Has anyone looked back at their first recording like "oh gosh! why did I ever do that?!"
My first proper section was Certain Famous Oratorios from For Every Music Lover. I had no idea what an oratorio was. I sound very very young and I honestly didn't know half of the words I was saying. It is dreadful, and I think kind of cute, very very Welsh accent that I have kind of lost and is very high pitched.
A Level exams from 4th May to 30th June. I am around, just not as often. If I forget or miss anything, drop me a PM and I'll be on it like a wasp on honey!
My first recording was the main character in a DR, which my family was very excited about and burned the whole thing onto CD's for listening to in the car, so I have to listen to it often
It makes me cringe because for one thing, I had a very squeaky ten-year-old voice (which my mom says is adorable and I disagree), and for another thing, at that time I had terrible allergies to something and I always had a very stuffed-up nose, and you can very much hear it
Rachel
“My behavior is nonetheless, deplorable. Unfortunately, I’m quite prone to such bouts of deplorability--take for instance, my fondness for reading books at the dinner table.” - Mistborn: The Final Empire
Titus, a Comrade of the Cross, Chapter3. My PL notes were a mile long (mostly plosives) and I tried to fix it by cutting them out. I think I recorded that chapter 4 times...
I started my LibriVox recording experience with the intentions of reading a chapter or two of "The Algonquin Legends of New England or Myths and Folk Lore of the Micmac, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot Tribes". It had been orphaned, so thought it would be a good one to start with. Once I got into it, I understood why it was orphaned. The author had dozens and dozens of footnotes that were essential to the book and had to be read, so it wasn't easy to get into the flow of the stories.
It was sort of an interesting book and as it wasn't a classic, I doubt that many people ever listen to it. Even so, I wish I'd understood the workings of Audacity a little better at the time and that my voice and delivery were better. I think I've improved somewhat, but I often feel like a crow trying to imitate a mockingbird. I know in my mind how I should sound, but instead of "tweet tweet" what comes out of my mouth is "CAW ...tweet...CAW
“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.”
―Diane Duane, So You Want to Be a Wizard.
My first was The Cow by Robert Louis Stevenson, in November 2005! Much too much background noise (it wasn't a USB microphone, and I remember that I had to read with my mouth just a couple of inches from it ... without moving around). My voice sounds the same, but I was reading much more slowly than I would now. I'm happy with the recording.
The next I read was Jenny Kissed Me, by Leigh Hunt, while I was also working on a solo versio of Rabindranath Tagore's Sadhana ... which I got so fed up with that I almost discarded but was persuaded to open it as a group reading.
Peter
"I think, therefore I am, I think." Solomon Cohen, in Terry Pratchett's Dodger
Mine was a short story that I should now like to forget, please. Background noise, low volume, and I read it far too slowly and self-consciously. I have no idea how or why I chose it.
I am far, far too new to Librivox to even begin to answer the forum question, but I am truly enjoying reading others' first-recording stories. I will say this: Rachel, your mother is right--your reading of Heidi is so delightful that I think I'll download the book. This will be the third audio version of Heidi I own! Esther, I actually listened to your "dreadful" first recording a few years ago; I never would have guessed that Chapter 3 of Titus: A Comrade of the Cross was your first recording.
As for me... I said I was too new to tell a first-recording story, but I can certainly recount a first-recording... um... ur... experience. After struggling through a chapter with some difficult names and some nuances that I simply couldn't synchronize my voice with, I uploaded a thoroughly cleaned, tweaked, and generally polished audio recording. A nice, neat 21 minutes. At least, that's what I believed I had uploaded... As it turns out, Audacity has its eccentricities and, rather than hearing a clean albeit potentially breathy work near being completed and ready, the DPL encountered a 27-minute mostly raw recording full of unedited mistakes! Definitely an experience I shan't be repeating any time soon, and a lesson in always checking that Audacity has saved my hard work!
Bethesda Lily
"My soul waits for the Lord as watchmen for the morning, as watchmen for the morning" (Psalm 130:6).
Technically, my first recording was chapter 11 in the collab version of Mansfield Park. But my first solo recording (Rilla of Ingleside) ended up in the catalog first.
My first for LibriVox was a trio of Wilfred Owen war poems, which were far from perfect, but listenable. My problem was one of those psychological things--I insisted on reading the intro as "read for LibriVox.com by Winston Tharp." When I asked rather huffily what was wrong with that, Ruth helpfully (and, I thought, gleefully) said "It's librivox.ORG, Winston."
Winston
Be kind. Be interesting. Be useful. Morality ain't hard.--Jack Butler, Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock
k5hsj wrote:My first for LibriVox was a trio of Wilfred Owen war poems, which were far from perfect, but listenable. My problem was one of those psychological things--I insisted on reading the intro as "read for LibriVox.com by Winston Tharp." When I asked rather huffily what was wrong with that, Ruth helpfully (and, I thought, gleefully) said "It's librivox.ORG, Winston."
