Don't forget to breathe!

[eosrose]

When podficcers first start recording, we all tend to face the same question: "Should I cut out my breathing?" With so many new podficcers joining us (welcome to the party, guys!), it seems like a good time to revisit this question. The basic answer: don't cut out all of your breathes; keep clear pauses in your narrative and dialog.

Comments

[ysilme]

Thank you so much for this tip, it is very helpful. I'm still very new to podficcing and didn't even know some readers cut out their breathing pauses, but I know now I have listened to such edited podfics which indeed have felt somehow weird.

As far as listening goes, I can't thank you enough fort his:

One thing you might keep in mind is that not all listeners will speak English as a first language-comfort levels with the language will vary; a steady pace with reasonable pauses are even more helpful to people who need the pause for mental translation.

English is my third language, and while I speak and understand it very well and have no problems any more with professional audiobooks to understand them when I don't know the book, a very large number of the podfic I come across is so fast I simply can't follow. I usually take up the text to help me along, but in a few cases event hat doesn't help to understand the reading.

[susan_voight]

Just a mild disagreement on one part! I strongly believe in lots of pauses and silences, I often go back and paste in more between paragraphs or unmarked dialogue. But I think I have a higher standard for feeling that audible breaths are distracting. My very rough rule of thumb is that if I want to convey -- paradoxically -- breathlessness, then I leave audible inhales in. I just did a podfic that was 100% a nervous person doing a radio show, and when she got really worked up and talking rapidly, I kept in the inhales necessary to get all her long sentences out. But when I'm narrating, or when the character has a very long sentence but isn't audibly agitated, I will overwrite the inhales with silence to keep the pause but not distract the listener with my biological need for breath. :-)

Now, maybe people do find this distracting in my podfics and they've just never mentioned it! A lot of what I do I've just developed by what I find works for me. So this is just another data point.

[podcath]

This! I have always removed breaths and replaced them with c&p silences (sometimes shorter, sometimes longer than the breath, which I decide when I listen to it), but recently I've started keeping some breaths in in dialog or, at times, in prose narrative when I get to a scary or exciting moment. At that point, the breaths seem to increase the tension and work...for the rest, I'm with you and find them distracting! (Only caveat is to pick different sections to c&p in a very long fic, bc silences change in different recordings).

Eosrose, great post! I wish I could go back to my earliest fic and just insert pauses :)

[skeletncloset]

I'm a beginner and I'm wondering what c&p silences are and how do you use them? Is this on audacity or garageband?

[paraka]

It's not a setting (at least now how I do it). Whenever I record, I try to leave a pause of a few seconds at the beginning or end of the recording. I generally copy that part into a new file, for easy access, then whenever I cut out a breath, I'll past in some of that stretch of silence. The advantage of doing it this way is that, hopefully, the ambient background noise of your recording will be present on your bit of "silence" so there's no audible difference to the bits you paste in.

[margi_lynn]

P.S. One thing you might keep in mind is that not all listeners will speak English as a first language-comfort levels with the language will vary; a steady pace with reasonable pauses are even more helpful to people who need the pause for mental translation.

Thank you for pointing this out! English isn't my first language and I usually feel pretty fluent! ...except sometimes for podfic.

I'm sort of a perfectionist and will sit there and make sure all the spaces are just right IMO but I do completely silence my breathing. I left all the breathing in once, and I felt it was ... yeah. I'm a really plosive breather and I just don't know... my breathing feels really loud and obnoxious to me!

I have been debating about doing less editing to my podfics, I will admit, but I'm not sure.

[piscaria]

Lately I've been listening to a lot of fiction podcasts again (EscapePod, PodCastle, Clark's World, etc.). I hadn't listened to most of them for about a year, since I've really gotten into listening to podfic. What shocked me the most when I started listening to them again, though, was how fast most of their readers are. It's all full-steam ahead, with nary a pause for a breath. They definitely go overboard on the editing. I never really even noticed it when I listened to them before. But now that I listen to audio recordings as a podficcer and not just a listener, I'm much more tuned into what's working and what's not. My favorite readers, both podficcers and pro readers, all really know how to inhabit the pauses in the narrative. They uses silence to their advantage. I don't usually pick up them breathing, but I definitely pick up the pauses. And when they're not there, I notice their absence

[piscaria]

While on the topic of breath, this might be helpful to some of you. It was certainly helpful for me! Last weekend I had my theater-major sister trapped in a car with me for several hours. For a long time now, I've been bugging her to show me some articulation exercises (usually I warm-up before I read by doing a bunch of tongue twisters and whatnot). But as it turns out, my internet searches for vocal warm-ups had turned up pretty much the exact same things she was doing in her classes. So instead, she showed me something much helpful -- how to tell when I was speaking from my gut as opposed to my throat. The principle behind this is that your core muscles are a lot stronger than your throat muscles, and that if you use them to support your breath and your voice, you can speak for a lot longer without exhaustion. I used to sing a lot, and I remembered my voice teachers stressing the importance of diaphragm breathing, but for some reason, I hadn't carried that into my speaking voice. She had me take in a deep breath until my stomach

[mothlights]

speaking from my gut as opposed to my throat

Yes, this.

[mothlights]

Great post, and good to read through the comments too

[margi_lynn]

I think you've been doing a great job at the speed you've been recently recording, though. :)

I find that about half of the time editing just listening to what I've recorded, because I know that my tendancy is to edit the pauses tiny because I felt like I spoke too slowly. I feel like those podfics when I first started sound slightly strange now, because I was trying to be fast and that didn't really work out for me.

[mothlights]

Your beta skills are crazy good, so I appreciate that. :)

I find that about half of the time editing just listening to what I've recorded, because I know that my tendancy is to edit the pauses tiny because I felt like I spoke too slowly.

Agreed! Pacing sounds faster to me on a listen through than while editing.

[margi_lynn]

You're welcome! I love beta'ing so I'm glad to hear that what I do works for you ^u^