{"id":2393,"date":"2023-05-08T18:09:58","date_gmt":"2023-05-08T22:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/behind-the-scenes-in-the-recording-studio-for-life-in-five-senses\/"},"modified":"2023-05-08T18:09:58","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T22:09:58","slug":"behind-the-scenes-in-the-recording-studio-for-life-in-five-senses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/behind-the-scenes-in-the-recording-studio-for-life-in-five-senses\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Scenes: In the Recording Studio for “Life in Five Senses”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

\n

I narrated the audiobook for Life in Five Senses<\/em><\/a> myself. I\u2019ve recorded most of my previous books, and it\u2019s always a fascinating process.<\/span><\/p>\n

For three days, I sat in a small dark recording booth, carefully placed in front of a microphone with a pop filter (which I definitely need; I have an issue with plosives, I\u2019ve been told).<\/p>\n

My terrific director May Wuthrich\u2014with whom I\u2019ve worked many times\u2014and engineer Zach Giberson sat in the next room, where I could see them through a soundproof glass window and talk to them through my mic and headphones.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Inside the booth, I read the book from a script on an iPad. I paused often to drink water to keep my mouth from going dry and to move my body to keep my energy high.<\/p>\n

I had to keep reminding myself to relax in my seat. It takes tremendous concentration to read with expression and emotion, while articulating clearly, at the right pace (I tend to go too fast). Over and over, I\u2019d find myself tensing up. That makes the process unnecessarily draining, so over and over, I reminded myself, \u201cDrop your shoulders!\u201d<\/p>\n

My director had sent a list of 59 words she\u2019d checked for pronunciation ahead of time\u2014such as names of people (e.g., Dorothy Kunhardt), artworks (Sarcophagus of Harkhebit), places (Eleusis), materials (maiolica), foods (ke-tsiap sauce).<\/p>\n

Despite the long list, we had to stop several times during the recording to check challenging words such as \u201ccentaur,\u201d \u201caesthete,\u201d \u201ccumin,\u201d \u201csatiety,\u201d \u201clazuli,\u201d \u201cWeimaraner,\u201d \u201cmadeleine,\u201d and \u201cWorcestershire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for me, I found it hard to pronounce the ordinary word \u201ctastes\u201d clearly\u2014a word that comes up often in the book, as you can imagine.<\/p>\n

Pronunciation hack: Zach told me about \u201cyouglish.com<\/a>,\u201d a site that shows you clip after clip of videos where real people pronounce a certain word or name. From what I can tell, it does seem to favor clips from experts\u2014and it also shows that there\u2019s a lot of variation in how people pronounce a word.<\/p>\n

I found this phrase to be a particular tongue-twister: \u201cpark\u2019s refurbished spring landscape.\u201d It took me five tries to get it right.<\/p>\n

While recording, I experienced an amusing example of a sensory illusion related to how our brains match sights and sounds. When we watch a movie, the sound comes from speakers far from the screen, not from the actors\u2019 mouths, but our brains move the sound to the correct place. In the same way, while recording, I heard May through my headphones but could see her through the soundproof glass of the studio booth, and my brain corrected the information, so her voice seemed to come to me through the glass.<\/p>\n

I was encouraged when, after a break on the first day,\u00a0 Zach said to me, \u201cI tried turning my phone to grayscale the way you talked about. That\u2019s genius!\u201d (Discussed on p. 54 in the book.)<\/p>\n

Throughout the recordings, I kept a pillow in my lap. I know from experience that I have a tendency toward \u201cstomach noises,\u201d and a pillow muffles the sound. TMI?<\/p>\n

One embarrassing thing happens every time I record one of my books: I have to stop because I\u2019m overcome with emotion. For Life in Five Senses<\/em>, I had to take a break several times while recording the last few pages.\u00a0 I wrote those words, I\u2019ve read and edited them dozens of times, yet when I read them aloud, I still got choked up.<\/p>\n

The very last line of the book was very tricky to deliver. When you look at a copy yourself, I think you\u2019ll understand why it was hard to read aloud those words in the way to capture the experience of reading them to yourself.<\/p>\n

This actually wasn\u2019t the first time I\u2019d read much of the book aloud. As one of the last stages of my editing process, I read aloud all important passages, as well as those that were particularly tricky to write. Reading aloud is a great way to catch issues such as wordiness, accidental rhyme or alliteration, repeated words, poor rhythm, or general clunkiness.<\/p>\n

Want to see more behind-the-scenes footage from the recording studio? Watch this short video.<\/a><\/p>\n

People sometimes ask, \u201cDoes it count as \u2018reading\u2019 a book if you listen to the audiobook?\u201d In my view\u2014absolutely<\/em>!<\/p>\n

If you\u2019d like to order a print copy\u00a0Life in Five Senses<\/em>\u00a0or the audiobook, you can find information and purchase links here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Profit<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I narrated the audiobook for Life in Five Senses myself. I\u2019ve recorded most of my previous books, and it\u2019s always a fascinating process. For three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-habits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}