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Re: Narrators Voices

Subject: Re: Narrators Voices
From: Walter Knapp <>
Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2003 14:59:33 -0500
From: Martyn Stewart 

> I see through the notes of the group that Walter is about to release a
> frog CD? Do you have a good narrating voice mate? I have found with a
> lot of disks available to the public that the narration can be bloody
> awful, you get some lovely natural sounds then this voice spoils it,
> being a Brit and used to the "plumb in the mouth" BBC voice, I
> personally like this, listen to David Attenburgh for instance, he has a
> good narrators voice, it makes all the difference, with respect to Lang,
> he has some great CDs out yet I don't feel his voice does them justice
> (I don't like my voice also, I had to get another Brit to record mine) I
> often hear comments about this, you hear a melodic sound then the dorsal
> tones of a cross between Dolly Parton & a sheep!!, just a thought, Walt,
> does the wife still have her Aussie accent?

Yes, and still the Brit/Aussie ideas about english. Though it's not as
strong as it was. And I'm very used to it.

Our narrator is one of the DNR employees who's been used a number of
times because most everyone around here likes his voice. (I'm quite
happy to let someone else do that) I heard it last just after the day in
the studio when we recorded all the narration. The poor narrator stuck
in a booth, and a bunch of folks going over each letter he said,
constantly telling him through our mic link to try again. On top of a
good voice he was very, very patient, some parts took many takes. I
heard the entire narrated CD that day all put together, but have not
been involved since. It sounded good to all of us then. And my
understanding is that there have been no changes to the CD since. It was
supposed to be released in February. The hangup is there is a booklet
that's been endlessly edited. I've only seen a few of the early rough
drafts on that, have avoided being involved there.

The primary authors of this CD are myself and John Jensen of the DNR. He
and I cooperated over the picking of the call stuff from mostly my
material. (Brimley's, for instance, I did not have at the time) I mostly
filtered and cleaned material from all my survey recordings and mostly
stuck him with exactly which one of the clips to use. It took months,
Lots of back and forth. He wrote a guideline text for the narrator, but
somewhat we worked out the rough spots in the narration in the session
as we heard how they sounded. John also was designated the final
authority on exact pronunciation of scientific names and such like,
although he and I were mumbling on some of them. The narrator, although
a biologist is not a herpetologist, so had lots of fun with some names.
He was more familiar with bird CD's and we had some interesting
discussions on the differences of approach and end use.

This CD has the usual set of ID clips, narrated, followed by over 20
minutes of frog chorus. Which is a chorus through the year, all the
tracks crossfaded to sound like one long track if played straight
through. (at least that's how it was last I listened, I provided the
crossfading in several forms for them to choose) We did not get every
species in the chorus, but quite a variety. Info about the tracks there
is in the booklet. We found in checking a fair number of state ID CD's
that most just put in the ID clips with narration followed by the same
clips without narration to "test", a pretty dry format. The chorus is
not common in this type of CD. But we thought it would be a more
realistic test, and a piece of good listening too.

In many ways this CD was a rush job when the higher up's in DNR suddenly
became interested due to hearing about sales of the New Jersey CD and
asked John if we could do one. John and I had been planning on doing a
CD, in fact had discussed it just a week before, but wanted to get
better stuff on some species first. Since we did not have the hard job
of selling the CD to the DNR management, we just scrabbled to put it all
together with what we had, some 37+ CD's of raw material I'd recorded,
plus a little research recordings from other projects. (the gopher frog
ID clip includes some calls recorded by hydrophone.) Our figuring is
that now that it's out, we can later revise it with more material. I'd
particularily like to expand the chorus some more.

John Jensen is head of DNR Non-game, was the person who sucked me into
doing sound survey on the frogs. He did not have to work very hard at
that. He is a herpetologist and a fantastic person to work with. Though
you better be ready to move if following him through a swamp, he covers
ground, even if it is deep in water and weeds.

I had a note from him today, the CD has finally gone to press today. And
he'd already found a error that will be in the first edition. One range
map that probably only he and I know needs another part marked, another
of my recordings changing maps. Range map changes are endless. This one
was a little interesting in that the ID clip contains calls from the
area not marked. (Southern Cricket Frog - Polk County GA)

It is a DNR fundraiser, profits will be put directly into the non-game
research fund. I'm not making a cent off this. It will be sold through
one of their wildlife preserve stores, and maybe elsewhere. I'll give
the details when I know them as to ordering and so on.

Hopefully you will like the narrator.

Walt




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