Well, wouldn’t you know that I’ve stumbled upon something pretty stinking cool if I may say so myself. And, I am. It’s really amazing to me how daily living can organically lead to making some notable strides in one’s skills development. This is the story behind the development of my voice in preparation for creating audio books one day.
Now, I don’t know when this goal of mine will come into fruition, but I still have the dream of putting my first book, Playground Instruction for the Growing Adult, into audio. My hope is essentially to do more and more audio books as I go along in my content creation journey. I’m finding that I enjoy creating audio content, not that my version of it is the best quality stuff out there. But I’m learning and developing my voicing chops, and figuring out the best use of technology to go along with it will come in time.
And let me actually go into the “cool” part of the whole organically-generated voice training that I’m currently participating in. I’ll start off by bringing in a little excerpt from my past blog post, entitled “An Inexpensive Voice Coaching Option” (dated November 12, 2019), where I highlighted what I was doing for voice training at that time. And then, I’ll go into what I’m currently building up as my audio repertoire to-date.
Doing your own reading for the audio recording of your book is definitely not for the faint of heart. I’m learning that speaking stamina is required if I want to produce a solid audio book. And, the voice preparation officially starts this week. Actually, the unofficial prep began a couple of weeks ago when I started reading 30 – 45 minute daily intervals with my 9-year-old, Little Man.
Now, Little Man has a weekly reading goal that he strives to meet as a participant in his school’s Accelerated Reader program, so he’s regularly reading books on a continuous basis. When he completes one, he promptly starts in on another one. And, it’s been pretty easy to keep his reading interest ablaze as he found an enjoyable well-known series, known as the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney, to consume. Once the first book reeled him in, then he was set on reading all the books until he exhausted the series.
He blew through this fan fave quickly in the first nine weeks of school, which left him with a choice to make on a new series to begin for this second nine weeks. And what do you know? He found one, a series that is a higher reading level group of books. Because this series’ level of complexity provides some challenges for Little Man, I’ve been pretty active in helping him with the reading. We take turns reading the pages of Gordon Korman’s series of books (Swindle, Zoobreak, Framed, Showoff, and Hideout). That way, Little Man gets a bit of a break between his reading sessions with an even mixture of out loud and silent reading. We’ve read Showoff and we’re currently reading Hideout (all 275 pages of it).
Not only does reading a stretch-goal book help Little Man with learning new words, vocabulary, and context clue practice, but it’s also warming my voice up for the recording of my audio book for Playground Instruction for the Growing Adult. Without realizing it, I’ve been prepping for my recording day by simply reading to my son.
I’ve heard several authors state that they worked with a voice coach before recording their audio book by having multiple one-on-one sessions or by recording an audio sample and then sending it off to a voice coach for critiquing. And if you guessed that my inexpensive option for voice coaching is to simply self-instruct, then you guessed right. I firmly believe that an author can prepare him or herself for the rigors of audio book creation. So, I’m going to take the techniques I use while reading my son’s library books out loud and apply them to my own book. I plan on practicing reading it out loud in sections throughout each week up to recording day to get my voice prepared for the real deal.
So, as you can see from the excerpt above, I was working on my voice back then and even further back than that. It’s been a constant and steady progression of becoming voice ready that I’ve been traveling on for some time now without really putting a lot of thought into the fact that I was doing it.
And, let me tell you what I’ve managed to add as voice training to the regular routine of reading to and with my son.
Well, let’s go to YouTube for starters. When most people hear the word, “YouTube”, they automatically go into thoughts of video content and rightfully so. That’s YouTube’s draw, but YouTube is very heavily audio-driven as well. There’s obviously an audio component that’s prevalent throughout the platform. I definitely know that first-hand. Just ask me what I listen to, many times, when I’m driving in the car. Go ahead . . . ask away. You know I’m going to tell you anyway. IT’S YOUTUBE VIDEOS! Yes indeed. I actually listen to videos a lot more than I sit down and watch them. Reason being: I appreciate being able to do other things while I take in content simultaneously.
Furthermore, because I was one of those YouTubers that didn’t want to show my face on camera, my videos utilize a smorgasbord of images to complement the audio content that I put out in the videos. For me, audio is the prevalent content component to the videos I create instead of the graphics, and this is probably one of the reasons my videos haven’t done well on YouTube. Just keepin’ it real.
YouTube is a platform that caters to Influencers who appear before camera and bring their visual presence along with their verbal content to the screen. (Too bad I’m not currently interested in Podcasting — seems like a better fit for someone who’s not into video but doesn’t mind speaking.) Never say never, though. And even though the numbers and audience weren’t there, I’ve been able to appreciate the practice creating videos has given me in exercising my speaking voice in front of an additional audience, albeit, a small one.
Then, there’s my latest family project that I started a couple of months or so ago, where I volunteered to record The Old Testament from the King James Version of the Bible in audio for my family’s studying purposes. We’ve been wanting the Bible on audio and had one professional recording of it but decided to replace that version with a recording using a family member’s voice. And it just so happened that I wanted my voice to be the one heard. Go figure. No, I’m not ego-tripping. I simply wanted another challenging avenue to pursue to help strengthen my voice.
Once my husband identified that we needed to record the Bible within the family and had even started out alternating chapters of the Bible to record with me, he eventually decided to let me ride the trek alone, handing over the reins so I could gallop off into the sunset by my little lonesome. And, I’m currently in the book of 1st Kings, recording a book of the Bible each week by splitting the chapters as evenly as possible over 5 days (Monday through Friday). Recording is one of the first things I do when I wake up (after helping my husband get off to work). The book-a-week method for recording has worked very well, but I imagine that Psalms is going to put an end to that recording pattern. I’ll be on that book of the Bible for several weeks.
Needless to say, I absolutely and wholeheartedly LOVE doing this project. Not only am I actually learning as I’m reading the Bible through but I’m, again, exercising those voicing chops of mine in a very productive and natural way. And, I can’t help but feel accomplished to be a part of such a worthwhile endeavor that will spiritually benefit my family for many years to come.
So, when I think about the three major DIY voice training activities (without any help from a professional) that I’ve taken on to help prepare my future audio books or audio work in the future, I think I want to keep this particular content train chugging along. And, here’s what I’m thinking: it’s time to take on an additional voice training activity. I do believe there is an option to do audio content here on WordPress; therefore . . .
I’m going to start adding some audio clips of my content on the Degrees of Maternity blog.
Woo hoo! I’ll be using several Tuesdays to audio record my “Untitled Book #2” scripts that are currently housed on this blog as blog posts. So, if you haven’t had a chance to read them yet, feel free to do so. You’ll find them under the “DOM Writer’s Block: A Writer’s Journey” category on this blog. Or, you can just sit tight because they’ll be coming right at you on Tuesdays, audio-style. I should be able to start that up for next Tuesday’s post. We’ll see. So . . .
Get your listening ears ready to go.
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