It’s been a long winter and I’m happy to see summer arriving here on Jekyll Island. Unfortunately, I’m not actually seeing a lot of it right now because I’ve been in my new “sound studio” recording the audiobooks for “Escape to Jekyll Island,” “In Bloom on Jekyll,” “Treasure on Jekyll,” and “In the Shadows on Jekyll.” I’ve started writing Book 5 – that’s the easiest thing on my to-do list. But I stopped myself. I needed to record these audiobooks before I did anything else.
Y’all, being a narrator is HARD! I’m a devoted audiobook fan – I used to have dozens of cassettes for audiotapes, then CDs for audiobooks, and now that there’s no limit to what I can store on my iPad, I have more audiobooks that I’d like to admit I’ve purchased. But keeping that in mind, I figured I should give narrating my books myself a shot before I went out and hired somebody else to do it.
Day One was ugly. My girlfriend, Rita Rich, is a podcast producer and she loaned me all the necessary equipment to record the books. Including sound blankets to build my studio. I started out by watching a tutorial on the whole process. Then I tried to get set up.
After stepping around the box of equipment for months, I finally opened it up to get started. It was not what I was expecting. I don’t know how to use a sound mixer, and I’m not even sure what half of the other equipment in the box was for. I read the quick start guide, cursed a lot, then got online and spent $50 on the easier microphone the guy in the tutorial recommended. It plugs right into the computer and skips all the mixer steps that I’ve never learned. I told Rita I was too dumb for the system she gave me, and she just laughed.
Next, I built my “sound studio.” I’ve been struggling with this one, too. The only room we have without windows is a bathroom and the plumbing in the walls makes it less than ideal. After watching the tutorial with the guy set up in his closet, I decided to use the linen closet cabinet in the guest room as a base. I opened up the doors, top and bottom, and draped the sound blankets over the top. The way they hang on the opened doors, I have a nice workspace underneath. It’s great except for the blankets sitting on the back of my head. They bug me. I think putting a ladder behind me to brace it higher may help so I’m going to try that tomorrow. But the actual studio space works. And the ACX check – that’s the test to make sure the sound quality is sufficient for Audible, the biggest audiobook distributor out there – said that everything sounds fine.
But it’s not fine. Why? Because I read too fast. If you’ve ever met me, you know that I always talk too fast. But it seems like when I’m reading, I’m racing. I could barely understand myself at some points. What to do about it? I’m going to delete the eight chapters I’ve recorded and start over. Much slower. It’s so frustrating that I could scream. But at the same time, I get what the problem is, and I should be able to fix it with some self control. Right?
With that said, I learned a lot from the Audacity tutorial, and I managed to take out a lot of the dumb noises and breath sounds that I make. Not all of them, as Rita was quick to point out when she listened to the recording with her super-fancy producer headset. But I got rid of a lot of noise that wasn’t supposed to be there. The next time around, I think maybe I’ll actually have something I can work with.
It’s not easy to record anything at home. I had a podcast for a few years from Vieques Island and I cannot even imagine what Rita went through to clean up the background noises there. Coqui frogs and roosters, among other things. Here on Jekyll Island, my dog is probably the biggest challenge. Sherlock is our security pooch (at least that’s what he thinks) and he MUST bark at everyone who walks down our street. And let’s face it, here on Jekyll we get more bikes and walkers than cars. I have to stop recording every time the dog barks. And then I wait patiently to see if he’s going to bark again or if it was just Susan across the street getting in her car and Sherlock saying hello.
So, what’s my excuse for not blogging in months? I don’t really have a good one except that I didn’t have anything interesting to write about. I had a shoulder surgery, a hand surgery, and a knee replacement in the last nine months, and I’ve had so much physical therapy that they going to start charging me rent at the facility. I thought that I would be recording audiobooks while I was recovering from the knee replacement, but that didn’t happen. So, I’m tackling it now.
ACX recently sent me an offer to create AI audiobooks for me – I don’t want to take it. I don’t love the whole AI thing and I’m not ready to give up to it yet. I know other good authors who are going to use it, but I really want to try to record them myself before I even consider going that route.
I’ll keep you posted on how it goes – as I always do, I promise I’m going to try to blog more. Maybe I’ll post some sample audiobook clips to get your feedback. That’s so scary, right?
Until next time, happy reading! Are you all caught up on Tally and Mitch? Book 5 is coming!
Sandy