Sounding Off

Spending the morning reading the tutorial on how to use a digital recording application I've just downloaded called "Audacity." Exciting, eh? I'm setting up a home recording "studio" (AKA my study closet) so that I can record voiceover auditions from home, thus garnering me more chances to yell my brains out on all manner of video games. There's so much copy for video games these days that my agency can only record a fraction of them in-house (they'd have no booth space for anything else otherwise). Hence, my entry into home recording.


Many people I know would just jump in and "play around" with the equipment and software without using a manual, a FAQ, or a "Read Me." Those people fall into two categories: Gestaltists, who intuitively "get" how something works and can magically make it happen; and Minimalists, who want to know only enough to get them up and running, but no more. An example of the former would be my friend Michael, a savant who can assemble a Lego kit just by looking at the box (and I'm talking about one of those "for ages 8-14" Star Wars kits that have been known to reduce parents to quivering lunatics ). An example of the latter would be my husband Doug, who still does not know where the volume is on his Blackberry phone. 


I am cautious, and obedient. I want ALL the information. If something says "Read Me," I, like Alice in Wonderland, cannot resist. I am of the "Gather All Data and Synthesize" school (GADAS), which Doug has rechristened the "Waste My Time and Put me to Sleep" (WMTPMS) school. I am able to tell him how to use his iTunes library to create a specific Requiem ringtone for each of his most-called numbers. He refuses to care. This is how marriage works after twenty years. 


Audacity is a free downloadable program, recommended to me by several of my VO colleagues. It's simpler to use than Garage Band, and its online manual rocks, mostly because it begins with the heading, "How is sound made?" which is exactly the level I'm starting at. The manual has conversational, easy-to-understand instructions, employing exactly the same tone I use when trying to explain to my mother-in-law how to attach photos to her email. 


Here's a sample:

Your computer has a soundcard − it could be a separate card, like a SoundBlaster, or it could be built−in to your computer. Either way, your soundcard comes with an Analog−to−Digital Converter (ADC) for recording, and a Digital−to−Analog Converter (DAC) for playing audio. Your operating system (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc.) talks to the sound card to actually handle the recording and playback, and Audacity talks to your operating system so that you can capture sounds to a file, edit them, and mix multiple tracks while playing.

I like all those components having little chats in my computer— it's so warm, so collegial! I imagine them gathered around the water cooler, sound files tucked under their digital arms, holding coffee mugs with sound waves steaming out of them...

Okay, back to reading...

Here's another good bit:

Next comes foley. These are clothes rustling(body sounds), foot steps and objects being handled. People that have the ultimate edition of Terminator 2 will know that all of Arnold Schwarzenegger's footsteps and rustle of his leather clothing were created by a five foot woman. These people are usually called foley walkers or foley artists.

Arnold Schwarzenegger being foley'd by a five-foot woman? Now that's information I can use! Even Doug would want to know that!


This may take a while...


Update: My brain hurts. I'm done. 

Does this Money Belt Make me Look Fat?

Why am I up at 5:45 in the morning? It's not the jet lag, I don't think. Last night was perfectly fine. Perhaps because the air conditioning was turned off... Dear Lord, I look at the tangle of cords and adaptors surrounding me and plugged in— computer, Flip Video camera, Canon Cybershot, Ipod, IPAD, PSP— and I think... what would I give up? So I'm not the most rustic of travelers. What else would I be doing at 5:45 in the morning? Yes, I could read that Henry Miller book I brought along... or As I Lay Dying... but how nice to arrange my photos bit by bit, instead of never doing it when I come crashing back at home.

A most edifying day, marred only slightly by children. Our tour guide Marguerita picked us up at the hotel at 8:30, and we proceeded to wend our way to the Acropolis. It can only be described in a word that we don't allow Benjamin to overuse in his essays but is entirely appropriate in this case: awesome. To look up at the fortified walls and imagine spears and arrows hurtling down; to climb up the path that Pheidippides, the heroic but expiring messenger might have taken (if only they'd known about electrolytes back then!); to marvel at the sheer longevity of it all. 

At the base of the Acropolis is the Theater of Dionysus, where, amazingly, they let you sit in. It used to be round but the Romans cut it in half for their games. There was a channel at the bottom where water could exit after they filled up the amphitheater for staged water battles. Take THAT, Cameron Macintosh! 

I sit amongst the ruins and imagine my friend and former Greek Theatre teacher, Linda Jenkins, conjuring up Sophocles and Euripides. I imagine my friend Denis O'Hare reciting his adaptation of "An Iliad" here. I think of the dramas I have seen, and how they all have their provenance here...

Oh dear. Some things never change, like me falling asleep during Act I...






Up to the walls and the gateway at the top, where visitors would be readied for the site of the sacred courtyard where the Parthenon stands. We walk on the weathered patches of pink and brown marble, still beautiful but sporadic, all of it worn into slipperiness from the millions of sandals, boots and sneakers that have trod onto it as we tourists swarm  like ants over the ruins. 

You pass by these enormous columns and then— there it is. The Parthenon. As grand as inspiring as you'd think it'd be. Even with the legions of tour groups battering at its steps, the monument refuses to be daunted, or sullied. After all it's been through— the conversions to church, and mosque, and artillery depot; the constant defilement from fires, explosives and Catholic zealots— a few thousand tacky T-shirts and crappy baseball caps aren't going to do it any harm. 

We walk around it, jaws forever lowering into idiotic gapes, and we also take in it's smaller but still impressive sister the Erechtheion, the temple and tomb where Poseidon & Athena were supposed to have vied for bragging rights over Athens, in whose foundation a snake protector was supposed to have been coiled. We want to linger and soak in the godly glow, but it's hard to be properly reverential when your son is running into Italian tour groups while swinging an imaginary light saber, and your niece is entirely over the whole event and demanding to be taken home.  Nothing like children to swing you back to the present.


Later, while Doug is resting and Benj is allowed his his own sacred time in front of his holy gaming device (believe me, he had to write an essay about what he saw first; screen time is no "gimme") I wonder through the streets of the Plaka region, getting happily lost. A rotund Greek man befriends me and accompanies me three blocks to the main square, also to his dark bistro where he invites me in to sit with his three special lady friends. Ah, what's Greek for "You're barking up the wrong tree"? I decline ("Ohi torra, efkharisto") and wend my way back to Xenodoheo Electra and a lovely meal of lamb with lemon sauce and fried potatoes. Everything is gloriously drenched in that miraculous olive oil. Tomorrow—Delphi!

Update: Dear God, it wasn't 5:45 when I woke up— I read the watch wrong. It was 3:45. Benj woke up too and later I roused Doug to eat breakfast at 7 only to find that I was 2 hours too early. Oops. Can one get late onset jet lag?