Something a little different...

[avevale_intelligencer]

Background Music - a story!

About seventeen minutes long, so probably not worksafe in that sense.

First time recording this kind of thing since schooldays, so feedback very welcome.

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the warning, also not safe to start listening at this time in the morning when supposedly getting ready for work (for some reason if I just click on a link to an MP3 it just opens as a black window[1], indeed a blank black box, with no indication of length). I'm downloading it to listen this evening.

[1] No, not a black widow. Not that I have anything against black, you understand. Or widows...

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

And, for a bonus, see if you can spot the major plot hole I only just noticed. Erk. Not sure how to get round that without re-recording the whole thing...

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Preface: ah, it's a good thing I 'hibernate' the computer instead of rebooting it, I actually started this (well, almost all of it) when I listened to it originally. I've tidied it up (speelinge erors and such) and added the technical details (specifically, the timings) which I meant to fit in before. Thanks for reminding me to find the window I'd opened for it...

Content: You have a way with voices. OK, only one (apart from your normal one) on this, but I'd like to hear more. I've been interested since you first mentioned that you were reading aloud to the Countess. I like it, and it's an interesting story told in an interesting way. The 'twist' at the end reminds me of something, and I'll track it down eventually.

I didn't find the plot hole though, and that is probably because of my next point. Or possibly because I'm pretty bad at spotting plot holes.

It's a long time since I've listened to "audio books", and I've re-found why (apart from my tendency to filter out audio if I'm doing something like working or driving, which in this case I wasn't, but that makes them not useful to me unless I am actually doing nothing else at all at all). I don't take much in when listening to voice, and I've just realised why. When I read, I actually reread, even something new, I read each paragraph several times, or at least bits of it, it's non-linear on a small scale. I backtract to catch bits which I know I missed. It's fast so I don't generally notice it. When I'm listening, though, I can't backtrack, or not easily or smoothly, and so things get lost because the new information is coming faster than I can store it. In interactive speech that's not so bad, because a speaker will generally pause (and one-to-one I can ask for a repetition), and I also get visual cues (but the 9:30 company meeting at work I lose most of it, again because I can't see them or control the pace or ask for a 'replay'). And with music I listen to the same thing over and over again (it used to drive my mother mad) to get the details.

For some reason the last part stuck more. Possibly because by then I had got more of the 'pattern' so it needed less processing, or possibly I'd adjusted more to the format by then. That probably happens with books as well, I think.

Technical:

The break between the first part and second (where he gets carried away listening to the music, around 02:10) jars, I found. It's too abrupt and sounds almost as though it has stopped (indeed, I checked the file and almost got round to pausing it and investigating what had gone wrong). Some background noise, even low level hiss (it is supposed to be on tape) would, I think, have covered that.

At 10:25 there is a sudden quality difference (it seems to me as though some of the bass has disappeared, and sounds 'boxy'), with no in-context explanation (he didn't say that he'd changed room or something). There's a slight click at that point, I suspect that this was two takes and you had different settings.

So yes, I enjoyed it, but I'm not the target audience I'm afraid.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Thank you for listening anyway. :)

I tried letting the Sibelius run on and "turning it down" at the appropriate point, but it was still intrusive, and of course I have no music to use for the second part.

I think what happened at 10:25 was that a certain cat leapt on to the keyboard and knocked the microphone over. Starting again after I'd put everything back probably accounts for the change.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I think I might have found the music more distracting if it had run on. As it was, I actally had to go back and listen to find out where it did disappear (rather ironic, in view of the sentiments being expressed at that point). Yes, it could have used some for the second part, perhaps you should write it *g*. I think that the way you faded it was very good, it was there but then faded out once I'd recognised its presence and didn't need it any more (much the way a playwright wil often use a dialect or language at first to setup a character and then reduce it once it's been established).

I do love the voice, the suggestion of a Russian (or similar) bass, and I would love to hear your reading to the Countess sometime with the different voices. Preferably 'live', because then I could get the visual cues (which I use a lot when people are speaking normally; I don't "lip-read" but I do use it for synchronisation, which is why I get very upset when TV or video is out of sync by more than a few 10s of milliseconds, I've been known to rip video to disk and put it through a video editor to get rid of as little as 50ms error).

I would also love to hear you reading something like the Austin (which I now know, and so would expect to have less trouble following) with the character voices. (OK, so I know our Soren, but not how the Soren in the books sounds nor any of the others.) Or maybe Two Magicians.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Some comments.

0) I enjoyed the story and the reading.

1) I see why you chose to use audio as the vehicle for this story, but you may be getting fewer responses as a result because a 17 minute mp3 is rather a lot of data to download for those of us who are used to slow connections.

2) Having background music for the first part, and then none when the speaker comments on the music, is a sort of shift in the meta-rules of the art form. For example, you can have a play with no scenery and no props, and the audience just imagining what the actors refer to and mime out. Or you can have a play with scenery and props. But you don't see much in the way of plays that start out with scenery and props that just vanish halfway through--except perhaps as a comment on the mental state of the characters that they are referring to and interacting with things that aren't there.

I would similarly suggest either having music or having the audience imagine the music, but picking one and sticking with it all the way through. Because I was wondering if maybe the speaker was hearing music that wasn't there and I should bear that in mind, which was a digression you maybe hadn't planned on the listeners minds making.

4) Regarding plot holes--well, he says the music paralyzes people but he's still talking. The music works on tape (and a tape of a tape, and a tape of a tape with someone talking over it so you can't listen to it properly) but doesn't work in live performance which ought to be more emotionally intense. And it's hard to see how the grieving families "have their remedy to hand" when everyone who knows how the tape works only knows because they're not in this world anymore to tell anyone.

So those are my thoughts on it. Thanks for letting me listen to it.