Need Advice for my First Chapter

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Permalink Reply by Nathan Lowell on June 29, 2008 at 6:17pm

Hi, Jason.

Tech issues first. There's something odd in your audio stream. There's no ambient sound .. you need to use a pop filter .. There is some very odd hiss sound. It *almost* sounds like the input level on your mic is too high but you're not clipping where it sounds the worst. Did you record this as a low bitrate mp3? It sounds very strange without any ambient noise at all ..

Reading was pretty good. There were only a couple of bobbles in there and they were minor.

Word choice is a bit iffy in spots.

- fingertips have no viscera to eviscerate - interesting word, but problematic.
- an assassin probably doesn't wear a cameo .. more likely camo. I'm not saying yours isn't wearing a nice cameo of his mum, mind. Just not normally.
- i'm not sure that a shaking hand would generate much noise between cartridge and casing. barrel against teeth maybe, but guns and ammo tend to be engineered to fairly close toleranaces.
- if the gun really shoots a .9mm round, you might want to make that clear. That's a REALLY tiny bullet, altho I suppose it could be really long. I *think* you mean something like 9mm with is an actual calibre.

You've done a decent job of painting a picture of Henry Stableford. I'm not sure it's the picture you intend.

The larger issues revolve around why the tone quality of your voice is so poor and why there's NO ambient noise on this track. I suspect the answer to the former is related to the latter.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Miles on June 30, 2008 at 4:31am

Thanks for the response Nathan. I'm glad you pointed out some of my ill-conceived word choice. Oh, how I would love for eviscerate to fit in there :)
They will all be sorted out in my rewrite and I'm glad my reading's Ok.
However, I really do need to sort out this tech issue as soon as possible. I'm using Propaganda Pro and exporting my play-list into a 96kbps file. I'm going to attach a sample, this time exported as 128 kbps.

Also, please note that I am using a USB head-set for recording. I had a feeling this would be a problem. Is there any way around buying a microphone? Perhaps a kind of software to add in that ambient sound?

Attachments:

• Test.mp3, 611 KB

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Permalink Reply by Nathan Lowell on June 30, 2008 at 5:21am

Oh! Much better. So it's not the mic, but something with the encoding.

A couple of tips with that headset ... Push the boom up so it's somewhere around the tip of your nose. You want your breathing to be going out under the mic and not hitting it.

This reading sample had a problem that you want to watch out for ... almost every sentence has an inflection drop at the end. This is especially noticeable in the last half of the recording.

I'm still curious why there's no ambient noise level at all. You're either in a very quiet room or some processing is playing with your levels. It's not a bad thing necessarily but you'll want to make sure you understand what it is that's causing it.

I'm not sure about Propaganda Pro as software. Never used it myself, but if it's working for you, then cool. I use Audacity and love it. It's free and runs on pretty much any platform.

Oh, and one other tip. Slow it down just a touch. Your work is very dense. Give the listeners a chance to actually process a bit. Your accent is going to add a bit of cachet to this work in the US and elsewhere, so make sure people can understand what you're saying by giving them a bit more time than you'd normally allow.

Generally, I really like this.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Miles on June 30, 2008 at 6:13am

Well Propaganda has an option to eliminate any noise other than voice, which I have enabled and I am also in a very quiet room. I agree that it is a bit disconcerting to have complete silence between each sentence.

Listening again, I recognize that inflection drop you're talking about. It looks like its just going to be something I need to work on. Once again, thank you so much for your invaluable feedback. I'm one step closer :)

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Permalink Reply by Nathan Lowell on June 30, 2008 at 7:18am

try turning that "only the voice" setting off .. I have a feeling that's hurting the quality of the voice .. if you're in a quiet room already, that'll actually work out well.

the inflection drop is normal and it's something I had to work on to train myself not to do. the challenge is to not go to far and make every statement push upward and sound like a question. Generally, once you're aware of it, you can deal with it. I get caught up in the reading sometimes and forget, though, and wind up having to re-read :)

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Permalink Reply by Evo Terra on July 1, 2008 at 3:47pm

Hi Jason,

Nathan's given some great advice and I won't quibble with any of it. However, I'd like to draw attention to a couple of things you wrote:

I am a young author seeking advice on how to improve my audio and writing skills.

Note, this is a work-in-progress and I have not yet completed the entire book.

Emphasis is mine. It's all fine and good to give the waters a test with audio, but I'll proffer that you are putting the cart before the horse. Ask around here, and you'll find that (with few exceptions) those who have found success in this medium have done so by making sure the process of writing is done well before you embark on the journey of recording.

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Permalink Reply by Nathan Lowell on July 1, 2008 at 4:06pm

Amen to that.

It's all well and good to start dialing in the audio, but if the book isn't done, don't record your first chapter.

I just revised my chapter one based on something in chapter 48. When you're dealing with a story that's 100k+ plus, you can't really afford to lock it down until you have it done.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Sharpe on July 1, 2008 at 7:08pm

Sec-- Thirded to Evo.

I know full well that serials have trouble "hand waving" their older errors.

For my story, I've got the entire chapter 9 missing, just as it just is a "eavesdropping scene" on a later chapter, I guess, 100. (My some of my chapters are small, and it's near the end, too.)

Several of the characters that are currently in it, didn't exist when I wrote chapters 8 and 10, and the characters I had then, don't exist now. I was glad that I waited until I got some scenes for the characters on their own to get a feel of them. If I locked it already, the critter's favorites Svetlana wouldn't be around to be thrown on to Keiya, who also wouldn't be there. (Svetlana was initially a background character who did little, she was in a place that I could use her for that scene.)

I'm at 25K+5k and glad the only thing I've really locked is major event dates in relation to particular event. (5K is for a side story.. which is needed by the plot, but actually answers clearly the questions about the heroine's Mother. And also features Svetlana.)

The only time that I dare read WIP's out, if the critter asks for it. And then It's RL or Skype, then I'm not recording.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Miles on July 2, 2008 at 3:42am

I understand your concerns guys but essentially this is just an audio test to get the environment and settings right before I complete the book and start recording. Note the "Test Dummy" in the filename. ;)

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