Post by **commonsparrow3** » August 12th, 2016, 8:16 pm

My first recording was a chapter of the Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. Fortunately, a new group version of this book happened to be in progress when I first joined LV, even though there were already other versions of the same book in the catalogue. As a "newbie", I was a bit overwhelmed at first, unsure where to jump in. It was reassuring to find that I could begin with a chapter of a favorite novel that I knew well. I'm convinced that it's worthwhile for LV to keep doing new versions of familiar favorites, even if they've been done before, just to give "newbies" like me a comfortable place to begin.

Post by **TriciaG** » August 13th, 2016, 7:17 am

aaronml wrote:Noah Claypole in Oliver Twist. It's not in the catalogue yet though... I had a horrible mic. and I read to slowly.

I felt I read too slowly on my first dramatic reading, too. DR's are different than regular readings, for sure!

aaronml · Post by **aaronml** » August 13th, 2016, 8:43 am

Yeah... They really are. I freaked out the first time I did a non-DR...

wildemoose · Post by **wildemoose** » September 3rd, 2016, 7:51 am

My first ever recording was Chapter 23 of this version of Good Wives, catalogued in March 2009:

https://librivox.org/good-wives-by-louisa-may-alcott/

I think it was on some kind of headset mic? I certainly did not have a pop filter yet as you can tell from the first five seconds of the disclaimer.

I think I sound okay (I have a distant memory of reading the whole chapter out loud to myself at least twice before I tried to record!) but the recording quality is a little shocking to my ears now.

SonOfTheExiles · Post by **SonOfTheExiles** » September 5th, 2016, 1:54 pm

From memory, my first Librivox recording back in 2013 was the historical text group project "Chronicles of Canada". I wonder to this day how close I came to correctly pronouncing the French personal and place names! Commonwealth solidarity and Canadian politeness probably kept the wincing to a minimum.

Son of the Exiles

Kangaroo692 · Post by **Kangaroo692** » October 21st, 2016, 5:28 pm

Here's mine:
https://librivox.org/wilderness-ways-by-william-j-long/ (sections 0 and 1)

The bad audio quality on Section 0 is a result of using a built-in laptop mic, noise removal way to many times, and I don't know what. Section 1 is slightly better, but not much.

But comparing those to one of my recent sections I think I've gotten a lot better during my 2 years at LV, but I still want to try to get better at some of the aspects of recording. I'm currently operating with just a USB mic (Samson Q1U, as suggested in the wiki) but someday I would like to make a Portable Recording Booth according to the suggestions in the wiki.

My earlier recordings used to make me cringe, but they don't anymore. I've gotten used to listening to them.

Joey

J_N · Post by **J_N** » October 28th, 2016, 12:29 pm

I thought it was the chapter I did for "Höhlenkinder im Pfahlbau", but according to the catalogue, the poem for the 5th anniversary collection came first... long, long ago...

http://www.archive.org/download/5thanniversary_vol1_1008_librivox/5thanniversary_10_fuenfjahreimkerker_jn.mp3

by now, luckily, I have gotten used to my own voice - I really, really disliked all recordings in the beginning. Now, I can cope.

PS: My first English recording (third all in all) was the weekly poetry "The Pool" by P. L. Dunbar... which I re-recorded so often, I still remember a couple of lines...

http://www.archive.org/download/pool_1205_librivox/pool_dunbar_jn.mp3

J_N · Post by **J_N** » October 28th, 2016, 12:35 pm

Btw. it would be funny to have people re-record a couple of sentences from one of their earliest readings and listen to them side by side...

aaronml · Post by **aaronml** » October 28th, 2016, 2:53 pm

J_N wrote:Btw. it would be funny to have people re-record a couple of sentences from one of their earliest readings and listen to them side by side...

That would be a great idea!

Should we upload them under "bloopers"?

Post by **TriciaG** » October 28th, 2016, 2:56 pm

No, that's for bloopers.

I'd say under XX-Nonproject. But name it something like firstrecording_username.mp3, so we can know what they are and not accidentally delete them.

aaronml · Post by **aaronml** » October 28th, 2016, 3:44 pm

Here's mine:

First: https://librivox.org/uploads/xx-nonproject/Noah_Claypole_Chapter_V.mp3

New: https://librivox.org/uploads/xx-nonproject/firstrecording_aaronml.mp3

BTW can I make a thread for this here in Off-Topic?

Post by **TriciaG** » October 28th, 2016, 4:14 pm

aaronml wrote:Here's mine:

First: https://librivox.org/uploads/xx-nonproject/Noah_Claypole_Chapter_V.mp3

New: https://librivox.org/uploads/xx-nonproject/firstrecording_aaronml.mp3

BTW can I make a thread for this here in Off-Topic?

Hmm, best to put them in the same file. We will have no clue what Noah_Claypole_Chapter_V.mp3 is.

(We ARE in off-topic.)

aaronml · Post by **aaronml** » October 28th, 2016, 5:31 pm

What do you mean?

tovarisch · Post by **tovarisch** » October 28th, 2016, 5:52 pm

My first LV recording (aside from the 1-minute test, which BTW I still have) was a poem in the multilingual collection 007, here is the beginning of it:
https://librivox.org/uploads/xx-nonproject/tovarisch_first_20sec.mp3
Oh how stiff I was (or is it "rigid")

...