Because Sometimes Only Hearing is Believing
I’m featuring sounds from my recent audiobook projects, just for fun, and I hope that this feature of my narration work will resonate with authors and listeners.
Many times my FX are drawn from a marvelous website called Freesound.org. I cut, slice and alter them using effects found in the Audacity tool (also free to download and use). Sometimes I create the sound myself, using my voice or things to hand.
Featured Sound: Valenthur’s Tea
This is quite simply that part of the story where one guy is trying to have a civilized afternoon tea. But this is not England in the Alleged Real World, see, it’s an epic fantasy tale, so the adventurers crash the room with urgent requests to look at this book. This huge, old book that they open up on the nice table with all the tea things set in their perfect place. But now it all gets bumped out of the way, because book and clues and adventure. Right?
Here’s the sound, a bunch of tea things getting bumped out of the way to make room for a huge book:
How It Sounded
This is why my audiobook projects take so long sometimes. I mean, I already got swords being drawn, I got dragon roars and the sound of money changing hands. I’m ready to perform guys shouting in pain, saluting, stuff like that, no problem. But tea things? And it’s less than three seconds!
I searched up the following sounds:
- “Calopa310” recorded ceramic-dishes (#186419)
- “Soundmary” had clinking cups (#196679)
- Finally, “Darkiron 98_01” named his effect platoschocando (#446326)
I took clips from each, altered the dead space between them in some cases, and laid the tracks in parallel.
Labor of love, in the dictionary- picture of me doing this.
How It Looks
Hah! I almost spent another hour trying to find the picture. But if I’ve been successful you can see it already, yes? Something like this from https://www.pxfuel.com/en/free-photo-erxvz:
Of course, it was a tome, not a magazine. So sue me.
I believe that the key to good FX is not just bombast or distraction, but also by that just-right sound, the one that goes almost unnoticed behind the narration of the host shouting “see here!” and all the rest. I’m hoping that if I do it right you’ll be immersed and find yourself enjoying the story even more.
Harbingers of Hope is out now in paper and e-book, and will be issued as an audiobook later this fall.
What I thought to call Judgement’s Tale when I began chronicling in 2007 was a whopping big yarn. That much, I knew. But as I reeled out the story of Solemn, Treaman, Pol, Anteris, Gareth and many more I started to worry a little. How many pages could one book hold? I made the decision to split the tale into two still-hefty novels, published the first half of the story using the title Judgement’s Tale, and then began working on the conclusion.
much less refuse, back in 2012. She has guided my publication efforts since then and I have zero complaints. She excels in cover design and remarked from the beginning that the orange-toned original covers of JT and EoK were not fully satisfactory. I kind of liked them, but then I love any present I get. And I’ll always suspect that this newest project of hers came about at least partly because she just wanted to create a new cover.
THAT is a map of the Lands, I can tell you! And it should be in the current copy when it hits paperback.
Treaman lives for the thrill of adventure. Guiding a group of enterprising companions, he’d put his life on the line for any of them. But when the adventurers become lost in a land tainted by the growing curse of Despair, he fears his leader’s mission is destined to end in failure and death.