Today’s World Violin Day! As you know, I play harp, not violin. However, a violinist and his instrument figured prominently in my audiobook of FANNY HERSELF: A PASSIONATE INSTINCT by Edna Ferber and in the music I chose to go under the credits.
I started to write this quick story as a Twitter thread, but I strive to keep my original content on MY site and share it on social media.
Last updated 10/10/23
I’ve recently enjoyed participating in several Clubhouse chats. In fact, I held an Ask Me Anything on the site on 9/16/22 to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of NarratorsRoadmap.com.
If you click the link above, you’ll see it goes to an Evernote page that has the Clubhouse graphic and audio recording of the chat, as well as an AI-generated transcript from Sonix.ai. (Please see the additional comments about the transcript in the notes below.)
When creating an open Clubhouse room, you can choose to turn on Replays. The Replay is created automatically once you open the room and will be available on Clubhouse until you delete it. Replays let your audience hear the discussion at a later time, share the link to the chat on and off Clubhouse, skip to the next speaker, and make 30-second clips.
Just as — perhaps even more — importantly, Replays can be re-purposed in other ways, such as in part or whole on other social media sites. You know I LOVE to re-purpose content! For instance, I could transcribe one or more recordings and copy my words to a blog article. I’ve also extracted clips to make audiograms to promote the replay in between live events. I’m thrilled to announce that my Clubhouse shows are available on NarratorsRoadmap.com with AI-generated transcripts and on podcast platforms like Apple and Amazon/Audible!
When the Professional Audiobook Narrators Association (PANA) recently asked me to create a video about my music for its current Get Outta the Booth campaign, I couldn’t start fast enough!
I’ve been receiving Mike Dooley’s daily Notes from the Universe for years. I’ve taken some of his courses, and I enjoy how he presents material on the Law of Attraction.
I signed up for his Magical Mystery Manifesting Adventure, which began today. Each day in the 21 days, he and co-presenter Pam Grout will send an email with a secret mission of something to manifest.
When I read today’s assignment of a feather, I thought of a peacock feather. If you read my last blog post or saw this tweet or this Facebook post of a my picture of a real peacock, you might think I have a fondness for peacocks! I thought a feather would be unusual to find.
Drew and I were on our way to pick up something we had ordered. It was Friday lunchtime traffic on a major road that is always congested.
I saw we were about to drive by a flea market I like but haven’t shopped in for a year or more. It’s one of those places that used to be a grocery store but is now filled with several hundred vendors who sell everything from baseball cards to crystal chandeliers. Some of the booths contain so much merchandise that you can’t see everything and have difficulty even walking in. I fear one wrong move will send some precarious piece crashing to the floor.
I said I’d like to stop there. His first inclination was that it was too difficult to turn left out of its parking lot to get to the store. I said I had no business at the flea market and wasn’t looking for anything in particular. We should go on to our destination.
As we turned on the street by the flea market, I commented that we could’ve turned right out of the parking lot and gone only a little bit out of the way to the store. He offered to turn around, but I stubbornly said to keep going where we were headed.
He said again he could turn around because he knew I’d want to go to the flea market.
Reader, that wonderful man I married DID turn around, drove back to the flea market, and parked in front of the door.
I usually like to walk up and down every aisle, taking a quick look left and right to see everything crammed in all the stalls. I skipped a couple of aisles to avoid other shoppers and thought about leaving and returning some weekday when fewer people would be there.
I had not told Drew about the feather assignment.
On 1 February 2018, I started working on a 13″ x 18″ Glorafilia Tiffany peacock needlepoint kit. While it isn’t finished (yet!), it serves as inspiration and motivation for both my hobbies and career choices.
Today Bee Audio’s new CEO Roy Forbes sent a disturbing email to all members on their production roster. He gleefully wrote about working with 2 different international companies “who share our vision and enthusiasm” to help develop AI Text-to-Speech (TTS) for audiobooks.
I say he wrote “gleefully” because, as a professional audiobook narrator, I am skilled at analyzing an author’s printed words and interpreting the subtext, the underlying meaning.
One doesn’t have to be a professional narrator to also understand that such an email is completely tone-deaf and insulting to the workforce. We do not hold any “vision and enthusiasm” for technology meant to replace us!
Artificial intelligence can’t detect the subtext in a sentence, much less over the trajectory of an entire book. I can’t believe it ever would be that good.
One’s voice conveys the essence of being human. Nothing expresses our thoughts, feelings, and emotions better than the human voice. Words on a page can fall flat and be interpreted in different ways, where a speaker makes their views known in multiple ways like volume, pitch, tone, and pauses.
If someone only wanted to have a story read to them, they could use the text-to-speech capabilities on their computer or e-reader. Sure, the inflections and pronunciations are often wrong, and the entire reading lacks any kind overall understanding of the material needed to guide the listener.
Of course, visually impaired people benefit from TTS and understand its fallacies. Paying consumers require much more,
People buy audiobooks because they want to be entertained, informed, and inspired. An audiobook is a performance art based on the narrator’s interpretation of the author’s words. We do far more than simply read the words on the page!
Before I ever walk in to the booth to record an audiobook, I’ve carefully prepared for the moment:
Once I’m recording the book, I’m careful to distinguish voices among the many characters, especially when they converse in the same scene. The listener always needs to know who is speaking. Whether fiction or non-fiction, I must make organic acting decisions that help realize the author’s intent.
My experiences and knowledge shape every word that I utter and breathe LIFE into printed words.
I know that the narrator is the greatest cost in audiobook production, and companies perpetually look for ways to cut expenses. However, taking steps to remove the human voice and replace it with a synthesized one destroys the art form.
Technology is ideal for robots to replace humans in soul-sucking jobs like installing computer chips on a circuit board. It will never replace a human’s ability to convey emotion.
Since Bee Audio is actively participating in the development of TTS to replace narrators in audiobooks, I cannot in good conscience stay on their roster. I also encourage other narrators to avoid this company unless its “vision and enthusiasm” changes in favor of pro narrators.
Perhaps Bee’s TTS applications will be voicing their audiobooks even sooner than they realized.
