After Steve and I struck our bargain, I was sure creating the audiobook was going to be a lot of fun and that Steve and I, both enthusiastic and motivated, would complete it in a couple months.

We decided to have me read my own portion instead of hiring someone else to ‘play me’. It would be less expensive and I would have complete control over how my own story of cancelled job offers sounded.

Steve emailed me information on recommended microphones. I took his top recommendation, purchased off Amazon and set it up. I was familiar with using Audacity to edit audio. I setup the microphone, opened Audacity and began recording….

As I listened to myself, reading my words, I had a vague sense of awkward, wanna-be, straining to perform. I didn’t sound like a person talking about something that had happened to me. I sounded about as uncomfortable as a school girl, reading her book report in front of the class.

Hearing myself only made me more nervous, which made my reading less conversational and more testifying-on-the-witness-stand like.

Maybe I was just being overly critical, I thought. Maybe it would sound better to someone else. I sent a sample recording to Steve. He send me links to

Gaby

and

Booth Junkie

If you are interested in voiceover, or need to record something, go watch Booth Junkie and Gaby. You’ll love them both, trust me.

I went back to my ‘recording studio’, a small bedroom crammed full of extra stuff. Our clutter helped provide the sound absorption usually provided by that padding stuff in a sound booth.

I read the chapter again. I thought it sounded better and began listening to it. Only…. what was this?

For some reason about a minute into it, there was a static crackle and then a few seconds later, still more static and the volume was too low? What had I done wrong?

Shoot, my best recording was unusable.

I asked Steve about the static. He was surprised. Like most problems in my life I Googled it and came up with people suggesting that static during the recording could be static electricity from carpet and suggesting Static Guard or humidifier. There was a suggestion that other applications on the computer might interfere with any recording that was occurring through the USB connection. I started closing other applications, taking the wireless mouse out, moving the microphone to record in my car, powering off and on my laptop, untangling the microphone chord from my laptop chord, plugging my laptop in to be sure it was not on power-save settings, changing system settings on my laptop, changing Audacity settings, microphone settings, audiobox settings.

I had numerous successes. I would record a half-minute of test recording. It would be clear and clean. I would send Steve an email saying that I had ‘found it’ and things were working again. I’d grab my copy of the book, take a deep breath, hit Record and read, more relaxed and smoother from having read it multiple times before, and maybe even think, “this is pretty good.” I’d finish, walk out into the hall where I kept my laptop.

Only over and over again, I would find that part way through the recording, major static would enter the picture. You could actually see it in the Audacity view. Here is what it was supposed to look like

and here is what it did look like:

Holy cow. Things were going from bad to worse.

Meanwhile I had posted projects on Voice123.com. A lot of the project bids were too expensive or boring sounding, but once in a while they were awesome and amazing. What I listened for was believability. Most of Out-of-Work to Making Money is told in the first person. I wanted to believe that the person reading the words had actually had the experience they were describing. When I heard it, I knew it.

But many of the chapters are also interviews and Steve and I had decided that I would read the questions for each chapter. Steve commented that the questions had, in fact, come from me and that it would provide a thread of continuity through the book. It made sense except
1) I was the worst narrator we had
and
2) most of what I recorded was unusable.

At some point we got a bit more scientific. I tried using the microphone on a different laptop. I tried using the microphone with a different microphone cable. Steve and I walked through my setup on the phone. Misery loves company and I must say it was nice to have someone who had some experience with microphones. I was sure I must be making some newbie mistake, but Steve said it really shouldn’t be that hard.

Eventually we decided to have me try purchasing another microphone because there was a remote chance that mine was bad and it was still within the Amazon return window. I went to a local Guitar World and bought a different microphone, brought it home and… it worked. No static. I could record for 10+ minutes and no static. I also liked the way the new microphone sounded better. I was less wooden, which made me more enthusiastic, which also sounded better. I decided I liked my reading better when I made a point of trying to speak a bit more quickly, like I couldn’t wait to tell you what had happened.

Things were FINALLY going well, at last, and then…

Steve sent me a note. He said I had too much sibilance.

Too much what?

Sibilance – it’s the whistling you might get on an S word. I have it and my new microphone made it far worse than the Rode had. Someone just shoot me now.

Steve asked if there was any chance I would consider buying a new Rode microphone. Buy one identical to what I purchased from Amazon, but get it perhaps from a different store?

I did and…. this concludes the UNFUNNY portion of our story. To be continued….