The Fraidy Cat It’s funny how comfortable an automobile’s back seat feels until you have to sit on it for hours. And, of course, there isn’t much to do back there but look around at the passing trees, wishing that, somehow, you could have just stayed home instead of traveling through the night until dawn … Continue reading The Fraidy Cat
As a last comment on building our sound booth and recording as well as editing the sound track, I wish to share our settings. After much experimentation, we have settled on a simple set of three audio filters using Apple Logic Pro X software. When we started, I had an idea that our narrator’s voice … Continue reading Logic Pro X Filters
It’s one of those things I have to get off of my chest, an admission, a coming out, and it will surprise even you, my dear readers. I am troubled by cords…they are out to get me, and they have, many times. No, I’m not talking about musical chords. No problem there. I’ve made friends … Continue reading Cords…They Hate Me
I promised that I would discuss equipment we are using for recording our narrator’s voice, and this is the correct time to do that. After completion of the audio version of Geminknot, we have learned a few things that I want to pass along. First of all, the size and design of the sound … Continue reading The Learning Curve
Before I complete this series on setting up your sound booth, I should describe the ‘other’ important issues you will discover using your booth. Some of these you can expect, the others will sneak up on you and manifest themselves by surprise in your finished work. I’m largely speaking about extraneous, unwanted sounds which creep into … Continue reading Annoying Trifles
Now for final little touches which make this studio charming from the inside or outside. I wanted a pleasant scene, visible from the window since the narrator, or singer, faces that direction. Anything will do, other than a view of grey concrete. I built a small flower box, attached to the outside and then quickly … Continue reading Finishing Touches
The addition of sound absorbent panels, especially in areas of high reflection, is a long understood concept. There is no reason that your panels should not also be attractive. You may read that the ideal surface to prevent unwanted sound reflection should be matt or rough. Likely true enough. However, a gay, bright, cheerful panel … Continue reading Absorbing Unwanted Sound
Once the frame was up, I elected to sheath the interior with perforated pegboard prior to any wall finish or insulation. Peg board is inexpensive and there are plausible arguments around which give an edge to a perforated surface because it breaks sound waves differently than a flat surface. The door was inexpensive but solid, … Continue reading Completing the Walls
I started my project with an idea to build a small studio just large enough to accommodate a seated narrator or singer but also to allow a standing musician, two, or even an assistant. I’ve had as many as five people at one time in this small space, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Given my … Continue reading Beginning
Building your own sound booth is possible. I make that statement after recently creating one. My goals were to have a convenient, high quality and attractive booth for narration of my novels. Other uses have happily emerged, such as recording a singer’s voice over a provided melody, to be modified later in a digital audio … Continue reading Building Your Own Sound Booth
Introducing Janel Ridenhour, our new narrator. She has plenty going on at the moment, not only with the time-consuming labor of narrating a full-length book, but also completion of her first album of jazz recordings. Janel is a longtime friend and graciously gave consent for me to use an on-stage photo of her for the cover of Are We A … Continue reading Introducing Janel Ridenhour
At the end of the last blog, we had finished with our word processor document, and created a new text editor document by copying and pasting your novel. This example uses the well-known editor TextEdit, popular with programmers. In case you don’t know, an .html file requires each paragraph to be wrapped with the starting <p> and … Continue reading Refining with a text editor
In a previous blog, I briefly discussed taking your book from a word processor file to an html file and then to a format suitable for upload, publication, and distribution as an e-book. Now that I have ten books in print and also releases of them in ebook formats, including the Kindle version and the .epub versions, … Continue reading From word processor to HTML— Creating your own ebook file
When creating an e-book, you should not attempt to make the body of the text conform to your latest fancy font. The platform and the reader’s preferences should, and mostly will, prevail anyway. Save the fancy font for the front matter of your book and the chapter and title headings. Other than making sure that … Continue reading About Fonts
As you know, the first thing you need to write a book is a good word processor, one that is simple enough to allow concentration on your ideas and not the struggle with software. Therefore, it doesn’t matter at an early stage which word processor you choose. At a later date, you will be able to export the text … Continue reading Some Pointers Regarding Tools
When I watch old movies about an author and his/her interaction with a publisher or an agent, I get jealous. That’s what I thought it would be like, and of course, it does still happen that way for some writers. You remember the scene I’m talking about. The writer comes in with either a large folder … Continue reading Making An E-book
As an example of the process, I will demonstrate, in part, creation of the cover of my book Geminknot. The novel centers on the fate and life of female twins, one of which was switched for a male baby shortly after birth. I had the idea that, in some way, an image of famous twins would … Continue reading Image manipulation
Although I have used imaging editing software for many years, I don’t consider myself an expert or an authority. I am simply a fairly experienced user. There are many areas of book publication which will require use of image editing, and you will quickly see the need to learn the ropes. Creating a cover is the … Continue reading Using an image editor
Many people have commented favorably regarding my book covers, and in this column, I will give you some insight about my thought process and creative tools that I use. The first thing which has to be emphasized is that images found on the web are, in general, off-limits for your commercial use no matter how tempting it may … Continue reading Creating a book cover
If there is any hot area left in the book publishing industry, creating an audio version of your book is it. If you are an author, you must have had at least a fleeting dream about seeing your pet book converted into an audio form. Well, so have I. A reasonable person will be stunned at the complexity … Continue reading So you want to create an audio book?
