Verdanta

I read the word heroism exactly the same way, five times, in two different sessions.  Only when I played it back did I realize that the way I pronounced it: Hee-ro-ism, was wrong.  I had to check in with Merriam-Webster, but sadly, I was right about being wrong.  It’s pronounced “hair-o-ism.”

<sigh>

1. I know the right way to pronounce heroism, so I’m miffed at myself for messing it up… FIVE TIMES!
2. I hate it when narrators mispronounce words. (A personal pet peeve of mine…)
3. Now I have to re-record that whole section. 

I guess that’s what you get when you go budget and work without a sound engineer!

(Fess up time: I originally wrote this post on July 8th, but I didn’t publish it right away because I REALLY didn’t want to go back and redo that whole paragraph, just to fix that one little word. Getting everything to sound consistent is such a huge pain.  And of course I couldn’t blog about the mistake and not fix it, so I pushed “save” instead of “publish”.  Eventually, I went back and re-recorded it, so now I can post this with my head held high! )

Yes, I know. 

This sounds like a “DUH!” but after rehearsing the snot out of the first segment of Advent, I completely fell off the wagon and started recording after only a couple of readings, including the script markup.

But since my Saffire was in the shop, and I had nothing else to do on the drive to San Diego, I decided to do something crazy and practice reading my next section.

Actually, I had other fun things I could have been doing, but I was thinking back to my session in the recording studio.  It occurred to me that I had far fewer mistakes in that session that in any of my home recording sessions, and when I contemplated why that was, I realized I had not spent any real time practice reading the text, like I had in preparation of recording in the studio.

Now, I know that veteran voice overs – especially in the book narration field- usually do cold reads, but alas, I have not yet reached that degree of unconscious competence.  I’m still striving for conscious competence, and all too often find myself stuck at conscious incompetence!

We’ll see if my effort bears any fruit when my Saffire returns to me later this week.  I’ll be sure to keep you posted!

My audio interface started spouting intense static, so I had to send it in to the shop.  Fortunately, it’s still under warranty. 

Although I’ve had the problem since June, I waited until two weeks ago to send it in, when the family had plans to go on vacation and I wouldn’t be using it anyway.  I was hoping to have it back by now, but alas, no.  I called yesterday and found out they were still awaiting warranty authorization.  I called the Focusrite representative and he took care of it right away. 

So allegedly, the Safire is in the mail.

I hope to have it back by Friday.

Well, it’s not what I had in mind, but it works:

Solution to a gurgly reverse osmosis system

I guess you have to admire the elegant simplicity of it, after you get over the sheer cheesiness of it! 

Still, it eliminates the problem, so I’ll take it!

Yes, it’s true.  I have a gurgly drain.  Truthfully, I already knew this, I just never noticed that I could hear it IN THE BACKGROUND OF MY RECORDING!

The drain is the in the kitchen.  I’m in the den.  The door is closed.  Apparently, it doesn’t matter. AAARGH!

At least now I have a good reason to nag my handyman to actually fix the gurgle.  His preferred method of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” has gotten in the way of that before now. 

Ahhhhhh~ the joys of recording audiobooks in your own home!

One of the reasons I took this job on was so that I could take time off around my kids schedule. Well, school let out on May 21st, and we left on vacation on May 25th. I’ve been home for about a week and a half, but it took me a while to find my focus.

Actually, all it took was “So when do you think you’ll finish that first audiobook?” from my husband, and BING! everything became crystal clear!

So here I am, back at work.

In fact, I’d better stop blogging and get back to editing!  More later…